Getting Started Guide

CAUTION!

This article is only a guide. Information expressed in a guide is usually more opinion than fact and should be taken as such. Guides are written by players, based upon their experiences, successes and mistakes, and are meant to aid other players. However, there may be differing opinions than those expressed in a guide. Strategies and information in guides may not work for everyone.

Welcome to HorizonXI!

Welcome to this Getting Started Guide for HoirzonXI!

Let's start by being completely honest: FF11 is a hard game. It doesn't hold your hand at all. Its core gameplay based on a time when Ultima Online and Everquest were THE online games to play back in 2002 (it launched in NA in 2003 and WoW wouldn't launch until 2004). This server is based on FF11's 2nd expansion Chains of Promathia (2006). It's very much old school in its design.

So why do people want to play this? To me, it's because if you are willing to put in the work and have patience, this game is one of the most rewarding games out there. The lack of hand-holding means exploration is front-and-center. Danger is lurking around every turn.

This isn't meant to replace the Beginner How-To Guide, but more of a distillation of the information there with a little more guidance thrown in and addressing common questions found in the Discord. If you can't find the answer to a question here, check that guide.

Installation and Configuration

Installation/Uninstallation

Installation

Go to https://horizonxi.com/play-now and follow the steps there. After running the installer, login and click the install button on the bottom right of the launcher.

Where is the launcher's install folder? How do I load the game again?

The two common paths for the installer are:

• C:\Users\yourUser\AppData\Local\HorizonXI_Launcher
  • You can load the launcher again from this location.
  • This contains the launcher itself, including the executable that you can make a shortcut for.
  • Alternatively you can run the installer again and it will simply load the launcher for you. However, note that if you do this, whenever the launcher is updated, this method will revert the launcher, so it's better to go to the install folder and create a shortcut.
• C:\Users\yourUser\AppData\Roaming\HorizonXI-Launcher¹
  • This contains a lot of the configuration and settings.

Backing Up Your Settings

In-Game Settings and Macros

Backing up your macros and in-game settings should be a fairly simple process, even though we can't use many of the tools Square-Enix have. The most common way is to go to \Game's install path\Game\SquareEnix\Final Fantasy XI\ and copy/paste the User folder into a new location. After you reinstall game, go back to that folder and overwrite the new Users folder with the one you backed up.

Launcher Configurations

Go to C:\Users\yourUser\AppData\Roaming\HorizonXI-Launcher¹ and back up the file config.json. Replace the new config file with the backed up file after reinstalling.

Uninstalling the Launcher

To uninstall the launcher, delete the 2 folders mentioned in Where is the launcher's install folder? How do I load the game again?.

Uninstalling the Game

To uninstall the game:

1. Delete the following folders:
   \Game install path\Downloads\
\Game install path\Game\
2. Go to C:\Users\yourUser\AppData\Roaming\HorizonXI-Launcher¹ and delete the file storage.json. This will force the launcher to notice the game needs to be reinstalled.

WARNING: Doing this will delete your macros and in-game settings for every character unless you back them up.

Uninstalling Both the Launcher and the Game

You can completely uninstall the game by deleting all of the game and launcher folders found in the sections above. You can also try using the clean uninstaller found here. Some people have reported that it can miss items though, so be sure to double check everything if something seems off.

Changing the Game's Install Location

You can change which folder the game itself is installed.

1. Move the contents of the game's install folder (the one containing Downloads and Game) to the new location
2. Go to C:\Users\yourUser\AppData\Roaming\HorizonXI-Launcher¹ and open the file storage.json in a text editor like Notepad.
3. At the top of the file you should see installPath and downloadPath. In each one, update the path lines to the new path. Make sure the edits are within the quotes and that for each \ you have two instead of one (like how it is when you first open the file). Both keeping the path within the quotes and the double slashes are important as not doing so could cause errors.

¹You can also get to this folder by opening the launcher and going to Settings > Misc. and clicking the button "Open launcher install folder".

Launcher Configuration

This section provides brief explanations about settings you can find in the HorizonXI launcher.

General

• Hardware Mouse: Forces the game to use the hardware mouse instead of a software-emulated mouse. I would enable this regardless of your setup.
• Play Opening Movie: Whether or not to play the intro movie when loading the game. If it's your first time, maybe enable this for your first login and then turn it off after that.
• Sound: Whether or not sound should be enabled.
• Always Play Sound: Whether or not to play sound even when the window is not in focus.
• Gamma: A setting that can adjust the brightness of intermediate tones (greys).
• Max # of Sounds: How many simultaneous sounds the game should allow.
• Launcher Music Volume: The volume level for the HorizonXI Launcher's music.
• Console Key: The key that will bring up Ashita's console where you can set temporary keybinds and the loader's main settings
• Window Resolution: The resolution size of the game window.
• Window Mode: Whether the game should run in fullscreen, a window, or in a borderless window.

Graphics

• Graphics Stabilization: I have not found specifics, but allegedly it helped fix some crashing for Nvidia cards. May not be a problem now, but don't think it'll hurt to enable just to be safe.
• Map Compression: Whether or not the graphic used for the maps should be compressed or not to conserve memory. Disable for the best quality, enable if you need the resources.
• Bump Mapping: Makes it so that the textures appear to have more depth. Enable for a slightly better graphical experience.
• Maintain Aspect Ratio: Unknown; appears to have no effect either on or off
• 3D LCD Mode: Enables a way to view the game in stereoscopic 3D with something like a Quest or Oculus LCD headset. Don't enable this unless you plan on playing with something like that.
• Environment/Textures/Fonts/Mip Mapping: Allows you to fine tune the graphics quality. This can vary greatly on your setup. If you're noticing FPS drops and the common fixes don't improve your FPS, try lowering these settings.
  • Note: Some HD texture packs like Ashenbubs recommend disabling or setting Mip Mapping to 1 as it isn't really needed for higher resolution textures.
• Background Resolution: Resolution of the background image. 2x your window resolution is recommended.
  • Ex: If your window resolution is 1920x1080, set this to 2160x2160.
  • You can also lower this value to improve performance.
• Menu Resolution: The menu uses a different resolution than the game to determine how big to display the UI. If you want to make the UI bigger, lower these values.
  • Note: It's a good idea to keep the same aspect ratio as your window resolution, otherwise the game may crash. You can usually find a list of resolutions for an aspect ratio with a quick search online.

Pivot

This section allows you to toggle asset packs (found in \Game\polplugins\DATs\)on or off. You will likely have 3: HorizonXI Music, Horizonoverrides, and XIView. It's highly recommend to keep Horizonoverrides and XiView enabled. You can disable HorizonXI Music if you prefer the game's original music.

• Tip: Check out the Jukebox pack over at https://horizonxi.info/jukebox. This pack has an option that keeps the game's original music for areas with music, but fills in areas that did not have music originally with the HorizonXI music to round things out.

Misc.

• Screenshot Location: Unknown
• Screenshot in Screen Resolution: Unknown
• Enable seeding installer: The launcher uses torrenting as its way of distributing the game. While this is enabled, and while the launcher is open, you act as a seed for other users to download the game.
  • If you are noticing network connection instability or other oddities, try disabling this to see if the game runs better.
• Throttle installation upload speed: The max allowable upload speed the launcher can use to upload the game to other users who are installing the game.
  • You may need to change this if you wish to keep seeding the game for other users but do not have a fast internet service.
• Troubleshooting Buttons: View Log File and Open Launcher Install Folder are shortcut buttons allowing you to quickly find the launcher's log file or its configuration folder. Re-apply last patch can sometimes fix installation issues after an update.