Some noob questions

[LilPips]

Forgive me if these were answered recently. I have done many searches and compiled quite a bit of info already and I have not found answers to any of these questions:

1. Are you able to get AF (artifact equipment) for more than 1 job? I see many people listing AF complete for 1 job in their signatures, but never seen anyone with more than 1 AF listed. Can you only do this once? So if I wanted to be a tank (pal/monk maybe) in some groups, and support (bard/rdm for example) in other groups, could I get full AF (the 6 or so quests) for both pal and bard?

2. NM is notorious monster. A randomly spawning harder-than-normal monster that might drop some goodies...correct? I have seen variations on this, like HNM, QNM, UNM, and PNM...what are these?

3. BCNM (burning circle notorious monster?) Am I correct in this?: You must collect a certain number of a seal, randomly dropped from monsters. Then turn in these seals to get an orb. Then use the orb in a particular location, and your group is then attacked by a difficult monster or monsters. Do all players in the group have to have the orb? What is the motivation for doing these? Rare items? Excellent XP? Storyline?

4. Camping. I understand that the random NM's are highly sought after and you will have to wait a while for them to pop and possibly fight over them if a ton of people are there also. But, what I'm more insterested in, is how bad camping is for other things in the game. For example, will you frequently have to wait for long periods of time and possibly have to fight over quests? (or monsters that you have to kill for quests?) I've read that for some quests your group has to enter an area (like a hidden door or something) at around the same time, and there might be a line to get into the area...What stops the group that is already in the area from just waiting there and getting the monster over and over again? Also, how do you know when the group has left, so that your group may enter? Is this a frustrating and frequent part of the game?

5. Goblin Bag quests: I've seen these in signatures, and I understand that there are at least 4? of them? And each one increases the amount of items your char can hold. But I haven't seen any walkthrus for these quests. Do any exist?

6. How easy is it to get gil in the high level game? I've seen items auctioned for hundreds of thousands of gil, yet people also say they have to 'gil up' to get some yagudo potions (1000 gil i think?) for 60+ quests. At the highest levels are you getting 100's of gil or 100,000's of gil?

7. Quests: Does your completed quest area show EVERY quest you have done? If it does, can you select these quests to see what you did or what you were rewarded? Or is this left up to the player to keep track of. It seems as though # of quests done is important to get certain missions or quests...

8. Spells: Are the vast majority of high level spells (like the ancient spells), rare drops off rare spawning monsters? If so is this a very frustrating part of the game? I read that the new raise3 spell was an exercise in frustration because it was only dropped by a very rare spawning monster that dropped it very infrequently. I ask this because this was what I hated most about everquest (having to wait forever to get anything worthwhile).

9. What exactly is the expeditionary force system? I understand that you get conquest points by having a signet on you when you fight in certain areas, and the kills and deaths done in those areas are tallied up and then determine which nation that zone belongs to, right? Is the EFS related to this? Or is this a conquest quest system or something like that?

Thanks all in advance :)

[Jei]

you got most of the points right. I'll put in some of my understanding here

1. I have all RDM's AF full set. I got WHM AF weapon. and I got 3 pieces of THF's AF too.
So, yes, you can have more than 1 job AF.
(as much as your storage space allow really. My mog house is about to explode already with only RDM AF)


2. NM - you got it right. noto... monster whatever :)
HNM = hyper NM. a 3 day pop NM that are a lot harder to kill and drop some really rare and nice materials/items.Behemoth is one of them
QNM = Quest NM? Maybe. A NM you need to kill for Quest. mostly you trade item or check a certain spot to call them out.
I have no idea about the others :)

3. BCNM. NM in side a BC (Burning Circles)
You trade your orb to "enter" into the circle. and NMs waiting in there.
Only 1 person per group need to trade the orb. And people go there for items. Some spells are only available via BCNM.

4. competition varies a lot depends on time.... Normally, the easy-to-kill NM that drops nice expensive items such as leapping lizzy can be camped so heavily. like 24 hours there would be someone waiting for it.

And when SMN quest first open up, for example, almost every single player on the server were crazy about it and hunt leaches to the point it's impossible to find them anywhere. Some people spent 3 whole days to btain the item for that quest.
But once the hype died out you can get the item from it so easy in like an hour killing.

Some quest that requires entering battling area like DRG quest you need to wait 5 minutes before the next group can enter. A lot of people queued up for that.

The things i mentioned about SMN and DRG shouldn't be a problem in the US version I believe. because in the JP version everyone were already high enough to get those quests when it was out. so once they were available, 2000-3000 people all tried to do them at once. And the competition became so serious. In US not everyone in the server are going to do it at the same time.

For levelling, in my server atleast, some popular levelling spot can be heavily camped in holidays. Like 4-5 groups fighting side by side. (for normal week days levelling spot are so lightly camped)
We don't camp "pop" spot tho in this game. We camp a "safe" spot and competing to call the monster when it's popped. who ever call first got the monster back to their camp. and everyone accept that kind of competition pretty well ^^;

5. pretty much the goblin will ask you to bring him 4-5 items. give it to him and he'll increase your space. You just need money to buy the items needed.

6. higher level you have many choise.
- You can solo many things on your own. Farming items can become wealthy you just need to kill them over and over. Tigers are good example. 1 fang they drop cost 700gil. you can get over 20 fangs per hour if you can kill them fast and not waste time sitting.
- You can hunt for keys and treasure chest. Some place such as Feiyin, monsters are pretty easy for level 60. And if you can get a key and get item from chest there, they will cost 50K each.
- You are able to join the hunt for some really hard monsters and get some really nice items. Some can be sold for like 300-400K (like raise2)
- or the dream of all high levels.... HNM. You can join HNM hunts. and if lucky, very very very lucky you can get items worth over 5 million. (a sword I want drop from HNM dragon named Bune.... the price is 8 million.)

7. you can see all quests you've done. it gives you information about what the NPC was, and a brief description about it. but not how to pass or what reqard you get.

8. some are. some aren't.... some are sold by NPC, some are rare drop, some are from coffers. some are from BCNM.
Flare for example... drop from an exrtemely hard Demons in Zvahrl castle. used to cost like 3 millions back when the level cap was 60. nowadays many people can kill that demons and price goes down to 150K.

9. I understand how it works a bit, but since im playing on japanese version and don't really understand what the NPC tells me, I don't think i can explain it correctly ^^;

[LilPips]

Wow thanks a lot Jazaar. I had a lot of questions and you really spent a lot of time to answer them all!

Thanks a lot!

Do you already have a linkshell group for the US release? (I mean a guild set up for when FF11 is released in November)

[Jei]

for US release i still need to wait and see if square will let me shift my characters or not... and if they do so, what server will I end up at.
all Square's choice :( ....