Various events in other games have been distracting me over the past week+, but I finally got back to this last night.
Warrior 30/Thief 30/Red Mage 8
My current long-term goal had been to unlock Corsair. I saw that one of the steps in this process could be completed by a Thief of sufficient level with access to Thief Tools, so after my initial leveling spree to get subjobs and mounts, I’ve been working on Thief while completing Windurst missions. Between Thief’s weakness in combat and my failure to realize that I could have four alter egos deployed at once due to a recent upgrade, it had been slow going with a lot of unnecessary deaths.
The Windurst missions started out easily enough: run errands for gate guards, meet various ministers among the city’s institutions, gradually uncover one of the ministers as harboring schemes for the city’s “greater good”. Just as in the very early stages of FFXIV, this is too early in the power-curve to be characterized as any sort of destined savior, but that initial anonymity is undercut by the opening moments of later expansions, which you’re constantly invited to set in motion as soon as you happen to be in the right area and of sufficient level. One minute, I’m a lowly adventurer on an errand for my federation, then suddenly I’m being conscripted into a madwoman’s military. Then I’m privy to crystalline visions in the sky, and of all the witness, I happen to be the only one who can retain the memory due to my charmed fate. And then I’m waylaid by two different people in rapid succession who are each desperate to explain the details of two consecutive conferences between the nations (out of hundreds of such meetings).
And that’s not even getting into the initial Rhapsodies of Vana’diel story, which was designed as a post-facto bookend for all of the expansions and base content, threading these comparatively isolated storylines into an overarching narrative. I’d hardly started my foray into FFXI when I was bequeathed a time-travelling protegé from a dark future.
Anyway, the important thing here is that I’m having fun, and maybe I’ll settle down and focus on tracking down my missing ambassador in Jueno once I’ve got these jobs straightened out.