Getting This Mount is the Dumbest Thing I’ve Done in FFXIV

From minions and Triple Triad cards to glamours and housing items, there are tons of things to collect in Final Fantasy XIV. But my poison of choice? Mount collecting.

The reason I love mounts so much is because they are something you see constantly as you play the game. Many even change the music you’re listening to as you travel the vast in-game world. And let’s be frank here, not only do you feel like a badass riding a T-Rex or a transforming raid boss, having the rarest of rare mounts makes you the envy of all the would-be mount collectors out there.

At this point, I have a respectable 97 of the total 220. (The vast majority of the ones I don’t have are either from PVP, promo giveaways that happened before I started the game, or are only purchasable with real-world money). To get these mounts I’ve killed bosses again and again, run the same dungeons countless times, rebuilt cities, spent weeks in the Gold Saucer gambling. I even spent nearly a year doing Blue Mage raids three times a week to get a single mount.

So needless to say, at this point, I’m running out of mounts that can be obtained without significant time and work. However, there is one mount I regret getting—one mount that, if I had known the time sink going in, I would have never even tried for: the Al-iklil.

Now, let’s be clear, the Al-iklil is a super cool mount. Based on Fran and Baltheir’s hoverbike from Final Fantasy XII, the Al-iklil is one of the 12 mounts in the game that can seat more than one player (two people in its case). It also has its own special music track when riding it. To get it, all you need to do is collect all 50 “field notes” spread across Bozjan, Delubrum Reginae, and Zadnor.

Now, just by completing the story in these two special zones and the accompanying raids, I had all but eight of the field notes already in hand. Hell, I didn’t even need to do Delubrum Reginae at all after having run it so many times for the “Resistance Weapons” quests. This left me with four left in Zadnor and four in Bozjan. And with a mount as cool as the Al-iklil, it would be stupid to not try for it when I was so close, right?

It took me a month and a half to get the mount—which might not seem so bad until you realize just how much FFXIV I played during this time.

Now, before we get into the hell I experienced, I should note that I got four of the eight field notes rather quickly. One of these (#35 – Field notes on Meryall) dropped on a random run through The Dalriada—the special 48 person raid at the end of Zadnor (which we’ll get back to later). The other three of these (#38 – Field Notes on Fabineau, #12 – Field Notes on Dynbu, and #14 – Field Notes on Sartauvoir) took only one or two eight-hour-days of camping to get each. As the specific skirmishes that drop these field notes do not spawn naturally (you have to defeat around 50 of a specific enemy to spawn them with an hour cooldown between each possible spawn), the drop rate is much higher than on the skirmishes that spawn naturally on a set timer.

However, the other four took much, much longer. For #11 -Field Notes on Dabog and #43 – Field Notes on Dabog, Part II, I chose the most braindead option possible. I camped skirmishes that spawn every 30 minutes. To speed this up, I even jumped between Bozjan/Zadnor instances—exploiting the multiple spawn timers. I camped these spawns eight hours a day for weeks. When I was working out? I had my character spawn camping. Eating breakfast? Spawn camping. Lunch break? Spawn camping. Free time after work? You guessed it, more spawn camping.

On one hand, I was free to watch TV, surf the net, or play on my Switch while this was going on—though I had to stay alert to pause and do battle in FFXIV at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to do anything else in FFXIV. As Bozjan/Zadnor are instances, you can’t do useful time killers like crafting or gathering. I was basically locked in a single spot for hour upon hour, unable to move on.

It took me eight days strait of this (76 attempts) to get #43. It took six more days straight (54 attempts) to get #11. If I were a bit more intelligent, I would have quit there—accepting that I was in the middle of a hellish sunk-cost fallacy and should just give up. But alas, I only had two to go. And as these two surely wouldn’t take as many attempts to get, right?

The easiest way to get the first of these, #17 – Field Notes on Lyon, is from the final chest in Castrum Lacus Litore—the 48 man raid at the end of Bozjan. This raid spawns once an hour naturally—with this timer being decreased by each Skirmish/Critical Engagement completed in the area. However, unlike a skirmish that takes 2-5 minutes to complete, Castrum Lacus Litore takes 30-40 minutes.

For one week, I ran Castrum Lacus Litore five times a day. Then… well, I burned out. From that point on, I decided to run Castrum Lacus Litore one a day, every day. I told myself that the field note would eventually drop—and it did, after a total of 49 runs.

From there I started doing my once-a-day plan on The Dalriada raid in Zadnor (which I had been running a few times a week on the side since I started my quest for the Al-iklil). And amazingly, only a few days later (23 runs total), I had the final field note: #44 – Field Notes on Lyon, Part II.

And the moment the Al-iklil was in my hands, I felt such joy—not that I had the mount but rather that I would never need to do either Castrum Lacus Litore or The Dalriada ever again (you know… beyond getting the pictures for this article). More than that, I was just so happy that the grind was over. The stress of the whole endeavor had been hanging over my head and I hadn’t realized just how much until the pressure was suddenly gone.

But here’s the thing. Part of this horrible experience was absolutely a torture of my own making. You see, for my final four field notes, there was another possible way to get them: 1 vs 1 boss duels. Win the duel associated with the character in the field note and you get that field note 100% of the time. Now, winning these duels is not simple: they are about as complex as an extreme trial—maybe a savage raid for some of them. And as you’re the only person in the fight, one mistake means an instant loss.

Moreover, to even be in the pool of candidates to enter a duel, you must do the associated Critical Engagement and not get hit by any of the dodgable mechanics. This can be tough—especially considering one of these is the infamous “Hunt for Red Choctober.” That said, even if you aren’t chosen for the one-on-one duel, a counter goes up and you become more likely to be chosen for the duel in the future.

Even taking all this into consideration, it would have absolutely taken less time total to memorize the dodge patterns and do both the Critical Engagements and 1 vs 1 duels perfectly for all four of the final four field notes than the path I chose. Of course, this is all knowledge gained in hindsight—in the moment, I figured that the brain dead farming route would take the same basic amount of time as learning the battles.

So, now that I have the Al-iklil, do I use it? You’re goddamned right I do. No matter the class I am playing, I fly around on that thing. I even invite random people for a ride whenever I can. I may regret all I went through to get it. But now that I have it, I’ll be damned if I don’t show it off at every possible occasion.