General Tips for FFXI

[Not Kuno]

Play ffxi like a racing game (the only one's i've ever played are in the mario kart series.) Take the "inside track" to where you want to be:

If you're turning around a corner that bends to the left, hug the left wall.

It may sound stupid, but something as simple as saving a few steps here and there will save you time getting to where you want to go (yay more afk time), and often your life when you're trying to escape a monster. You'll amaze your friends (especially if you're a taru -- SPEEDY TARU!) by following behind then ending up in front.

That explains why my red shells never hit you.

[Amok]

NPC dialog will cause mobs to deaggro you. Useful in the QQ Spy assault and such.

The positive confirmation on almost all dialogs in FFXI are the top option. You can speed up many of these by pressing up>enter as soon as you see the dialog box starting to zoom in.

Think of logging out as a tactic to get past certain places without fighting or just saving your skin.

Level BST, it's a great sub for soloing low level jobs without going through the pain of noob pt's.

[Freysi]

The names of people in your party and ally will appear in your autotranslate list at the very bottom.

I type a lot when I use spells that aren't macroed so I go:

"/ma Viruna Gayname[TAB][UPARROW][ENTER]"

Which translates to:
"/ma Viruna Gaynamethatissillyandlong"

Also, using '*' in a search will give you only people that are in a party:

"/sea all RDM 75 *" = All lvl 75 rdms that are in a party.

Not very useful, but it's undocumented and I found it by accident. Haven't found the oh-so-more-useful "not in party" flag yet.

[Sevilla]

Try to avoid using <bt> as target method. Sometimes it will target the other link and cause a wipe.

A sleep macro I used to have was:

/ma "Sleep" <stnpc>
/p Sleeping <lastst>

All that will do is if you are engaged to an enemy and you sleep another, it will not say you are sleeping the mob you are targetting now with auto attack, rather it will take the last target you did with stnpc. This is also helpful for cure macros (if you insist on having pt chatter) and you always keep your target on the mob (which is good practice, that way you can determine whether you have enough MP or not).

Edit:

Sorry one last thing. If you do use the stnpc tag for macros that will make you change gear, make sure to put the /equip functions after the stnpc. That way you would not lose your target.

[Darkdream]

ok 2 things

1. Don't be that guy: If 5 people are standing at a camp waiting to exp or worse yet waiting to enter Nyzul or other events and one player is taking there sweet time in whitegate or jeuno i promise you the other 5 are getting pissed, so dont be that guy.

2. Even though you may think your cool party speak macros with <call>s in them for every spell, job ability, or moment of boredom are cool...........................their not so please remove them. Party speak macros should only be used to provide information such as fishing a mob or informing your SC partner and MB partner of your TP (not that we SC or MB much in exp anymore but hey occasionally lol).

[Foustian]

Subbing BST will allow you to charm anything that you can charm on main BST at its uncapped level. In other words, if you have a level 75 BST, even if you're on MNK/BST you can charm mobs that you're 75 BST could charm.

Kind of a follow up to something else posted here. Talking to an NPC will freeze time in the game. Any effects on you will not count down while you are in the conversation. These include both debuffs (like poison, elemental DoTs, etc) and buffs (such as Flee). Also, mobs cannot hurt you while you are in the conversation. Note that this only works on extended conversations where you have to hit enter to get out of it.

A mob attacking you will force a skip of any event, such as entering a portal in Limbus or going through a displacement in Riverne. Even if they miss, the attempt itself will interrupt you. For most mobs, however, its possible to time it so that you can perform the event in the span between the mob's attacks.

[Tagus]

I have another one:

A simple AH tip... I read this once a long time ago, so it's out there somewhere but I'm consistently amazed by the number of friends who don't get this, so here you go. If you are trying to sell something on the AH that has a consistent past history and a high number of items for sale, dropping the price by a few gil will move your sale way up on the list. For example...

Let's say you've got 10 stacks of beehive chips that you want to sell on the AH. Upon checking the past history you see that they have been selling for 4k per stack all day, but there are 20 lots for sale. Your inner greed and impatience are battling it out, and you can't decide which to sacrifice for the other. Do I underbid... or sell them for 4k and wait? Well why be only greedy or impatient, when you can be both? If you put your lots up for 3,997 gil, they will sell before all those other sucker's chips set to sell at 4k because of the lower price you listed... yet the price you will receive will be 4k because nobody in their right mind is gonna bid 3,997 gil. Your chips will sell like hotcakes, and you will not begin an underbidding catastrophe because the official sale price you received is the same it's been all day.

[Kimkytaru]

If you jsut start dont throw anything, keep all the stuff that the monsters are dropping. Then once you have a stack of them or several of them look what you can do with them. Turn them for quest to get money or simply sell them at AH or to an npc, but try to not throw anything. You'll need all the money you can get.

[Linktri]

I type a lot when I use spells that aren't macroed so I go:

Tip 256: Buy a controller, Create a Macro for everything and using the menu is almost always faster than typing.

[SubzeroDiabolos]

If you're doing a mission and you're on a map that has 2 ways to get to the same point, take the long road. It's ALWAYS the long road.

...

You didn't listen to me? I bet you ended up in a 1 way/facing a wall/wasted flee

[Zragnarok]

For those who like 2 boxing.... On your second account, you need only 2 macros :

Macro1
/assist <Nameofyourmainchar>
/wait 1
/attack <t>

Macro2
/follow <Nameofyourmainchar>


Now, press your Macro2 so your 2nd char follow your main. Engage a mob with your main and press the Macro1 on your 2nd char. Your 2nd char will target the same mob and engage him. Right after the mob is dead, your 2nd char will come back to follow your main. If your don't cancel the follow command on your second account, all you have to do is press Macro1 each time you engage a mob on your main for him to automatically attack.

You can also add stuff in your macros like provoke if you want your second account to tank.

Hint : If you got 2 computer, then it's easy to press the Macro1 on your second keyboard. But if you only have 1, put your Macro1 on the Alt1 macro. This way, your can easily Alt + Tab, press your macro and then Alt + Tab again to switch back to your main.

[Trichocyst]

40 is the new 37. If you're planning to take a job to 37 then you might want to consider taking it to 40 since it will expand your ability to get things done in terms of both BCNMs and CoP.

Learn to craft early, especially if you find yourself in a helpful linkshell. A couple of legitimate red blood newbies joined my linkshell recently and I've been encouraging them to turn their sheepskin into leather for a tidy profit while they grind away the now buffet-like exp of the EP-DC sheep in Konschtat.

Don't camp for a Rabbit Charm.

[isladar]

If your job / subjob has access to Provoke, USE it. Jumping into your JA menus and selecting Provoke will allow you to tab to anything in range, not just your current target. Voke adds. Voke what your BRD just lullaby'd. See that mob that your BLM just saw? Voke it, because he's going to nuke the shit out of it in about five seconds. Get yourself on the hate list, because even if its not enough to pull hate NOW, your foot is in the door.

Also, learn your weapon animations. If your WS can kill the mob, select target, tab, and be ready to hit enter to target the next and you'll never disengage. You can do this with regular melee hits as well. Its wonderful for 2handed weapons, because seeing "You must wait longer to perform that action" will become burned into your soul and torment you at night.

[anathema]

if you're playing on Windows FFXI, the menu up/down functions are unassigned by default. go into config/movement settings and assign them. these keys act the same as ps2 dpad up/down arrows, making it extremely easy to target alliance members.

awesome for stpc cure tanking macros.

[Raen Ryong]

Don't bother keeping stuff you won't be using in a long time; that set of Chainmail you could be using once per month which you have stored would be better sold and you can then use the money for more productive things.

Don't keep useless/cheap items like Rock Salt or other weak drops from mobs in your Mog House unless you are immediately using them; they're so cheap they're really not worth the space.

Consider the 7 AH slots precious and don't hesitate to NPC if the rate is reasonable.

Scout Bazaars and buy low, sell high! Consider sale rate of said items you are buying very carefully though. Too slow and it's not worth the risk in most cases.

You do not need to undercut an item that sells very fast very much at all to still make money; even if someone undercuts you in the meantime, yours will generally always sell overnight.

If you intend on farming, get THF sub to 15 asap.

Just a few very basic economic tips.

[Thistle]

If you jsut start dont throw anything, keep all the stuff that the monsters are dropping. Then once you have a stack of them or several of them look what you can do with them. Turn them for quest to get money or simply sell them at AH or to an npc, but try to not throw anything. You'll need all the money you can get.

People in my LS ask me how I became "rich" (I don't feel I am, but some people think that having a grand total of 1,000 gil on you is plenty of money, so I guess compared to that...). I keep from being poor by acting like I am. I don't mean being cheap with my friends, I mean: sell everything. Pebbles vendor for 1 gil each, yet when I get a stack or two during chocobo digging, I carry them back and vendor them. (Sure if you have space issues you drop the less good stuff for better stuff, but this is assuming you have enough room.)

No way of making money should be "below" you. Drop nothing, vendor it instead. Do not let your AH slots sit idle! At the very least, buy stuff from the NPC and list it at the AH (do a little running around to see where profit can be made in that).

There's no excuse in the world for every single PC not to have alchemy leveled to at least 60. The process of leveling alchemy will *make* you money if you're smart about it! Plus then you can easily make your own oils/powers. If you're a mage, or will ever play a mage job, same with cooking. Skill on juices, use them while XPing!

Take up lots of low level crafts. Sheep skins to leather. Zinc + copper = brass. Etc.

[benny]

Also, using '*' in a search will give you only people that are in a party:

"/sea all RDM 75 *" = All lvl 75 rdms that are in a party.

Not very useful, but it's undocumented and I found it by accident. Haven't found the oh-so-more-useful "not in party" flag yet.

Wow, I never knew that...

Some more fun command line tips...
/pcmd add Name will invite Name to party, but it only works if they're in the same zone and "fairly close" to you - useful if they haven't loaded in search yet.
/pcmd leave will drop party, and if you're leader, /pcmd breakup will completely disband the party (very useful at Ix'DRG for instance).
Each searchable area has a single word alias you can use to /sea with if you don't feel like messing with quotes and auto-translate; for example /sea sorrowvall, or /sea behemotdom.

Also, if you're going to macro something like Manafont or Chainspell, put <stpc> in the macro so you have to select yourself before it goes off. It works like an extra confirmation in case you accidentally hit the macro, and it's still very fast.

[ringthree]

/c <name> command line is useful to buy bazaared cell in Salvage when you're engaging an enemy.

This is the greatest thing ever, and saves so much time.

[Lordwafik]

If you can access the internet at the same time you're using FFXI, and have a bunch of random items you're about to load on the AH, don't waste time looking at the price history for each one and going back/forth through the menu when you can do it much smoother via ffxiah.com

[ringthree]

The most important difference between being gimp and being underequiped is knowing what is second/third/fourth best for the slot that you are missing the top notch gear for.

Just because you don't have the best possible gear for a slot on a job yet does not mean that you can just toss any piece of equipment into that slot. Not everyone has the time or can put in the effort to get the best possible gear immediately for every job, but that does not mean you don't have to be as effective as possible until you do get the best gear.

I think this is something that newer players haven't learned, but older players appreciate because they had to deal with much higher prices for gear that is now considered to be standard issue.