Considering Coming Back.

So as the topic title says, I'm considering coming back to the game, but I was wanting to get some info on the current state of the game and the servers.

First off, I was wanting to know if there are any servers that aren't completely overrun by RMTs/Bots. I played on Asura, so I know there is definitely a biased view I had on the issue last I played, and all the issues that server had with both. Almost never saw anything in shouts other than RMTs/Bots selling party slots for ambuscade or whatever xp/cp/etc grind. I'd like to transfer to a server that has as little of that as possible, and more of people doing stuff with each other in shout groups if possible.

Second, is how is the games economy these days in terms of methods of making gil vs. the amount of gil necessary to actually make progress on upgrades, mostly from a solo perspective with only one account. The times I have available to play vary greatly due to working a 3rd shift job, having an awful issue with insomnia, and being a light sleeper. These problems lead to me having drastically varying times I actually can be online, making group content hard to attend with any regularity outside of shout PUGs. As such being able to do a good number of stuff solo for gil to progress gear and such would be nice.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

run

Brd

There are basically three distinct FFXI experiences, from what I've read on this forum and reddit.

Asura: Loads of activity, including mercs, bots, RMT, AH, PUGs. Everything you want at your fingertips, though lots of competition for it all
Bahamut/Odin: Asura-lite. There are still mercs and RMT, and the AH is quite busy but not quite Asura levels. Possibly some PUG but fewer. Odin is primarily Japan-based, Bahamut is more US/EU based.
Everywhere else: There are no mercs, the only bots are people botting their own character, the RMT mostly just do CP or bot sparks. Content is focused around networking, linkshells, and Discord. If you want to do content, you need to make friends and do the content with them, you won't find a single PUG. Similarly, some things on AH are rare and you might have to wait for synthesis materials, or if you want a crafted item you may need to speak with a crafter directly.

Gil is reasonably easy to come by, as long as you're willing to grind some.

It's sounding like I should probably try Bahamut, I like the idea of the server being a bit busy, but Asura was just flooded with merc's, RMTs, and bots. That is definitely not what I'm lookin for, but I also don't want to join a server that's nearly dead either. Thanks for the insight, I'll probably give it a shot.

Bots are everywhere. SE has made it clear that they’re not willing to put the effort in to police it, and made an absolutely inane grind for all of the “I’d come back to sit and XP for hours on end!” folks who, surprising no one, didn’t rematerialize. Things that seem to get people banned is more the pos hacking variety of infractions. Shout content is mostly dead because most content has shifted to requiring a static group that seems designed to actively punish failure/adding randos due to difficulty and entry lockouts. Places like Bahamut will have the occasional Omen, Divergence, or Ambuscade shouts, but content much older than that is largely relegated to folks soloing. Odyssey and Sortie are attached to lockout and currency grind systems that dissuade you from adding Joe Blow in because it will stunt your progress, either through traversal limitations or straight up difficulty walls. The three raccoons in a trench coat that we have for a dev team these days have seemingly made things incredibly hostile to new/returning players, because otherwise the diehards would get their stuff and then sit and *** in Jeuno that there’s nothing to do.

Money is better made with a few friends - Odyssey Sheol C shits out a healthy reward for a 30 minute run if you can kill a lot of mobs, few people (on my server) farm Dynamis Divergence, so a quality 3 man group farming Wave 1 and 2 can make some decent scratch, Ambuscade you can sell the Currency you’re not actively using, and let’s not forget your 2 million gil weekly allowance from Sparks/Accolades. Throw in some solo Swart farming on THF in Omen and there are plenty of ways to make money if you put in the time and effort.

All of this really comes down to what are you hoping to accomplish when coming back? If you want to sit and grind XP with other players til your eyes bleed, you’re not going to find that. If you just want to chill and go at your own pace, make some REMAs, try Bahamut for a month or two. Watch their shout channel on here, see if the activity is what you actually want. If you’re hoping to jump in and progress on newer things like Odyssey or Sortie, you’re gonna have a bad time.

I feel like this attitude creates a causality loop. New players see a veteran group full clearing seg farms, getting 9k RP a run from bosses, getting V20/25 clears, and getting 8 or 9 Sortie bosses, but those groups can't carry them. Instead of gathering 2-5 other new players and starting from the ground up, clearing upstairs bosses and then working on clearing the lower bosses, doing seg farms with BLU Cruel Joke strats or skipping agons, and working on V0-V5 clears, they just quit because they can't get in with the big boys. Then there aren't any new/returning players for the next guy to group up with.

TBH I think people need to stop trying to skip straight to the end game. Sure, if a friend can help you get some segments by dragging you through their seg farm run and then get some R0/R15 clears so you can buy ody gear, great. But you shouldn't expect to immediately jump into 8/9 boss Sortie runs, V20 clears, top-efficiency RP farming, and capped seg farm runs. Start a group with other newer players, kill what you can, use trusts if you have to, and build a community of peers instead of worrying about why SE won't redesign the game so that veterans can drag you straight to the top.

A thousand times this. So many newer players want to jump to endgame gear guides without understanding their jobs and building themselves up to take care of content themselves. I see a lot of newer folks say things like "I NEED NYAME TO MAKE MY JOB PLAYABLE" and that's just an insane mindset.

You should try Horizon

I would recommend Eden myself. if you are going to force yourself to be limited to 75 cap, at least play where the game balance is more inline with the original experience, with only a handful of QoL inclusions, in addition to already having functioning ToAU jobs, and potentially Salvage and whatnot at this point (though I am not sure on that nor population numbers as I only dicked around there to relive the glory days of Ranger for a hot minutea few years ago).

added bonus: no allegations of sexual harassment via the server owners that I have heard.

I would still just go to Asura. Just use the game's new filter system.

Asura is still relatively easy to get stuff going. People are willing to help. Just as I am typing this there are two LFM shouts for the new battlefield. Asure does lack people willing to get stuff started, but whenever I try, even if it's to farm rems, I find people to join.

Party shouts for Sortie go from casual 4 boss to 9 boss kill. There people still doing oddy.

No shade at OP, though it seems like every post like this I read, the primary complaint is typically "no PUG shouts to join" rather than "nobody joins my PUG shouts".

Are you shouting and nobody is joining, or are you waiting for shouts that never come?

Just gonna say any mid-high pop server is going to be mercs/bots to some extent, every server is alts galore+likely botted alts at that, asura being the worst, so no real escaping all of it.

Man decided to come back to FFXI

He makes a post "Where should I go"

But he doesn't say what they plan on doing.

Good luck on your choice

P.s
I wouldn't play on a Private server since they a illegal and at any point subject to deletion. I dare not spend my time achieving on a server like that as my time is important.

In time, Bahamut will become similar to Asura. That said, it’s pretty funny to see a rando shout for a merc party to help them clear Bumba and everyone tells them to either go away or make their own group. Honestly, I welcome players to Bahamut. I think all of the content is puggable outside of some v20s and most of the v25s. If you’re willing to make your own groups it can happen.

Years worth of content to do in game. How fast you complete and get bored of it is the real adventure.

Don't do it!

I've not played since like 2020, so I don't really have much idea as to what I want to do right off the bat, just have the itch to play again that every addict occasionally gets. Hell, just trying to organize all the junk in my inventory and figure out what everything is feels like a daunting task already lol.

I'm not necessarily looking to jump into endgame stuff immediately or anything, I'm well aware that this game is a huge grindfest, and that having a base level of specific gear is necessary for progression. I think the last thing I had started to do before I quit was trying to get into Dynamis (D), but my gear just wasn't quite up to it yet (my cor couldn't land ws's for more than 2k on the wave 2 bosses I think?).

I think I mostly want to start working on some stuff like building up gil to make upgrades to gear that can get me into those higher tier events, or work on stuff like rema weapons and such. I guess for stuff like that though it doesn't much matter which server I'm on though does it?

You can probably look into unlocking sortie and just fast track to that, the empy +2 sets are very good good all rounder sets for majority of jobs

Your experience with this will vary quite a bit based on server. On Asura vs Carbuncle, for example, the availability and cost of materials to make those REMAs, and the sale price of all the things you're farming, will vary dramatically. If you're going to do any Empyreans you will have significantly more competition on Asura than Carbuncle. I'd assume Einherjar is pretty packed, since it only allows one instance per zone, but maybe that's not too bad since it only take a couple minutes. If you're on smaller servers you might have to wait to buy certain items like +2 necks, Su5 weapons, Beitetsu, etc. where they will be more readily available on bigger servers. If you do Ambu and sell HPB, it might take a day or two, or up to a week to sell, whereas on Asura if you priced it right it could sell by the time you get back to your MH.

Economy-wise you will have a very different experience on different servers, which applies heavily to REMA and crafted gear, which is a involved in a lot of endgame gearing. Plus a lot of the things you want to do for gil will involve selling them to another player.

Don't go to this place, it's bad.

Yes its worth returning. I would just stay on Asura and use filters. The rmt don't prevent anyone from doing anything, just an eyesore in shouts. I still see shouts for content but most do things with a handful of friends

My friend came back and I asked what he wanted to do


He said sam.


He's a really good sam now.

Start there. Have fun

Bahamut is probably the 2nd busiest server and there are shouts for content but it can be pretty hit or miss depending on day and time. Weekdays are pretty quiet overall but i see lots of pugging on weekends. Very few RMT/merc shouts at all. More JP pug shouts than NA i feel, but ymmv

it sounds like it's either that, or stay on asura and filter out the RMT as best you can

I had a friend join and he REALLY wants to play Bard I guess, so I have dragged him through all manner of things to get him the basics, as well as a set of R0 Sakpata so he can use DRK or WAR (in a severely limited capacity). enough to get him his Naegling last month from Ambu anyways; this month he gets the carry treatment from PUP. it's not impossible to start now, but it is important to aim lower than current endgame, which doesn't have the room for much leaching anyways.

Odin is kinda dead for pugs NGL.

I’d say it’s one of the most populated serves for JP. But a low pop server for NA.

I do have to say, from experience, be careful carrying returning players thru everything. They get to the end and get bored quick and quit. I've had it so happen so many times to friends who came back, I would easily clear everything with them and get them into making a lot of Gil and then they quit because they felt they did everything too easily. They don't understand that was possible because they were helped thru it. I don't know the solution really, but it happens easily.

Been on both Odin and Bahamut in recent years.

Odin I found to have a great economy for a returnee, when compared to Bahamut. Lots of things were just miles cheaper there.

For instance, when I was on Odin, Marine Stewpot was like 25k. On Bahamut it's like 200k.

When I transferred to Bahamut I actually bought Marine Stewpots to turn a mild profit as a way to soften the wilder economy I was entering.

But since I've been on Bahamut I've gotten to play with my brother again. Made a few friends. Some of whom I even get to look impressive to, even though I'm just an Ambu +2 on multiple jobs type of guy right now without any master stars.

Odin was lonelier for me. I made like one Japanese friend very randomly. He was sad to see me move, but I really wanted to play with my brother again.

Bahamut's busier with more NAs for sure. I think it was the right move. If I hadn't been working on my LP while I was on Odin, I think the loneliness would have gotten to me.

You also get to see some active AH members on Bahamut on occasion if you care about that. I think it's kinda neat, because everyone from the AH site that posts regularly still has something in their personality I enjoy.

I've seen Celebrindal, Jetacku, Negan, and one or two others fairly frequently. Though they're usually AFK or not on for long, haha.

A lot of events don't really function the way they used to with power creep/trusts so there are plenty of people who get to end game and don't understand the basics when they do party up. This game is miles of frustration for the occasional plesant stroll. I still like it, but the devs blatantly made a worse version of the game socially when faced with the challenges of managing a 20 year old mmo

I have no intention of doing so, as I've already played on the server and got tired of things getting nerfed for their idea of "job balance".

I think at first I'll try what you suggested and filter out merc/rmt shouts as best I can since that's not what I'm looking for. Maybe I can find a social ls that just does stuff together at random times since static grouping likely won't work well for me.

If nothing else I suppose it's a good thing blu is my favorite job, can do a lot with that solo, still gotta finish making that Tizona. Thanks, btw, to everyone for the input, it's been helpful.