News

A few days ago, we quietly released a new feature that we hope will help you stay connected with CoN going forward into the future. It's something that you've surely seen at many other sites, and we're just a little bit behind the times; it's the ability to register a new CoN account or connect an old CoN account to your social media presence. This news post is a brief FAQ about what we're doing here to help you get started, until I can get it re-written for a permanent place on CoN.

What it is: We've implemented a new system to allow you to log in and register for CoN much more quickly if you're already logged in to Twitter, Facebook, or Google in your same browser. New users can click the button on the registration page to have most of the signup information autofilled for you. Existing users can log in and then use their control panel to connect a social account to their CoN account. Both sets of users, after doing their part, can then log in with one click forever.

How it works for new users: When you click one of these buttons for the first time, you'll be redirected to the social media site you chose. You can review the permissions that we ask for, and, if acceptable to you, you can then proceed and you'll be sent back to CoN with as much information as possible created for you - we'll even suggest a username for you (that, of course, you can change before finishing your registration if you choose). Once you've registered, you can log in any time by clicking the correct social media button on the login page.

How it works for existing users: If you want to connect a social account to your existing CoN account, all you need do it visit the User Control Panel after logging in normally. You will see buttons for all of our supported social networks, and upon choosing one, you'll go through the same process of approving CoN, and then be returned to the site. After that, you'll be able to log in either using your CoN name and password, or simply by clicking the correct social network button on the login page.

What if I want to connect my existing account but can't remember how to log in? Just email me at rangers51@cavesofnarshe.com with as much information as you remember about your account. To be sure it's you, I'll definitely need to know what your old username was and the last email you remember using with it. If you already know that info, you can recover your password without waiting for me to help. We don't normally allow duplicate accounts for users, but if you just don't remember any of your old info and don't care about your old account, we're not going to yell at you for creating a new one!

But, what are you idiots doing with my information? Very, very little! You can see when you first attempt to connect with us exactly what info we're asking for, and it's not much. It's the same info we already ask for when you register a new account, by and large - email address, birthdate, etc. Once you connect, we do not attempt to post things on your behalf on social media or CoN, or share any of your social media information with CoN users beyond the things you approve during signup. And, if you don't like it after you've connected, you can always disconnect later.

But, I hate social networks! Well, that's okay. Sometimes we all do. I can't imagine we would ever make connecting to social networks a requirement to use CoN, but in our opinion, it's far easier to use CoN if you don't have to remember your login information, and that's what this makes possible - so, that's why we're offering it now, finally.

But, I hate the social networks you chose! Also okay! However, among our audience, they are by far the most used, so this is the best way to get started. If there's a social network that you really love but we don't yet support, ask us about it. I've got one or two more I'd like to add, but they're less frequently used for social signon so they're lower priority. But if you want more choices, just ask.

OK, but which one is best to use? Any of them will confer the same basic benefits to you - faster registration for new users and one-click login for all users. Personally, I think Facebook is the best way to go because they've been doing this the longest, and not only that, we have some tentative plans to do some neat features with our Facebook fan page that will be much easier to use if you've already connected your FB and CoN accounts.

Just a couple weeks ago, Wired reported a Mozilla announcement that half of all web traffic is served over secure HTTP, for the first time. As a user of the web yourself, you should be excited about this - obviously, sites that want your financial or very personal information have been secured for a very long time, but adding HTTPS to other sites is also a great thing. As Wired explains, a secured site makes it harder for people to intercept the things you're reading or posting out to the internet, and it helps you be sure that no malicious groups are intercepting your traffic and leveraging it for their own means.

Today, CoN has thrown in its lot with this half-and-growing chunk of the web by switching all traffic to secure protocols. All images, scripts and text you see in your browser will now be secured, including all forum traffic, news, and fanart submissions and posts. This improves the quality of the content that we're able to provide to you, and also unlocks the ability for us to extend our reach further into social media in the future.

You should now be seeing the pretty green padlock on all of the pages you visit on CoN, at least in browsers that make it easy for you to see such things (I can personally vouch for Firefox, Chrome, and Chrome for iOS!). It's possible that there are still some pages that might not be fully secure due to me missing an image or two, so please feel free to let me know if you encounter one, or if you have any questions about this update. This is the kind of nerdy stuff I like talking about, so don't be shy!

Happy new year, CoN readers! I posted a while back on our CoN social media accounts about the Final Fantasy XV soda collaboration with Jones Soda, exclusive in the US to Target stores. I posted, naturally, because I went out and bought a few (and drank some, they're quite good). The soda is bright orange and orange cream flavored, and it's no longer for sale on store shelves. But, as luck would have it, I've got several extras just hanging out in my office as I type.

Sealed bottles of Wiz's Energizing Elixir are selling on eBay right now for anywhere from $10 to $20 a bottle, and CoN is giving you the chance to win one for free. All you have to do is post at the forums between now and 23:59:59 UTC (or 6:59:59pm EST) on January 15. You can post in this thread to say "ooh, free stuff!," or talk about current events in General Topics, ask a question about Final Fantasy IX, you name it. If you make a post between now and then and don't get yourself warned or banned in the meantime, you're in the running.

We'll give away one bottle for every 25 users who post between now and then, up to four. One bottle for up to 25, two bottles for up to 50, and so on. Winners will be selected at random, with no priority given to number of posts, and messaged via the forums to claim their prizes by the end of January. Unclaimed prizes will sit on my shelf until I feel like doing something with them. Current CoN staff are ineligible to win, but our posts count toward the overall user count. Bottles will be shipped for free within the United States - international winners will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Time to get to posting, and to start out the new year with a new prize courtesy CoN!

It is our great pleasure to announce the release of Caves of Narshe's comprehensive Final Fantasy 9 section. The development process was a bit elongated, as is our style, but not as much as some of our other additions have been! That counts for something, right?

Our most recent "new" coverage, as some may recall, was the the fully-remade FFVI section in 2013 (and before that, the fully-remade FFV section in 2012). This means that FFIX marks the first time in quite a while that we've expanded site coverage into new ground - something which made the development process really exciting. There were a bit fewer hands on deck this time around, but those of us involved came away with renewed appreciation for the game.

As with every guide we produce, we aimed to deliver not just complete coverage but the best coverage anywhere. We're confident you'll agree that we've achieved that here. As always, the essential first step is an excellent walkthrough, written by longtime member Shotgunnova with thoroughness and character (and edited by EvilEye and myself with equal amounts of the same!) that make it a pleasure to read. The next step is to augment that foundation with additional written, image, and video content provided by Neal and Rangers51. And finally, we enrich it all with our usual HTML touches that make for easy-to-read tables and site organization, comprehensive links that make navigating content references easy and instant, and other useful tools (check out that chocobo map) that improve clarity and ease of use with flair. Whether you're looking for a tip on a pesky boss battle, information about that sidequest was just discovered a few years ago, a laugh about how silly Tetra Master was, or or a guide to accompany you on your first playthrough, we've got you covered for every release this game has ever had, including the newest version released for mobile and Steam!

Final Fantasy IX is a game that has proven it can stick around - something that CoN and its members are particularly qualified to appreciate. One has several different audiences in mind when making something like this, but the first is, as always, the people who will see this post: site members, old friends, facebook followers, and persistent lurkers. We're all active in different ways now, but it's your continued support - in posts, in traffic, in "likes" - that keep new content coming.

We hope you'll take a couple minutes to explore this section, talk about it, send it to a friend, or maybe even revisit FFIX itself.

Word. I access CoN on my phone as much or more than anyone. It's pretty shoddy. Or, well, it was, because by the time you read this, it will have gotten a whole lot better. If you visit CoN from your phone now, you're going to see a version of Skyglade that has been polished significantly for your enjoyment on your handheld device. We've reduced the number of images that you'll have to download, which your data plan will appreciate. We've also reorganized the navigation behind the popular "hamburger" button so that you can have more screen real estate for the content you're reading front-and-center. And, for everyone, we've implemented "lazy loading" on image-heavy pages so that you won't be forced to download pictures until you are ready for them. Your CoN browsing on any device will be quicker and lighter than before.

We're considering this to be beta. It's not like us to release content to you that we ourselves call beta, but in this case we feel confident in the quality of what we have already done and want you to be able to use it even though it doesn't cover every case. You might notice that some pages will require scrolling from left to right on phones in portrait mode, so rotating your phone to landscape might be beneficial. This is especially true of the forums. Some pages will remain generally difficult to use on mobile, but we will do our best in the future to continue to update them. If you come across any problems that you simply can't accept, we welcome your feedback in the forums, on Facebook, or on Twitter.

If you like what we've done here, please add CoN to your home screen so you can have quick access to our guides and community no matter where you're playing!

As you might have known, our IRC provider pulled the rug out from under us a while back, and our ability to get our users into CoNchat directly from the site has been broken since while I took turns looking for a new option and forgetting about the project entirely. No longer! I've just deployed the fix - it's not quite as nice as the old way but it will work well for most users and will allow you to chat directly from the site without visiting another page should you so desire.

Of course, as before, if you're a logged-in user, your username will be pre-populated in our chat form so that everyone knows who you are as soon as you join. I look forward to seeing some of you visit again or for the first time now that everything's up and going again!

Source: CoNChat