Knights of the Old Republic III

Final Fantasy XI updated and ready for new expansion

On Wednesday evening, Treasures of Aht Urhgan will be available for all. Here's what you can expect.

April 18, 2006

Square Enix held a ten-hour maintenance of its popular massively-multiplayer online RPG, Final Fantasy XI. Today, the next expansion for the game shipped to retailers in North America and another three-hour maintenance (and update) was held. Tomorrow, those who haven't begun selling the expansion will, and tomorrow evening (Pacific time), Treasures of Aht Urhgan will come alive.

Several aspects of the game have already been updated for the expansion. Space has been added for the new jobs, new items and categories show up on the in-game Auction House.

Here's a run-down of some of the changes and updates that are coming in the expansion, and that have changed already in the game.

New Jobs

Three new advanced jobs have been added in this expansion:

  • The new Blue Mage can learn abilities from its enemies.

  • The Corsair uses ranged attacks and chance-based abilities to bring new status effects to party members.

  • The Puppetmaster controls an Automaton puppet, which can perform a wide range of abilities depending on what parts it has equipped.

There's been no word of the particular requirements for obtaining these jobs. In the first expansion, Rise of Zilart, several advanced jobs were added. Each of these jobs required that a player first reach level 30 with a basic job and complete a quest. Square Enix has yet to reveal the details of these jobs, but other details on its Web site imply that any level requirement can't be higher than 70.

Updates to Existing Jobs

Many changes to existing jobs have been made to help "re-balance" the system to make room for the new jobs, and to address some player difficulties. For example, Paladins now use their sheilds to gain TP, and have an Auto-Refresh ability.

New Missions, Quests and Areas

As with other expansions, the storyline of Treasures of Aht Urhgan will be told through a series of missions.

The new Aht Urhgan continent has been added and will be available when the expansion contents are available tomorrow. Viewing "Region Info" in the game will reveal a new map where Treasures of Aht Urhgan locations can be seen. (The region info map is now divided into "Conquest" and "Beseiged".) The map is also available by using the text command "/beseigemap".

Aht Urhgan map
Aht Urhgan's Beseiged map. Enlarge Map | FFXI Maps

The new content will be available via a ship to Al Zahbi from Mhaura. A new NPC is standing by for those who complete the quest which will allow access to this continent.

New Mhaura NPC

Abuse Prevention

Square Enix has implemented two new changes to help cut down on player harrassment and competition problems that commonly arise:

  • Monster/enemy claims in the game have changed. Now, if one player has enimity (hate) from a monster, another player cannot claim that monster unless their method of claiming creates sufficient enimity from the monster to make that monster attack them.

  • In most cases, monster area-of-effect (AOE) abilities will no longer effect players who do not have enimity from that monster, and are not a party/alliance member of someone who does. In December, Square Enix changed monster spawn behavior to make it difficult for players to indirectly cause each other to K.O. This new change eliminates an alternate method used by some players.

New Items & Equipment

Several new items have been added to the game. (Most of these won't be available until the new area can be accessed.)

New armor sets have been added that make style and coordination even more important. Some of these new items add special effects to players who have all items of the set equipped. The new "Yigit" set, for example, adds a Refresh effect when the entire armor set is equipped.

Yigit Turban - Set: Adds Refresh Effect

Other Changes

  • A new Mog Locker can be leased in Al Zahbi in order to store more items. It is available from Al Zahbi rent-a-rooms. Initially, thirty items may be stored here, but this will be expandable to fifty.

  • The "PlayOnline" temporary logout functions have been removed from the game. In the main menu, this has been replaced with the "Shutdown" function, which, like the previous /shutdown command, will log out of the game and shut down PlayOnline with one command.

  • The amount of TP accumulated per hit by both players and monsters has changed.

  • The White Mage two-hour ability, Benediction, now cures both health and status ailments.

  • The "Dice" category has been added under Scrolls in the Auction House for Corsairs to learn new Phantom Roll abilities.

  • The following ranged ammo can now be stored in quivers and pouches: Iron Bullets, Silver Bullets, Spartan Bullets, Acid Bolts, Sleep Bolts, Blind Bolts, Bloody Bolts, Venom Bolts, Holy Bolts, Scorpion Arrows, Demon Arrows, Kabura Arrows.

  • "View Safe" has been changed to "View House", which has a sub-menu to allow viewing access to your Mog Safe, Mog Locker and Storage.

  • Several new auto-translate phrases have been added, including "Welcome back.", "You're welcome." and terms related to Aht Urhgan and the new jobs.

Square Enix will announce the availability of the Aht Urhgan content tomorrow via its Web site, the PlayOnline information tools and through an in-game System Message.