The winter seasonal event of Final Fantasy XI known as the Starlight Celebration kicked off over the weekend, signaling the start of a crazy holiday rush to find hidden trading cards, join the Smilebringer Boot Camp, and acquire gifts from all sorts of shenanigans.
Goblins are back to their mischievous ways as they try to beat their sworn rivals, the button-nosed Moogles. The goblins are intentionally breaking the rules and riding Chocobos to find the trading cards hidden by the Moogles. There was an outrage of course (Kupo! Kupo!) and you will have to retrieve the buried trading cards before the goblins do.
Just keep your eyes open for patches of overturned soil on the ground, and soon enough you’ll have a full set of cards to trade for various rewards. Strength is in the numbers for this card hunting task; Square Enix has confirmed that the more party members you have while searching, the more cards you will recover.
If you don’t want to get your hands dirty digging up cards, you can practice your best smiling face and bring joy to FFXI world. The Smilebringer Boot Camp will be open for the rest of the Starlight Celebration and will provide seasonal rewards care of the satisfied Smile Sergeant quest givers (just smile, don’t laugh, they’re really called like that!)
Free gifts can also be had with little effort. Festival moogles are on standby to dish out holiday tasks, from keeping Vana’diel safe to collecting important items lost in the mad shuffle of the season. And if you have FFXI Gil to spare, vendors will be hawking their goods in all the major cities, which, as you may have guessed, will have already exploded with sparkling decorations.
Like it or not, the Starlight Celebration will keep you in a bright and pleasant mood in the next couple of weeks so suppress that urge to be a goblin Grinch and just have fun!