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FFXI Macros in Detail

Get a handle on FFXI Macros

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
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Final Fantasy XI has a built in macro system which you can use to automate various tasks. Although you can macro anything that has a command associated with it, macros are most useful when automating chat messages and combat. In this short guide I will go over these two uses for macros and touch briefly on how you can use them in other situations. Hopefully, after reading this guide, you will be able to write your own macros and use the macroing system as you see fit.

To get started lets go over some of the basics of macroing in FFXI. First off, you can have up to 200 macros at a time, 10 banks of 20 each. To access a macro you will have to switch the macro bank to the one your macro is on and then press and hold either the control key (for the first 10) or the alt key (for the second 10) followed by press the corresponding number (1-0). This sounds difficult and confusing at first but it’s really not that bad.

For those of you coming from SWG you will be disappointed to know that macros in FFXI can only have 6 commands in them and they can not loop or call other macros. Even with these limitations, macros can still be very beneficial to you and your party.

Chat

Chat macros can be very useful when you are in a combat situation and you need to get information to your party as fast as possible. Without a macro you would have to type out the text you wanted to say and many times, by the time you finished typing, your message would be irrelevant or outdated. First off let’s go over some of the more useful chat commands that you can put into your macro.

<t>
When this is in a macro it will be replaced with the name of whatever you have selected. If you have a creature named “Wallawonk” selected and you type <t>, you will say “Wallawonk” in chat. So if you wanted to let the party know what you are attacking you would say, “/p I am attacking <t>.” This would say, “I am attacking Wallawonk.” to your party.

<p0> <p1> <p2> <p3> <p4> <p5>
These all work the same as <t> except they are for party members. <p0> is always your character and <p1> through <p5> are the other members of your part in the order they are listed on your screen. So if you are in a party with Joe, and Bob and you type, “/p Hello <p1> and <p2>!” you would say, “Hello Joe and Bob!” to your party.

<me>
Exactly the same as <p0>.

<hp>
This will be replaced with your current health displayed as <current>/<max>. So if you currently have 100 health and you have a maximum of 200 health then typing “/p My health is <hp>.” will make you say “My health is 100/200.” to your party.

<mp>
The same as <hp> except for mind points.

<hpp>
This works the same as <hp> except instead of saying <current>/<max> it will give a percentage. So if you type “/p My health is <hpp>%.” your party will hear you say, “My health is 50%.”

<mpp>
The same as <hpp> except for mind points.

<tp>
The same as <hpp> except it gives your current amount of tactical points as a percentage.

<pos>
Displays your current grid coordinates. ex: C-5.

<mpos>
The same as pos but for use when in an air ship or water ship.

Other Commands

For a full list of commands and their uses check out the tutorial on commands. I will list a few of the ones that are particularly useful in macros here.

/wait <seconds>
Wherever you put this in a macro, the macro will stop running for the number of seconds you specify. This is good for when you want to pause between messages or actions. NOTE: there is a max wait time of 20 seconds.

/echo <message>
This command will send <message> to you and only you. No other players will ever see this message. This is particularly useful for notifying you of the progress of your macro.

/item <item name>
With this command you can have your macro make you eat a certain food item or use a potion. This is exceedingly useful because you don’t have to navigate through your inventory which can be quite time consuming.

/equip <item name>
Use this to equip armor and/or weapons. Great if you have a couple sets of armor or a second set of weapons that you swap between frequently.

/ma “<spell name>” [target]
This is probably the most used macro out there. What this does is casts <spell name> onto [target]. If the spell does not require a target you can leave the target blank. You can combine this with the variables above to make spell casting very simple. For example, if you wanted to cast cure on your current target you could write this macro, “/ma Cure I <t>”. That would cast Cure 1 on your current target. If you wanted, you could setup a cure macro for each party member. eg: “/ma Cure I <p2>”. Remember that spell names have to be spelled correctly and use proper capitalization.

/ws “<skill name>” [target]
The same as /ma except it’s for weapon skills.

/ja “<ability name>” [target]
The same as /ma except it’s for job abilities.

The Macros

Here are a few sample macros to get you started. These should speed up your response time in battle and help reduce the wrist pain from typing.

/p Health <hpp>: <hp> Mana <mpp>: <mp> Tactical: <tp>
This will list off your health, mana, and tactical points in both percentage and current/max form. It’s especially useful if everyone in the party uses the same format. That way, when you are done with a fight, everyone can hit their macro key for this and it’ll give a nice chart displaying everyone’s current status.

/p Running out of mana (<mpp>): <mp>.
This is a good one for mages to use, especially white mages. It lets your party know that you are getting low on mana so they need to be extra careful and that they may need to use health potions if they get especially low.

/ws “Provocation”
/p Using Provocation!
/wait 20
/wait 10
/p Provocation is ready to be used again.
This macro will make it so that when you use it, you will use your provocation ability and tell your part as much. Then 30 seconds later (this is the cool down time for provocation) you will tell your party that you are ready to use it again. This can be useful if you are in a party with multiple warriors so you don’t all use their provocation at the same time.

/p About to attack <t>!
/wait 4
/lockon <t>
/wait 1
/attack <t>
This macro will tell your party the name of the creature you are about to attack and then it will lockon to the target (if you have /automove on then you will run towards it) and then attack it. You may notice there is a 1 second wait time between /lockon and /attack. Sometimes if you put two commands right after each other they will not work and they need to be spaced out with a /wait.

Conclusion

You can do much more than what I have listed here. These samples and the commands I have listed should give you a good starting point though and get you well on your way towards becoming a macro master.