Attempting to come back after long absence

[Calsetes]

As the title says, haven't played in a few years now. Going to try to log into one of my older accounts but I think most of them have been banned since they were back from before Sega did the "great banning of evil foreigners" way back when.

Assuming I need to make a new account (which I remember how to do) what should I focus on tackling first and foremost? Doing the story and those mission boards, or something else? Also, how high is the likelihood of getting banned now for simply using the English patch and not being in Japan and playing? Keep hearing stories about how the risk is low, but I've somehow had horrible luck and been hit by the ban-hammer more times than I can count. Given I've heard there's ways to actually buy stuff in-game without paying premiums for cash cards shipped from overseas, I'm definitely interested in doing it - but not if it's going to inevitably lead to me paying money to have my account get banned again.


Thanks.

[Yamishi]

Sega did the "great banning of evil foreigners" way back when.

As far as I know, this wasn't actually a thing. You might be referring to the DDoS that stopped a lot of foreigners from playing, because Sega didn't want to update their DNS settings to direct traffic from outside Japan to their servers, but this ended up getting fixed(?) down the line.

It sucks that you've gotten banned, but the only people I've heard of getting the ban hammer are those that get reported. I've been playing since Alpha2 and I'm still going strong.

That said, when getting started, you definitely want to clear all of Koffie's COs to unlock all of the areas, and therefore, all of the quests. Then you can diversify a bit -- Featured (Daily) Quests are a relatively new thing, whereby you can get boosts and bonuses just for doing a handful of quests each day. Some people still do TACOs (Time Attack Client Orders) to get lots of money. There are also Limited Quests, Challenge Quests, and the Battle Arena, all of which are probably new to you.

Coming back after a long absence leaves you with a lot to catch up on, and I fear I've barely scratched the surface with this post, but hopefully it's more fun than you remember, and I'll have my fingers crossed that you won't get banned again. :)

[Calsetes]

Alright, thanks. Yeah, it was always fun when I played it, but eventually the hassle just kinda got to me and it was far easier to play something like FF14. However, I recently burned out on that, so here's hoping this scratches the itch I've been having for something a bit different.

Given it's easier now to get the English patch and such set up, might try convincing one or two of my other friends to give it a shot as well.

[Yamishi]

Good luck! I just got a friend to join me after YEARS because he always felt that installing (and re-installing) the English patch was too cumbersome.

He's playing as we speak!