In-world time to travel?

[Illmaeran]

Hey all,

How long do you think it would take, in real Eorzea time, to travel from Costa del Sol to Gridania, including assumed land between in-game zones? A friend and I are starting an RP arc and I'm trying to figure out how long it will last.

[Iscah]

There's a group at an outdoor table at Buscarron's discussing that they're only a bell (ie. hour) away from Gridania, so that's a good starting point. Adding to that, it takes roughly an hour on the game's clock to ride from there to Gridania on a non-flying mount.

However, that doesn't account for any "missing distance" between zones, so you'd have to account for that.

I also have in mind that somewhere there's a Lalafell groaning that he shouldn't have tried to make the journey from Gridania to Ul'dah in a single day, but I had a quick look in the various towns along the route and can't find him.

[Rongway]

There's an interesting post I read years ago on another site that I unfortunately can't link here because the site itself is generally NSFW because reasons. However the topic of the post was an effort to determine the scale of Eorzea. The poster measured the Eorzean time it took to RP walk from Ul'dah to Black Brush (1h25), then using their real life walking speed (3 mi/h) extrapolated that Black Brush is about 4.5 mi from Ul'dah. They used this distance as a scale by which to measure the distance between Ul'dah and Vesper Bay (chosen because it's fairly easy to find on maps of all levels (zone, region, and continental), which they estimated to be about 11.25 mi. Using this as a scale, they estimated Aldenard is about 100 miles from northern extremum to southern extremum, and about 130 miles between the eastern and western extrema, with the map's border of alternating white/green/red segments corresponding to a distance of about 10 mi per four segments (see note below). With that assumption of scale, they overlayed Eorzea over Great Britain and found that Eorzea would be about the size of Wales if these measurements were accurate:

What I did next was grab a map of a country whose geography I was familiar with - let's take England. I overlaid the Eorzea map to be at the same scale as that from England (1 mile = 1 mile on both maps). I remember once vaguely estimating the size of the region to that of Wales, and I was amazed to realise that I wasn't far off the truth. If my estimations are correct, the land size of the region is just shy of that of Wales indeed. La Nosrea (well, the whole island) is quite bigger than the Isle of Man - and it also does have awesome cats you can get, but that's another story.

This means that the game/"real" scale ratio is around 1:20, though the cities are probably real sized - do remember many areas in these cities are also unreachable.

It also makes sense for the time period we are considering. Mainland Europe, especially Germany, was dotted with small city-states and kingdoms, many of which probably weren't even the size of Gridania's surroundings. It also makes sense for all these city-states to band together given their relative closeness.

There are some caveats of course. First, their post was written in 2015, and referenced the maps available in game at that time. The maps have since changed, and the border of the current Old World map is not ruled the same as the old Eorzea-only map. Much more of the Old World has also been added to the maps, and the distances once we get outside of Eorzea may not have been something the devs considered when they were designing the geography of Eorzea-only.

Secondish, following from that, this scale is probably too small for a month-ish long boat ride from Limsa Lominsa to Kugane. The distance from Limsa Lominsa to Kugane is something like 4 Eorzeawidths, which at this scale would only be about 500 mi. Given the top speed of medieval sailing vessels was about 5 mi/hr, with a daily range between 50 mi and 120 mi, it would have taken between 5 and 10 days to sail from Limsa Lominsa to Kugane at this scale. I don't remember the vague timeframe given in-universe for the aforementioned boat ride, but I felt like the intent was for it to be longer than 5 to 10 days?

Third, this scale is also maybe too small for the diversity of climate in Eorzea; however, we know that some of the regional climates in Eorzea can be attributed to magic and which elemental aspects prevail in each region (consider: the calamity's effect on Coerthas), so this point might be okay to ignore.

Finally, apparent correlations in scale may not even be meaningful because ultimately the distances between places come down to how far apart the devs want to think of them to make things fit into the story.

Anyway, it was an interesting read and at least a good starting point, and an Eorzeawidth of 130mi sounds at least reasonable when considering the city states of Eorzea only. This would make for a journey from Costa Del Sol to Gridania of maybe 80-100 miles, perhaps more if the passes through the mountains wind a lot.

[shadowclasper]

The lore books cover travel times to an extent, I believe it's 6-8 months to go from limsa to othard's primary trade port

[Cleretic]

The lore books cover travel times to an extent, I believe it's 6-8 months to go from limsa to othard's primary trade port

Which is the main reason that, if you were to measure all the expansions by presumed in-universe time elapsed, Stormblood is in front by a LONG way.

The shortest is either Shadowbringers or Heavensward, both of which lack much in the way of confirmed long-period travel, so it's all down to stuff like 'how long do you think it takes to get an airship to the Sea of Clouds' and 'how long does the WoL sleep on average'.

[Enkidoh]

The trouble is, you also have to take into account the distances within each zone transition (the space between each zone line), which, can be rather inconsistant between different zones (Thanalan to the Black Shroud for instance doesn't appear to be that far, the zone line to the Black Shroud in East Thanalan has the surrounding area starting to become forested, where as the zone line back into Thanalan from the South Shroud the forest is starting to thin out (and if you look through the zone line, the area beyond is rather bare), suggesting that the distance between the two isn't really that far... a few malms if that. And Northern Thanalan to Mor Dhona is a short distance across a Garlean railway bridge (the Mor Dhona side the zone line is literally on the bridge, while the Northern Thanalan side is at the bridge's far end... and the bridge doesn't appear to be that long.

At the other end of the scale, it's not apparent to 'new' players but 1.0 players would know that there is actually a whole zone skipped between the Black Shroud and Coerthas when transiting between the North Shroud and Coerthas Central Highlands (the Coerthas Central Lowlands), and the sudden shift in climate alone gives that away, all but screaming there is a huge distance being just ignored for the sake of gameplay. Mor Dhona to Coerthas Central Highlands also appears to skip over a bit of distance too.

So it's difficult to accurately determine exactly how long it takes to travel by foot/carriage between various points in Eorzea (and remember, given virtually instantaneous travel does exist in the form of the aetheryte network, it's mostly irrevelant anyway except for those unlucky enough to be lacking aetherial suitability to teleport like Thancred, who have to travel the slow way.).

[Necrotica]

The trouble is, you also have to take into account the distances within each zone transition (the space between each zone line), which, can be rather inconsistant between different zones (Thanalan to the Black Shroud for instance doesn't appear to be that far, the zone line to the Black Shroud in East Thanalan has the surrounding area starting to become forested, where as the zone line back into Thanalan from the South Shroud the forest is starting to thin out (and if you look through the zone line, the area beyond is rather bare), suggesting that the distance between the two isn't really that far... a few malms if that. And Northern Thanalan to Mor Dhona is a short distance across a Garlean railway bridge (the Mor Dhona side the zone line is literally on the bridge, while the Northern Thanalan side is at the bridge's far end... and the bridge doesn't appear to be that long.

At the other end of the scale, it's not apparent to 'new' players but 1.0 players would know that there is actually a whole zone skipped between the Black Shroud and Coerthas when transiting between the North Shroud and Coerthas Central Highlands (the Coerthas Central Lowlands), and the sudden shift in climate alone gives that away, all but screaming there is a huge distance being just ignored for the sake of gameplay. Mor Dhona to Coerthas Central Highlands also appears to skip over a bit of distance too.

So it's difficult to accurately determine exactly how long it takes to travel by foot/carriage between various points in Eorzea (and remember, given virtually instantaneous travel does exist in the form of the aetheryte network, it's mostly irrevelant anyway except for those unlucky enough to be lacking aetherial suitability to teleport like Thancred, who have to travel the slow way.).

Aether travel only applies to 'personal belongings' on your person. A kind of aetheric spirit bonding only for everything. Merchants would always need to rely on traditional means of travel. And the cost of aether travel could be prohibitive for most people. I am sure someone has done a break down of the average cost of living for Eorzeans, but they cannot all throw around gil like cracked out adventurers who kill gods for funsies whenever they need to go to the next town over.

[kaynide]

Which is the main reason that, if you were to measure all the expansions by presumed in-universe time elapsed, Stormblood is in front by a LONG way.

The shortest is either Shadowbringers or Heavensward, both of which lack much in the way of confirmed long-period travel, so it's all down to stuff like 'how long do you think it takes to get an airship to the Sea of Clouds' and 'how long does the WoL sleep on average'.

This was honestly one of the most mind boggling parts of the expansion. Sure, out of game it’s a handwave and a dungeon, but in game we all know time is incredibly precious. 6-8 months traveling to Kugane and the entire rebellion could very well be over. The Reach had just been sacked and rather than dig in/regroup, our best option was to peace out for 6-8 months (or whatever) to go to an entirely new place.

I get we were trying to get Allie’s and what not..but I was surprised there never was any other faster way conceived, even if it was sneaking into a Garlean airship or just taking a smaller airship covertly/quietly through. Couldn’t have sent Gosetsu/Yugiri first? Or teleport shenanigans?

I guess that’s why the insta teleport from Sharlayan to Thavnair was added to the story… because wow.

[Cleretic]

This was honestly one of the most mind boggling parts of the expansion. Sure, out of game it’s a handwave and a dungeon, but in game we all know time is incredibly precious. 6-8 months traveling to Kugane and the entire rebellion could very well be over. The Reach had just been sacked and rather than dig in/regroup, our best option was to peace out for 6-8 months (or whatever) to go to an entirely new place.

I get we were trying to get Allie’s and what not..but I was surprised there never was any other faster way conceived, even if it was sneaking into a Garlean airship or just taking a smaller airship covertly/quietly through. Couldn’t have sent Gosetsu/Yugiri first? Or teleport shenanigans?

I guess that’s why the insta teleport from Sharlayan to Thavnair was added to the story… because wow.

It makes sense in the context of Stormblood, because especially in that situation we know that neither nation was necessarily high-tension, and these sorts of wars aren't exactly brief. When talking about wars, it's rare that they're over and done with within six months, especially when the stakes are high. Especially since the one guy involved that would have lit a powder keg in either of those wars we know was also on a boat for most of it; Zenos probably could've taken a quicker route since he didn't have to sneak around the Empire-owned lands (we had to take the long route through Sirensong, remember) but he didn't have the luxury of time either.

It's absolutely why they added that Sharlayan-Thavnair teleport, though. Endwalker's story, and that part especially, isn't something that plausibly slow. Shortcuts make Endwalker more plausible, while they would've had the opposite effect in Stormblood.

[shadowclasper]

Which is the main reason that, if you were to measure all the expansions by presumed in-universe time elapsed, Stormblood is in front by a LONG way.

The shortest is either Shadowbringers or Heavensward, both of which lack much in the way of confirmed long-period travel, so it's all down to stuff like 'how long do you think it takes to get an airship to the Sea of Clouds' and 'how long does the WoL sleep on average'.

Heaven's ward is at least 6-9 months because it covers a woman going from pregnant but not obviously so to having a child.