FFXIV: The Zuri Update – Circle of Life
There’s not been progress that I want to share in FFXIV lately (unless leveling Fisher is interesting to you), but I did want to talk about the cycles and circles of getting my characters to a place that feels right for me.
As some may remember, for years I played a character called Zuri Nimat. She was a blue moon kitty, and I loved her design very much. However, for many different reasons, and just me being restless at the time, I decided to remake my character at the beginning of 2017.
Not only did I decide to change her looks, but I chose to rename her to my usual Internet handle, Aywren Sojourner. I stuck with trying out the Elezen for a few months, but I began missing being a Kitty, so I did eventually switch back.
Now, I’m quite content with my character. Her design was heavily influenced by Zuri’s — I used the save data from Zuri’s character creation as a foundation, and changed a few minor things about it. Overall, I have no further desire to change my main at this point.
This post isn’t about my main, but rather, what happened to Zuri. When I did the name change, I rolled an alt to hold on to my original name. Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to completely let go of Zuri, and I didn’t want someone else snagging the name of a character I’d used for years.
But she just kinda gathered dust as a level 1 archer.
The Cactuar Kitty
This story isn’t actually about the Zuri place-holder on Midgardsormr, either. This is about a whole different character I rolled back in Feb of 2015 on Cactuar.
I did this originally to join up with the blogger folks in the FC of GREY. I wish to thank them for their hospitality of my largely inactive character for all these years! I hope there’s no ill-will in my character heading off to another server.
The truth is, we were kinda shopping around for FC possibilities back in early 2015. But then, shortly after, our FC on Midgardsormr started to really take off. I was pulled back to Midgardsormr permanently as I had to take on a leadership role, and never really had the time to keep up with my Cactuar kitty. But I didn’t forget about her.
Originally, her design was based off of Zuri’s, just with shorter hair. Her name was my blogger name (Aywren Sojourner) since I was playing with folks that would better recognize that name.
After Heavensward released, I decided to change the Zuri-duplicate into an Au Ra. Because why have two blue kitties, really?
Despite not having a lot of time to play this character, I am really attached to the way she looks. I did log in from time to time to snag special event cosmetics, and she has things that only older characters might have from seasonal events and things like that. She also already has a chocobo (back when you farmed seals to earn your chocobo!) and a few slightly leveled jobs.
So, lately, when I’ve been inspired by the environment of the Steppes in Stormblood to think about Au Ra culture, I remembered the Kitty-turned-Au Ra character I left behind. After much deliberating, I decided to do two things:
- Move her from Cactuar to Midgardsormr
- Change her name to Zuri Nimat
This worked out perfectly since moving this character prompted a free name change. I then deleted the placeholder Zuri that has been gathering dust (I still have a copy of her on Balmung, and all her creation data if I ever wanted to re-create her again). When prompted to change names, I made my Au Ra officially the new Zuri Nimat.
And… I think I’m happy with this. I don’t like the feeling of having left an unused character lying around, especially if they have old and special cosmetics and progress made. So, this way, I can:
- Play an Au Ra when I feel like it
- Keep my old Zuri name (which actually works well for Au Ra)
- Keep all the progression and cosmetics from the older character
Yeah, I know I think too much about these things, but it’s interesting how a character who was originally inspired by Zuri’s design has become Zuri in the end. 🙂
