A few technical and game questions

[ThePheonix]

I don't have the game yet, but I have some questions, so I know exactly what to get.

1. Do my brother and I have to get a copy of the game each to play at the same time?

2. For the same reason, would we have to have 2 separate acounts? I have heard yes and no, but I'm guessing we would.

3. Would a friend with his own account be able to log in / play his character on my computer?

4. How exactly do macros work... What is the range of commands that can be macroed and is there a max. length to them?

5. How do skill chains / magic bursts work?

6. Do I still need a worldpass so that my brother and I end up on the same server?

I'm getting the game in roughly 2 months.

Thanks in advance.

[valentine]

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Yes, he could login as a guest with his account info

4. hmm you it looks like you did some homework, good. Macros are strings of commands you set for easy later use. for example instead of select something, then select magic, and select what magic you want to use, you just press one of your set macro buttons and the spell will automatically be cast. for example if you wanted to cast cure on yourself you would put this in as a macro: '/ma "Cure" <me>' there are so many possibilities so I can't really explain it all here, but the macros you want to use really depend on what job you pick. Don't worry though, it's something you'll learn as you go through the game. As for length, there is a limit of like 7 lines of text or soemthing, but don't worry about that, most of my macros don't go beyond 3

5. skill chains. well to be honest, as a paladin I haven't really had to use them much but basically when you hit or get hit by an enemy you earn TP. after a certain amount of tp has been gained (usually 100) you can use a weapon skill. there are several ws for each type of weapon in the game, and they all have an element. if you attack with one ws and then another person in your party attacks with a ws compatible with yours within a short time, then afterwards a new attack will happen and do additional damage to the enemy, and that's what a skill chain is. as for magic bursts I'm not sure, I've never leveled up an offensive magic job, but I *think* that's just like a skill chain except instead of ws, ws, it's ws, ws, and then shortly after a mage uses a compatible magic for even greater damage. I know it rpobably soudns difficult but parties usually decide on the skill chain(s) they are going to use early on in the party.

6. probably, I mean you could always get lucky and end up on the same world but chances are you'd need a pass

[Miriel]

If you'd like to join up on a server that several of us EoFFers play on, let me know and I can get worldpasses for both you and your brother.

[ThePheonix]

Thanks for the info, valentine, and the invitation, miriel. I have some more questions:

1. About the merrit system, is subbing Warior with merit points into double attack going to come with the increased chance of double attack (for example)?

and

2. Can my home country be San'dora while I live in Windrust? I mean do you have to switch alegience or whatever it is to live in the country?

[valentine]

Thanks for the info, valentine, and the invitation, miriel. I have some more questions:

1. About the merrit system, is subbing Warior with merit points into double attack going to come with the increased chance of double attack (for example)?

and

2. Can my home country be San'dora while I live in Windrust? I mean do you have to switch alegience or whatever it is to live in the country?

oh dear... you really have done your homework.

Merit points. I know next to aboslutele nothing about. They apply ONLY to people who have reached level 75, and trust me, that takes a while. If I were you I would ask a level 75 about it once you get teh game, if you're really interested.

As for your second question. Yes. It's as easy as just talking to the guard outside of the residential area of whatever city you want to live in. Your home country is only the country you have allegiance in, you can live anywhere you want, and freely move your home from one city to the next. You can also change allegiance as well, but that requires quite a bit of money to do so.

[Yeargdribble]

As to the merit point question the answer is no. I believe double attack is a job specific merit for WAR. Job specific merits do not apply when the job is subbed.

As for macros you have 6 lines. You're fine as long as you don't play a mage job. Most mages think there's not nearly enough room because our macros tend to be far more involved especially with so much equipment swapping.

[ThePheonix]

6 lines only? I was looking foreward to at least 15... I hope they increase it to at least 10; I'm going to be white mage for some time, and after the thousands of lines I've worked with in programming class, 6 just seems to be a somewhat cramped. At least we get 20(is that right?) of them.

I just did some research on skill chains and magic bursts, and it seems that Detonation and Scission SC's are possible with lvl 10 WS's... and how much more powerful is the magic in a magic burst?

Also, how fast do you gain weapon mastery/skill, and do you just learn the WS when you reach the necesary level? (other than the relic weapon ones)

And thanks for the answers, everyone.

[valentine]

The guy who posted before is probalby right about mages having some difficulty with macros, but 6 is do-able for most things, as that's how it's been since the game was first released. I can't see them chanigng it now.

weapons skills are generally learned when you reach a specific weapon level. you probabl know this, but in addition to leveling up your job, you also level up your weapons. although there is a limit. for example you couldn't level up your sword skill to 50 at level 1. So in a way ws are tied to your level. Also. each job has grade for how well they can handle different weapon types. For example one job might have an A+ in swords but a D in spears. This grade decides what the maximum weapon level you can achieve for each job level. In the example given, the person's sword skill would be able to go much higher than their spear skill before capping out. Also some WSs are job specifc. I don't have any examples of hand, but I believe that Paladin, for example, is able to get a sword WS that Red Mages can't.

EDIT: Also, I didn't really cover this before but, it's usually pretty easy to cap your weapon mastery for each level as long as you play a damage dealing class. Mage classes have trouble with it though because they rarely if ever attack physically anyway. The trade off is though, it's easier for a mage classes to cap their magic skill, because a white mage of course, uses their magic much more than a paladin or dark knight would.

[Yeargdribble]

Macros
Well you don't really need all of those macro lines until endgame where you have a lot more equipment swapping to do. If you need the space you can use any number of 3rd party macro editors which I know many people do though it is against the rules. However, if SE banned everyone that used Windower (agains the rules) they would lose well over 50% of their current user base.

As for the number you get 200 macros per palette. You have 10 Ctrl and Alt rows from 1-0. Additionally you can save and load 4 separate palettes each containing 200 macros for 800 total. If wish you can actually move some files around in windows if you know what you are doing and have virtually unlimited numbers of macro palettes.

I don't see SE adding extra macro space as they haven't changed it since the beginning of the game and why now? If you don't wanna use a 3rd Party macro program you can always be like me and have multiple equip changes in multiple macros which is a pain in the ass but it works.

Skillchains and Magic Bursts

While several SCs are possbile at those levels I think Liquefaction is the one you'll see the most. Also the newer players and even old players playing through at those levels sometimes feel it's not worth their effort to make SCs even though they really work wonders. As you proceed throughout the game you'll find that nobody does any SC almost ever except Distortion. This is because just about every good XP mob in the game is weak to Ice. Also Distortion is easily made by almost everyone. Sadly this is why MNKs don't get many PT invites at lower levels as they cannot open Distortion and people turn their back on other SCs even though they can work just as well.

Another thing to understand is magic potency in FFXI. I think this is a huge flaw but this is how it works. From strongest to weakest ALWAYS AND FOREVER is Thunder > Ice > Fire > Wind > Water > Stone. This is the reverse order that you will get each spell on your jobs. Sadly elemental resistance isn't what it should be and you can use Thunder on a mob that isn't particularly weak to Thunder and do more damage than using the element it is weak to. I hate this but that's the way it is.

This has also a huge effect on SCs. As I said you will only do Distortion, especially early in the game and Ice is the second strongest spell and bursts on Distortion. Later people will use Fragmentation more which you can burst Thunder on. As for the added damage of the burst I'd say it's between 30 adn 50% more damage and can be even greater depending on elemental affinities and what gear you have. Though it's possible to get 'meh' damage on a MB.


Weapon Skills

You gain points of skill as you use the weapon. Early in the game you get skill ups on your weapons very quickly. Almost every time or every other time you hit you'll get a message "Thephoenix's sword skill rises 0.2 points." Eventually you'll get it leveled up. As I'm sure you've read there is a cap for each level for you to reach. You do not automatically get skill ups to learn a weaponskill but must continue to skill up until you get it. If you are playing a melee job you will generally cap your primary weapon pretty quickly just buy meleeing in XP.

On the plus side there are a lot of skills beyond just weapon skill. As you skill something up on one job you'll find that when you change you already have it. For instance. On my 75 BRD I have capped evasion around 215 and decently high parry skill around 120 or so (Parry is freakin' hard to skill up). Also I have dagger, sword and staff capped at their respective caps for BRD and many other skills as well. When playing another job these will all be capped for a very very long time.

When leveling my NIN I found it very easy because my Evasion and Parry were already capped. When I level jobs that use sword, dagger or staff each of those weapons is already capped for a long time on those jobs whilch makes you much more effective and you'll find that you can XP faster and just be a far more effective all around player. However, if I play a job that has higher 'class' in a weapon I have capped they may not be capped at 75. PLD I believe is A (+ or - I can't recall) in sword. I'm on C- I believe. So my PLDs sword skill would go uncapped around level 72 or 73 most likely and I'd have to continue to skill it up to recap it at 75 on the job that has the highest class in it.

[Miriel]

Ok, I am a mage by trade (WHM, BLM, SMN) and I can't even imagine what I would do with 20 lines of macros. Seriously, who needs all that? 6 is more than enough all the way up until you get to end-game level so I really wouldn't worry about it at this point.

[ThePheonix]

Ok, thanks everyone; and if we get so many macros, I guess it'll be fine for all classes. I'm really looking forward to this game, but I have to finish school first (just 2 more months...)

I hope I have the time to play during University.

[Vincentsinnerdemon]

oh dear... you really have done your homework.

wow im surprised anyone researched that much.

[ThePheonix]

I just read some forums, etc (allakhazam, this one, etc.)

but now I have one last problem (it's not 100% on-topic)
but I have to convince my dad that playing FFXI is relatively safe (he's concerned with it being on-line). I'm doing some research on that now, but if you can help somehow, I'll give you my first stack of crystals or something to show my appreciation... please.:mog:

[eternalshiva]

uh how is it unsafe? It's not like it's hooked up to porn >.> it's an online game to which you connect to SE servers. No worries about viruses or anything.

[Ouch!]

It's just as safe as the rest of the internet. As long as you don't hand out all sorts of personal information, there's really no difference than to being online in a chatroom, except, well, that you're playing a game.