New player here wanting to know how to check quest progress.

[CelestiaYasuhiro]

Hey there, got this game a week or so ago because it's the only FF I haven't played so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I think I may have been spoiled by ARR with how it always tells you where to go and what you've done. I find myself having to look up guides for missions just to keep track of where I'm at in a story mission. I reckon I probably will be able to get into this game, some guides for noobs are helping, I'm just having trouble remembering if I've spoken to this person, done that, done this, etc. For example in "Lost for words" I don't think I would have guessed to go talk to Nanaa. Again, not the game's fault, it's mine, ARR spoiled me with it's hand holding.

Tl;dr. need help keeping track of progress, thanks in advance!

[Dragoy]

Teegrins and welcome, CelestiaYasuhiro!


Unfortunately the in-game tracking of quests is indeed lacking, even for one who doesn't like hand-holding!

As such, it can often be quite the time-saver to check a quest walkthrough at least partially at a fansite such as Gamer Escape or FFXIclopedia. The former was established by the creators of the latter, but the editors didn't move with, so a lot of the more recent info will be missing... for which you can blame me a lot since I did move, but I don't have the time and energy to do everything. ^^;

For many parts, we definitely can blame the game, or rather its creators. It would certainly be helpful is a quest description would update, or rather get more 'pages' with steps we have taken.

Sometimes like that has been suggested before, but it has been, and probably still is beyond possible. If they had the money and man/woman power, the new user interface announced a while back should be able to provide what is needed, but it might have been completely cancelled as a project, or at least put on hold/worked upon very slowly (or in secret!).

Even with that, there would be huge amount of work to be done to rework each quest, which we have quite a few indeedy...


Again, welcome, and may you enjoy your stay!

[CelestiaYasuhiro]

Thanks for the response and welcome, the FFXI encyclopedia has been helping a lot, I just think I'm spoiling the game for myself if I look up every little thing, where as if I didn't I'd be wasting time exploring endlessly in hopes of talking to the right person with the few leads I have, I know characters will tell you where you have to go, it's just if you went away from the game for a day or two, you've got to remember where to go next or you'll need to retrace your steps to find said person who gave you your next task.

Anyways, if people managed to do this back in the day when it was released I guess I should just suck it up.
Cheers again for the quick response!

[Dragoy]

Yeah, it can be a battle of sorts for one who doesn't like quest spoiling.

I am one of such myself, and stay away from reading on quests I don't know about yet, but I have learned that with FFXI, it can save hours, easily, to at least take a peek. Not all quests are like that, of course, and of course we don't have to spoil the whole quest at once. Something like 'required items' alone can help lots of backtracking, which rarely is fun, and as such, can be a huge time saver.

At some point I started writing such walkthroughs myself, and when I do, I do my best to at least not spoil any story or such with them.

In any case, try not to feel too bad about taking a peek, especially when returning to a quest after a break.

The quest-tracking was never good, not even back in the day. ^^;

They did recently add NPCs who thell adventurers about quests, so that's something fer sure! Perhaps a start for something wonderful (but not too close to hand-holding!).