Category: Anniversaries

As you probably guessed from the title, our Free Company has now been around for seven years! Wow! In usual tradition we celebrated it with lots of games and lots of prizes!

Also as usual we had a new outfit for everyone to wear. With the Dawntrail expansion releasing in under 2 weeks the outfit theme this time was an attempt at a crossover between a vacation outfit and the new Pictomancer job. At least that was the idea!

Specifically the outfit was White Beret (Pumpkin Orange), Extreme Survival Shirt (Undyed), Hose of Happiness (Pumpkin Orange) and Leather Sandals (Pumpkin Orange).

This time for our jump puzzles we went on location and I need to link and give credit to Nae’s FFXIV Jumping Puzzles. They have many different jumping puzzles on many different servers and while I’ve only seen a few of them, they are very impressive and really recommend taking a look! We used two of theirs (Chaos -> Omega -> FC house rooms 5 and 6) and gave our prizes for the first 5 people to finish.

After this we headed to Upper La Noscea to play hide and seek. How this works is that I place some characters around the area and everyone has to find them and you get a bigger prize for finding them faster. In previous years this has dragged on a bit, so this time I made it easier by picking a smaller zone where we can fly, but compensated by increasing the number of characters who were hiding. We had some problems with people finding them a bit too fast, but overall I think it worked well and next time I think we’ll just use a slightly bigger zone.

Then we headed back to the house for a mini quiz. The first person to answer correctly won Gil and the majority of questions were on things related to the Free Company (and also to make sure people are aware of some of the perks of being with us etc!)

Then we went back out into the world to throw ourselves off tall buildings to try and land on a tiny spot far below! Everyone had three chances and got points for how close they were to the marker and then the overall scores were added up to allocate the prizes.

We then moved back to the FC house to do the raffle. There were items prizes, but also some Gil prizes (see the lists below for who won what). Finally, we moved to the Gold Saucer to do a quick run of “Cliffhanger”. It’s not very hard and everyone who went made it, but it was just a fun little thing to end on!

The total prize money we gave out was a 23.55 million Gil (that’s 10.25 million more than last year) and here is a list of who won how much:

Name	Gil won
Kenda Covell	2,850,000
L'ireiya Tia	2,750,000
Bifi Bifi	2,500,000
Lyallon Estaqur	2,350,000
Zolukai Pestishyde	1,500,000
Key Ceallaigh	1,300,000
Rydia Nishiyama	1,300,000
Terazoic Willowstar	1,200,000
Blithesome Carl	1,100,000
Fist Lovefury	1,000,000
Leonceault Ferdillaix	750,000
Tiny Ice	750,000
Wilderis Sikk	750,000
Sylvia Flutterstar	600,000
Driess Raronek	550,000
Nekomi Hounami	500,000
U'anna Nitsah	500,000
Ashelia Nightfall	400,000
Noda Moonlight	350,000
Thea Belles	350,000
Sarah Sugarcube	100,000
Zack Wolf	100,000

And here is a list of all the prizes that were won in the raffle:

Name	Prize won
Driess Raronek	Kingdom of Baron (Endwalker) Orchestrion Roll
Fist Lovefury	Wind-up Golbez
Fist Lovefury	Wind-up Kangaroo
Key Ceallaigh	Statice's Wings
Lyallon Estaqur	Their Deadly Mission Orchestrion Roll
Nekomi Hounami	Assorted Candles
Nekomi Hounami	Assorted Candles
Nekomi Hounami	Minmisle Hat
Noda Moonlight	Flying Chair
Rydia Nishiyama	Indoor Pond
Rydia Nishiyama	Tier 4 Aquarium
Rydia Nishiyama	Tier 4 Metal Aquarium
Sarah Sugarcube	Statice's Wings
Sylvia Flutterstar	Archangel Wings
Thea Belles	Greener Gleaner
Tiny Ice	[To be decided]
Tiny Ice	[To be decided]
U'anna Nitsah	Black Hayate
Wilderis Sikk	Flying Chair
Zack Wolf	Byakko Cub
Zolukai Pestishyde	Zurvanite Barding

Finally I was quite chuffed to see that some of our members still had some of our older outfits (and this wasn’t even from the last year!)

Thank you everyone for a part of our FC and let’s look forward to our eighth anniversary!

I know we haven’t updated our website in a while, but we’re still here and today is actually the sixth anniversary of our Free Company! As per usual we got together and played some games and gave out some prizes and a lot of Gil. So much Gil…!

In previous years I’d made people wear an outfit with a cowl, partly because it makes us look like a cult, but partly because it’s just fun for everyone to be wearing matching outfits and running round a public area! However, this year I made a whole new outfit and here we are wearing it:

If anyone wondered, it’s Thick-rimmed Glasses (Soot Black), Falconer’s Shirt (Pumpkin Orange), Dinosaur Leather Gloves (Soot Black), Dragonskin Bottoms (undyable) and Expeditioner’s Thighboots (Pumpkin Orange).

We usually start with a small climbing parkour puzzle, but this year we did two. First of all the small one that’s in Rhalgr’s Reach (which I think most people dont’ realise is there) and then we moved onto the Bokairo Inn, Kugane. There were Gil prizes for coming first, second or third.

Next we headed off to Gridania to play some hide and seek. I had six characters hidden there and it was as simple as the first three people to find them won Gil. I think I did quite well this year as a lot of them took people a while to find and with one of the characters one of them only one person found them, huzzah!

It might have been raining, but that didn’t stop us having fun! Amusingly despite changing our outfit to look less like we’re in a cult someone still commented…

Awesome! Next we headed back to the FC house for a mini quiz, where the first correct answer is worth Gil. Most of the questions are themed on the FC (ranks, permissions, things in our house/garden, that sort of thing), partly to see if people are paying attention, but also to make sure people know about FC related things that maybe they didn’t hear about (like we give all our members a free FC room after they’ve been active for 10 different days).

We also did the raffle at this time where we had 20 prizes where the winners could pick from a bigger pool of prizes (see below) as well as some straight up Gil prizes.

Next we moved back into the world to throw outselves off of tall buildings. Basically playing lawn darts with our characters. I put a marker on the floor and everyone has 3 tries to try and land as close as possible. 2 points for dead centre and 1 point for the edge. After 3 jumps the scores are tallied up and the top 3 winners get more Gil (you can never have too much Gil!).

Then we moved onto the final event, the mini PVP tournament! We did 5 battles with best of 3 for each and we tried to match up the jobs as best as we could and win or lose people still got some Gil for making the effort!

This took up a large part of the afternoon, but I had a really fun time and I hope everything else did too! This FC is great, but only because of the people in it, many whom have been here for many years now, thank you! Also thanks to Lyallon Estaqur and Ria Skybreaker for letting me use some of their images on this post.

Oh finally, the total prize money we gave out was a rather large 13.3 million Gil (that’s 1.5 million more than last year) and here is a list of who won how much:

Name	Gil won
Hime Miyumi	2,050,000
Zolukai Pestishyde	1,800,000
Driess Raronek	1,750,000
Ria Skybreaker	1,600,000
L'ireiya Tia	1,400,000
Prandine Archibald	1,150,000
Bifi Bifi	750,000
Maralade Ferilla	700,000
Rem Anastasov	650,000
Lyallon Estaqur	550,000
Nekomi Hounami	350,000
Sarah Sugarcube	300,000
Adrilith Nelhah	100,000
Octavia Rosethorn	100,000
Pome Kneeknibbler	50,000

And here is a list of all the prizes that were won in the raffle:

Name	Prize won
Adrilith Nelhah	Black Hayate
Bifi Bifi	Dedicated to Moonlight Orchestrion Roll
Driess Raronek	Wayward Daughter Orchestrion Roll
L'ireiya Tia	Forged in Crimson Orchestrion Roll
Lyallon Estaqur	Answers Orchestrion Roll
Lyallon Estaqur	Landslide Orchestrion Roll
Maralade Ferilla	Gates of Paradise - The Garden of Ru'Hmet Orchestrion Roll
Maralade Ferilla	Royal Lunatender
Nekomi Hounami	Glade Gazebo
Prandine Archibald	Adventurer's Hooded Vest
Prandine Archibald	Modern Aesthetics - Scanning for Style
Prandine Archibald	Seitei
Prandine Archibald	Wind-up Leviathan
Prandine Archibald	Zurvanite Barding
Rem Anastasov	Eastern Canopy Bed
Ria Skybreaker	Drawing of Character by Blithesome Carl
Ria Skybreaker	The Final Day Orchestrion Roll
Sarah Sugarcube	Sophic Barding
Zolukai Pestishyde	Bacon Bits
Zolukai Pestishyde	Dress-up Alisaie
Zolukai Pestishyde	Private Pachypodium
Zolukai Pestishyde	Royal Lunatender

And to end this post, here’s a picture that Ria took that I thought looked quite amusing and in a way I feel this sort of sums up our FC…

Thank you all again, you’re all awesome!

Another year has passed and I’m glad to say that our Free Company is still here, now at the ripe old age of 5 years old, wow! So like in previous years we all got together and played some games!

Last year I made everyone wear a “Altered Woolen Cowl” and admittedly not everyone likes it, but they still got into the spirit of things and wore it for the duration of the event, even if it does make us look a bit weird! Many thanks to Bifi Bifi who took the time to assemble them all!

Throughout the event we had multiple raffles, based on /random. Some of the prizes were fixed, such as specific amounts of Gil, but others could be picked from an available pool of prize, on a firstcome, first served basis.

For the event itself, in previous years we’ve started off with climbing the small lighthouse in Shirogane (where our FC house is), but this year I wanted a change and with the new Empyreum housing area that offered us the chance for another climbing puzzle. So I made them climb it, with the temptation of Gil prizes for the fastest three!

Once three people got to the top we switched to playing Hide and Seek. I had 6 alts hidden around the world and the first three people to find each of them won Gil. We started off in Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks and immediately we caused quite a stir with people commenting on a cult arriving:

They found the two hidden characters in that zone quite fast, but because we can now fly in “A Realm Reborn” areas this time we also had two characters in Upper La Noscea and another two in Eastern La Noscea. Some of them were trickier to find than others, but the maps just aren’t that big and everyone was found before things got boring.

Then we moved back to the FC house for a short quiz and each correct answer was worth some Gil. Some of these were counting questions (like how many flowers are in the garden…. top tip… make sure you know the correct answer yourself first!) and other questions were related to the FC itself such as ranks and permissions etc.

Then we moved onto another game… Lawn Darts aka Lemmings. We mark a target on the ground, everyone throws themselves off a cliff and tries to land as close as possible. Two points for centre, one for the edge and everyone gets three tries each.

Originally everyone was queueing up to jump in order, but it turned out to be workable for everyone to just jump at once and stay still until their score was checked off/they could move out the way. When everyone jumped at once all you heard was thud, thud, thud!

Then after this we finished off with a quick PVP match. Not everyone wanted to do this, but we had 5 pairs of people who each had a fight (paired up as evenly as possible, tank vs tank etc.) and everyone got some money, varying on if they won or lost.

This all took about three and a half hours so after that we called it a day! Thanks to everyone who came, I hope you had as much fun as me, but thank you most of all for making this FC what it is, it’s nothing without the members!

The total prize money given out was 11.8 million Gil and here is the list of who won what:

Name	Gil won
Sahmon Zhier	1,600,000
Geralt R'ivia	1,350,000
Zolukai Pestishyde	900,000
Gwynevere Cateye	850,000
Tiny Ice	850,000
Ashelia Nightfall	750,000
Hime Miyumi	600,000
Lyallon Estaqur	600,000
Sylvia Flutterstar	600,000
Malison Fey	500,000
Rydia Nishiyama	500,000
Sarah Sugarcube	500,000
Bifi Bifi	450,000
Driess Raronek	350,000
Nekomi Hounami	350,000
Asahimaru Onishi	250,000
Maralade Ferilla	250,000
Neroxx Bladestorm	250,000
Primatus Soprey	100,000
Scutts Fletcher	100,000
Shinichi Fukuda	100,000

And here is a list of all the prizes that were won in the raffle:

Name	Prize won
Asahimaru Onishi	Dress-up Yugiri
Ashelia Nightfall	Ballroom Etiquette - Decadent Decoration
Ashelia Nightfall	Calca
Bifi Bifi	Koala Joey
Bifi Bifi	Fat Cat Rug
Driess Raronek	Anemos Suspenders
Geralt R'ivia	Scarlet Peacock
Hime Miyumi	Wind-up Estinien
Lyallon Estaqur	Hippo Calf
Lyallon Estaqur	Calamari
Malison Fey	Tight-beaked Parrot
Malison Fey	Mandragora Queen
Maralade Ferilla	Abroader Otter
Neroxx Bladestorm	Flying Chair
Rydia Nishiyama	Drawing of Character by Blithesome Carl
Rydia Nishiyama	Ballroom Etiquette - Apples with Aplomb
Sahmon Zhier	Ballroom Etiquette - Decadent Decoration
Sarah Sugarcube	Levin Barding
Sarah Sugarcube	Ugly Duckling
Sarah Sugarcube	Anemos Jacket
Scutts Fletcher	Byakko Cub
Shinichi Fukuda	Abroader Otter
Zolukai Pestishyde	Magic Broom

Finally, here’s a picture that Sarah Sugarcube took with lots of us all sat on the same bench, in the same outfit, merged into some sort of mess!

This week was quite a big deal for our Free Company as we turned four years old! Huzzah! So naturally we celebrated with some party games and some Gil prizes!

I made everyone taking part wear an “Altered Woolen Cowl” dyed in the colours of our FC and it caused quite a few comments from other players wondering what was going on!

So as in previous years we warmed up by climbing the small tower that’s in Shirogane (where our FC house is). A few of our members were familiar with this so it didn’t take them too long to get to the top and the first three people won prizes.

After this we moved to Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks where I had 5 alt characters hidden. Everyone started off at the Aftcastle and then spread out to try and find the hidden characters. The first three people to find each character won a prize. This didn’t take too long, because it’s pretty hard to hide in the Upper Decks, but I think it still went well and everyone had fun!

We even managed to get a quick group photo of most of the people playing, although sorry that it has gotten dark by this point:

After this we all moved to Horizon to play Lawn Darts. This involves having a waymark on the floor and everyone throwing themselves off a cliff, like a lemming, with the intention of trying to land as close to the waymark as possible. People had three tries each and scored 1 point for landing on the edge of the waymark and 2 points for dead centre. Scores were tallied at the end and highest scores won!

We had 21 people play this game and I was a little worried that it’d be chaos with everyone jumping at once, however, as requested everyone lined up and jumped in an orderly fashion and we got through the game without too many problems!

After this we headed back to the FC house for a quiz. It was mostly about the FC itself and there were a few “go and count these objects” type games. These all had a prize for each correct answer. I always worry that it’s unfair to non-native English speakers as well as those who can’t type as fast, but everyone still seemed to have fun.

After the quiz we had a quick raffle for some bigger Gil prizes. To generate the raffle numbers we had everyone do a “/random” in chat and noted down their number. They had one chance to draw another /random and then the prizes were drawn (also using /random). The closest person to that number won.

One of our FC members, Blithesome Carl, is a talented artist and offered a raffle prize of a drawing of someones character as a raffle prize. L’ireiya Tia won this prize and I look forward to seeing the final drawing!

Oh and while we were getting the numbers… it involved more Raubahn Savage queuing:

After the raffle we moved to the PVP area and split up into groups for some PVP tournaments. We had one for melee DPS, tanks, ranged physical DPS, healers and magical DPS.

The DPS fights all went rather smoothly, but in the end we had to call a draw to the tank and healer fights. The tank fight was going on for about half an hour, long after we’d called it a draw. It was impressive to watch though!

After that we called it a day and I went to tally up the prizes and send everyone what they had won!

Thank you all for coming, I hope that you had as much fun as I did and thanks for all being a part of such a great Free Company! Here’s to another amazing year! Here’s the list of prizes and who won how much!

Name	Gil won
Meow Chow	1,300,000
Nekomi Hounami	1,300,000
Ceyri Noca	1,200,000
Lex Miahto	800,000
Lyallon Estaqur	800,000
Rydia Nishiyama	550,000
Sylvia Flutterstar	550,000
Wom Blorm	550,000
Blithesome Carl	500,000
Terazoic Willowstar	500,000
Elydith Nelhah	350,000
Geralt R'ivia	350,000
Roy Yunomi	300,000
Driess Raronek	250,000
Kamisato Ayato	250,000
L'ireiya Tia	250,000
Erza Keso	100,000
Lucy Evercraft	100,000
Primatus Soprey	100,000
Sirradez Halvic	100,000
Dacent Valeroyaniox	50,000
Gianix Giari	50,000

And just to finish up here’s a random picture of us all mounting up in our “party outfits”!

I’m very proud to say that our Free Company is now two years old and to celebrate, we had a party with lots of games and prizes! We also officially launched this website!

First we started with some jump challenges, specifically the lighthouse type building in Shirogane and then the Bokairo Inn in Kugane. We didn’t try the massive Shiokaze Hostelry because we didn’t have all day and there were other games to play!

It didn’t take too long for 3 people to reach the top of each so after that moved onto “Hide and Seek”. I’d hidden 4 characters in an area (Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks in this case) and it was the first three people to find each who won a prize. Some were found quite quickly, others took a few more minutes.

Then we played three games of what I’ve been calling “Lawn darts”. We climb a high structure, I place a marker on the ground and everyone has 3 attempts to try and land as close as possible to it, 2 points if they’re dead centre, 1 point if they’re in it at all. Highest score wins the round. Weplayed this at Amarissaix’s Spire (East Shroud), Witchdrop (Coerthas Central Highlands – this was the hardest one!) and The Descent (Middle La Noscea).

Next it was back to the FC house for a pop quiz (first to shout out the correct answer wins). Some questions outdoors, some indoors and I think it went pretty well!

Then we headed off to Wolves’ Den Pier for a mini PVP tournament. We had two separate tournaments, one for melee DPS and another for ranged/casters.

Finally we headed back to the FC house for the raffle. While we were getting started at the beginning of event I had everyone generate a random number with /random and I started to use /random repeatedly. Whoever was closest got to pick a prize from our prize pool! The final few prizes were raffled off randomly to whoever had the closest to the prize pool.

Then the scores from all the events were tallied and the we had a grand prize which was won by Momo Blakes. This is a drawing of his character by our very talented Blithesome Carl so I look forward to seeing that at somepoint in the future!

Thank you to everyone who came today, I think it went really well and I hope you all had a fun time. Thanks for making the FC what it is and I look forward to another year of fun with you all!