Welcome to the Umbra Dreadknights Free Company

Our Free Company, «UMBRA», offers a cozy, relaxed and mature environment to enjoy the game, and we operate more out of an expectation of mutual respect than by enforcing a complex list of rules: this page is mostly about documenting things that are not obvious or that are intimidating to new players.

The golden rule: no jerks

Our chat can get mature and bawdy at times, but it should always remain civil. Swearing is fine, attacking other players isn’t. Mature topics are ok, but avoid bringing up divisive topics such as politics and religion. We’re LGBT-friendly, bigot-unfriendly, and generally too easygoing to be forced to police the chat often.

Free Company & Linkshell

We run both a small Free Company (FC) and a large Linkshell (LS): a small core group in the FC, and a larger community in the LS. A player can only be part of one FC, but can join up to 8 LS. FCs offer many in-game benefits, while LS are only chat channels. Members of our FC are always also members of our LS, but not all the LS members are from our FC - most are friends from other FCs.

In general, socialization, recruitment and advice happens within the linkshell, while FC chat is used to discuss stuff only FC members care about (for example, FC airships).

To chat in the FC chat, start your line with /fc. To chat in the ls, start it with /l1, /l2, /l3… depending on the slot where our LS ended up.

Even if you find that our FC isn’t what you wanted and decide to join another company, you’re welcome to stay in the LS if you enjoy participating in it.

Unfortunately, linkshells only have room for 128 people (online or offline), and we are always close to the limit: for that reason, we frequently remove inactive people. If you take a FFXIV hiatus, you will find yourself removed from the linkshell eventually. Please do not take it the wrong way: we will gladly re-invite you as soon as you’re back.

Discord

We use Discord for voice chat and to text chat out of the game - you should join us there. Even if you don’t want to voice chat, text channels are very useful. To join, just follow this link, and be sure to register an account to keep your access to the private area.

You should have access to #general and #fcchat. If you are not given access to #fcchat after joining, it’s an oversight on our part: please request access.

Discord is available for browsers, desktops, phones and tablets: after you login in the browser, you will find a little “Download Apps” link hidden in the bottom-left of the app, but the browser app already contains all the features in the desktop app.

By default, the desktop app will start with Windows, and the phone app will ring you when your name is mentioned. And your name will eventually be mentioned by people living in the timezone exactly 12 hours away from yours. Unless you want that to happen, you should change the notification settings.

Do not be shy!

If you keep to yourself, you will find that you are only rarely included in discussions and activities. Never be afraid to tell us about your current goal and ask questions: you will often obtain immediate answers - and sometimes invitations to party up.

Hang out at the company house!

When you join us, you will find that you have a new teleport point in Mist, costing only a fourth the normal teleport rate. It offers many amenities close to each other: retainer bell, market board, armoire, vendors, cutscenes book, triple triad board, chocobo stables… but most importantly: it allows you to hang out with everyone. While we’re always in contact through the text chat, it’s a lot more fun to see each other’s characters.

The chest

The inventory of the Free Company chest can be accessed from all the main cities, and from our FC house.

We save resources in the chest for FC projects: building airships, items giving FC buffs, holding events, helping people gear up, crafting raid items. We’re also saving money to buy a large house in the future.

With only 150 slots, we rarely have much room in the chest, so we do not use it to trade items with FCmates - we prefer trading in person at the house, or through mog mail.

Please avoid adding to the chest items that you’re not sure the FC actually needs: if you wish to contribute items you don’t need, selling them on the marketboards and contributing some of that gil is more helpful.

When you add items to the chest, you decide to give them to the FC: other people will use them without asking. If you add the wrong item by mistake, ask someone with access to get it back as soon as possible.

When you join us, you are allowed to deposit items, but not to withdraw them. If you prove trustworthy and participate in FC activities requiring chest access, you will be granted access eventually.

FC resources are meant to be used—fairly. You can purchase reasonable quantities of items such as materia at a discount, up to 50% off the marketboard price if that’s all you can afford. Just be fair about it. Before buying, consider the following:

If you can’t afford to buy at all, but could really use the help gearing up, talk to FC officers: if you’ve been active with us for a while, we might give you some resources for free, but you need to clear it with officers first.

Only the FC leader, A’milly, can withdraw money: since we cannot cap transactions, we have no way to prevent someone with gil access from fully emptying the bank.

You might catch Wtspudgy Puks’com moving around large quantities of items and big sums of money: it’s Lunaire’s alt character, whose only purpose is to hold things for the FC, and sell FC stuff on the marketboards. It keeps accounting simple: everything she owns belongs to the FC, except for her 371 pudgy puks. You can see an overview of what she stocks on this separate page.

Chocobo stables

The chocobo stables are free to use by everyone. Feeding stabled chocobos Krakka root gives them a bit of experience. If you leave your chocobo stabled, other FC members might feed it while you’re away! No promises we will do it regularly, however.

The stables should be kept sparkly clean, as it maximizes the experience earned. If the sparkles disappear, they should be cleaned with a magicked stable broom. We keep a supply in the chest: if you have access to it, you can clean them yourself, otherwise, notify someone who can clean them.

Gardening

We mostly use the gardens to grow Krakka for the chocobos. When you see that something is planted in our garden, do not hesitate to tend to it. All the 8 plants need to be tended to once every 24 hours, but doing it more often won’t hurt. If the crops ever develop a purple cloud, please tend to them immediately!

In general, we try not to produce krakka faster than we consume it. If you’d like to participate in feeding the chocobos, let us know, and we will plant more to provide you with it.

When unused, the FC gardens are free to use by anyone, but please consult with other people. Do not worry about krakka production, enough FC members have private houses for us not to need to use the FC gardens.

While most FC members have planting rights, few have harvesting rights. You’re entitled to your harvest in full, but you’ll need someone with the authorization to pick it up for you. If you log in to see your crops gone, look through the activity logs in the FC menu: it will tell you who harvested your stuff.

Static raid team

We have a static team tackling the most difficult raids, comprised of FC members and people from outside the FC. Membership in the FC and static are separate: you will never be treated like a second-class FC member if you are not part of the static raid team.

Because running a static takes a lot of effort and energy, and endgame raiding is entirely optional and done for the challenge and prestige of it, you should never expect the static to carry you through difficult raids.

Free company actions

All activities by FC members earn our FC some points, which can be spent on free company actions, small buffs shared by all members that last for 24 hours. Because our FC is small, we do not always earn FC points fast enough to rotate a regular schedule of buffs: instead, we run them whenever someone could use one. So, if you plan to level up a job or attempt difficult crafts, you should mention it.

The static’s needs always take the priority for buffs: in endgame raiding, every single buff counts to give the group the edge they need to clear, while XP bonuses are just nice to have.

Rank & authorizations

Members have different ranks, each having different authorizations regarding recruitment, chest access, airship use, etc.

Promotion and rank is handled by the leadership, but generally one can find themselves being promoted based on activity and attendance to FC events.

Officers are specifically chosen by the leadership, and they have their own responsibilities within the FC.

Progression through the story

There are many ways the FC and our LS friends can help you progress through the game.

While you will find that the story quests and dungeon drops provide most of the gear you need to progress, gear under level 50 can be crafted for cheap, with easy to acquire materials: FCmates will be happy to hook you up with upgrades.

If you are playing as a DPS, congratulations, your dungeon queues suck! But if you bring along a tank or a healer, those queues often disappear. So if you need to clear a dungeon to proceed, you should ask if someone is available to help.

Once you reach lv.50 and are ready to see the conclusion of the 2.0 storyline, you will have to run two 8-people dungeons, they happen soon after your first 8-people trial. Those contain a lot of long cutscenes, and on Duty Finder, you will most likely be pressured to skip them, and locked out of boss fights (if not downright kicked out of the party) if you refuse to skip them. So if you wish to enjoy the full experience the first time you play those, have your FCmates group with you—don’t let Duty Finder jerks ruin it for you!

When you take with you a premade party, you can run many dungeons and trials undersized, without level sync, and with a free party composition—but you won’t get any XP for that clear. That feature often turns old content into speedy curb stomps. So if you don’t care for the challenge and just want to clear a quest ASAP, take advantage of that fact.

Between the time you reach lv.50 and the time you unlock Heavensward, you will open many new dungeons and trials, some of which are seldom played on Duty Finder. If you have trouble getting fast queues to clear a lv.50 trial, you’ll have an easier time asking us to run it unsync’d: most fights can be cleared with the help of only three lv.60 people.

And if you wish to invest in your crafts, we can help you powerlevel by crafting HQ levequest deliveries for you, but you will have to front the cost of the materials.

Recruitment

Feel free to invite friends and other good players you come across in your travels—whether you invite them to the FC and LS, or only the LS.

You can advertise our awesomeness in both Party Finder and /shout—just don’t spam! Be proud of your FC and invite others to be proud of it, too.

Contribute!

If you can, you should contribute to the FC in ways you enjoy: crafting, gathering, content clears for other people, recruiting cool players, donations to the FC chest… But if you’re leveling a DPS job to 60, your avenues to contribute anything are very limited, and we’re aware of that fact, so don’t worry about if it feels one-sided. It’s once you’re starting to reach the endgame that it becomes a give and take.

Useful websites

Things you should not use