Five year anniversary!

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!

We look like a cult don’t we?

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!

Jump, jump, jump!

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:

Invasion!

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.

Meeting up in the FC house

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.

We know how to queue!

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:

NameGil won
Sahmon Zhier1,600,000
Geralt R'ivia1,350,000
Zolukai Pestishyde900,000
Gwynevere Cateye850,000
Tiny Ice850,000
Ashelia Nightfall750,000
Hime Miyumi600,000
Lyallon Estaqur600,000
Sylvia Flutterstar600,000
Malison Fey500,000
Rydia Nishiyama500,000
Sarah Sugarcube500,000
Bifi Bifi450,000
Driess Raronek350,000
Nekomi Hounami350,000
Asahimaru Onishi250,000
Maralade Ferilla250,000
Neroxx Bladestorm250,000
Primatus Soprey100,000
Scutts Fletcher100,000
Shinichi Fukuda100,000

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

NamePrize won
Asahimaru OnishiDress-up Yugiri
Ashelia NightfallBallroom Etiquette - Decadent Decoration
Ashelia NightfallCalca
Bifi BifiKoala Joey
Bifi BifiFat Cat Rug
Driess RaronekAnemos Suspenders
Geralt R'iviaScarlet Peacock
Hime MiyumiWind-up Estinien
Lyallon EstaqurHippo Calf
Lyallon EstaqurCalamari
Malison FeyTight-beaked Parrot
Malison FeyMandragora Queen
Maralade FerillaAbroader Otter
Neroxx BladestormFlying Chair
Rydia NishiyamaDrawing of Character by Blithesome Carl
Rydia NishiyamaBallroom Etiquette - Apples with Aplomb
Sahmon ZhierBallroom Etiquette - Decadent Decoration
Sarah SugarcubeLevin Barding
Sarah SugarcubeUgly Duckling
Sarah SugarcubeAnemos Jacket
Scutts FletcherByakko Cub
Shinichi FukudaAbroader Otter
Zolukai PestishydeMagic 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!

What the…

Rank changes and two new Sapphires

Bullet point TL;DR version:

  • New rank – Peridot (270 days)
  • New rank – Emerald (365 days)
  • Ashelia Raphael and Tiny Ice changing to Sapphire (Congratulations!)
  • If you’re inactive you’ll now keep your rank on Discord


Much longer, rather detailed and boring version:

We’ve had a few people ask about the possibility of adding new ranks and although we don’t really have any extra permissions to hand out (we try and give everyone as much access to everything as is possible anyway), I am glad to announce that two more ranks are being added!

Currently the maximum rank is Jade (active on 180 different days) and we are going to be adding Peridot for 270 days and Emerald at 365 days. Although they are still all shades of green, this is partly because the ranks don’t add any extra permissions over Jade, but also so that it won’t be massive change to existing Jades who are now becoming something else. I’ll be updating the ranks in-game within the next few hours, but please be patient as they won’t update on Discord until after the Lodestone has updated (this is an automatic process, but will probably take 6-8 hours). !active in #bots should already be working to show your next rank.

Since we started the FC in 2017 it has grown quite a bit larger and I felt it would be a good idea to add two more people to the Sapphire rank so that they can help with some FC things like making sure the company chest had enough Thavnairian Onions and also enabling people to get their free FC rooms, etc.

I’m happy to announce that Ashelia Raphael and Tiny Ice have confirmed they are happy to step up and take on some extra work, even though this is a non-paying job! They both originally joined the FC soon after it started, nearly 5 years ago and I thank you for both for sticking with us, we’re lucky to have you!

The last thing I’d like to bring up is the “Inactive” rank. At the moment if someone is offline for 100 days we temporarily lower their in-game rank to Zircon (the lowest rank we have) until they start playing again. This is merely to try and protect us from compromised accounts where things such as our FC chest are at risk and the real owner of the account might not even be aware, because they aren’t playing right now. This is a real problem during free login periods and sadly something we’ve seen happen before.

The side effect of this is that on Discord it also means you also lose your rank/colour, even though you are still part of the FC. I’m going to change this slightly and instead of being changed to Zircon you’ll be changed to a new rank, “Inactive”. This also means I can separate it from Zircon you’ll keep your rank on Discord for as long as you’re in the FC.

I’ve also spoken with the Sapphires, but for the same reasons we’ll also be temporarily lowering their in-game rank due to inactivity, but after 30 days, not 100. This is just because they have a lot more permissions in-game and it could cause us a lot more problems if their accounts were compromised.

As before though, if you are inactive for over 6 months, then I’m sorry, but you will still be removed from the FC so it better reflects our numbers and removed from the main chat channels on Discord. I will do my best to send you in-game mail to explain what has happened (for if you should return), but obviously you are of course welcome to re-join us should you start playing!

Any questions, as always, please let me know!

New look to the FC house: “Cafe Walls”

It’s been a while since the last website update, but our FC is still here and we’re all eagerly awaiting 6.1 and some new content! However, it was time for a new look for the FC house… so introducing… The Crystal Cafe!

Only comes in green!

Sadly you can’t actually dye it, so it’s that shade of green whether you like it or not. Using dye only changes the roof colour… which you can’t normally see! Oh well, it could be worse! So here’s a quick tour around:

Poroggo water feature, wooden deck and chocobo stables
The house entrance with level 1 and level 90 striking dummies either side of it
More seating areas and our Lara Croft NPC operating the baker’s stall
Side of the house (all cafe skins come with these tables and chairs)
Little seat added at the very end and demonstrated by Maralade, myself and Zolukai

However there’s more to it than that… thanks to some skin swapping with the Forge skin I was able to place an Oriental Deck into the wall…

Dyed white so it’s fairly suble

Doesn’t look like much right? What’s the point of that? Well if you go up to it and type /doze then…

Woah we’re on the inside of the house!
I spent 100 gemstones on this stupid boat, so for now it’s “inside” the house.

But it gets better, from the inside of the house we can jump up the columns to get onto the roof:

HEY YOU GUYS!!!!

And not just the roof… we can get into the balcony area:

For an area that you wouldn’t normally see, it’s rather detailed!
Zolukai and myself looking out at Maralade who’s on the outside!

I’m sure some parts of the garden will be adjusted, but for now I’m happy with it. It’s been 7 months since the last major change to the FC house so it was about time!

Congratulations to our winners!

The raffle has ended and we had 7 main winners who each won 1 million Gil and 34 runner-ups who each won 100,000 Gil. We also had 21 people who didn’t win anything at all, so they each received a 50,000 Gil consolation prize anyway!

This means the total prize money for the raffle was 11,450,000 Gil and here’s a table of the winners:

DateWinnerRunner-ups
25 December 2021Lyallon EstaqurAlistair Theirin, Cookie Snurr, Driess Raronek, Ellie Burrfoot, L'ireiya Tia, Octavia Rosethorn, Spingus Fleeb
26 December 2021Rydia NishiyamaElsa Moon, Noda Moonlight, Thea Belles
27 December 2021Gianix GiariGazes Also, Meow Chow, Mona Makoto, Roy Yunomi, Tas Burrfoot, Tiny Ice, Zorlaq Rex
28 December 2021Ghaima KuMomo Blakes, Sylvia Flutterstar, Terazoic Willowstar, Zolukai Pestishyde
29 December 2021Mel ArkyAshelia Raphael, Kanos Kon, Ninuh Khatka, Soli Dus
30 December 2021Elsa MoonRydia Nishiyama
31 December 2021Aaeru XuhBearn Livinstone, Blithesome Carl, Elza Kanzaki, Geralt R'ivia, Lex Miahto, Lilide Lide, Maralade Ferilla, Tim Bro

Congratulations again to everyone who won and I’m sure we’ll do another raffle again in the future!

Raffle (2021)

It’s that time of year and I am happy to announce that, for the third year running, we are going to be holding an FC raffle! This is free for all FC members who were with us at the start of 17th December and have been active within the last 30 days.

Previously we’ve had 5 days where the prize has been 1 million Gil (each day), but this year we are extending it to 7 days! As before all runner ups will get 100,000 Gil and anyone who didn’t win anything at all will still get a 50,000 Gil consolation prize at the end!

For more information, please see this years special page for the event!

Don’t miss out, enter without delay and pick your (hopefully) lucky number!

Good luck to you all!

If you want this outfit for free, just ask Scott!

We finished the Hidden Canals of Uznair!

It’s Sunday so as usual we were doing some treasure maps and this week we really hit the jackpot. Not only did we get a lot of “Timeworn Thief’s Maps”, but Ashelia also managed to actually beat the crazy RNG and get us to the the of the Hidden Canals!

So much loot!

Getting to the very last room requires opening the correct door, 6 times, from a choice of 3 doors each time. We don’t know for sure if there actually even is a correct door each time, but it’s very common to get thrown out on the first room, so making it all the away to room 7… wow! It also gave each of a us quite a lot of Gil:

Can’t argue with that! There’s also an achievement for finishing it, I personally did that one about 2 years ago (only the one time!), but everyone else in our group got it today:

We actually ended up doing treasure maps for nearly 4 hours (overran, a lot!) but we got two hedgehoglet minions worth 2 million each, 1 gold whisker (worth 1.1 million) and a Matanga elephant minion worth 400k (and other smaller items). We finished with 1.4 million in Gil, each (largely thanks to that 500k Gil mentioned above!) as well as few people who got the above mentioned minions. It was a very good week!

Finally here’s just a group picture of us looking awesome!

Lucy Evercraft, Hannibal Glamdring, Kamisato Ayato, Ashelia Raphael, Scott Pilgrim and Elza Kanzaki

I don’t think we’ll get even close to this next week… but we can try! Thanks all who came today, I hope you had fun too!

New look to the FC house: “Florist’s Walls”

It’s been a few months since the FC house exterior was changed and with the start of the Moonfire Faire in-game event, now seemed like a good time to try out the “Florist’s Walls”!

It’s quite tall so unfortunately I can’t quite get it all in!

I’m sure you’ll agree it’s very different to the “Forge’s Wall” skin we were previously usin and it’s much more colourful! Here’s some other pictures from different angles:

Chocobo stable, fountain, flower stall (retainer inside it) and garden toolshed at the bottom left
Another flower stall, one of our two striking dummies and the new pool area
General overview of the garden
Garden plots are round the back out the way and also we have this… so we can get on the roof!
“I can see London from here!” – Moby, SSX Tricky, 2001
I’m so far up, everyone looks like ants!
Chilling out in the new pool area at night

Finally, we rarely manage to actually get everyone in the same place at once and today, is no different, but here’s a picture of some FC members that I managed to rope into posing for a picture!

Don’t we look awesome? 😀

Four year anniversary!

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!

We're not a cult, honest!
We’re not a cult, honest!

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.

Jump!
Jump!

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!

"I bring this meeting to order..."
“I bring this meeting to order…”

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:

Some of the Crystal Crusaders
Some of the Crystal Crusaders

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!

Is anyone else having flashbacks to "Raubahn Savage"?
Is anyone else having flashbacks to “Raubahn Savage”?
Geronimo!
Geronimo!

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.

Inside the FC house
Inside the FC house

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:

We're not all British, but we still like to queue!
We’re not all British, but we still like to queue!

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!

It's time to duel!
It’s time to duel!

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!

NameGil won
Meow Chow1,300,000
Nekomi Hounami1,300,000
Ceyri Noca1,200,000
Lex Miahto800,000
Lyallon Estaqur800,000
Rydia Nishiyama550,000
Sylvia Flutterstar550,000
Wom Blorm550,000
Blithesome Carl500,000
Terazoic Willowstar500,000
Elydith Nelhah350,000
Geralt R'ivia350,000
Roy Yunomi300,000
Driess Raronek250,000
Kamisato Ayato250,000
L'ireiya Tia250,000
Erza Keso100,000
Lucy Evercraft100,000
Primatus Soprey100,000
Sirradez Halvic100,000
Dacent Valeroyaniox50,000
Gianix Giari50,000

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

Moving between zones
Moving between zones

New Giveaways Page

It’s been a while since an announcement, and even longer since our last giveaways. Scott has be working on it and now you can join in on giveaways through the giveaway website.

To enter a giveaway, you need to “log in with Discord” and the character you have linked there will determine what giveaways you can enter! As always the giveaways have its own rules and with the new Giveaway Page it will be able to track which minions and mounts you have already (via Lodestone) and block you from entering if you have it. It isn’t fool-proof since the Lodestone doesn’t allow us to track other unlockables such as Orchestrion Rolls/Hair Styles/Bardings . Please be sure to check if you have the item to be given away first.

Just a reminder too; All giveaways are for your personal use only and are not for gifting to others or selling for Gil, breaking this rule will result in being blocked for future giveaways. For those wondering why we aren’t using the old Giveaway bots on Discord, they are either no longer being backed by its developers or didn’t allow us to do what we wanted.

Good Luck!

New look to the FC house: “Forge’s Walls”

We’ve had the “Shirogane Castle Walls” on our FC house since we bought the house back in 4.1, all the way back in October 2017 and it felt like time for a change. When 5.5 was released it added some new items, including the “Forge’s Walls” and now that’s what our house is using:

Large Forge's Walls

Looks great doesn’t it? It’s very different from the previous Shirogane Castle, but a change was definitely overdue.

The main reason we hadn’t changed the skin earlier was because we had a “Stump Elevator” setup which allowed us to get onto the roof of the house and also to glitch “inside” the house as well. The first time people saw that it always made them say “What the…” and that never got old!

Sadly, changing the skin around actually broke that and the stump which should have been on the ground, floated into the air, breaking the elevator as you can see in this picture below:

Broken Stump Elevator

It took many hours of trying to get the elevator to work in the first place as it had to be pixel perfect, but I’m actually relieved it broke. It means that now we can change the house skin more frequently without having that stump elevator holding us back. It was great, but we had it for well over 3 years, we got our use out of it!

I hope you all enjoy the new look too!