[Kittyneko]

Today we bring you the 8th Vana'diel Census, which marks the sixth anniversary of FINAL FANTASY XI!

In addition to the standard job level distribution and relic-level item charts, this year we've included some fascinating data relating to the new expansion disc Wings of the Goddess, as well as other never-before-seen statistics such as the number of players who've earned the right to wear Maat's Cap!

Take this opportunity to see a slice of Vana'diel, as brought to you by our operation and development teams.

The 8th Vana'diel Census can be found here.

[Malacite]

The four top-ranked items for the Bastok auction house have remained unchanged for the last 3 years. Among the newly ranked items this year, number 6 “chunk of mythril ore” and number 8 “pot of honey” both caught our attention. Mythril ore is quite valuable in goldsmithing synthesis when combined with gold dust. Synthesis for goldsmithing is relatively costly, but one can use just “copper ingot” and “brass ingot” as materials to raise one's synthesis skill to 50 and, by selling the results of the synthesis to different shops, a player can raise one's skill at a relatively low cost. In other words, players are most likely synthesizing “mythril ingot” using “chunk of mythril ore” and then “pinch of gold dust” to raise their skill.

EXPLAIN NOW

[Shadowneko]

lots of high levels and not many in the 50s and 60s...my summoner is gonna have a really rough time of it...

[Aksannyi]

The stats on Hades will definitely be different, because it is definitely more than 14% of the population that has RDM. Everyone and their uncle levels the job and most of them blow at it.

[Kitalrez]

I would hope very much that they're looking at the relic lists for Claustrum, Mjolnir, Gugnir, and Guttler and seeing what I'm seeing: These probably need some sort of adjustment to make them worth getting. Seriously, 4 Thrysus and 16 Claustrum tells me maybe relic staff needs some kind of boost. If this is supposed to be one of the best weapons you can get, and most of us aren't even trying, that should say something.

It also sounds like they're taking a look at Fishing and Bonecraft's later stages, which is nice, since these are a bear.

Wow, 50% of us haven't ranked up in Assault at all. That's kind of surprising. No wonder it's so hard to find a group for some of these.

[Aksannyi]

Originally Posted by Kitalrez

No wonder it's so hard to find a group for some of these.

QFT I like to do new Assaults that I haven't done before (moar points!) but everyone just wants to spam Excavation Duty and Golden Salvage.

[Sevv]

So many maat's caps

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I liked the positive spin on mission progression. It was amusing.

The fact that the majority of players are stuck on "Ark Angels" in RoZ isn't terribly surprising since people are always like "Dude just wait to do Divine Might," so lots of people get stuck there and don't do the original version of the mission.

A whopping 47% are on "Ancient Flames Beckon" but then, this is probably due to the fact you can get that Mission CS at 30 with no requirements other than being 30 and zoning into Lower Delkfutt's Tower. Then there's the difficulty of finding a competent group to get through the Promyvions. You'd think people would have it easier on Chapter 1 with all the changes, but people still are stupid and the boss difficulty hasn't changed at all, just mob placement and the ability to buy anima off the AH.

RoZ you have to be Rank 6 and 60+ to even trigger the first mission CS in Norg, if I recall correctly. So that's a bit more of a requirement.

ToA's mission progress is embarassing. The data basically says "lots of you stopped once you earned runic portal access."

just under 50% of players are PSC in Assault. "75 Onry, plz." Still, the disparity in percentages wasn't as large as I had expected.

WotG Rank-up progress is a breeze, its not surprising so many hit max rank thus far. Still, the first rank says that most people just came by did the initial quests, unlocked SCH or DNC and never looked back.

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I didn't see why SE unlocking SCH was so difficult. Its a bit more running around than DNC was, but its mostly accross the same zones by the same means if you're low level. Nothing terribly threatening about either, SCH just requires some item acquistion, which can mostly be low cost if you buy rolanberrys from M&P's in Upper Jeuno. Then there's just the trek to Crawler's nest for the sheets of vellum in exchange.

Originally Posted by Sevv

So many maat's caps

"You are not a unique or special snowflake. "

I actually don't know whether to be impressed or disturbed that 6000+ have Maat's Caps. I think I'm going with the latter.

[Sevv]

You do realize that they use the data from every id, that means I have 1 id at capped status mission and assault wise, and 14 ids at no status. And job wise, that is 5 lvl 1's per id unless you have leveled.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally Posted by Sevv

You do realize that they use the data from every id, that means I have 1 id at capped status mission and assault wise, and 14 ids at no status. And job wise, that is 5 lvl 1's per id unless you have leveled.

Since they've stated several times in the past they don't count "mules" in the bulk of these statistics, yes, I'm well aware.

[Lunaryn]

For my part, I'm wondering which servers are still hold-outs for DD/WAR and BLM/WHM, since both of these seem to have fallen by the wayside somewhat on Midgardsormr, at least at high levels.

[Aksannyi]

I know a lot of people who only leveled BLM with WHM leveled, then get to endgame and are like, "Oh fuck I need to level RDM."

RDM > WHM as a subjob for BLM anyway in my opinion so the point was moot.

[Lunaryn]

Well, historically on Midgardsormr, /WHM was the expected sub for BLM to have, period. To the point that a BLM I know who absolutely despised main-healing took WHM to 37 and swore never to touch it again. And was a successful BLM/WHM for a while that way. And then everyone suddenly decided /RDM was better, and the community forgot about /WHM so quickly that he now gets comments like "wow, you must really love healing" in regards to having /WHM instead of /RDM. And then gets pestered in /tell to "heal more" because of his sub, even though he parties together with a RDM/WHM (and now also RDM/SCH) who is quite capable of covering that role.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Every year I see the results of this survey, they mention weeding out all level 1 characters as simply "storage characters". I'm guessing they'll have to raise that threshold up to level 5 next year, since most players will take their "storage characters" up to at least level 5 for this year's lottery event.

[Aksannyi]

Lol true that.

Of course all of my characters have always counted, I enjoy leveling my mules when I don't feel like being bugged on my main.