Caves of Narshe: CoN Site News

CoN Shopping Refreshed

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:37:22 GMT

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve had much to say about the ways you can spend your money and help keep the lights on at CoN, but since the turn of the year we’ve been hard at work patching things up and getting some new things on offer for you.

First, we can point you back at AmaCoN, our affiliate partnership with Amazon in the US and elsewhere; for quite a while, our links out and search functionality were having lots of trouble, so today we’ve streamlined them quite a bit. You can still get links to search for your favorite CoN games from each game’s landing page, and we’ve also set up some convenient links for common searches on the AmaCoN page, as well as fixed up our search. You can still make your own links from there as well, to use yourself or share with others. Don’t forget to stop at CoN before making your Amazon purchases, to help support keeping us online!

The other new feature we have for you today is the return of our bespoke merch store! In partnership with Teepublic, we have just rolled out our first two CoN designs for shirts, mugs, stickers, magnets, and more. And if you aren’t looking for something that has the CoN logo on it, don’t fear; we also currently have six Final Fantasy-related designs there as well that you can’t get anywhere else (because we created the things). That’s just the start, as there are lots of designs that are ready and haven’t been published yet, and even more on the drawing board. I'll share a couple of the products later in this newspost for those of you who are simply too lazy to click things more than once.

Please take a look around and think of CoN next time you have something you need or want, and feel free to make suggestions on what you might like to see next!

New Final Fantasy Tactics Coverage Added!

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:24:25 GMT

Okay, it's not for The Ivalice Chronicles, but it's not like I got a preview copy...

Anyway, it’s very nearly a legal adult here in the States, but finally the War of the Lions version of Final Fantasy Tactics has a home at Caves of Narshe. This is a project that I’d wanted to do for many years, and at times made some progress towards that goal, but life being what it is, we never quite got it over the line until now.

This is almost a complete redo of what we’ve had to offer for over twenty years in terms of Final Fantasy Tactics coverage, with expansions and reorganization of our game guides and data throughout. It’s the perfect way to reacclimatize yourself to the game, no matter where you last played it, with just ten days left before the new release drops.

Our team of help in preparing this coverage is smaller than usual, but their dedication made up for the numbers in a big way and as always I’m beyond thankful for the assistance. Here’s hoping that this is the start of more new things to help our friends and visitors enjoy their Final Fantasy experience; I’ve already done a couple behind-the-scenes tweaks since I released the new section early this morning to help make future work a bit easier. As always, please let us know if you find anything that isn’t working or you’d like to see changed!

CoN Server Transition Complete

Mon, 9 Sep 2024 19:08:38 GMT

Hi, friends - this is just a quick note to say that the heavy lifting on the server maintenance that has been going on since the summer is now largely complete. There are certainly a few things that have broken along the way that are on my list to clean up, but if you're reading this message it means we've fully transitioned to our new hardware and the site is not likely to fall over dead for at least another couple years. Probably.

If you see anything that looks bad, runs slow, doesn't work, et cetera, please let me know as soon as you can. If it's something potentially time-sensitive, like site slowness or rampant spambots, your best bet is to find me in Discord. Thanks as always.

TheSpeedGamers Final Fantasy Charity Marathon Scheduled for July

Thu, 6 Jun 2024 13:48:10 GMT

Longtime friends of CoN, TheSpeedGamers, have announced a charity marathon stream of Final Fantasy games for next month, starting July 9 at 7pm ET and running through July 14. For this marathon, donations will be in support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, one of my personal favorite charities. As of this post, the schedule is still to be determined, but expect a large slate, as previous Final Fantasy marathons from TSG have covered virtually every mainline single-player game and then some.

CoN is supporting TSG this summer as well! We will rebroadcast the stream live on our homepage throughout the marathon, and I'm certain it will be a topic of discussion on our Discord too. We've also just packaged up some donations to be given away for raffles and donation goals during the stream in partnership with ThePhoenixCave, with more to come! If you'd like to be a part of CoN's contributions, start by grabbing some of our holographic stickers before they're gone, or come talk to me in Discord.

Keep an eye out here for more information, and don't forget to tune in on July 9.

Source: TheSpeedGamers (TSG.tv), ThePhoenixCave

CoN Account Password Security Upgrades

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:45:49 GMT

We here at CoN were notified over this past weekend about a potential past intrusion into the CoN database, which may have affected user information, including email addresses and passwords.

Please note that our passwords have never been stored in plaintext, and while there's evidence suggesting that we may have been susceptible to brute force attempts to unmask user passwords, we want to assure you that we are going to do everything we can to safeguard your accounts.

Let us first give our apologies for this happening; it's our belief that any information that was stolen was out of date, though we know that doesn't make this news much better. Nevertheless, we're taking additional steps to further enhance our security measures; yesterday, we rolled out changes in how we securely store passwords, effective immediately for all new users and set to update for older users upon their next login. The new storage method tracks to current best methods and reduces the chances of any passwords being reversible to nearly zero.

If you're already logged in, or once you log in next, we kindly ask you to update your password. For those who haven't logged in within the last two months, we've already reset your password, and you can regain access to your account through our 'forgot password' process. By doing this, you'll be utilizing our new, more robust security and also separating your CoN login information from anywhere else you might have used it online.

If you encounter any issues, have concerns, or questions, please reach out to R51 on Discord, via the forums, or via email for assistance. As we always say, there are web professionals behind the running of this site, and we'll always answer questions about how things work here and even what you can do to keep your accounts secure elsewhere.

It's nearly 2024 and we probably don't need to tell you this, but now's the time to make sure you're not reusing passwords. If your password was unique to CoN, then we still suggest you change it but you don't have much else to worry about. If you have used your CoN password elsewhere, this is still a good time to make a change for the better. We will continue to look out for your account as best we can, and if you meet us halfway, we'll all be in good shape for the future.

Caves of Narshe Reaches 25 Years Old

Mon, 1 Aug 2022 22:57:07 GMT

I'll spare everyone a long-winded update given that I'm now a day late and still recovering from traveling with a summer cold: you may well have noticed that yesterday, July 31, marked the 25th anniversary of Caves of Narshe. It's plainly obvious that many of the strengths of this humble site that kept it going for so long have waned, but I know well how loved our core content remains, though perhaps its audience has dwindled over time.

As always, I want to thank everyone who reads this at any point for their support, either implied or expressed, over the years. I am still happy to keep the lights on around here because of it, and because I know that we provide things that you can't find easily elsewhere (and if you can, they probably stole them from us, the rogues). While I'm not cranking out the new fancy stuff very often these days, and when I am it might be a shade on the dry, techy side, you all should know that if you're reading this we remain of a community and I am thrilled to have my place in it with you all. Or at least most of you all. A lot of you are pretty weird, truth be told.

I have missed out on being able to provide a lot of pomp and circumstance for this big milestone, and I wish I'd done better, but I always hope for the best. I did design a new take on our logo, as I have for every big anniversary since the tenth. As I usually do, I will probably document the design process over at my own blog and will crosspost it here when I do. If you like the golden watercolor, I did manage to make it also into an image that will class up your computer, tablet or phone, so go check that out. If you would be interested in having a printed copy of your own, well, I didn't make any to give away this year but post here or come to our Discord server and make your interest known and I will see what I can do in the near future. Or, you know, just post at the site or join Discord and talk with us. We are still game, if you'll pardon the pun.

Oh, dear, I've gone long-winded again. Sorry.

CoN Performance Improvements

Thu, 3 Feb 2022 21:57:20 GMT

It's been quite a long time since I've had anything good to talk about with CoN progress. I'm still trying! I promise! So, with that in mind, I do have a little bit to talk about today that probably isn't the most exciting for most of you reading this but hopefully will still help you enjoy your CoN experience just a bit more.

Starting this past weekend, I've shifted a big chunk of the CoN website into an Amazon Cloudfront CDN. This should mean pretty much nothing to you readers out there - if I did my job correctly - but it does have some potential benefits. For one, the site should load faster now, particularly in the case of the images we use in our guides and website (and forums!). Additionally, it did give me the opportunity to fix another couple minor bugs that I found while doing the conversion; and, down the road further, this is the first step to making the rest of the site faster and more useful for you people out there using it to complete your games or generally enjoy Final Fantasy.

Of course, this also means that if you see something that's looking weird, I'd appreciate you letting me know. I went hard into the move-fast-and-break-things approach for this, and while I'm pretty sure I didn't do the "break things" part, well, you never know. And, if for some reason you have some curiosity about how exactly I did this and why now, you can always visit my personal blog where I go into a deeper dive.

Thanks for sticking around CoN - we're happy to have you visiting, using our resources, and in fact reading this!

Regalia Champion Crowned: Play This on Eos

Tue, 2 Jan 2018 02:50:48 GMT

Happy new year, CoN friends and Final Fantasy music fans; with 2018 upon us, we now know how the 2017 Regalia Music Playlist Championship ended up! In a pretty big blowout for the final, Balance is Restored, the Final Fantasy VI ending theme, took honors over Liberi Fatali from Final Fantasy VIII. Here's how the top five songs sorted out at the end of it all:Balance is Restored, Final Fantasy VILiberi Fatali, Final Fantasy VIIITrisection, Final Fantasy TacticsCorridors of Time, Chrono TriggerChrono Trigger (Crono's Theme), Chrono Trigger
Obviously, this was a very different tournament from the last one many years ago; we nominated songs differently, we included many more games and songs in the final bracket, and of course we had the neato Regalia website to help manage it all. For all that, we definitely ended up with a very different set of tracks fighting to the end, but we still ended up with one thing the same as last time around: an epic Final Fantasy VI song at the top of the heap.

Because of how differently things played out in the songs, we had a very tight race for our prizes. Only seven people even managed to get any of the songs that ended up in the top five, and of those, only one person got two songs, and that same person was the only person to get one of the songs exactly right (it was Liberi Fatali in second, for the curious). That person, our winner, is AltheaValara! Congratulations to her! Second and third place could not be separated at all, as they each got the second-best predictions for each most closely predicting the final position of Corridors of Time, so they will each get the second-place prize should they so choose. Those two people are Glenn Magus Harvey and Sherick.

Thanks to everyone who nominated, predicted, and voted along the way. I hope you all had a good time, and all the best to you and everyone at CoN for 2018!

Regalia Phase 2 Underway: Enter to Win Prizes!

Mon, 9 Oct 2017 19:52:11 GMT

Earlier today, I shut down the nomination phase. Sorry to those who were too lazy to get it done! It's possible you might not have gotten your favorite song in to the top sixty-four nominations by missing out, but it's okay, because now it's time for the second phase, and it's much faster to do this one and it's the part where you can win prizes.

https://regalia.cavesofnarshe.com/ is still where it's at. If you go back today, you'll see something similar to before, but now there are only sixty-four songs to choose from, and you only choose five. The new list is alphabetized, so that nobody has any idea which songs were most popular - from that list, you choose, in order, which ones you think will be the top five after everyone votes on the matchups which will be coming soon. Once you submit your list, you're entered to win the prizes we showed a month ago!

We'll leave this phase open until at least November 1, after which we'll get the voting started. Please remember to share to social media after you make your picks, because everyone everywhere can still play, whether they nominated or not!

I'll post the list of sixty-four as a subsequent comment to this news post for folks who want to see it before making their picks.

Climb In: The Regalia Playlist Championship Only on CoN!

Fri, 1 Sep 2017 19:08:57 GMT

Way, way back, back in the day, a hundred years, it seems that way, CoN did the "Final Fantasy Music CoNtest." Really, though, we last did a smackdown here at CoN to pick the best Final Fantasy music seven years ago, and it was a smash. But, there have been several more games in the main Final Fantasy series since then, and we figure it's high time to take a shot at it again, especially in light of the series' 30th anniversary and CoN's 20th anniversary this year.

So, here's the setup: Noctis and friends from Final Fantasy XV have a pretty serious sound system in their car, the Regalia. So many musical options that there's no telling what to play next, so they're going to need some help figuring out what's best. And that's where we come in, by visiting https://regalia.cavesofnarshe.com/ (or on Facebook).

The Regalia PlaylistStarting now, and running through the end of September, everyone out there with a CoN account can pick fifteen songs from Final Fantasy to make up their own preferred playlist. You'll be able to pick from every single numbered entry in the series, including the MMOs, with a couple bonus games that CoN covers to boot (Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics, of course). At the end of September, we'll compile everyone's selections into a 64-song knockout tournament by which we'll determine the best songs from the last thirty years for Noctis to load up as he travels across Eos.

We can discuss the knockout when we get there, so let's dive a little more in to the nomination process starting now. As I mentioned, everyone with a CoN account can go to https://regalia.cavesofnarshe.com/ or the tab on our Facebook page to nominate fifteen songs. They're organized by game, and every one has a listen link so you can familiarize yourself with the song again if you can't quite remember it by name. You can click and drag or doubleclick to add a song to your list (or tap if you're on your tablet), and click or tap the trash can to remove it from the list. You can also click and drag to reorder your list as you make it, but once you submit with the green checkmark, you're locked in.

List the songs in your preferred order, because higher rankings are worth more when we do the seeding. The song you pick for the number one slot is worth 15 ranking points, and the song you choose at #15 is worth just one. Our tournament seedings will be based on the overall ranking points earned by every person's picks, so make sure you give the highest spots in your list to the songs you most badly want to see in the tournament.

Around October 1, we'll shut down the nomination process and take some time to rank all the songs that got nominated to come up with a final bracket of 64. After that, the voting will begin and you all will have the opportunity to vote your favorite nominees to the top. At the end of it all, we'll have a brand-spanking-new 2017 version of the best Final Fantasy song of all time. Or close enough.

The Regalia CoNtestOnce we have our 64 candidates based on your submissions, the contest starts! You'll have a couple weeks to look over the 64 top tracks, and pick what you think the top five will be. People who make those picks will be graded for accuracy once all of the votes have been tallied and we have our winner. We'll compare each person's guesses to the final results, and the top three most accurate players will win prizes:A signed set of illustrations from Final Fantasy VI through Final Fantasy X by Sarah Childs at Gyzra InkA Gyzra Final Fantasy VI illustration plus a bottle of Wiz' Energizing Elixir from Jones SodaA Gyzra Final Fantasy VI illustrationThese prints are no longer available, nor is the soda, so this is the only place you're likely to ever get your hands on them!

If you've got any questions, let us know now so we can make sure your picks get in. You'll get the chance to start voting in the tournament and making your feelings known about each matchup starting in October, so let's get started! Also let us know if you see song names that are not accurate or awkward - there're over 1700 of them in there so odds are we messed some up along the way!