Common Myths of FFXIFollow

Quite a lot of players in this game seem to strongly believe in a *lot* of faulty information on how this game works. I wanted to start a topic so that these "myths" on gameplay can be debunked. Here are two of the most common myths I hear players bandying about:

"You're a lower level than I am; you'll drag down my XP."

This is mostly untrue. Actually, it's the opposite; higher-level players will lower the XP that lower-level players get. That's because XP is based on what the monster /checks as to the highest level player in a party. So, 3 20th level party members might find a mob is "Very Tough". But if they have a 25th level player in their party, the XP will be based on his "Easy Prey". You also have an additional XP penalty if you're in a party with a higher level character.

So, adding a lower level player to a party only affects how many ways the XP is split. Adding a *higher*-level to the party can affect the XP gains of everyone lower than him. It's not the party's level spread as much as it is *your* level spread with the high level person in the party.

For more detail on this, read this *excellent* guide to how XP is calculated:

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=171

"If I move my character round and round the monster, I have a better chance of getting a critical hit and evading his attacks"

Untrue. The game does not care (with one *big* exception) where the attacker is in facing. You have the same chance to hit, damage, and critical from any side.

The exception is the Thief. This is what Sneak Attack is all about. A Thief *needs* to have the back of the monster when Sneak Attacking. As a Thief, I cannot tell you the number of times I activated Sneak Attack, only to have a Warrior spin the monster around before I could strike.

If you are a meele fighter partying with a Thief, don't circle the monster! Your party will lose out on a valuable damage dealer. Keep yourself and the other fighters to the front of the mob, and leave the back free for the Thief to Cusinart with their weapons. :)

Note that these points have been addressed in other threads in greater detail. The point of this thread is not to Explain It All. What we want to see is that false assumptions and potentially deadly misinformations are pointed out and hopefully eliminated. So give your favorite knucklehead idea about FFXI, and debunk it!

Edited, Fri Jan 16 17:30:59 2004 by mtknife

Edited, Fri Jan 16 17:31:57 2004 by mtknife

Another one is that pets hurt the party's xp gain, when they actually only hurt the pet user's xp gain.

If someone's inv is full, they are the only one that loses loot. Everyone gets the message however which is why people get confused.

It is disheartening to see items lost at all though.. so remember to sort your packs!! (you can also solve this problem by lots ^^)

The biggest myth about FFXI is that it is good.


Heh J/K guys ^_^

If i got into a party and some fool decided to manual dodge monster in hopes of more hits/ evasion i would either ask for person to leave or leave myself.

It might sound like a good plan if your mildly retarded or live under powerlines but for everyone else its just a pain in the @$$.

Oh, and another thing about bombs. There are things you can do to make the gob drop the bomb. Abilities like shield bash. You can also stun the mob with something like legsweep or weapon bash.

The bomb thing is not entirely a myth. As soon as you see him readying it you have to get as close to him as possible so that he drops it on himself. Any space between you and the gobbie, and it'll go off normally and not hit him. The target of the bomb has to be right on top of him.

Also, people tell others to sort their inventories just because it's better to have the item actually go to someone (even if it's not you) than have it flushed down the toilet into oblivion. Treasure is pretty rare that I'd rather see one person of six get it than none from six. Takes about three seconds to sort your inventory, or if it's totally full, just pass on the items. One person passing on all the items is more efficient than five people casting on everything.

No these don't actually make it drop the bomb. Any paralyze or stun weapon skills you use on it while its readying the bomb will completely stop the bomb toss. Its like a spell that can be interrupted like the above poster said.


As far as running away, well, like any spell I'm sure the bomb explosion has a radius, so if whoever it was being thrown at was able to run far enough away where everyone else in the group was out of the explosion radius, they'd probably take no damage. Its like an AE spell. If you notice on things like the -ga spells, there is no dropoff in damage the further the target is away from the radius. This would be why running away from the center of the blast wouldn't lesson the damage any. Now, if you could actually stay out of the radius of the blast altogether...then it'd probably work.

We tried the following scenario:

Our mages positioned themeselves on a high cliff, right above the mobs, and the tanks went down right below to pull and fight there while the mages would heal and buff and deal damage from above.

This was a good idea since the mob would have to run a long way if the aggroed the mages, unfortunately it turned out to be a bad idea. As soon as the mob aggroed a mage it just went straigt up the vertical 10 meter high cliff and attacked him. We (the tanks) had to run all the way around and just got there in time to get aggro ^^

boost stacks, a reason why it lasts 3 minutes, cools down in 15 minutes.

Boost does stack and be stacked a bunch of times before wearing off. It goes up 5 points if i'm not mistaken but is only good for 1 hit and sometimes doesn't seem to matter much unless you use boost just before using a weapon skill.

Here's an other myth some have believed: job/sbj 'passive abilities'(or 'job traits') stack. They don't

For example:
Pal/War Defense Bonus. A 20Pal/10War only gets one Defense Bonus, not two.
Blm/Rdm Magic Attack Bonus. A (post future update) 80Blm/40Rdm only gets three Magic Attack Bonuses, not five.
Rdm/Whm Clear Mind. A 40Rdm/20Whm only gets one Clear Mind, not two.

I would immagine that a Summoner's Auto Refresh(all the time +mp regain) does stack with Clear Mind(sitting +mp regain) wich is great, and probably was considered into the balancing issue. But does Auto Refresh stack with regular Rdm Refresh? My guess is yes, but not sure.

It wouldn't bother me to be proved wrong btw.

My 2gil.

Edited, Sat Jan 17 22:18:46 2004 by Dasef

I've wasp stinged during a bomb toss and it didn't do anything. Those action don't in themselves stop the bomb, they just do a lot of damage and are very likely to interrupt any special action by the mob.