An in-game FINAL FANTASY XI discovery guide for Ashita 4. VanaCompass helps new and returning players find spell scrolls, ordinary shop equipment, quest starters, story missions, job unlocks, teleports, and their current map position without leaving the game.
Author: Elcatrin (Spacedandy)
Community project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix or Ashita. FINAL FANTASY XI is a trademark of Square Enix.
- Purchasable spell scrolls filtered by job, level, learned state, and magic type
- Vendor Gear with weapons and armor filtered by equipment type, job, and level
- Standard vendor supplies with NPC, location, price, and nearest teleport
- Crafting-material lookup with ordinary and guild vendors, shop schedules, dynamic-stock warnings, nearest teleports, and synthesis recipes
- Monster-drop locations and synthesis recipes for listed purchases
- Searchable non-vendor weapon and armor drop browser
- Searchable NM guide with current-zone priority, spawn areas, and placeholders
- Quest and main-story guides with collapsible regions, START NPCs, map grids, world coordinates, and unlock-aware ports
- Server-synced active, completed, and current-step quest status
- Artifact and advanced-job unlock filtering, including prerequisite chains
- Live zone, map grid, and world-coordinate display with multi-map safeguards
- Collapsible results browser, responsive layout, and scrollable guide panes
- Launcher palette integration through the bundled theme adapter
- New-player Signet, Conquest Point, and EXP-ring walkthrough
VanaCompass is designed to answer both what do I need? and how do I get there? Across Spells, Vendor Gear, Supplies, Materials, Drops, NMs, Quests, and Main Story, the detail pane pairs an NPC or objective location with the closest safe teleport it can identify. Home Points and Survival Guides are preferred for the requested zone, with regional Outposts used as field-zone fallbacks. Clicking Port selects the nearest supported destination while normal travel unlocks and rules still apply. If a map is ambiguous or has no suitable destination, VanaCompass shows No direct port instead of guessing.
The Welcome tab lets you toggle every optional module, with Show all tabs and Spells only shortcuts for common layouts. Welcome always remains visible so hidden modules can be restored at any time.
The Spells tab searches vendor, quest-reward, and monster-dropped scrolls by spell name, vendor, quest, monster, or zone. Use the learned-state buttons to show missing or learned spells, restrict the list to the current job and level, or enable Show all jobs / levels to see every job requirement. Results can be sorted by name or level and filtered by magic family, including White Magic, Black Magic, Songs, Ninjutsu, and other supported types.
Selecting a spell shows every known vendor, quest reward, or monster source. Vendor entries include the NPC's exact area, price or requirements, and a Port button for the closest destination. Drop-only scrolls identify the monster, zone, level range, known NM area, and closest supported port. Quest rewards identify the quest, its starting NPC or object, completion status, safe grid when available, exact location, and closest supported port. Tenshodo shops that require membership are clearly marked and point to the membership quest in Lower Jeuno. Conquest restrictions, merchant hours, quest acquisition, and special-currency unlocks remain listed on their individual vendor rows. When a vendor scroll also drops from monsters, the same collapsible source section lists those alternatives. Searching for a monster or drop zone finds matching scrolls as well. The filter-aware Moogle's missing-scroll bill totals each missing spell at its cheapest listed Gil vendor and identifies entries that require another currency or have no fixed Gil price. Drop-only scrolls do not affect the bill. Quest-only scrolls also remain outside the shopping bill.
Vendor Gear combines weapons and armor into one searchable vendor browser with a category selector. Weapons can be narrowed to classes such as Axe, Great Axe, Dagger, or Great Sword, while armor can be filtered by equipment slot. Supplies remains a separate tab for other ordinary vendor goods. Job and level usability, item level, combat statistics, vendor, location, and price requirements remain visible in the detail pane. Every vendor row includes its closest available Port destination. The selected item's collapsible source sections also show available monster locations and synthesis recipes. Recipes include craft levels, crystal, ingredients, yield, and a warning when a synthesis key item is needed. Drop rates are intentionally omitted, and server-specific changes may differ from the standard LandSandBoat source data.
The optional Materials tab helps locate ingredients for crafting recommendations. Search for a crafting-related item such as Bronze Ingot to see every known ordinary or guild-shop NPC, exact zone and grid, closest Port, shop hours, guild holiday, and variable-stock warning. If the item can be synthesized, its craft level, crystal, ingredients, and yield are listed as well.
The search waits for at least two characters and renders only visible rows, so the full material catalog does not create a large per-frame UI workload. Guild prices and quantities change with stock; VanaCompass reports the configured maximum price and never guarantees that an item is currently on the shelf.
The Drops tab lists weapons and armor obtained from monsters rather than vendors. Category and Type dropdowns filter the list by weapons, armor, weapon class, or equipment slot. Results show the monster's level, zone, grid location, and closest supported port. For lottery NMs, VanaCompass also identifies the specific placeholder monster to defeat and displays the available spawn guidance. Drop rates are intentionally omitted, and server customizations may differ from the standard source data.
The optional NMs tab searches the complete generated notorious-monster catalog by NM name, zone, or known placeholder. NMs belonging to your current zone are always pinned above the remaining results and marked [Here]. The full list can be sorted by name, level, or zone without submitting thousands of rows to ImGui every frame.
Selecting an NM shows its level range, known grid or world-coordinate area, closest supported Port, and script-exposed lottery instructions when available. The detail pane also lists equipment and spell drops already tracked elsewhere in VanaCompass. Drop rates are intentionally omitted. Timed, forced, battlefield, event, and other spawn types are identified as having no parsed placeholder instructions rather than being guessed.
The Quests tab shows level-appropriate entries by default, with toggles for quests above the current level and already-completed quests. A tracker sync adds active/completed status and highlights the current walkthrough step when the server reports one. Each guide begins with a clearly labeled START NPC, zone, grid coordinate, exact world coordinates, and nearest port; individual objectives also receive Port buttons wherever safe travel data exists.
Three filters make the larger quest catalog easier to use:
- All quests searches the normal regional catalog.
- Artifact quests isolates job artifact chains and can optionally show artifact quests for jobs other than the one currently equipped.
- Job Unlocks shows every supported advanced-job unlock, not only the current job. Multi-quest prerequisites, such as the Paladin lead-in chain, are kept in required order, followed by the final job-unlock step. Reaching level 30 does not bypass fame, nation, or prerequisite requirements.
Main Story keeps national missions and Rise of the Zilart chains in story order. Filters separate San d'Oria, Bastok, Windurst, and expansion progress; the completed toggle and tracker sync help returning players see what is done and which objective is active. Selecting a mission shows its recommended starting NPC, precise START location, and a numbered walkthrough. START and step locations receive nearest-port buttons when the destination is safe.
The window can be resized for a full guide view or compact navigation duty. At wider sizes, the result list and detail guide sit side by side. At narrower sizes, they stack automatically. Hide list collapses the browser after you select a destination, leaving more room for the walkthrough, while independent scrollbars keep long lists and instructions usable. The current zone, grid, and world-coordinate header remains available as the content layout changes.
The Welcome settings page can also hide any optional guide tab. This allows a player to keep only the features they use, for example Welcome and Spells, so the tab bar remains compact. Choices persist across addon reloads, and Welcome always remains visible so every hidden tab can be restored. Show all tabs and Spells only provide quick presets. Fresh installations begin with only Spells enabled; existing saved choices are preserved when updating.
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Download the latest release archive.
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Extract the folder as:
Ashita/addons/vanacompass/ -
In game, run:
/addon load vanacompass /vana
No separate libraries are required. Ashita 4 supplies common, chat,
imgui, and settings; all VanaCompass-specific Lua and data files are
bundled here.
| Command | Action |
|---|---|
/vana |
Toggle the VanaCompass window |
/vanacompass or /vc |
Alternate toggle commands |
/vana <text> |
Open VanaCompass and search purchase tabs |
/vana refresh |
Refresh character, catalog, and tracker state |
/vana help |
Print the command summary |
VanaCompass deliberately reports Grid: unavailable when a map cannot be
identified safely. Split maps and floors are not guessed. Vendor inventory and
prices may also vary with nation rank, conquest standing, fame, era, or custom
server rules.
If a vendor, teleport, quest step, or grid is wrong, please open a bug report with the zone, entry name, expected result, and a screenshot or exact world coordinates.
- Nameplate for Ashita 4.30 restores Shirk/BunnyBox Productions' GPL-3.0 nameplate rendering fix for the current Ashita plugin interface.
The project is prepared under GPL-3.0 because its generated shop dataset is
derived from LandSandBoat. BSD attribution for FFXIMissingSpells is retained in
THIRD_PARTY_LICENSE.txt. Detailed provenance is in
DATA_SOURCES.md and NOTICE.md.
Third-party teleport identifiers, theme integration, and guide data are
included with permission. Full source and license details are recorded in
DATA_SOURCES.md, NOTICE.md, and
THIRD_PARTY_LICENSE.txt.
Bug reports, verified coordinate corrections, and focused pull requests are
welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before changing generated
data or server-specific behavior.