News

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

If you're reading this, you've probably already seen the new CoN feature that we timed for the big Final Fantasy XV news of the week. We know that navigating our content can sometimes be daunting as a player, as there is so much of it, so we spent some time looking at how to best improve the user experience of our guides and forums.

The result, as you've no doubt guessed by now, is Boco Buddy! We've analyzed the usage patterns of the site so that Boco can provide to you on the fly (if you'll pardon the pun!) tips on how to find what you're looking for on CoN, as well as helpful suggestions for content you might have missed. He even works in the forums!

So, please, give him a try and let us know what you think. He's here to help!

I've been utterly awful at keeping up with fanart this year - perhaps there's a volunteer opportunity for one of you readers out there - but thanks to a burst of energy, the CoNvent Calendar is returning for its second year! Every day from now until Christmas, we'll have a new fanart published to our calendar page. If you're a CoN member, you can visit each one and rate it; if you've rated all of the pieces by the end of the year, you'll get a limited-edition CoN award for your account! Start here, with the first day's art, from new CoN artist thirteenthangel.

To follow along, check the calendar page every day, watch the Fanart Commentary forum, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter! Happy Holidays!