Free Trial Guide

This is a guide containing explanations of issues as well as tips for new players playing on a Free 14-day trial account.

In addition to the time limit of 14-days the trial account also has several limits on the characters and content, whose meaning will be explained in detail further on.

=Level limit= On trial accounts your characters are limited to level 50. This means that you cannot reach endgame and high level content on your trial account. This will only be an issue though if you have enough time to play a significant amount of time daily. If you're on a full time job and can only play evenings and weekends then you will probably not reach the point of hitting that ceiling before the trial period ends.

Note that the trial period does not prevent you from switching and leveling different jobs, neither does it prevent you from taking the quests for unlocking advanced jobs. This should give you enough content for the 14-day trial.

=Number of characters= You can create up to 3 characters on a trial account. I do not see this as a very restricting limit since most players (trial or paid) don't generally need more characters than that.

The number of characters you will want to create depends mostly on how you want to experience the game. You can create 3 characters using different race/nation/job combinations, allowing you to experience different possibilities for the (very) early stages of the game. If you decide to do this I recommend selecting a different nation for each character, as the different nations have different missions and quests.

An alternate (and my recommended) approach is to create a single character and focus on it, allowing you to experience more advanced content during your free trial. Focusing on a single character should allow you to level at least one job all the way to level 50 before your trial period ends.

Mules
Unlike the paid service, it is pretty much pointless to use the two additional character slots for Mules, since most of the functions that mules perform are either unavailable (e.g. bazaar) or useless (e.g. crafting) on trial accounts.

=Money= This is one of the most annoying restrictions, though it is necessary in order to avoid trial accounts from being exploited for RMT. The two main restrictions is that you cannot have more than 100,000 gil at any point (you can, however, earn gil again after spending some) and you cannot trade with other players in any way. You cannot put items on auction, bazaar or even directly trade with them. You can only make money either by directly farming it from beastmen or by selling items to merchants. Using your gil is also pretty much limited to merchants. This prevents you from using some of the more common methods of earning early gil, such as putting crystals on auction.

Ironically, the merchant-only limit makes the 100,000 gil limit a bit less restricting since (unlike auctions and bazaar) merchants will usually not have items priced over 100,000 gil that can be useful for you during your trial period.

Crafting and Fishing
While crafting is not directly prohibited, I suggest that you avoid it altogether. Your 14-day trial period may not be sufficient to level a craft to a skill level high enough to make significant profits (or profits at all). Also being limited to only merchants for getting supplies and for selling your crafts will make it very difficult to find profitable crafts.

Fishing is also pretty much pointless. Again, the trial account does not directly prohibit you from fishing, however characters less than 14-day old are limited to 10 catches per (real earth) day. This is not a specific limit of trial accounts (it applies to paid accounts as well) however since 14 days are also the trial period limit it does mean that you will not be able to catch enough fish to make any significant profit and/or skill your fishing level above 2 (if you're lucky).

Treasure Caskets
These have been my main source of income during the trial period. While breaking caskets open can be a little annoying, you will get items that you can sell for a relatively nice amount. Once you reach level ~26-27 my recommended area is Qufim Island, where you can get items that sell for up to 2,000 gil each.

Quest items
Another consequence of not being able to trade with other players is that you'll have to spend time farming quest items that you'd usually just buy off the AH (a good example is Gausebit Grass for your Chocobo License - I spent around an hour farming that!). Try to reduce the number of such quests you take to a minimum. Alternatively you may want to level THF to at least 15 for the Treasure Hunter trait to reduce the amount of time needed to farm items for quests (buy it can still be painfully slow sometimes).

A difference approach I've attempted is to use Trust: Nanaa Mihgo, who supposedly has the Treasure Hunter trait, but it did not affect the farming time by a significant amount.

=No Expansions= One of the most annoying restrictions of trial accounts is that you are restricted to areas of the original release of FINAL FANTASY® XI without any expansions, not even Zilart (Note - certain quests introduced in expansions but which do not involve new areas may still be triggered). This doesn't sound too bad in the beginning, until you realize that it effectively prevents you from doing Rhapsodies of Vana'diel missions - as the fourth mission already takes you to Norg, which is unavailable to you, therefore preventing you from proceeding any further (the three beginning missions that you can take will give you access to subjobs so they're still worth taking).

The biggest problem is not being able to acquire the Rhapsody in White key item, which creates a multitude of derived limitations:

Transportation
Back in the level 75 era, reaching certain areas used to be a pain, however with the introduction of Home Point teleportation and Survival Guide teleportation there's hardly any use for other methods anymore, however this is not the case for trial accounts. You're not prohibited from using Home Point / Survival Guide teleportation but using them is not free - it will cost 500 gil to 1000 gil per teleport. Having the Rhapsody in White key item slashes the prices by 80% to 100 to 200 gil per teleport - but since you cannot obtain it you will have to pay the full fare.

I found myself trying to avoid using these if possible, limiting myself mostly to teleports that spare me a huge waste of time running and/or that spare me passing through dangerous areas. Opt to use other, cheaper, transportation options such as -


 * Warp Ring - Get that as soon as possible (can be bought from a gate guard in your home city for conquest point). It's basically an unlimited warp enchantment, allowing you to return to your home point whenever needed (this is basically the same as having a scroll of instant warp that is never consumed; the only limit is that you can only use it once every 10 minutes). Warping is free so opt to use it when possible. Set your home point in a strategic area and keep it there (I just kept it in my home city, but Jeuno is also a good spot).
 * Outpost Teleportation - The old notorious teleportation method from the 75 era is not used much anymore but it still works and for most non-expansion areas it will always be cheaper than home point / survival guide teleportation, so if your nation happens to have a strategic outpost (e.g. Zulkheim, regions near other cities) take the supplies quest.
 * Chocobo - You should get your license as soon as possible. Chocobos are not used as much as they used to, so rental prices should generally be low. This will also be your safest method of reaching new areas for the first time, since another trial account restriction is not being able to use Unity. This however does mean that to get the license you'll have to make the initial run to Jeuno on foot. If you wait for level 25 it can be made without much difficulty using trusts and/or sneak/invisible spells (WHM/RDM).
 * If it's less than 10 minutes away and not in a really dangerous area, I just opted to walk.

Trusts
Trial accounts are not prevented from using trusts (that would have made them pretty much useless in modern era FFXI) but without Rhapsody in White you can only call 3 at a time. This will make it difficult to fight Incredibly Tough monsters. If you don't want to take chances stick to Tough and Very Tough mobs. Gaining experience will be a little slower but with experience bands (get one!) and Records of Eminence objectives it will still be a reasonable pace.

Even trial accounts can get a reasonable number of different alter-egos. You can, and should, get the starting trusts from all three starting cities. After you get the first, you can use a sequence of RoE objectives to obtain several more. Using the trusts you have it will be pretty simple to reach rank 3 in your home country and get the second set of trusts from all 3 cities. Finally, if you happen to be playing when a trust-related event is on (e.g. Alter Ego Extravaganza) you can buy whatever trusts are available for conquest points and/or sparks.

The only alter-egos that you cannot acquire are those that are only obtainable in areas you cannot reach (mostly from the Wings of the Goddess expansion). Also, while you can theoretically acquire the rank 6 alter-egos from the 3 starting cities, practically they are not obtainable since completing rank 5 missions at level 50 with only 3 trusts within 14 days is extremely difficult (you may be able to do this if you can get a real party with high level players though, but note the next section regarding this). Still, the trusts you can get will be more than enough for the trial period.

=Communication with other players= This is one of the most annoying restrictions of trial accounts - You cannot use the tell/shout/yell chat features (exception: you can use /tell but only to reply to the last player who sent you a /tell). This basically means your communication with other players will be passive (i.e. you will have to wait for them to make the initial contact with you). I guess some limits are needed in order to prevent trial accounts from being used for harassment but it's still too restricting). You are also not allowed to form real (i.e. not trust) parties, though you can join parties if invited (again, you can only be passive). The only method of initiating contact with other players is /say, which means that you can only initiate contact with players who happen to be around you. While virtually all content up to level 50 is soloable in modern FFXI, these limits are kind of ironic considering that this is an MMO.

If someone does initiate contact with you though, you can use the friends list to keep in touch. The friends list is a feature of the PlayOnline service and can be freely used.

Enjoy your trial!