FF14 encyclopedia? Information needed.

So I've been looking around for information on not only lore, but little things about the world of FF14 that people don't think about and was wondering if anyone has done a PDF or website on this to cover a lot of questions. For example:

Eorzean units of measurements. Fulm, Yalms, Malms? How can we compare them to our measurement? What compares to an inch? If someone asked me how tall was that guy that attacked me, how could I answer that? He was 6 fulms high?

A list of every known creature in Eorzea. Which ones are edible to eat? Which are poisonous? Which are a red flag to NOT eat.

Dates, Times, Year. - I think there is a post on the forum somewhere that explains the days, months, cycles, etc. But while thinking about it, how would you mention something that happened last night? Do you say last sun? If you wanted to say "Good night." Do you instead say "Good sun?"


Can anyone help find information like this?

Also...

Phrases - A clear understanding on those would be pretty good. "Gods Preserve, Curse the Twelve, Seven Hells, etc."

Just google "Encyclopedia Eorzea"....
Also Gamerescape has all you need to know about measurements along with Eorzea's concept of time.

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Originally Posted by Angelerator

Just google "Encyclopedia Eorzea"....

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Hey,

I know there's a buy that you can buy. It has a good amount of information. But I was wondering if there is another website or place that I can find information such as the questions in the original post that the book doesn't answer.

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Hey,

I know there's a buy that you can buy. It has a good amount of information. But I was wondering if there is another website or place that I can find information such as the questions in the original post that the book doesn't answer.

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Well you might have to ask Anonomoose( sorry if I spelt your name wrong) not sure where he gets it's info but it's so deep and rich with info that it's like he has the number of the head story guy for FFXIV

I agree Professor Moose would probably be the best person to answer that... but I will still try to offer some insight. :)

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Eorzean units of measurements. Fulm, Yalms, Malms? How can we compare them to our measurement? What compares to an inch? If someone asked me how tall was that guy that attacked me, how could I answer that? He was 6 fulms high?

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'Eorzean measurements' are indeed rough amalgams of real-world 'Imperial' measurements (inch, foot, yard, mile, pound etc), and ironically their creation is taken from an earlier SE game - they first were used in the FFXI Abbysea 'add-on' expansions, where they replaced previously used Imperial measurements. Either way, the names are pretty similar to see which real-world measurement they equate to (viz 'ilm'-'inch', 'fulm-foot', 'yalm'-'yard', 'malm''mile', 'onze'-'ounce' etc). I'm pretty certain the Encylopedia Eorzea officially lists these measurements.

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Originally Posted by Temple46

A list of every known creature in Eorzea. Which ones are edible to eat? Which are poisonous? Which are a red flag to NOT eat.

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In-universe there is mentioned a publication called the Raimdelle Codex which is a scientific bestiary that classifies all known lifeforms in Eorzea according to groupings, such as 'scalekin', soulkin', 'beastkin' etc. As for an out-of-game listing, apart from an actual gameplay guide of all enemies in the game on various websites like Gamerescape, I am pretty sure the Encyclopedia Eorzea includes a basic guide to Raimdelle's classification (as I do not own the Encyclopedia unfortunately I am not sure on this.

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Dates, Times, Year. - I think there is a post on the forum somewhere that explains the days, months, cycles, etc. But while thinking about it, how would you mention something that happened last night? Do you say last sun? If you wanted to say "Good night." Do you instead say "Good sun?"

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Time measurements in Eorzea are a funny thing - I actually had a thread on the subject a long time ago on the old 1.0 thread which did give some insight into the Eorzea calendar. And although there are specific terms used for describing time measurements, this can actually differ depending on context such as a person's age, they don't say they're something like 'thirty suns old', they'll instead either say they've "seen their thirtieth summer" or "thirtieth winter", or just say they're "thirty years old". It seems to depend on a person's level of education as well, smallfolk in particular seem to be more fond of the "summer/winter" terminology when describing age. And tied into that, hours are referred to as "bells" in relation to time: "something happened an hour ago" would be usually stated as having "happened a bell ago", although I am uncertain if this extends to actual reading time on a clock in the same way (like 'six o'clock' being "sixth bell"), although again I am sure Moose or one of the other Loremasters can clarify this.

It should also be noted that it's clear mechanical time keeping devices in Eorzea seem to be a rather recent innovation - the 2.0 storyline treated Cid's pocketwatch as something almost unheard of, yet clocks are now player furnishings in houses, so it's possible the earlier terminology might be somewhat archaic, based on a more primitive form of timekeeping like a waterclock or sundial.

A footnote in reference to your comment about days and nights being referred to as such in Eorzea is the use of the word sennight to apparently mean two weeks or (presumably) sixteen days, given the Eorzean week is made up of eight days not seven like Earth (an eight-day week is also shared by FFXI's Vana'diel). Additionally, old 1.0-era in-game reference was made to each day of the Eorzean week being named after one of the eight elements, with the suffix -day added at the end (such as 'Firesday', 'Windsday' etc). This was also shared with FFXI. Whether this is still the case though I am unsure, but together they would both be pretty conclusive that Eorzeans indeed refer to days and nights as such in regular conversation.

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Also...

Phrases - A clear understanding on those would be pretty good. "Gods Preserve, Curse the Twelve, Seven Hells, etc."

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They're Eorzean exclamations, roughly analogous to real-world exclamations derived from religion like "Oh my god!", "Damnit!" etc etc. Seven Hells is taken from the Eorzen belief that there are indeed seven layers of hell inhabited by voidsent and demons, the Twelve is the polytheistic pantheon of gods and goddess the Eorzeans worship, etc etc.

There is also an amusing meta connection to this though - as revealed at the lore panel at the very first FFXIV Fanfest in 2013, localization team leader and co world lore content creator Michael Christopher Koji-Fox (aka Fernewahles here on the forum) admitted that he "likes to swear" and so deliberately thinks of humorous terms and language that he could also adapt as in-universe cusses and swear words (the god 'Nald'thal' is an example of this, he created the name simply because he thought up the phrase "Thal's bloody balls!" and liked it so much, he made the god's name in combination with Nald to give it legitimacy. ;)

A very funny way of getting swear words past the censors in other words. ;)

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

A footnote in reference to your comment about days and nights being referred to as such in Eorzea is the use of the word sennight to apparently mean two weeks or (presumably) sixteen days, given the Eorzean week is made up of eight days not seven like Earth (an eight-day week is also shared by FFXI's Vana'diel).

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A sennight is seven days, and is a real-life term. Eorzeans make use of "fortnight" (fourteen days) as well.

@Temple46:

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Originally Posted by Encyclopædia Eorzea

• 1 ilm: An adult Hyuran thumb, a ripe rolanberry
• 1 fulm: 12 ilms, an adult Hyuran foot, a grown chocobo tailfeather
• 1 yalm: 3 fulms, a bastard sword blade, an adult Lalafellin male
• 1 malm: 1760 yalms, the distance an adult Elezen can run in a tenth bell, the approximate height of O'Ghomoro

• 1 onze: An adult Hyuran thumb, a 100-gil coin
• 1 ponze: 16 onzes, a merchant's scale stone, a block of kukuru butter
• 1 tonze: 2,000 ponzes, a fully matured goobbue, 600 bottles of Wineport red (1 standard overseas shipment)

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In other words, ilm = inch, fulm = foot, yalm = yard, malm = mile, onze = ounce, ponze = pound, tonze = ton.

Here's a link to a breakdown of Eorzean time measurements from a book that was readable in 1.0:
60 seconds to the minute, 60 minutes to the bell, 24 bells to the sun, 8 suns to the week, 4 weeks to the moon, 12 moons to the year, 12 years to the epoch.

However, Eorzeans still use the terms "hour", "day" and "month" just as often as bells, suns and moons. Decades are also often used, whereas I cannot find a single mention of an "epoch" in 2.0 onwards, nor to the old elementally-named days of the week mentioned in 1.0 ("Firesday" and so on). There's no explicit mention of eight-day weeks either, but fortnights are referred to pretty commonly (and sennights occasionally).

So basically the old timekeeping standards from 1.0 are no longer adhered to by any ingame dialogue, nor are they mentioned in the Encyclopædia Eorzea (as far as I can find). If they came out and retconned them altogether it wouldn't really surprise me.

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Can anyone help find information like this?

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This older post of mine covers the lore behind units of measurement and time, including days of the week and the order of the years.
Anonymoose's Raimdelle Codex Alces provides a great beastiary inspired by the in-universe Raimdelle Codex.
Tinolqa created a similarly excellent compilation of Eorzea's flora in Botanica Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Keever

So basically the old timekeeping standards from 1.0 are no longer adhered to by any ingame dialogue, nor are they mentioned in the Encyclopædia Eorzea (as far as I can find). If they came out and retconned them altogether it wouldn't really surprise me.

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Considering we only got affirmation on the names of the days of the week at the 2014 Fanfest, I seriously doubt its "retconned" even if it's not as prominently mentioned as it was in 1.0. There's a lot of 1.0 flavor that just doesn't get mentioned frequently in ARR for whatever reason.

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Originally Posted by Michael-Christopher Koji Fox

Yes! The days of the week definitely have names. Because the game was based off of themes that we had in Final Fantasy XI—the main lore guy was Kenichi Iwao, who worked on XI, and I had also worked on XI, and then we came on and started collaborating for XIV—and, again, it’s a new world, but we do want to, like with all Final Fantasy games, take stuff from previous Final Fantasies, and that’s one of the things that we wanted to take, because it was such a good system. In Final Fantasy XI, you had your elements, and because we have those same types of elements in XIV, we wanted to do the same thing—so you have your Watersday and your Firesday and you have your Windsday.

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"1 ilm: An adult Hyuran thumb, a ripe rolanberry."

Interesting bit about this one - in Eorzea it currently has a standardized implementation rather than just being an approximation (like it might be among a particular community). Details vary based on who does the telling, but basically a pirate/sailor started a fight over believing he was given shorter cloth than what he paid for and the Admiral at the time cut off his thumb, had casts in metal of it made, and then had those sent out as a shared standard for those engaged in trading.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I agree Professor Moose would probably be the best person to answer that...

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I dunno, you guys seem to have nailed it. :P

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Originally Posted by Sounsyy

Raimdelle Codex Alces

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Thank you for reminding me I need to prep the update for pushing when we know what's in 3.55...

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Originally Posted by Temple46

Can anyone help find information like this?

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The above posts feature most of the information you requested.

In terms of measurement, it's the same measurement you'd find in the United States with different labels. Considering the entire rest of the world (barring Liberia and Myanmar) uses the metric system, this silliness must seem so fantastic to everyone else. Describing height, you'd probably say something like "5 fulms 10 ilms" as an American would, or 70 ilms if you were being scientifically specific. The only exception is that Eorzeans seem to work in yalms way, way more than Americans ever mention yards. (And they don't even play American football!)

In terms of time, it's close to Earth so people will be able to grasp things like ages and how long ago events happened, but it's been simplified so there's no extra math that needs to be done. It's prescriptive rather than descriptive, so it has that kind of freedom. 8 day weeks, 4 week months, 12 month years mean that everything lines up pretty much as it would on earth. You get 19 extra days a year, so if you were being a literalist, you'd have to assume that every 20 Eorzean years, you add a "leap year" when calculating to Earth Time, lol. It's laid out nicely here.

In terms of phrasing, a lot of things are going to be similar to Earth for the sake of familiarity and localization. Even though a 24-hour period is called a turn of the sun, you'll still see people say "Good day!" because it's familiar and it's daytime. Last night is still often "last night" because it was the night time last seen. Hours is replaced by "bells" pretty frequently, though. And there's no reason you can't get creative ... people might just look at you like they look at Urianger, sometimes.

Enkidoh, thank you so much for that! This is awesome!

And thank you everyone. This has been an amazing read. This is exactly the information I've been looking for and is now bookmarked.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

they first were used in the FFXI Abbysea 'add-on' expansions, where they replaced previously used Imperial measurements.

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Pretty sure that ilm, fulm, malm, etc WELL predates Abyssea. The Fulm-Long Salmon Sub was one of the original recipes in the game and was NEVER called a Foot-Long Salmon Sub. (The text description also mentions Malms.)

While my memory from fourteen years ago is admittedly spotty, I have vague recollections of wondering just what the heck a malm was when I first started playing the game, and that eureka moment when I finally figured it out. I started when the game was first released for PS2, long before Abyssea was even a twinkle in a developer's eye.

No, these units of measurement have been around a lot longer than Abyssea.