33 Gampley Tips and Tricks for New and Veteran 75-cap FFXI Players

----
Original post can be found at https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIPrivateServers/comments/i3qq7d/guide_33_gampley_tips_and_tricks_for_new_and/
Massive thank you @nia on discord for allowing this guide to be added to Eden's Wikipedia.
----
Hey everyone, this'll be a long post. I started this out as a script for a Youtube video but I don't have the time anymore to continue recording and editing it so I decided to adapt it into a Reddit post here so that it doesn't get lost. This is going to be geared towards both returning and seasoned players in the FFXI private server scene and is going to be pretty general so that it is applicable regardless of which server you choose to play on (for the most part). So, here it is, 33 gameplay tips and tricks for 75-cap FFXI servers:
==1. Signet Accuracy and Evasion==
Tip one: while it is widely understood that Signet gives you conquest points and crystals when fighting, did you know that Signet also gives you accuracy and evasion when fighting monsters that are the same level or lower level than you? You will gain these bonuses when fighting a monster that checks as TW/EP/DC/EM. This only applies to the target you are currently engaged with and gives a bonus of 15 evasion and 15 defense. You can see this yourself if you open your character sheet in the equipment menu and checking your defense before and after engaging a monster while having Signet on. This will only apply to Signet and not to the ToAU or WotG equivalents: Sanction or Sigil.
==2. Spend your CP==
For tip #2, speaking of conquest points, don't forget to spend them. This is an extra boost of income for newer players that you get pretty much for free since you'll getting EXP anyway. When you start out you'll be rank 1 and the rank 1 items are not that great. I'd recommend doing the rank missions to get to rank 2 pretty quickly, you can do them at level 10 pretty easily for every nation. The rank 2 items cost 2000 conquest points and the most desirable ones from each nation tend to be
W: Merc. Knife (conquest ranking 2nd+ place)
W: Merc. Hachimaki
B: Decurion's Shield (conquest ranking 1st place)
B: Decurion's Dagger (conquest ranking 2nd+ place)
S: Royal Spearman's Spear
S: Royal Spearman's Horn (conquest ranking 2nd+)
but be sure to visit the auction house to check the going rate for all of the point items available to you and make the decision what will net you the most gil OR if you see something that you like for your job you can spend points and keep it. When you get to rank 3 later it will open up more items to spend points on (like the desirables: M.C. Belt, Cent. Sword, R.S. Mufflers) so definitely keep that in mind. If you do not know where to spend your points, it's the same NPCs that give you signet, the guards in your home nation that stand at the gates to the wilderness areas.
If you ever want to reference the conquest point item lists without having to be at the gate, the following wiki pages will help you out:
Bastok Conquest Points Items
San d'Oria Conquest Points Items
Windurst Conquest Points Items
==3. +2 Accuracy = +1% Hit Rate==
During the first tip I mentioned an accuracy boost for having Signet on. If you do not know how accuracy works, every +2 accuracy is 1% hit rate bonus. Every 1 point of evasion your target has is -1 accuracy for you. When accuracy and evasion are exactly equal, the attacker has a 75% chance to hit the target. If an attacker has 110 accuracy and his target has 100 evasion, the chance to hit is 80%.
Every level difference between two entities is also + or - 2% hit rate. For example, if you are fighting a monster 5 levels above you, you take a -10% hit rate penalty down to 65% rate if acc and eva are equal.
This should give more clarity on what an item does when you come by it and see the the accuracy or evasion stat on it. For example, on the very popular Battle Gloves when you see the +3 accuracy and +3 evasion stats on it, it should come to mind now that what these gloves are giving you is +1.5% hit rate against monsters and -1.5% hit rate for the monsters against you.
This should also give clarity on why it feels like Incredibly Tough (IT) monsters can feel so evasive in EXP parties. At the lower levels, monsters that check as IT in EXP camps are typically about 7-10 levels above your party. I'm going to use the number 8 as an easy, round number to work with... what this means is that before accuracy and evasion are even considered, your base hit rate against an EXP party mob post-level-penalty is going to be about 75% - 8*2% or 59%. That's not a great rate at all and the only significant way to compensate for it is to build up your accuracy stat. This is why accuracy is so important in EXP groups.
There is a hard floor and hard cap to any player or monster's hit rate. The minimum possible hit rate is 20% and the maximum is 95%. Getting a metric on what your hitrate is during a fight can be done using the Deeps plugin which will be discussed more in tip 12.
==4. STR, DEX and AGI affect combat stats==
For this tip, some of the core stats affect your combat stats. STR affects attack. Every point of STR is +0.5 attack for one-handed weapons and +0.75 attack for two-handed weapons (this two-handed setting may differ from server to server but this is the most popular setting). Every point of DEX is +0.5 accuracy for one-handed weapons and 0.75 accuracy for two-handed weapons. Every point of AGI is +0.5 evasion. A good example of these stats in action is in the item Emperor Hairpin which has +3 DEX, +3 AGI and +10 evasion:
For one-handed users, the total bonuses work out to be:
+1.5 Accuracy (this is +0.75% hit rate!)
+11.5 Evasion (remember, this is the native +10 but with the AGI bonus factored in as well)
For two-handed users:
+2.25 Accuracy (this is +1.125% hit rate!)
+11.5 Evasion
Now, since +4 DEX/AGI = +2 acc/eva = +/- 1% hit rate, then, transitively, you can think of every 4 DEX equalling +1% hit rate and every 4 AGI equalling -1% hit rate for your target against you.
Another thing to note is that your 3-letter stats are often modifiers for weapon skills and that DEX is a modifier for Thief's Trick Attack (+1 DEX = +1 flat damage for TA if THF is main job) and AGI is a modifier for Thief's Sneak Attack (+1 AGI = +1 flat damage for SA if THF is main job).
Each weapon skill has its own stat ratios which can be found individually on the wiki. For example, Fast Blade has a 20% modifier on both STR and DEX so if you have 40 STR and 50 DEX, you are getting 40*0.2+50*0.2 which is a +18 DMG stat bonus added onto the DMG listed on your weapon for the damage calculation of this skill. The application of these stats for magical weapon skills works a bit differently and will not be covered here. Take note that there is an "oldid" in the URL linked for Fast Blade on the wiki. With the release of Adoulin, all weapon skill modifiers were changed which is outside the scope of 75-cap... so to get accurate information you'll need an older version of the wiki page. More on that in a minute.
In addition to aaaaalll this, STR in particular has one more bonus and applies to all physical weapon skills: every +4 STR is equal to +1 weapon damage for weapon skill and normal attack calculation. This, on top of the fact that STR also gives +attack and is very frequently listed on weapon skills as their modifier, is the main reason that the strategy of stacking absurd amounts of STR is so popular when you get to higher levels. At this point I don't think anyone needs to guess to figure out which stat was SE's special favorite. As a disclaimer, this mechanic is a bit more nuanced than +4 STR = +1 DMG and there is a cap to this bonus based on your weapon rank but for new and intermediate players... don't worry about it too much. If you want to read more on it, the article is here.
In conclusion, STR = damage, DEX = accuracy. For ranged attacks, it's STR = ranged damage, AGI = ranged accuracy. Notice it is AGI instead for ranged weapon accuracy. This is why you'll often see rangers wearing a pair of Drone Earrings. That combined +6 AGI is equating to +1.5% to ranged hit rate and +1.5 to Sidewinder's weapon damage calculation (that WS has a 25% AGI modifier) which is really good for ear-slot equipment.
==5. FFXI Wiki==
Only applicable if Eden's wiki is lacking the info you need
Tip number 5 is going to be your most valuable resource on Final Fantasy XI information for quests, items, missions, maps, monsters, just about everything. You can visit FFXIclopedia (often referred to as the wiki) and type whatever article you need into the search bar at the top right. Whenever you run into a roadblock and find yourself stuck on anything in the game chances are the wiki will be able to help you.
The best feature of the wiki that you will be utilizing constantly is the History button which will let you see a snapshot of any page from past edits. The History button can be found at the far right in a drop down right next to Edit, see this picture if you can't find it. From there, pick the revision you need (refer to following paragraph). At the bottom you can change the view to show 500 entries at a time if the date doesn't go back far enough. For an example of how the History feature can keep you from getting incorrect information, as you can see on the normal Ranger page it shows A+ archery but if we go to a mid-2007 revision then it will correctly tell me A- (accurate to 75-cap FFXI) and also all those level 99 cap abilities and such are gone and out of the way.
==6. Combat Skill==
Keep your combat skill up! If you are a warrior using a great axe, try to skill up your great axe as much as possible before joining a group. If you are a thief using a dagger, skill that up. Skill will only go up so far when fighting Easy Prey only so it will be a good idea to seek out a few, harder fights on Decent Challenge or Even Match before heading out to Valkurm Dunes or Qufim Island or wherever so that your skill will catch up some more.
Combat skill is the biggest factor that decides how effective you are as a fighter when playing as a physical damage class in a party. The reason for this is that each of your weapon's combat skill is +1 attack and +1 accuracy. This means if you show up to a group and are 15 skillups away from the cap, you are at a -15 attack and -15 accuracy disadvantage to someone else who has their skill up to cap for that level which is absolutely huge. One small caveat: for combat skill past 200, each point gives you +0.9 attack and accuracy instead of +1.0 each.
A huge consequence of this relationship for fresh 75 characters is that combat skill merits are insanely important and you want to dump points into them before other merits in most cases. Each merit into a combat skill increases it by 2 and maxes out at +16 so once you upgrade it eight times you are earning yourself a bonus of +14.4 attack and +14.4 accuracy at the relatively low cost of 210k limit points... WOW!
==7. Food is essential!==
For anyone past level 10, if you are fighting whether solo or in a party, but especially in a party, always use food! It is a massive damage boost so as soon as you can afford it I would pick up some Meat Jerky to start (you can find it on basic merchants in every starter city for cheap) and upgrade later to accuracy food or Meat Mithkabobs (found on the auction house). Newer players, I encourage to test this yourself and go out and fight a monster without food, use a piece of meat jerky and notice the damage difference. It is very noticeable.
If you are unsure when it is a good time in your levelling journey to upgrade from Jerkies to Kabobs, check your stats in your equipment menu BEFORE using food and AFTER the party's level sync is applied. Meat Jerky's attack bonus will cap out at 136 pre-food attack so if you have 137 or more attack, it's going to be a good idea to snack on the Kabobs instead.
If you are having accuracy issues, Jack-o'-Lantern is good in the Dunes only and other accuracy food is pretty expensive. Bream Sushi (RoTZ, CoP, ToAU servers) and Crab Sushi (WotG servers) seem to be the cheapest and if you are willing to spend more cash, just take a look around in the Seafood section on the auction house.
If you are primarily using ranged attacks instead, Sausage is the main cheap early-game ranged attack food that can be found on Bastok NPCs for 140 gil each. Later on, Coeurl Subs are the best for ranged attack. At higher levels, Rangers get a ton of free ranged accuracy from gear from things such as Archer's Knives, a Ranger's Necklaces and Hunter's Jerkins so I'd stay away from food that gives only ranged accuracy such as sushi. If you do need to mix in a bit of ranged accuracy though, Flounder Meuniere provides a good mix for the early levels and Pot-au-feu (WotG servers only) provides a good mix for the later levels after Flounder caps out.
For mages, Ginger Cookies are great from 10 to 75 for regaining MP. For BLM, you will have better success with baked pies such as Rolanberry Pie for the added INT.
==8. INT, MND and Resistance==
If you mages are feeling left out so far, don't worry, I've got you covered. For this tip, each point of INT will increase the damage of elemental magic by exactly one point unless you've reached enough INT to reach the soft cap, at which point every point of INT afterward is +0.5 damage. This soft cap depends on your target's INT and is generally not reached against monsters much higher level than you (VT, IT) without the aid of level 70+ equipment, so it's safe to ignore the soft cap before then for grouping and just consider +1 INT = +1 spell damage. INT also affects the magic accuracy of most black magic, including all elemental magic. So it sort of double dips for elemental magic, increasing both damage and accuracy. This is why the stat is so crucial for Black Mage.
Magic accuracy affects the resistance rate of spells. If you don't know how resist works, any spell can be half, quarter, eighth or full resisted. On status spells like Rasp, it is the duration that is either halved or quartered and such. For damage spells, it is the damage that gets halved, quartered and so on. Most status spells, including Slow, Blind, Sleep, Paralyze and Bind either take full duration or half duration; any resists beyond a quarter will count as a full resist, causing the spell to not stick at all. This means a spell like Sleep can only ever land for 60 seconds, land for 30 seconds, or just get resisted. Lullaby is a bit of a weird exception and will always land for 30 seconds if it's not resisted.
MND works in a very similar way, increasing Banish damage by one point per point of MND and increasing magic accuracy of most white magic spells. MND has very little effect on cures mostly due to the ease of hitting the soft cap on the HP restored formula. Cure V is an exception here due to its lack of soft cap: no matter what, every +1 MND equates to about +1.4 HP restored for this spell. On the other Cure spells, MND is pretty negligible. For the most part, the main reason a White Mage would want MND gear in the earlier levels would be to increase the magic accuracy of Slow and Paralyze.
One last very interesting thing is that MND and INT will actually increase your resistance to their respective status effects and magic nukes if you are on the receiving end of the spell. If you are instead being hit by a monster TP move, the modifier will always be INT, even if the status effect is typically associated with white magic, like Chaotic' Eye's Silence (Coeurls) or Palsy Pollen's Paralyze (Flytraps), and so on. They will roll with your INT as the modifier. It is rare for anyone to ever itemize MND or INT just for resistance but it is something to note and may be something you keep in mind now for jobs that have a low base MND or INT.
==9. Resting MP Ticks==
After you first sit down to rest, the first tick of MP will come in at 20 seconds and then every tick after will be 10 seconds apart. This is something that healers can use much to their advantage to get in extra MP here and there when needed which can really add up. For example, if one of your party members needs a cure while you are resting and you are 7 seconds into the current tick, consider waiting that extra 3 seconds to get another, say, 20 MP before you get up and toss the cure if it's not an emergency. But if you just sat down 4 seconds ago and your next tick is going to be 16 seconds away you may want to get up regardless. Always consider the current situation at hand with the monster your team is fighting to make the call when you need to stand up from resting to cast spells. Early and mid game WHM is a lot about how well you manage your rest cycles. As for how much MP you actually get per 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. tick, below is a link to the article that shows the exact values along the right side of the page.
Clear Mind
==10. Mog Wardrobes==
Use your Mog Wardrobes!!! Most 75-cap private servers have these enabled (Nasomi has Sack/Satchel instead). If you do not know what these are, they are extra storage options in your mog house at the very bottom and they can only be used to store equippable items. The unusual thing about them though is that they can be accessed from anywhere in Vana'diel. Out in the field, open your minus-key menu and then hit the right key and go to view house and you'll be able to move your equipment freely back and forth.
The biggest boon from the wardrobe system however is your ability to equip your items directly from your wardrobes instead of from your inventory. This frees up 16 slots from your main inventory which alone is huge. In your equipment screen after you select one of the slots, hit the storage options button at the very top to change the equip view from current inventory to a wardrobe slot instead.
Mog wardrobes are conveniently auto-detected when using equip macros, meaning /equip main "Light Staff" will look in all your wardrobes for a light staff to equip, and the macro will not break later if you move that staff to other wardrobes or your inventory. The same goes for equipsets.
Some servers may require you to unlock your Mog Wardrobes before you can use them. On the Eden 75-cap private server in particular, Mog Wardrobes must be unlocked by completing content: getting Mog Wardrobe 1 by achieving rank 3 in your nation and Mog Wardrobe 2 by achieving rank 6 in your nation.
==11. 60 FPS==
Next up are a few tips for Ashita which is a loader for Final Fantasy XI that lets it run in windowed mode and to connect to private server IP addresses. If you use Windower there are alternate ways to use plugins for Windower to achieve the same effects. For tip 11 we have FPS. By default, FFXI runs at the choppy 30 frames per second. The game was originally designed to run at this rate but this plugin allows you to up the framerate to a smoother 60 per second by typing in "/fps 1" into your game's chat line and hitting enter.
==12. Deeps==
Deeps is a basic damage parser that will show accumulated damage over a parse and percentage of contribution for nearby players. Once downloaded through Ashita in the plugins tab, type "/load deeps" in game and "/dps reset" to start a new parse. The window can be moved by holding the shift key and dragging it with the mouse.
The most powerful part of Deeps in my opinion is the ability to see your hit rate percentages on attacks and weapon skills. When you have had a parse going for long enough to have a decent sample size, you can click on the damage bar for yourself (or anyone in your party) to see a damage breakdown. From there, click on either "attacks" or the weapon skill you have been using. Right click will take the menu back one step. This will give a metric on what percentage of swings have missed, hit, or scored a critical. This is VERY useful for adjusting your build or changing up bard/corsair/food buffs. If your miss rate is around 5% (within reasonable margin of error due to sample size) then you are likely at or beyond the accuracy cap, meaning that some of the accuracy you have in your build is going to waste and can be traded out for more haste, attack or STR. As a physical damage dealer, do not let this important tool go to waste!
==13. Recast==
Probably the most game changing will be the recast plugin. Normally the only way to check your magic and ability cooldowns is by checking the menu or by making dedicated recast macros per ability/spell. With this plugin you'll be able to see all of your cooldowns in real time on the screen. Like before, it can be moved by holding the shift key and dragging it.
That's all for Ashita plugins but I'd encourage you to read through the plugins list in Ashita itself to see what else you might put to good use. Be sure though to check the rules of the server you are playing on -- not all plugins or addons may be allowed within server rules.
==14. Equipsets==
Next up are a couple tips related to your macro bars. #14 covers equipsets. You may or may not already be familiar with changing your equipment through macros that use "/equip" for each individual piece. Well, now there is a much easier way to do it within the game client. In your minus key menu under macros there is a second button here called equipsets, hit that and you will have an entire book of equipment sets that you can edit and save. Each one is a snapshot of all sixteen equipment slots and once you have one set up, you can put into a macro in simply one line "/equipset 1" to equip that set and it will update all sixteen slots to match it. Equipsets will automatically detect where that piece is located so if you move gear between your different wardrobes or inventory then it will not break the set.
==15. Inline Wait Command==
Some macro'd actions cannot be used consecutively without a delay between them (i.e. Boost, then Combo) which can be remedied with a "/wait 1" line between them, however this limits your macro to only using up to three lines instead of six. Sometime down the line, Square added the functionality of an inline wait command at the end of any line using the angled brackets. There are a few applications where this is immensely useful, such as this lastsynth macro that will set up your character to automatically craft for two minutes straight without any additional input while you do something else. The macro for that would look like:
/lastsynth <wait 23>
/lastsynth <wait 23>
/lastsynth <wait 23>
/lastsynth <wait 23>
/lastsynth <wait 23>
/lastsynth <wait 23>
==16. Keyboard Shortcuts==
Tip #16 -- did you know there are several keyboard shortcuts for some of the most used actions and windows in the game? You can use
CTRL+A to engage an attack
CTRL+W to open the weapon skill menu
CTRL+J to open the job ability menu
CTRL+B to open the pet commands menu
CTRL+I to open your inventory window
CTRL+E to open your equipment window and
CTRL+R to reply to the last tell received
Another neat thing is that every single one of these CTRL shortcuts will also work if you use the ALT key.
==17. Aspect Ratio==
Now for a few tips within your Final Fantasy game settings. If you first loaded into the game and felt like the game is stretched lengthwise, that's because it is. The default setting for the game is an aspect ratio of 4:3 which was the most common monitor aspect ratio in the early and mid 2000s so, for tip 18, you can go into your Config menu under Misc. 2 and change the ratio to better match your monitor. 16:9 is the most common nowadays so it is likely the option you'll want to choose. The Config menu can be found by double tapping the minus key to get the second page of the minus key menu.
==18. Auto Sort==
Tip 18 will be the auto sort function inside Config under Gameplay. The default setting is off which means your inventory will fill with loot one slot at a time until it is at max, even if the items are able to stack on top of each other. Enabling this setting makes it so every time an item enters your inventory it will automatically sort and stack if possible. It is something you cannot live without in my opinion.
==19. Tell Notifications==
A decent bit of Final Fantasy 11 is going to be seeking party with your invite flag up and you might be AFK or tabbed out for a lot of that. For tip 19, did you know you can safely alt+tab out of the game and not have to check back constantly for invites? In the Config menu under Chat Filters there is an extra option to turn on a sound notification that plays when you get a tell. Find "Tell" in the long list of chat channels, hover over it and then keep pressing enter until you see the musical note. You can test it by sending a tell to yourself if you want to hear what it sounds like. Be careful though, this sound will ONLY play if you tab out of the game from windowed mode but if you MINIMIZE the game it will turn off all sound from the game. If you alt-tabbed out of the game in the proper way, you should still hear footsteps of people running by and general background noise. You can actually turn the in-game sound setting all the way down and you will still get a full-volume tell ping if this bothers you. Which leads into the next step...
==20. Don't Use <call>==
Please, never use <call> or <call1> or <call2> or any of the very jarring call sounds for that matter. This is a courtesy for the people in your party. The reason for this is that they ignore the in-game sound slider. If you leave the sound settings in-game alone but adjust the windows sound it will sound normal... but some people do it the other way around -- they leave the windows sound maxed and use the in-game sliders. Since calls ignore the slider and always play at max volume, if you ALSO have windows sound maxed too it is insanely loud and will destroy the eardrums of headphone users. In general, use calls sparingly, and if you want to use one, use one of the softer sounding ones like <call14> or <call20> or <call21>. And if you did not know you can test what each one sounds like using party chat even when playing solo. They go up to 21.
==21. Avatar Blur Effect==
Next up is a rather niche tip mostly for SMNs. When you summon an avatar you'll notice a really pixelated glow effect around the edges of your avatar. This effect happens because, for whatever reason, the blur effect is locked at rendering at the game's native resolution and you are running the game at a higher resolution. You can turn this off by typing "/localsettings blureffect off". This will make the avatar look much cleaner in my opinion. You can turn it back on by just doing the same thing but just typing "on" instead. This is also insanely useful in Dynamis if you are getting a lot of framerate lag during a pull with a lot of summoner monsters that have their avatar out... the blur effect is the culprit for the lag.
==22. Aggro Detection Ranges==
Many monsters across Vana'Diel are aggressive towards the player, most often by sight or by sound, as long as they check to the player as "Easy Prey" or higher. At higher levels, the lower end of Easy Prey will no longer aggro you. For tip 22, I'd reccommend picking up the distance plugin in Ashita to better understand the detection ranges I am about to mention. The maximum detection range for monsters detecting by sight is 15 yalms and the maximum detection range for monsters detecting by sound is 8 yalms. However, if you are a ninja or have ninja as your sub job and you have the accompanying stealth job trait learned at level 5 ninja, the sight detection range is reduced from 15 to 12 and the sound detection range is reduced from 8 to 5. Definitely keep these numbers handy next time you're trying to path around aggressive monsters in tight spaces. Keep in mind also that there is a minor lag in player/monster position in FFXI so where you see the mob in your game is where it actually was about half a second ago. It's the same reason that players have trouble initiating battle with a melee attack on a monster that is moving around.
==23. Running Ahead of Moving Monsters==
This is a quick one. Due to the lag mentioned above, if you want to hit a moving monster, you can run in front of it while facing the same direction it is moving in to land your first hit.
==24. Jobemotes==
You may be familiar with some common emotes such as /wave /bow and /clap. For tip 24 there are also additional emotes you get when you unlock each job. There is one for every single job and they can be used with the command "/jobemote job" such as /jobemote whm or /jobemote war. It's just a little extra bit of cosmetic fun added to the game and adds to the social aspect of the game which is always a bonus. Also in case you did not know, you can find a list of all the normal emotes in the minus key menu under Communication and then Emote List. /jump is the only one that does not work on private servers.
==25. Displayhead==
For 25, just a quick stylistic tip. If you have a helmet on that covers your character's face or just in general doesn't really match the rest of your armor, you can type "/displayhead off" to turn off your helmet or headgear display without taking off that piece of armor and losing its stats.
==26. Skillchains with FFcalc==
Skillchains in Final Fantasy are one of the many cooperation mechanics that encourage you to coordinate with your party members. Certain weapon skills can be performed in succession for a skillchain that does bonus damage. This works off of each weapon skill having its own skillchain properties that are each associated with an element and when certain elements are mixed it will result in one of the many types of skillchains. Knowing exactly which skills will chain with which other skills can be pretty confusing. There are some charts you can find if you search around online but for this tip I am going to be recommending a very useful third party program that will help immensely with planning skillchains. It is called FFcalc and can be downloaded here:
http://www.ffxicalculator.com/
Extract everything to a folder and then open the .exe and click the skillchain tab. In the first drop down at the top left, put your own weapon and in the second drop down put your party member's weapon. On the right side, uncheck "Empyrean" and "Merit" weapon skills (they are not 75-cap) and most likely "Relic" as well unless someone has a relic weapon. After that, it gives you a simple list of all the skillchains you can perform with your party member if you go in this order (i.e. Dagger into Sword). If you swap the order (i.e. Sword into Dagger) it's possible to get entirely different results. Level 1 skillchains deal 50% bonus damage, level 2 skillchains deal 75% bonus damage and level 3 deal 100% bonus damage. Continuing a chain with additional skills will add another force multiplier, dealing even more damage than this.
==27. Statistics Calculator==
For tip #27 we have another external tool, this one is a website instead of a program so it is easier. Just go to this link here:
http://ffxi-stat-calc.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/ffxistats.cgi
This is a stat calculator that will tell you the base stats of a character of any given level, race and job combination. This is immensely useful when planning out what your starting race will be and how your sub job affects what your stats are for whatever main job you choose to go with. It will give you information on things like how much HP a Galka PLD will have over an Elvaan PLD... how much INT/MP a Tarutaru BLM will have over a Hume BLM... or how much AGI/DEX you gain playing a Mithra THF over a Hume THF. Your race choice is PERMANENT in Final Fantasy and on top of that each race actually has pretty substantial stat difference from other races. If you are stuck on being unsure what exactly those stat differences will be when trying to plan out what character you want to create, this website is 100% going to be a huge help.
==28. Searching by Area==
Tip 28, if you see multiple people with their flags up and plan to build an EXP party, make sure a camp spot is open before starting. Many people are going to be familiar with the common comands /sea and /sea all but there is also a search window in the minus key menu that will let you check any area in the game as long as you've visited it at least once. If you know the area's "short name" you can search it up by the chat command as well. Some common ones you may want to get familiar with will be /sea Valkurm, /sea ZiTah, /sea Qufim, /sea YuhtunJng, /sea Bhaflau, /sea Wajaom, /sea MtZhayolm, /sea . This way you can check if a spot is taken. If you see a party there but unsure where they are at... the party leader's name will be marked in yellow so give them a /tell.
==29. Provoke is All VE==
This tip is focused on Provoke which is the primary enmity-controlling ability, at least in the early and mid levels. If you are a tank and are not a Warrior, likely you are subbing Warrior solely to get this ability. Provoke is ONLY "Volatile Enmity" meaning 1/30th of its effect fades off every second so it is fully gone by 30 seconds when the ability is back off its cooldown. What this means to you as the tank or off-tank is that Provoke is at its highest usefulness the moment it is used and for several seconds afterward since it starts fading immediately. For this reason it is important to NEVER Provoke a monster while it is bound or sleeping -- you are wasting the best part of your Provoke's effects. Again, to clarify, a Provoke that happened 30 seconds ago has absolutely zero effect on enmity. Keep this info in mind when using Provoke to control the pace of a fight for your party.
==30. AH Slight Undercutting==
This one is a bit controversial since some people despise undercutters but I'm going to cover it since I'm not one of those people and I feel it'll answer a common new player question of "why won't my items sell?" The AH is really basic -- the lowest price item will always sell first regardless of list date of any of the listed items. If a sword is listed at a rate of exactly once every day for 4,950 and is sold at the exact same rate of one per day while a few other ones sit up for 5,000, then the higher priced ones will never be sold due to their price. Because of this simple system, sellers who have an intent to list for a price, like 5,000, will list for slightly under to get the item to sell faster, like 4,950, 4,901 or 4,999 so it is within your interest as a competitor to do the same to get your own items to sell. If there is enough competition for people to sell their items before others, you can take advantage of this as a buyer and put in bids for numbers like 4,800 which might fail but maybe you'll get some hits with 4,900. Once enough sell at 4,900 the price history will basically say "this item is worth 4,900 not 5,000" and the process could continue if there is still competition at the lower price. This is pretty much the basics of how prices fluctuate on the auction house. If you've had something listed for a week or more you may want to go back and check on the price again -- you might need to relist for lower.
==31. Camera Control==
Next up are a few camera tricks using the shift key on the keyboard. When you are locked onto a monster with the H key, your arrow keys go from turning the camera to selecting options in the battle menu. You can hold down the shift key while locked to allow usage of the arrow keys to adjust the camera angle. Once you let go of shift you are back to the menu options. Another neat quirk about the shift key is when you are running around out of battle your camera naturally recenters itself behind your character. You can hold the shift key to stop it from doing that. It's useful for taking cinematic shots and also useful if you are trying to avoid aggro and need the camera pointed in the direction where you need to see enemy monsters while you are moving around.
The game starts with the camera zoomed in patially. You can use the comma key to zoom all the way out for a wider field of view, or the period key to zoom in further. Also, the Home key will quickly recenter the camera directly behind your character.
==32. Monster TP==
For tip 32, the way monsters gain and use TP is much different from players. Monsters have a TP gauge that starts at 0 and fills up to 3000 just like players, but they will only use TP moves when they reach the full 3000 points. This changes, however, once the mob hits 25% hp or lower, where it enters sort of a rage mode, using its TP moves immediately once it has at least 1000 TP. This can have the effect of often making the TP moves very predictable in EXP parties since a mob will typically have around 2000~2500 TP at 30% so if it drops to 25% it will use its move right then which will help you time your defensive abilities or even preventative abilities and spells such as stunning or sleeping the monster right at 25% to interrupt its move. Whether the mob consistently uses a move at 25% or not is going to depend on your own party's damage output and weapon type since one handed weapons will feed TP faster. If you did not know, while players get a negligible amount of TP when hit, monsters get much more TP when they get hit. The amount of TP a monster gets when you hit it is the same amount you got for hitting it, plus 30. So if I strike with a Brass Dagger, I get 50 TP but the monster gets 80 TP, meaning it gets TP at 80/50 or 160% of the rate that I do. If I strike with a Greataxe instead, I get 137 TP but the monster gets 167 TP, meaning it gets TP at 167/137 or 122% of the rate that I do. This constant +30 per hit is why faster-attacking one-handed weapons feed TP much more.
==33. Checkparam==
For the 33rd and final tip of this post, you can see extra information about your character that isn't normally displayed on your equip screen character sheet through the use of /checkparam <me>. The me is in angled brackets. This will let you most importantly see your accuracy, ranged accuracy, ranged attack, and evasion stats that are normally invisible to you. Don't know if you are hitting the bonus cap on a ranged attack food? Now you can check. Unsure of how much accuracy or evasion you're adding with the bard songs Madrigal and Mambo? Now you can test it out. Another neat trick you can do with this command is put <pet> in angled brackets instead to see your pet stats on any pet job. This is particularly useful to see what level your summoned jug pet is as a beastmaster.
And that is everything. I had to cut quite a few tips (the original video script had 45) and many URLs due to Reddit's 40k character limit. Maybe in the future I can get into those on other posts. If there was something here you don't understand or something missing you were hoping to see, let me know and I'll try to answer questions. I hope this was helpful and enjoyable to read to someone out there,
Category:Guides