I had been working on a Rhapsodies of Vanadiel % route and eventually went crazy or burnt out or something so I figured I would share as much information as I had collected in case someone would like to use it.

The original guide I had been writing (Windurst home): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N5LODAFMkw0bp0d5-ey5ueFTFikT0kkWBG-LgYaa4vk/edit?usp=sharing

Unity Teleport locations list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GJFJzl50ESAv2nfO1inD08NCWBUlyiqfo0MGMzkyIes/edit?usp=sharing

Korvana's level 1-99 leveling route: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/User:Korvana/Speedrun

One of Korvana's earlier routes: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/57u6u6/planning_speedrun_to_level_99/

Just a note that Korvana uses a different set of rules than what is listed here on speedrun.com (most notably about limited availability items). Also I don't particularly agree with many of their leveling choices, but it's possible I was just at the wrong camps so I included the notes as a reference anyways.

My guide only goes up to the level 60 section of quests, but here's a rough draft I had written out that should give a good idea of where to go from there: https://pastebin.com/sMeN6bSk

This was based on WAR/SAM originally, but after reading through a lot of the arguments made towards DRG/WAR I decided to give that one a try. I tested whether or not the job could take on the normal version of the Perfervid Narakas (as well as basically everything else in the zone) at ilvl 117 and they were incredibly easy.

While I don't know that anyone would want this, here's a link to my original Shadow Lord (Bastok) notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0isEi8-ObRz0mpQyRKrUknXeK4LUq-CHXW7R0-zcF8/edit?usp=sharing

These notes stop abruptly at the Delkfutt's tower section because it was around this time that I was alerted to Unity Teleports. Since those teleports greatly destroyed my route I gave up working on it.

Lastly, I have no idea which starting city is fastest. I've tried all 3 and they roughly seem about the same, except Windurst has the least RNG so I tend to favor that one.

So there's potentially a ton of different things you could turn into categories for this game. For now I have only added the Shadow Lord category in, and as time moves on I will add more as long as people are actually going to do runs of the category.

As much fun as a "Take a level 1 character from Windurst to San d'Oria" category would be, I would like to avoid adding a ton of arbitrary race categories if possible, but I would love to see people actually racing some of these things on SpeedRunsLive at some point.

For now the only things I see being realistic are: Shadow Lord Rank 10 Rhapsodies of Vanadiel Level 99

If people want to do runs of each of the expansions separately, then I'm all for it, but I would like to avoid actually adding a category for it until someone actually does a run.

Any further input is appreciated at this point.

A few months ago, it was discussed among a few of us interested in running the game what sort of rules were to be considered "fair" for actually doing a run of the game with as much of a solo playthrough in mind. With the recent influx of people interested in running this game, I thought I would bring this up again so that we can figure out what is really fair for everyone.

1.Timing starts after you confirm player information after selecting your nation. Interruptions do not pause the timer. Timing ends upon seeing the defeat message of the target boss in the chat log. -This seemed to make the most sense in terms of timing. For things like "Rank 10" or specific missions it would potentially end upon completion of said goal in the chat box.

2.Do not interact with other players or mules. (including things such as the Auction House, Bazaars, trades, partying, etc.). Do not open the Delivery box. Use /blockaid before you leave town. Accidental player interference or griefing is excusable as part of the game. -Since the goal of this is to speedrun the game with a single player mindset, it wouldn't make any sense not to prohibit outside player interaction where applicable. If Co-Op runs become a thing, then obviously this would change, but for all of the 'solo' related runs this seemed to be the general consensus. The only exception to this is in places where it just can't be helped. For example, anything involving Adoulin story missions is going to eventually have to deal with Reives. There are certain areas that you just can't get past without doing the Reive and at some point it's extremely possible that some other person not involved in the speedrun might also need to pass through that Reive and they are going to be attacking the same giant tree root you are.

3. Limited-availability items such as items gained from login campaign, Alter Ego campaigns, etc. are banned. -Some of the login campaign items are incredibly useful and also only available at completely random times. Some of the trusts are incredibly overpowered. Since these sort of things are really only available at random times of the year, it felt most fair to just ban the use of them in order to keep from dissuading someone from running the game just because they don't have access to Kupofried or something.

4. DLC items such as the Destrier Beret, Mog Satchel, etc are banned. If you have a Mog Satchel just don't use it (since you can't remove it). -Not everyone really has access to these things, and not everyone can just buy a new copy of the game every time they want to do a run. So in order to keep things fair, everyone felt like just banning all DLC type items was the best option.

5. Windower Plugins and similar 3rd party programs are banned. You are more than welcome to use the base Windower program if you are unable to utilize the windowed mode available in the base game, but plugins are banned from use. -You can write scripts to automate a lot of things that a player can't really keep up with. Anything from buying items to spaming through cutscenes at a turbo rate. In order to prevent a situation from coming up later on where someone wrote a plugin that automated too much, everyone felt like it was just best to ban all plugins. It's also against Playonline TOS and some players are a bit paranoid about this.

If I forgot anything, or you'd just like to give some further input towards why you disagree with some of these, feel free to chime in.

There's a few things that are also up for discussion and I'd like some input about.

For now I made EXP campaign a variable. Obviously it's going to be faster to do runs during a campaign, but I also don't want to dissuade people from doing runs when the campaign is active. I also don't want to end up with like 500 categories for this game, so at this point it seems best to just make it a variable so that people understand it's just a part of the game.

I personally don't feel like EXP rings should be allowed to be charged during a run, but I understand that it's a mechanic of the game. For the Shadow Lord category it doesn't actually matter (you can get from 15-60 on a single ring and still have some left over), but some of the longer categories it could play out to be a benefit. I do understand both sides of the argument but I don't actually agree with the idea of recharging it. For now It's being allowed, but if the community feels like it provides too much of a bonus that it limits when people can actually do runs then it may end up being banned in the future.

I started video on the same frame as movement actually started, and then ended it on the same frame as passing certain landmarks. It should be noted that for general movement, jumping is the fastest in most situations. There are various places that it's faster to roll because of the starting animation for running vs rolling once. I actually stopped in the wrong spot on the going down the stairs part of the video, but you can clearly see that jumping is farther along. Warping forward is always faster but MP management kind of plays a factor.

This was done in Chapter 6 on a PS4 slim. I was unable to get this to happen twice, but it happened once, so that means it's theoretically possible to have it happen again, and in multiple places. I have no idea what the effects it would have on the game would actually be because I unintentionally backed out of one of the menus.

If anyone would like to mess around with it, that would be super great.