Fondest FFXI and XIV Memories?

Final Fantasy XI: Music

Mines was not even really the game itself, but music. There were some amazing songs released during the early 2000s when XI was hot. The songs would get stuck in my head because people would put lyrics in their Bazaar.

One in particular was the Common song "Go"

I would play XI with headphones of other music. I would only take it off for the Altepa desert Parties;).

Final Fantasy XIV: Beta

In XIV, it may have been the beta. I did not play XIV pre-ARR. So XIV was a new experience to me after coming from XI. It was the greatest game in the world to me at the time. Now, not so much lol. I think the rush of not being able to get into the game due to the congestion (You all remember that...), which made it more appealing or something....idk....

Let's see for FFXI...


I'm really fond of a memory I have of a WHM friend of mine. His character name was Crazyboy, and he had the full HQ Blessed set with all the haste, and he liked to help out with stuff like AF coffer keys. So we're in Castle Zvahl getting my Warrior a coffer key. WAR's all I had leveled, and neither of us had THF subbed, so no drop rate increases. We farmed in there for about 4 or 5 hours, until finally, we got the coffer key.

My friend Crazyboy goes, "Well, good luck finding the chest. I've got to shove off to bed, it's 3AM!" And I was like, "Could you stay just the 10~20 minutes longer it'll take to find it, I'm really tired." And he was like, "Dude, it's 3am! I'm exhausted." He was PST, and I'm EST, so I just casually say, "Yeah, me too. It's 6am and the sun is coming up." And it blew his mind so hard that I was EST, that timezones were a thing, that he stayed to help me find the coffer. He also told me that I must have insane mental stamina to stay up like that.

Not the most exciting story or anything, but that was about 16 years ago now. That memory has stuck with me, and I always liked that guy because of it, even if we fell out of contact just a couple of years later.

For FFXIV... Hmm...

These memories are a lot more fresh. I guess if I have to describe just one I'll go with one from 2.1.

It was 2.1 and we were on the verge of the update where they were going to nerf Pharos Sirius. My friends and I had, had i90 sets for all of our jobs and pentamelded accessories for crazy VIT/HP on Healers/DPS for a long while by this point, so we loved to screw around and flex in XIV still.

I got my buds Dameion Khaiser, Kalila Violette, and Loloro Loro to agree to run Pharos Sirius with 3 DPS, 1 Healer. I was DRG, Kalila was BRD, Lolo SCH, and Dameion was MNK. With our pentamelded Gryphonskin accessories, we had roughly 5300 HP with food or there abouts, and for the first parts of the dungeon we just took it slow and everything was alright. Then came the first boss, and it was wild. We barely got through it, and Lolo was like, "Why did I agree to this?!"

We moved on through, and decided to knab the treasure rooms. Again, the trash packs weren't so terrible, but we all came close to dying several times on them anyway. Second boss went down fast, but we also went down fast, and I think we wiped twice due to adds overwhelming us. We got it when we played tight with the egg break mech. Breaking an egg, then breaking a second when the rage stacks got down to 4.

The third boss was laughable as always.

At last, we were at Siren. I had been tanking the bosses, because with DRG's starting spike and higher physical defense, that first Blood for Blood let me establish enmity, and with Keen Flurry, Second Wind, Foresight, Featherfoot etc. I was able to somewhat stay alive. Siren's tank buster on the other hand was just too much. I had to not use BFB, which meant my friends had to do old style MMO tactics and not hit her as much, but this got to be too troublesome with Monk having no way to constantly maintain GL, Dameion couldn't help out with the adds too much after Siren jumps, and it was a shit show for healing to full to prevent charm.

So we changed tactics, we had Dameion tank, and me and Kali specficially saved our burst moves to delete adds. Once Dameion had established a big enough lead, in Fists of Earth no less, we got to press the attack as hard as possible. After it was all over, Loloro Loro was like, "Never again." and he left the dungeon immediately. He also quit SCH that day, and he became WHM main for like the rest of ARR for some reason.

When we told other people we did this, they pointed to me as the crazy guy for suggesting it. Seems I gained a reputation in my friend group for having "bright" ideas like that haha. Sometimes it's really fun to mix it up though. Last time I mixed it up was doing x4 DPS runs on the first 3 Stormblood dungeons during the lull between 4.0 and Skalla release. The good old days I guess haha.

Never played FFXI I can't anything about it other than it is on my "to-do" list...


FFXIV on the other hand; finally unlocking Dark Knight in Heavensward(Gordias+Midas Savage/Thordan+Nidhogg EX/Weeping City were relevant during this time) after learning the basics of tanking with Maruader and Gladiator classes(for cross class skills for Dark Knight) and learning new tips and tricks about Dark Knight...

I was a lvl29 whm in FFXI on the boat to Selbina. Those who know about this boat probably knows where this story is going and how it will end, but still its my fondest memory.

There was a lv75 MNK on the boat, just us 2, he was a jp player.

Sea Horror spawns and he was fishing on the boat when it spawned. He switched to all his gear and proceeded to instill massive inspiration in me to go mnk. He stood his ground, and threw everything he at Sea Horror. Sea Horror is MNK NM octopus and about 20% health, yes he got it down that far, actovates Hundred Fists, the MNK 2 hr. The 75 MNK responded in kind and activated his own 2hr. I decided to help, I was a fledgling healer and at 29 all I had was Cure 3 as my strongest heal which is just tickle hp for a 75 MNK that has over 1100 hp, but I had to try. Most people just take the death, ddont fight back, Sea Horror has killed multiple alliances in FFXI's heydey and only NIN and RDM can stand up to it alone and win, but not this guy, he refused to go down without a fight. The fight was long, maybe 6-7min, the boat ride is 10.


I tossed as many Cure 3's til I ran out of MP. He dropped to the floor dead with sea horror at about 2%. I went next.

He thanked me in both English(translator) and Japanese for trying to keep him alive.