FFXI Mog Satchel - Registering your Security Token

Here is a run down of the procedures you must follow in order to successfully register your FFXI Security Token so you can log in with your new one-use passwords and enable your Mog Satchel.

1. Open the box and navigate to the internet address provided.
2. Create an account and log in. (Accept the usage agreement.)
3. Enter your email address.
4. A verification email is sent to the address you entered.
5. Click the URL provided in the verification email.
6. Enter your desired ID. (Check for availability.)
7. Enter a password. (Enter in the password confirmation.)
8. Enter your birthday.
9. Select a security question. (Just in case you lose or forget your password.)
10. Enter the answer to your security question.
11. Confirm the data and submit.
12. Login using the account you just created.
13. Select the Security Expansion. (Click next.)
14. Select the Security Token Registration. (Click next.)
15. Accept the terms. (Click next.)
16. Enter the seriel number located on the back of your Security Token.
17. Press the red button on your Security Token to display a one-use password.
18. Enter the six digit code displayed on the device. (Click next.)
19. Complete the Registration.

Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? But wait! You aren’t done! Now that you’ve registered your Security Token, you’ve got to add it to your PlayOnline account! I know, right? But don’t worry, this is pretty quick and easy too.

1. On the left of the screen, click Link Settings.
2. Select “Add a link” (Click next.)
3. Select PlayOnline. (Note: trial accounts cannot be linked.)
4. Select PlayOnline Info. (Click next.)
5. Confirm your account.
6. Confirm Add.
7. Open PlayOnline.
8. Edit login settings to include “One time password”

Congratulations! You have now added the Security Token to your FFXI account. You will now be required to enter two passwords each time you log in. The first password will be the one that you created in the registration portion of this guide. The second password will be generated by pressing the red button on your Security Token device. “One time password” does not indicate that you will only enter the password once, but instead that each password the device generates will only be good for one use. You will still be required to enter in a new password in this field each time you log in.
If you have found this guide useful, I would also like to recommend my other articles on Final Fantasy XI.

• Mog Satchel and Security Token for FFXI
• Tips on How to Avoid a Ban from FFXI for Real Players
• Thinking About a Return to Final Fantasy XI?

Read more: http://gameolosophy.com/games/fantasy/final-fantasy/registering-your-security-token-for-ffxi-mog-satchel/#ixzz1a9cP73KR

FFXI Ultimate Collection Abyssea Edition

After several months trying to like FFXIV and many attempts to go back and try to get into the game, I finally made my way back to Final Fantasy XI. It seems like now was the perfect time to return with the release of the Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection - Abyssea Edition. You can get right back into the game with all of the expansions and add-ons for only 20 bucks and it's available as a digital download through Amazon and Steam. This was perfect for me since I had missed the latest addons and at the normal 10 bucks a pop I saved a good ten bucks at least. I honestly can't recall where I left off with the addons since I didn't really end up doing any of the story lines for them past the first one, and of course I stopped playing right before I got the sweet end piece of augmented gear.

Now there is Abyssea and a level cap of 90. I'm left wondering which class I should play. I've spent the last couple of days dorking around on BST and finishing an old 290 axe trial. Is it just me or did experience points from mobs get increased? I started the quest to get into the new areas, I just need to go enter one of the maws and turn in my key item for some visitation time. Without a linkshell, though, it seems a little scary. I mean, what's to lose except a little experience points, right? Still, I wish I could find some Abyssea mentors to help me understand all these time extensions, at as, and insane experience points groups that are available. I guess the first step to that would be to just ask, but I guess I've been busy with other in game things so far. It goes back to th question of what job I want to play. While I've been thinking it over, I've been leveling up some crafts, spending some Gil, making some Gil, and LOVING how the auction houses are all tied into Jeuno now. Take that, FFXIV, why can't you get it right like XI? Superior retainer system my ass.

Another cool thing about this Ultimate Collection is that it comes just in time to snag the 9th anniversary experience points bonus ring and outfits. The Novennial ring comes with an experience point bonus of +100% for a maximum of 9000 extra points per charge and a duration of 720 minutes per go. This puppy has 10 charges, so if you don't let any go to waste that's 90,0000 bonus experience points by the time you're through. Amazing! As far as the novennial outfits go, they are quite Victorian in style and very slick. The male version is not as colorful, but does have a bit of charm to it. Personally, I'm digging the female version. The coloring and design is breathtaking - and that's saying something coming from a hetero male.


Here's my mule, Angrymonkey sporting his bodacious digs.


The female Novennial gear has got to be one of my all time favorite armor designs.

You'll have to forgive me for the quality of the photos, I took them off my big screen TV with my Xoom. They aren't to show off the quality of the game, which has improved by the way with adjustable background ratio up to 16:10, but to highlight some of the things I'm excited about. So, without further delay, I will introduce the Destrier Beret that comes with this collection via special code. This hat turns you into a chocobo! Not only that, but for your jobs under 30, it also adds regen, refresh, auto-raise,  increased skill gain, and increased movement speed! Is that insane? I love it! Picture added to post for awesomeness.



This helm is awesome! It makes me want to play one of my jobs I never leveled.


Here's me as a chocobo!

BTW - there are a lot of speculation threads on the internet that assume this is only for new accounts, but I can confirm that they code works for existing accounts as well.

FFXI Level 20 Avatar Fight: Ramuh

For anyone interested, I originally obtained most of my avatars through the level 20 solo fights. While many players will recommend against doing this as it prohibits you from using the tuning forks for easy avatar battle travel later on, for some it is the only real option unless they want to level another job to Avatar fighting range first.

I am posting a video of this first fight for you to learn from. Sorry about the cheesy music, a friend of mine did the compilation for me back in 2006.

Chocobo Racing Silks - Further Discussion

I  have had a bit more of a chance to experiment with the Blue Racing Silks and the Sky Blue Racing Silks with my digging lately. The reason for this is primarily that 200 successful digs can take a while longer than I really have to spend on work nights. So, I often get about 60-70 free digs before switching to the Sky Blue Racing Silks to finish off the remaining 45 fatigue digs for the night.

Last night turned out pretty decent for my moderate level of digging skill. I netted two gold beastcoins, a handful of silver, two petrified logs, a few ebony logs, an oak log, some mythril ore and a mythril beastcoin and other miscellaneous items. Oh, the 6 danceshrooms were a nice sell-to-vendor treat. I definitely paid for my greens! The moon was 69% and a few of the zones I tried were near barren, it took a while to finally get in that haul. I'm glad I had the patience to see it through.

The Blue Racing Silks are definitely good for zones where the incidentals are beneficial. Digging in Tahrongi gets me a lot of pebbles and flint stones for my free digs with the occasional surprise. Digging in the jungle, however, brings in a nice flow of bone chips, which I send to my mule in Windy to level bonecraft. Just hit level 9 tonight and am ready to start making gelatin and glue here soon. A few years ago those stacks of chips would have sold for 10k easy, but nowadays they only go for 1k. There's really no point in trying to list them, I'd just as soon get some skill off them and keep the AH stocked with my more profitable digs.

I'm enjoying synthing the logs I get and receiving the occasional HQ. I haven't lost any of my lumber yet, which is always a risk with crafting in FFXI, but I'm sure it's bound to happen sooner or later. I suppose that's the gamble. You win some, you lose some.

I'm still not sure what the Sky Blue silks are doing for me. Is it increasing the skill of my bird temporarily to artificially boost my digging skill? That would make it easier to pull up those harder items if I get them in the treasure pool, but there's really no way for me to know client-side. I really wish these things weren't quite so ambiguous.

Chocobo Digging

Well, I picked up my FFXI chocobo digging recently and finally made it to the rank of Initiate. That means that I have slightly better accuracy than someone just starting out and I can dig every six seconds instead of every sixteen. Wahoo! My area wait time is at 50 seconds, meaning that I can't start digging until 50 seconds after I've zoned. This is down from a full minute when you start out.

I raised a digging chocobo with the Bore and Burrow abilities to increase the rate of successful digs. With maxed out discernment I'm finding that my successful dig rate is way better than I had ever encountered before and I can stay competitive in the jungles without a problem. With 67 woodworking skill, I synth the higher priced logs into lumber and have been surprised with a few HQ's that result in more lumber than logs and increase my income. At this point in the game, though, I'm still aiming to pay for my digging sessions. Anything extra is just a nice surprise.

I think I made a mistake by getting the Sky Blue Racing Silks. It seems, after doing some reading, that it is rather inconclusive what they do for your skill. Sure, I get the messages that my chocobo has gained knowledge from digs quite frequently, but what does that mean exactly? I still haven't found any comprehensive arguments that can say with any certainty that this is actually directly improving skillup rates to cut down the time required to level up your digging skill. Why is that so important? As an initiate I see a slightly better accuracy rate and I can dig quicker. The next rank is the first one that really starts setting you up for the big leagues. Players will often refer to the Novice rank as A45. The reason being is that, of course, your area wait time drops from 50 seconds after zoning to 45, but furthermore, this is the first rank where you receive 0 delay between digs. So, instead of waiting six seconds to dig again, you can basically do it back to back. Going on with this, each successive rank contiunes the decrease in area wait time by five seconds while maintaining the 0 delay between digs. On and on it goes until you finally reach the rank of Expert with an area wait time of 10 seconds. This rank is often referred to as A10, catching on?

Aside from the obvious benefits of ranking up your digging skill, higher ranked players also gain access to digs that would be impossible for newbs like me. We're talking about elemental ore, orichalcum ore, adaman ore, and precious metal beastcoins plus other hard to obtain items. This is where all that hard work starts to pay off. You no longer worry about whether you're going to break even on greens, now we're talking about putting the little Tarus through college. That's the idea, anyway. The problem is that after the anti-RMT actions instituted into the game, the fatigue system will only allow you to dig up 100 items a day, which resets at midnight in Japan. From everything I've read, that puts you on schedule to obtain your A10 rank after a mere 20-22 months of digging to cap every single day. That's right, no holidays, no birthdays, no anniversaries off, digging every single day to fatigue. Bleh!

I suppose that's why I had such high hopes for the Sky Blue Racing Silks. With the idea that I could shorten that time, well, I was pretty stoked. I have since learned that I may be much better off going with the Blue Racing Silks, which increase the number of successful digs per day substantially. Hmm, immediate payoff. If FFXIV weren't right around the corner I might be tempted to just stick it out and see how these Skill + silks work out, but the truth of the matter is that I really don't have the intention to stay in this game for that long. Sure, the quest for 99 sounds like it might be kind of fun, but let's face it. I have become a loner in this Final Fantasy game. My friends have moved on or only log on once in a blue moon and it gets lonely. I work full time and I've got a family and I just don't have the time to try to foster new friendships. Let's face it, in this game it's always been a crapshoot of hit or miss and generally these things include helping other people with the things they MUST have in the hope that they reciprocate later on. In my experience, I end up spending a lot of time helping others who are quick to forget the good deed. New addons or not, I think it's time for me to move on. Until then, though, I'm having fun seeing what I can dig up in my old stomping grounds.

Last night I got a few gold beastcoins and some choice pieces of ore and logs. I made more than I spent on greens and, who knows, maybe I got a few good skill increases somewhere in there. I'm already halfway to getting my new racing silks to increase my successful digs and I suppose I'll keep the others in my storage in case some new information comes to light later on down the road.

My experiences so far have left me hoping that an improved version of chocobo raising and digging find themselves in Final Fantasy XIV. I also hope that the developers find better ways to mitigate RMT activities than dictating what real players can do with their time in game. There will always be other ways around it. And really, what's to stop an RMT joint to bot up a few more mules and keep the dig botting going around the clock? All it really does is make it harder for real players to track competitors. I would much rather avoid a zone always occupied by a single player who dig bots than try to keep up with his many alts. But, alas, we digress into the topic of how Fishing and Digging have had their noses cut off to spite the face -- and that, my friends, shall be for another day.

Until then, happy digging!

FFXI and the Level Cap Increase

How do you feel about the announcement of the impending level cap increases for Final Fantasy XI? By the end of this year the max level will have raised from 75 through several increments to 99. Of course, many players will have left the game by that point if Final Fantasy XIV, the new FF MMO, releases on time. I suppose when you put it into that perspective, it will only be the die-hard XI fans that will remain. Well, I suppose those who simply have no desire to move on to the next MMO will also remain.

Will the mass exodus call for more server consolidations? I imagine that some might say, "Big deal, let them go, who cares if SE consolidates the servers? At least there will be less people sitting in town whining about lack of invites or that no one will help them." Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about this. It just brings up some interesting concerns.

For example, if only the truest of die-hard XI fans remain and they consolidate servers as they are doing this month, then players will again face an undesirable side affect that will undoubtedly come as an unpleasant surprise after the March 2010 update. The thing with having a character on a long standing MMO is that you get used to them, you develop a connection to this online persona that you have been attached to for so long. So imagine waking up one morning, driving to work, and then as you walk into the building you're given a message that indicates that you can no longer be Bob or Bill or Sam or whatever it is that you call yourself. It turns out that Accounting just merged with Outside Sales for who knows why and there already happens to be a Bob or Bill or Sam, or what have you, in their block of cubicles. Darn the luck, you now have to come up with a new name, a handle to which people will refer when desiring to communicate in your direction.


I know, to some it won't be an issue. It's just a name and your friendlist should still function just as it used to. If you're one of those guys whose account has been jacked up for who knows how long, well let's face it, you're screwed. But there are those minor annoyances. Like making sure you send mail to the right person. Wouldn't it be awful to send all your gear to the wrong Mrshineypants mule? Next thing you know some galka with a fetish for meat dishes is parading around town in YOUR underwear. Imagine the embarrassment.

The real point I'm trying to make here is that there will undoubtedly be a lot of changes in store for FFXI in the coming months and not all of them will be gameplay alone. Another thing to consider is that the folks at SE do seem to have a plan for taking FFXI into 2011 and perhaps even years longer than that. This should be great news to those fans who see the game as their long time home for gaming entertainment.