Last week I gave a rundown of the March update for Final Fantasy XI. Well, today the version update arrives — with a few new surprises. Here’s an overview of the new details from Square Enix. (A few details need to be tested. The maintenance isn’t over at the time of this writing.)

• I don’t think it was explicitly stated before, but there are new areas in the past world of Wings of the Goddess
• New spells have been added:
  • White Mages get the following new teleport spells, which send you to areas in the past: Recall-Junger, Recall-Pashh and Recall-Meriph. All three spells are level 53.
  • Black Mages get a new level 55 spell, Retrace. Retrace will apparently send you back to your home nation (or possibly a second home point) in the past.
  • Dark Knights get a new spell, Absorb-ACC at level 61.
  • A new Scholar spell, Klimaform, has been added at level 46.
  • Ninjas can now sneak at level 25 with Monomi: Ichi. The new ninja tool sanjaku-tenugui has been added for this spell.
• New job abilities have been added:
  • Warriors can now use Retaliation to add a counter-attack status, but it will reduce their movement speed
  • Thieves have a miniature version of Accomplice — Collaborator will take 25% of enemy hate and redirect it to the thief. Accomplice and Collaborator share a single recast timer.
  • Samurais get a new ability also — Sekkanoki will reduce the cost of the next weapon skill to 100%, allowing you to retain some TP. As a SAM75 myself, I’m happy to hear about this one!
  • Summoners can steal MP from their elemental spirits using Elemental Siphon.
• Dragoons are getting a change to their wyverns. Wyverns will now experience an increase in their attributes based on exp earned while they’re summoned. So once you summon your wyvern, it will get better the longer its out, until it dies or is dismissed. Presumably, it will return to the status quo each time you summon it, giving Dragoons incentive to keep their wyverns alive and healthy.
• New weapon skills are now available for Puppetmasters.
• The new Emperor Band replaces the Empress Band as the best exp ring. It’s been confirmed that you will need to drop your Empress Band to get it, as you can only have one ring of this type at a time. The EXP bonus is the same as with the Empress Band, but the maximum bonus is doubled — so using an Emperor Band is like using two Empress Band charges back-to-back.

The full details are available on PlayOnline.

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