(Just be sure to enable "Skip playback of previously viewed scenario cutscenes" tho)

Original meme credit: u/ipsusu

When you are partnered with a Scholar please remember to "limit" your usage of Eukrasian Prognosis (AoE shield). Sage actually has a pure AoE heal, whereas Scholar does not. This also works when partnered with another Sage. It's best to decide who will focus on applying the shields and who will focus more on raw healing.

Just a little bit of insight I thought I'd share. Because if you override my spread Critlo again, I'll gut you like a cod, lol. (Yes, I'm a lalafell from Limsa)

Adding credit for artist. cmykat-art.carrd.co/

After the great influx of new players brought by the Switch 2 launch, I've noticed a lot of sprouts not knowing how to handle some common mechanics which, to their defense, the game doesn't always explain very well.

Commonly-seen issues include running away with a stack marker (or stacking two of them), standing in the middle of a knockback circle, and not stretching a distance tether.

Hopefully, this old infographic by The Phookas will provide some guidance to any sprout out there.

Felt like making some simple explanations on all the new main combat buttons for each evolved job shown at fanfest.

Each action is categorized on what part of the kit it mainly interacts with, the left column in each category is each individual button and indented icons are followups or combos that share the same button.

Of course all this info is subject to massive changes before 8.0 launch, but I bet the core idea of the job designs won't change much, so hopefully someone will get something out of this. o7

Edit (Corrections and Clarifications):

From u/Meirnon - DRG Geirskogul and Nastrond are likely not tied to the specific positional, but will be based on the gauges. If you have neither Sinister nor Dexter, you will get Geirskogul. If you have one filled, you will get Nastrond and it deals more damage. Also Vengeful Surge (buff to nullify next positional) provides a heal when consumed, so it's similar to consolidating Life Surge into Jump.

from u/TannenFalconwing - Divine Might (buff from PLD burst Imperator) can also be spent on Full Clemency as a stronger heal, similar to what we can do with current PLD.

White Mage: GCD heals must do healing to count for Sanctity. If healing someone who already is at maximum health, Sanctity gauge does not fill.

Dragoon: Vengeful Jump gapcloses as well, not just jump in place like current High Jump.

With the release of the Windurst raid and the Echoes of Vana'diel storyline being wrapped up, I've seen some people show interest in trying out XI and experiencing its story. I'm someone who recently went through the journey of XI's story a few months ago, so I want to help any other XIV fans looking to give it a go. I have the BG-Wiki new player guide linked below, so I recommend looking at that in terms of starting the game, but I will give a general outline of what to expect.

Here are some great resources:

• Official Sign Up + Install Guide
• Videos
  • Vicenarian: Why FF Fans Should Play XI, XI vs XIV Differences, Gameplay Tips, Story Tips, Beginning + Endgame Tips
  • SoberDwarf: Beginner's Guide
  • Mrhappy1227: Install Guide, Free Trial Install
  • Greg Troyan: Story Overview (Contains some spoilers)
  • A Goth Egg: Worth Your Time? Final Fantasy XI in 2025
  • MithposterSyndrome: Endgame Progression and Pathways, Choosing a Job
  • Heghmoh: The Best Way to Experience FFXI's Story (I personally recommend the Hybrid approach), 10 Things New Players Should Know
• BG-Wiki (Your best friend)
  • New Player Guide !!! Follow this when starting !!!
  • Story Mission Guides !!! Follow this throughout !!!
  • Grinding Locations
  • Endgame Guide
• Rhapsodies Mission Order

1. Setting expectations

XI is a much more aged game than XIV, and while it's gotten QOL updates over the years, it's still a much tougher game to get into and has a lot of remaining friction. Even today, the game gives very little guidance on how to progress, making online guides basically mandatory, and it has a pretty sharp learning curve. Being honest, if you try to play XI without following guides or someone helping you, you will have a very hard time getting far in the game or story. Some grinding will be necessary for leveling and story progress, and you will need to go out of your way to get some early endgame gear for some of the later story bosses. Quest design in general is very old MMO and involves tedious tasks and some RNG drops. And of course, the sign-up and setup process is an absolute pain, even worse than XIV's.

However, compared to the classic 75 era, modern XI is a lot friendlier in comparison. Today, you can solo nearly the entire story and a lot of content with NPC Trust party members, unlock EXP boosts to make leveling immensely faster, earn Sparks of Eminence for easy Lvl1-50 gearing and gil, and unlock mounts and multiple fast travel methods for quicker traversal. The game will still be intimidating compared to XIV, but I do think you can adjust to it with enough patience and the help of guides.

Also, you should know that similar to XIV, XI has a pretty slow start in terms of both story and gameplay. You'll notice an increase in story and writing quality with the second expansion, and the gameplay gets more engaging as you unlock more job abilities.

1. Story

XI has eight main storylines with the Base Game and the Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, Wings of the Goddess, Seekers of Adoulin, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, and The Voracious Resurgence expansions. XI differs from XIV in that the expansions are more self-contained stories, and can largely be done in any order. However, the Rhapsodies storyline (featuring Iroha) ties them all together under one massive story and acts as the framing device of the game, also providing key QOL enhancements/boosts. Also different from XIV, in XI our player character has less of a focus in the story, and instead each story has a female protagonist at the center of that story, such as Prishe and Iroha. Our character is still important and ultimately the goddess's chosen Warrior of Light, but we are less widely known in the world of Vana'diel than Eorzea, and usually have more of a deuteragonist role. You should also know that the Base Game and Wings of the Goddess are unique in having a separate storyline for each of the three nations, only doing one is required for both, but doing all three is worth it to get the full story and lore.

In my opinion, the best way to experience XI's story is to start Rhapsodies alongside the base game, and then go through each expansion in release order while progressing Rhapsodies, ultimately finishing with Rhapsodies' Chapter 3 and Voracious. I have a chart linked above for when to do the Rhapsodies missions, as well as a list below. All of these storylines can be soloed fairly comfortably except for Voracious, which has some higher challenge bosses that you will likely need to get help for.

1. Base game (Ranks 1-5 in one nation) and Rhapsodies of Vana'diel Chapter 1 together
2. Rise of the Zilart, then finish Ranks 1-10 in all three nations (can do this later if you want)
3. Chains of Promathia, then start RoV Chapter 2 (2-1 through 2-6)
4. Treasures of Aht Urhgan, then progress RoV Chapter 2 (2-7 through 2-13)
5. Wings of the Goddess (eventually doing all three nations is recommended), then finish RoV Chapter 2 (2-14 through 2-41)
6. (Optional side stories) A Crystalline Prophecy, A Moogle Kupo d'Etat, A Shantotto Ascension, Vision/Scars/Heroes of Abyssea
7. Seekers of Adoulin
8. RoV Chapter 3
9. The Voracious Resurgence

Okay, I talked about the story structure, but what actually is the story? 20 years before the events of the game was the bloodiest war in Vana'diel's history, known as the Crystal War, between the Shadow Lord's Beastmen Confederate and the Allied Forces of Altana (San d'Oria, Bastok, Windurst, Jeuno). You are a new adventurer who has travelled to your chosen starting city, and will uncover the plot of the Shadow Lord's return, as well as receive warning from Iroha of Vana'diel's impending fate of destruction. Throughout the expansions, you will uncover Vana'diel's ancient history with Lion, lay a god to rest with Prishe, travel to distant continents to help Aphmau and Arciela, travel back in time with Lilisette, change Vana'diel's fate with Iroha, and learn the truth of the afterlife with a trio of beastmen. This is just the basic outline, I don't want to get into spoilers, but overall these stories are excellent and have many great characters and memorable moments.

XI also has four mini-stories. A Crystalline Prophecy has you help Aldo, BG+RotZ main character and opening movie boy, in a conflict involving his family. A Moogle Kupo d'Etat is by far the most comedy-focused story in the game, and has you help a Moogle with wacky hijinks such as ghost exorcisms and the Moogle Mafia. A Shantotto Ascension has you trying to stop Shantotto from conquering the world. And finally, Abyssea has you travel to an alternate version of Vana'diel that fell to ruin, as mentioned during the Windurst raid, and is the largest out of the four with being divided into three parts. Abyssea in particular is a very gameplay-focused experience with pretty involved grindy monster hunting for progression, it has some neat lore but it's up to you if the gameplay effort is worth it. Overall, I wouldn't consider these four stories to be essential, and their stories aren't amazing, but they're worth doing if you want to be fully completionist with your XI playthrough. Comparing to XIV, I would roughly compare the first three to being like raid/trial side stories, and Abyssea is like a field operation story.

1. Gameplay

While XIV is focused on its encounter design, XI is more focused on character progression and its job and gear systems. In XI, you equip both a main and sub job, with there being many possible combinations, and the game uses horizontal progression, meaning that there isn't necessarily "best" gear, it depends on what build you want to do and what the situation calls for. Overall, it gives you a lot more freedom with building your character than XIV, and you can do some interesting builds such as DPS White Mage. The combat is menu-based, similar to classic FFs, with cooldown-based job abilities and TP-based weapon skills, and overall is slower-paced than XIV's combat. There are also advanced mechanics such as gearswapping, skill chaining, and magic bursts, but you don't really need to worry about these for a story playthrough. Personally, I went with Dancer/Warrior for good damage and utility, and found it comfortable for soloing with NPCs. This is by no means a proper explanation of all the gameplay/combat systems, but I hope it gives a broad idea.

1. Progression

As I mentioned earlier, level grinding will be required for XI, as the story missions don't give enough EXP by themselves. Leveling is much faster than it used to be, and the main two methods of boosting EXP will be progressing Rhapsodies (each key item reward gives a significant EXP boost) and use of the various EXP bands you'll get early on in the guide. The game also has level caps that must be removed through challenging "Limit Break" quests, the guide explains them. There are many different areas throughout the game for leveling, and many of them are locked behind the expansions. These are the areas I recommend for level grinding without starting expansions early unless necessary (look at this guide for reference):

• 1-8: West Ronfaure (San d'Oria), South Gustaberg (Bastok), or East Sarutabaruta (Windurst)
• 9-12: La Theine Plateau (San d'Oria), Konschtat Highlands (Bastok), or Tahrongi Canyon (Windurst)
• 12-24: Valkurm Dunes (San d'Oria or Bastok) or Buburimu Peninsula (Windurst)
• 25-31: Qufim Island
• 32-43: Crawler's Nest or Garlaige Citadel (You should also get levels while doing Mission 3-3)
• 44-90: Escha - Zi'Tah (Various areas have different level enemies, keep in mind that you might feel EXP slowing down at certain levels)
  • For free trial: 44-50 in Eldieme Necropolis, 50-55 in Bostaunieux Oubliette, not sure about 55-60 (I entered the last dungeon at 55, was at 58 by the end, and was able to beat the final boss). Going above 60 in the trial will be tricky and very lengthy without access to expansion areas.
• 91-99: Ceizak Battlegrounds or Rala Waterways (Requires Seekers of Adoulin to be started, I think 90 should be enough to comfortably finish through Wings)

But of course if you want to try other areas, then definitely go for it, or even start expansions early if you want to.

I also mentioned that you'll likely need early endgame gear for some of the later expansions, specifically Seekers, Rhapsodies, and Voracious. I won't go into details, but look into the "Bayld", "Domain Invasion", and "Ambuscade" gear once you reach 99.

Additionally, XI does have a few roadblocks throughout the story that you'll have to deal with. The biggest ones are "next in-game day" waits, where you have to wait for the in-game clock to hit 0:00, which can take up to an hour if you're unlucky with your timing. They can be pretty annoying and are fairly frequent. There also used to be "Japanese midnight" waits, which basically means wait until the next real-life day, but I think only one of them is still remaining in the main story. Also, Seekers of Adoulin and The Voracious Resurgence in particular has a few side activities that are required. The requirements for SoA have been significantly lowered over the years, I think you can knock them out in two days now, but TVR requirements can still take a while.

1. Music

Naoshi Mizuta is the main composer of XI and is responsible for most of its music, he also composed for XIII-2, XIII LR, XV Episode Prompto, Stranger of Paradise, Dimensions 1+2, and Four Heroes of Light. Nobuo Uematsu and Kumi Tanioka also contributed to the base game soundtrack, and Uematsu also composed the ending theme for Chains of Promathia. Here is a good platter of XI's music:

• Ronfaure
• The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah
• A New Horizon
• Bustle of the Capital
• Flowers on the Battlefield
• Breaking Ground
• Between Dreams and Reality
• Goddesspeed

Three other standouts are the game's vocal themes: Distant Worlds, Forever Today, and Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, but I'll let you experience those yourself. RoV in particular is one of the coolest things the series has done imo, featuring the voices of nearly 700 real players.

1. Length

XI expansions are shorter than XIV's, with each one taking around 30-40 hours on average, some longer than others. Including grinding and unlocks and everything, you can expect at least 250 hours total to finish all main story, up to 300, maybe 350. Personally, it took me 260 hours to finish through Rhapsodies, but I didn't stop to do much side content.

1. XI's Future

Many people have the misconception that XI is in maintenance mode and only being barely supported, but this isn't exactly true. While the dev team is small now, the game still receives monthly updates, and continues to gradually get more QOL improvements and new content. The most recent story, The Voracious Resurgence, just released across 2020-2023. The developers have also talked about updating their old PS2 dev tools to modern software like Autodesk Maya and Blender, so it's possible we could be getting more exciting content in the future. A new expansion sounds pretty crazy, but it's not completely off the table. Some future plans they've already talked about are updating the free trial, adding an equipment system for Trusts, continuing to update battle content, adding new areas, adding a story replay feature, adding a party finder system, revamping PlayOnline, and creating a ninth main storyline.

1. Private servers

Alongside the official retail version, XI also has fan-made private servers, most of which aim to recreate the older version of the game, usually the Chains or Treasures eras. There are pros and cons to each, but in general, private is better for getting the classic hardcore experience with required multiplayer, and retail is better for having QOL features with solo play and being able to experience the full story. There are some private servers with more QOL, but they still don't have have the story that retail has. If you are a story-first player, I strongly suggest sticking to retail, as no private servers have the full story, most only have around half. If you are less interested in story and want that classic experience, then private servers are likely the way to go. Generally, I would consider retail to be the default choice for most XIV players, and only go with a private server if you know you specifically want that experience. I'll also note that some private servers and their creators/moderators have histories with controversy, so do your research if you're concerned about that.

1. Discount

XI receives three 2-week sales every year ($30 -> $10 for complete edition), the time periods are: * Middle of May to end of May * End of August to middle of September * Middle of December to beginning of January

.

1. Free Trial Update

After the recent update, the free trial is now unlimited in playtime and goes up to Lvl 75. However keep in mind that it only includes the base game with no expansions, as well as having restrictions. Notably, the QOL features from Rhapsodies are not available without expansion access, so starting on the free trial will be less smooth than starting on the full version. However it's still worth considering if you want to try XI without fully committing.

Some tips with the restrictions after playing the trial myself: Make sure to complete the tutorial quests to get the Echad Ring, this will massively increase your EXP gain and help compensate for the lack of Rhapsodies boosts. Without Rhapsodies, you won't be able to buy Prism Powder and Silent Oil from the Curio Moogles, but Sneak and Invisible are still accessible in some dungeons by using the "Circumspection" service from a Grounds Tome. This is especially necessary for moving through the Ranguemont Pass area on the way to Xarcabard. The base final boss will be tricky with only three trusts, but it should be manageable if you're close to Lvl 60. Make sure to bring Valaineral, an offensive caster (I used Robel-Akbel), and Kupipi.

1. Starting out

When starting, you'll have a few important things to choose: starting job, starting city, and server. For your job, any of them can work for starting out, but I would recommend leaning towards Warrior as it makes for a comfortable start and is also a great sub-job for most jobs. For city, I think Windurst has the best base story, but it also has the most challenging missions and layout, so consider going with Bastok or San d'Oria (you can eventually do all three stories). For server, the top four servers are not open to new players, so Fenrir is the most populated server you can join.

Overall, I believe that XI is a game that's still worth experiencing, and has excellent story, characters, lore, and music with great in-depth gameplay. But it is an aged game, and won't be for everyone. If you decide to join, I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to ask any questions! To any other XI players, if there's something you think I should add, please let me know.

This may seem obvious, but:

Please use your Vesper Bay Aetheryte Tickets that you are given at MSQ level 17 to fast travel to the Waking Sands.

(They look like envelopes in your inventory.)

Do NOT save them for some nebulous future. Use them. You have plenty. Save your sanity. Put them on your hot bar. Do not teleport to Horizon and run to Vesper Bay/Waking Sands. These tickets are a mercy gifted to you that many of your predecessors did not have. Do not squander this mighty gift <3

Hi all. This was meant for discord so the formatting is a little wonky as I don't think reddit lets you embed pictures in a post. I've been collecting pre-release info on Beastmaster and here is what we know.

Beastmaster Prep Guide

Leveling

• I ran a few characters from 1-50 Blue Mage to test out some different leveling options. My methodology for the tests was as follows: Poorly dual boxing with my main on SGE giving my alt on BLU shields. The BLU alt tags everything and then the main kills. The BLUs only had the 30% exp earrings on with no other boosting items.
• You’ll notice in the vod that each char started at level 8, nearly level 9. This was due to pulling 4 penguins to get Flying Sardine to pull easier. So for the final times include maybe 30 seconds for the penguins to the count. Here’s the vod :construction_worker:Still uploading :construction_worker: for reference. I died an embarrassing amount. Know my shame.
• You will want to tame a Wavekin to get a ranged ability to pull that you can spam. (Level 4 Pugil in Middle LN should work, assuming we can use Borrow early on.)
• **Important note:** assuming BST leveling works like BLU leveling, there is a hard cap on exp gained from mobs above the current level cap. So in this case that means level 50 mobs give full exp, but level 51 mobs give 1% of their exp. I did some testing before I was reminded of this, *so Method 3 and 4 below are very unlikely to work.*
• Method 1: ARR mobs. Total time: 33m to level 32. I pulled densely packed ARR mobs in a few different level appropriate spots that were roughly 10 levels higher than me. This was slow and bad and I gave up at level 32 after 33 minutes. Stinky.
• Method 2: Coerthas West mobs. Total time 34m12s to level 50 Any level 50 mob is best. I was doing a loop around the Deepeyes but there are lots of 50s to choose from.
• ~~Method 3:~~ Azys Lla mobs. Total time: 14m38s to level 50. There is a nice little loop of mobs on the first island near the teleporter to the next island. This will likely NOT work for BST.
• ~~Method 4:~~ Kholusia mobs. Total time: 5m40s to level 50. Along the beach starting near the Stilltide Aetheryte. This will likely NOT work for BST.
• Recommendation: Partner up. Take turns boosting your partner. The best options will be the HW Starter areas, and the ARR max level areas. Remember, level 50 will be ok, but level 51 won’t give hardly anything. Shoot for high mob density and areas where you can chain pull.

Exp Gear

• I made an image for Exp Boost Gear. Here is a link to the text version. https://discord.com/channels/1134719628078219325/1482810231393222656/1484670007802855527
• A few things to know. These are not vital, but they will save you a chunk of time leveling. If you don’t have any, the best bang for your buck is the Adventurer’s Kit on Mogstation which comes with an older pre-order earring.
• You can get both rings without a ton of effort from the Hall of the Novice. Most of the value will come from having a 30% earring and the later 30% ring that goes to level 60.

Pre-BiS Gear

• This gear is very unlikely to be useful or matter in any way. Especially the shield. It’s dumb.
• A while back I made some graphics and some theoretical BiS lists. Basic Pre-Bis and Pre-BiS with Options Let’s call it a Pre-BiS at this point. As new information came out, I don’t think that these will end up mattering much as BST gets damage boosts from upgrading its job gear inside Crucible.
• My expectation is you’ll wear the Leveling set for 30mins to level > put on the Pre-BiS for like 20 minutes of quests until you get the Job Gear > work towards upgrading the Job Gear.
• We assume that the Job gear will be BiS because it's how you increase character power post level cap, but we don’t know if there are also accessories on that set. I’d recommend picking up the accessories just in case.
• Thanks to old game design at level 50, BST can use both fending and slaying accessories so mix and match the best options. BST uses the striking set and can only equip the shields that WHM/BLM can.

Abilities

• There are around 20 abilities that you will want to bind for Beastmaster.
• Here are some of the tooltips that I snagged from the Live Letter to give you an idea of how BST will operate. I think I am only missing the 123 combo and there are obviously many permutations of Trick, Tempered Release, and Borrow that aren’t listed.

Job Quests

• We have been told that Job Quests don’t unlock any actions but instead serve as a tutorial to learn your new abilities.
• They have made a point of saying that they enjoy the story and encouraged us to read it.
• We know that Crucible unlocks at level 30 and the first board is a tutorial. It sounded like it was part of the Job Quests.
• You also get your BST Job Gear around level 30 via Job Quest.

Taming

• Taming is pretty simple. Use Gauge on a mob to see if it’s tameable. Then you lower its hp as much as you can and use Capture to tame it. It is not meant to be an annoying RNG thing. It sounded like the success rate will either be 100% or a high chance of success.
• You must be higher than or equal to the level of the beast to tame it.
• The Beast Encyclopedia specifically tells you where to find each mob. There can be multiple spots for the same beast.
• You can tame beasts in dungeons, trials, raids, and alliance raids. Everyone in the group can tame the same mob.
• I am going to make a spreadsheet with all of the tamed beast locations. It doesn’t sound like any of them will be difficult to find/get so I would guess they are all found in the first hour or two.

Crucible

• The main BST content where you try to finish new stages in a sort of roguelike challenge.
• Each run has a decent amount of RNG due to random Crucible Items, Beast Gear drops, and sometimes Random Encounter spaces. Crucible Items are kind of similar to pomanders that only work inside the Crucible. I will link some below to give you an idea
• You will level up and feed your beasts here.
• You will augment/enhance your gear here.
• There is a ranked mode that will start two weeks after launch. That first season will run to patch 7.58 and at the moment seems like it will be paired up with the Ranked PvP season.
• Your score will be determined by your previous 3 consecutive runs so you can’t just get very lucky one time.
• Players who place top300 in their region aka NA, EU, JP, etc will be rewarded with the Rainbow Golem mount. The Rainbow Golem mount will still be obtainable for the winners of each following season as well.

Not sure if this is allowed, but thought it's a thing people don't seem to believe is true! I don't know that this mechanic happens anywhere else in the game. But he will target two players with confusion and do a little bit of damage. The confusion debuff is something like 25 seconds long. Healers can remove it by just bringing the players to 100% health.

Hey there!

Many of you may have noticed that I did not post a thread for the Island Sanctuary Workshop for season 91.

I don't want to get too terribly into it, but the long and short of it is that I simply don't have the time to devote to maintaining the weekly threads. Work, medical complications, home stress, reddit's recent updates, and other things have all piled up. The XIV team has also stated that Island Sanctuary is pretty much finished.

That all said, the Overseas Casuals Discord is still and will remain active due to the incredible amount of automation work that Mienna has put into motion. You can find the Discord at this link. Daily workshop solutions, tailor-made personal solutions, and guides are all available on the Discord.

Thank you all for the amazing support over the last year and a half. It's been a blast being part of the community. I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I plan on giving the new Dawntrail casual content much of the same attention that I did for Island Sanctuary. Please look forward to it!

I'd imagine some of you, like myself, might have uninstalled GShade quickly without much thought, went to reinstall ReShade, and then realised you had messed up.

I and my friend are here to attempt to help! We combined some of our files to relatively get Reshade back in to working order!

There are many helpful comments below and I implore you to look through them! Someone has even gone ahead and written a script so that you can ~kind of "one-click" uninstall GShade. Use at your own risk of course, and I'd recommend going through these steps and checking file locations to make sure GShade has been removed in full.

If you simply need the backup preset files, textures, and shaders here they are! (Google Drive Link).

• This pack actually contains the various textures and shaders that certain presets needed to work - For some reason the only backups I'm seeing posted are JUST the presets, which is not enough. It's like saying "here's a picture of the sandwich I'm making" while not having any of the ingredients. Please feel free to download, append to your own folders, and send to friends. This backup is from January 28th, 2023.

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Preliminary

Go here:

• C:\Users\"yourUser"\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn

and make a copy of the things important to you - macros, chardata, HUDlayout, gearsets. Put them in a separate easy to access folder like somewhere on your desktop.You can also use the in-game character backup thing in Character Selection, but I don't believe it's super duper thorough. For example I don't remember if it backs up Macros at all?

INSTRUCTIONS:

Step 0

• MacOS? You're method is much different: https://www.xivmac.com/gshade#uninstalling-gshade
• Trying to uninstall from Steam FFXIV or maybe you have a different game drive than C? Be aware your install paths might be slightly different. See this comment chain for some information on a possible GShade folder location that will need to be deleted later in step 1B

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Step 1

• If you haven't already removed GShade - Follow this post on GitHub for uninstalling GShade

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Step 1A

• If you absent mindedly removed GShade, double check the above linked GitHub post that you have at least removed it correctly. There are a couple files that stick around after uninstalling and you should make sure they are removed to be able to switch to Reshade.
  • (Please pay the most attention to Step 3 on GitHub. If you are having trouble understanding what to do, Step 3 truly is the most important! If you are having trouble understanding how to backup or transfer your own files following the GitHub post, that's okay, just get to the point where you've removed GShade completely and then come back here and continue with these steps. We'll get you those shaders back!

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Step "Sanity Check"

• If you are one of the people who can just follow along with the above GitHub post, you're all set, just read that post very carefully and follow instructions.
• IF YOU HAVE DELETED GSHADE WITHOUT ORIGINALLY CONSULTING THE GITHUB POST, please go back to Step 1A and double check you've actually fully removed GShade, then continue on.

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Step 1B

• Have you successfully removed GShade and restarted your computer?
  • Check your: "C:\Program Files" folder for a "GShade" folder and delete it.
  • Before moving on and installing Reshade, check that you can still launch FFXIV, repair your game as needed, and consider backing up your player files/hotbars/etc if you generally have a hard time with these kinds of things.

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Step 2

• Install Reshade using their installer. This is the same link available from the GitHub guide AND their website. But if you are one of those that is anti-trusting of links. Here is a direct link to Reshades website: http://static.reshade.me/#download
  • You want the one that says "Download Reshade 5.6.0 with full add-on support"

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Step 3

• Install Reshade in to FFXIV. The file Path should be something like: C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\ffxiv_dx11
  • NOTE SPECIFICALLY - ffxiv_dx11 (this is also mentioned in the GitHub Post)

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Step 4

• Click "Next" and choose "DirectX 10/11/12"

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Step 5

• You can click "Skip" all the way to the end after this point, and finish the whole install.
  • You can install Reshades base files if you would like to instead of skipping, but for the sake of simplicity I've recommended skipping them. They have also caused strange conflicts and color changes in presets for some people. If you know what you're doing please feel free to install what you'd like. If you tend to have a harder time with stuff like this I'd still recommend you skip them and just put the folders specified in Step 7 in their correct place.

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Step 6

• Navigate to: C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game
  • Your install path might differ slightly, but make sure the folder you are in is AT LEAST inside "SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game"

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Step 7

• Please download this pack that contains the backup of GShades presets, shaders, and effects! Google Drive Link to the Shader pack!
• Unzip the folder, select both folders inside, and dump them in:
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game
    • This file combines all the extra file downloads from the GitHub post as well as mine and my friends recovered Presets, Shaders, and Textures from GShade to continue having the same shaders in Reshade.
• Your "game" folder should now look like this (specifically referring to the reshade-presets and reshade-shaders folder. Disregard any extra files I seem to have that you might not): https://imgur.com/a/48qJiXs
• Inside the "reshade-presets" folder: https://imgur.com/a/AImQo5X
• Inside the "reshade-shaders" folder: https://imgur.com/a/ZeK1I7n

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Step 8

• Start the game and follow the in-game tutorial for using ReShade. Once through the tutorial go to the Settings tab.

YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE that your "Effect search paths" link to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\reshade-shaders\**

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YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE that your "Texture search paths" link to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\reshade-shaders\Textures

• HERE IS AN EXAMPLE IMAGE OF WHAT TO DO FOR THIS STEP
• NOW go back to the "Home" page of ReShade, scroll to the bottom, and click "Reload". Let the program do its thing, and when it's finished I'd recommend turning on performance mode.

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YOU'RE FINISHED!

• You can change your settings window to match mine if you'd like, I've used these simple settings for a long time and like them.
• I hope this helps someone, best of luck. Whatever your stance may be there's still a bunch of people trying to switch to a different add-on right now and are having a lot of trouble. So I'm just trying to help those people out.

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UNINSTALLING RESHADE

• Literally just use the same Reshade installer you downloaded, there will be an obvious "Uninstall" option, and it very nicely removes ALL files it originally installed.

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EXTRA NOTE: In my Google Drive link from Step 7, in those files is also an .ini file called KeepUI bundled with everything. When using a various shader in-game, if your UI ends up blurred out... simply search in the search bar for "KeepUI" and checkmark the setting on! This willl - keep your UI! It's on by default by most Presets I believe?

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TROUBLESHOOTING:

I've just done a fresh install of Windows 10/11, and a fresh install of FFXIV (+mods, plugins, ReShade). I followed my own guide here to install ReShade (including my own download) and everything worked correctly~ this is just to say I believe Windows can sometimes mess up your files if you are doing this after uninstalling GShade and are not on a fresh install of Windows. Not to say that you should fresh install Windows... just that it seems the way files are handled in general can easily mess something like this up. Please make sure you have actually uninstalled GShade fully.

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IF YOU CAN'T GET THE INTERFACE TO OPEN INGAME ON A REINSTALL OF RESHADE:

- Try pressing the "Insert" key instead of "Home" or "Shit+F2". I'm finding on peoples ReShade reinstalls after they've uninstalled GShade that for some reason the Overlay Toggle key has been set to "Insert". I am not sure of the cause of this, but it seems to be directly related to those who are installing ReShade after having uninstalled GShade.
- If your computer has anything like Citrix or similar work related programs (special connections, macro programs, VPN, etc.) that monitor or alter the way your computer works, it is very possible they are interfering with your ReShade install. Citrix is the biggest offender and the current solution is to completely uninstall it to get ReShade to work. If that is not possible for you to do, there currently isn't a workaround, and ReShade with specifically FFXIV will not be usable for you. If one is found I'll update this here.

IF YOU HAVE NO PRESETS LOADING OR THINGS AREN'T LINING UP CORRECTLY:

- Please go back and carefully follow Step 8. Seriously, super carefully. The most important thing to make ReShade OR GShade work is that those parameters are pointing to the correct file directories. If there is a single typo or you have put them in the wrong spots, ReShade will not work. Please make sure your paths on your settings page look like this.

IF YOU HAVE A BLACK/GRAY/TRANSPARENT BOX AROUND JOB GAUGES:

- This is caused by how ReShade reads texture and interacts with the game compared to GShade. This is probably the most obvious difference between the 2 programs. Here's a messy workaround use entirely at your own risk.

- There are multiple shader makers working on fixing this. I don't have a catalogue of all of them who are trying to fix it, though I believe Ipsusu has some suggestions for a workaround. Otherwise, switching to the "Simple Job Gauge" mode "fixes" it.

- My favourite shader is "Maya Happiness Gameplay" and I have no boxes but may not have checked every job gauge, results may very based on which shaders you use~

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Shader Creators with Updates, Info, and Guides!!

• Ipsusu ( u/ipsusu ):
  • https://github.com/ipsusu/IpsuShade
• This comment by ( u/pigpigmonk1997 ) links many creators that have updated their shader packages for ReShade! Worth taking a look to see if your favourite is there!:
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10vya2j/comment/jkq3mj6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
• Espresso Lalafell will be releasing a Reshade installer specifically for Espresso Glow soon to help everyone!
  • You can follow their Twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/Espressolala

Since Ghosts of Desire was announced, I've seen quite a few people in the FFXIV community saying that they're not familiar with Evangelion (beyond knowing the name and that it's about giant robots), or that they don't know where to start with it.

This really surprised me at first (after all, it's literally one of the most popular anime of all time!), but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. There's a sizeable number of FF players who wouldn't even have been alive when EVA aired, and for most of the 2010s, the original series was out of print and not on streaming services.

So, for the benefit of those who missed out, and are wanting to get caught up on EVA in preparation for Evercold, here's a quick guide:

What the heck is Evangelion?

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a post-apocalyptic mecha anime series, which originally aired in 1995, and has been receiving continuations and spin-offs (not to mention absolute mountains of plastic merch) ever since. The most notable of these are End of Evangelion, a movie that continues directly from the end of the original series, and Rebuild of Evangelion, a whole series of movies that sort-of-but-not-really remakes the show (more on that later).

Evangelion was originally created by the studio Gainax (who would later go on to make other massive shows like FLCL and Gurren Lagann), under the direction of the now-legendary filmmaker Hideaki Anno. The rights to the franchise later got transferred to Anno's studio, Khara, who made the Rebuilds - they're the ones collaborating with Square Enix on the GoD raid.

What is it about?

Fifteen years after an apocalyptic event known as the Second Impact, the world is under attack by gigantic monsters called Angels. To prevent them from triggering a Third Impact and destroying the world for good, a shadowy organisation called NERV fights back, using bio-mechanical mechs called Evangelions. The series follows Shinji, the estranged teenage son of NERV's leader, as he's summoned (then immediately emotionally blackmailed, lmao) to pilot one of the EVAs.

What's it like?

Much like FFXIV, Evangelion is absolutely all over the place tonally (in a good way, IMO). The early episodes are pretty standard monster-of-the-week fare, and there's a lot of goofy humour - but as the series goes on, things get increasingly dark and introspective, with a big focus on the cast's various neuroses and interpersonal conflicts (people have speculated that this is a reflection of Anno's mental state during the production - his struggles with depression during that time are pretty well documented).

EDIT: This does mean that there's some pretty heavy content warnings for suicide/self-harm and sexual assault in the later episodes (and even more so in End of Evangelion).

What order should I watch things in?

I see a lot of people asking this, or asking whether they can just skip straight to the Rebuild movies. The answer (and the main thing I hope people will take away from this post) is: watch it all, in release order.

The early stuff still holds up exceptionally well, in my opinion, and while Rebuild initially gives the impression of being a straightforward remake, it diverges massively after the first film. The later Rebuilds are very much in conversation with the OG series/movie thematically, and IMO, you will get a ton more out of them if you've watched it all.

(To bring it back to Final Fantasy for a second, you can think of Rebuild as being the FF7 Remake to Evangelion's FF7 - while you could feasibly start with the former and have a good time, it's pretty clear the writers are riffing on your assumed knowledge of the latter.)

So, with all that in mind, here's a list of the main stuff to watch:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV series, 1995-1996)
• The End of Evangelion (Movie, 1997)
• Rebuild of Evangelion (Movie series, 2007-2021)
  • Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
  • Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
  • Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo
  • Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

You can safely skip Evangelion Death (True)² - that film is just a recap of the original series, designed to shown before screenings of EoE. There are a few new scenes in it, but they don't really add anything important.

Which stuff is going to be relevant to the raids?

We don't know yet (though I think it's likely we'll find out more at the JP Fanfest). That said, if I had to guess, I'd say it's fairly likely they're going to draw on both the OG series and the Rebuilds - they have Mahiro Maeda from Khara working as a guest artist on the raids, and while he's got animation credits on basically every EVA thing in the last 30 years, they specifically called out his work on 3.0+1.0 at EU Fanfest.

Where can I watch it?

The original series, End of Evangelion and Death (True)² are all available to stream on Netflix.

EDIT: People in the comments have pointed out that they're also now available on the Criterion Channel (with the original 90s dub, which many people consider superior to the Netflix one).

The Rebuild films were all on Amazon Prime, but I found out while writing this guide that they let the streaming rights lapse a few weeks ago. You can still rent 1, 2 and 4 on Amazon - but not 3, for some stupid reason. It remains to be seen whether they'll come back to Prime at some point, whether Netflix will pick them up, or whether physical media will remain the only (legal) way to watch the whole series.

What's the deal with the last two episodes?

Without getting into spoilers, the original series has a notoriously abstract and confusing ending, as a result of the studio running out of time/money and Anno basically having a nervous breakdown towards the end of production. Depending on who you ask, End of Evangelion is either a remake of those two episodes that actually shows what was happening, or a completely alternate ending.

I mention this because I think watching EoE is basically essential to have a 'complete' experience of the original series - while I personally love how weird they get with it in the last couple of episodes, a ridiculous amount of plot threads are left hanging as a result, and I think if I'd not known that there was a more definitive ending coming (as was the case for people watching in 1996), I'd have found them a much more frustrating watch.

Is Evangelion 'over' now?

With those merch sales? Hell no. The biggest recent announcement was that there's a new anime series being worked on, with Yoko Taro writing the script. There's very little info about it yet, though - we don't whether this will be a spin-off, tie into the original series, or be something completely new and unrelated that just shares the name.

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That's all I've got - I hope this helps at least a few people to get into this (super cool, imo) series before the raids come out next year!

Edit: Thank you so much for the support, I had no idea this would explode the way it did! I'm going to slowly go through all of the comments and reply as much as possible, as well as fix some annoying bugs. Heads up that because the app is getting hit really hard due to the traction this post has gotten, the API I use for Lodestone queries may return some incomplete data sets. It's possible that some encounters and questlines cleared are not showing up as such -- you can go in the settings and try to refresh the character, or wait a day or two for the Reddit raid to slow down a bit! Again, thank you all, I appreciate it!

Introducing... XIV ToDo!

Having noticed that there didn’t seem to be any tool or website out there to automatically keep track of completion of encounters and quests (without having to resort to editing a big clunky spreadsheet manually), I decided to build my own, fully free and open-source!

Current features

• List of all encounters, main questlines, and notable challenges with automatic completion, per-character
• Up-to-date, fully customizable list of weeklies and dailies, with completion and automatic reset, per-character
• Multi-character support / alt-friendly

Planned features for the near™ future

• More information for encounters, quests, and checklists (break down of individual quests, how to unlock, description, etc.)
• Profile-sharing with a URL
• Sign-up / device syncing (so your checklists syncs from your computer to your mobile, and vice-versa)
• Comparison features (to compare two or more characters’ encounter and quest completions)
• List of features and content in the game (with how to unlock, description), ranging from the Gold Saucer to PvP to Sightseeing Logs and everything in-between
• Support for the game’s main languages (DE, FR, JA, KO, ZH) pending finding resources to translate in those languages

I also have some more less-fleshed-out ideas, but let me know what else you’d like to see or what you like about it! Hopefully this is useful to some of you! I am grateful for any feedback and suggestions either in the comments, DMs, or on Twitter.

• Website: https://xivtodo.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/XIVToDo
• GitHub: https://github.com/bourgeoisor/xivtodo

Slightly outdated screenshots:

I happened across a video from some streamer just picking up the game, it was probably an older video, but they mentioned that they ended up taking low kick off their bar because of how useless it was.

I considered that they might change their minds later on, but WAY too often I notice little things that shouldn't be happening.

So if you or your friends are ignoring this VERY USEFUL skill because it doesn't deal damage this is for you. Low kick is both a mit AND uptime ogcd. True, it doesn't work on most bosses, but I couldn't count the number of times everybody turns and halts everything for a big trash mob are, that 2or3 of the 4 players can just give it a quick toe tickle and keep dpsing.

Low kick is GOOD.