Final Fantasy XIFinal Fantasy News

In FFXI everyone will find themselves in a group at one time or another, whether it's to do a quest, gain xp, or hunt for Gil and loot. This guide will walk you through the steps needed in order to be a helpfull group member and one that is asked to come back instead of asked to leave.

Low Level Grouping

Before I get into specifics, I would like to clear up some confusion about low level grouping. As it stands, many people have said that it is not worth it to group at low levels. This is most easily cleared up with some numbers and an example. If you are level 5 and fighting solo and you kill a monster that gives 50xp, and you can kill it once every minute then we'll say you are getting 50xp/minute. Now, let's say you group with someone the same level as you (you are both level 5) and you fight the same monster. It will only give 30xp to each of you. At first, it appears that you are making less xp by grouping. But when you think about it, you can kill these creatures twice as fast with 2 people, so you are really making 60xp/minute, more than if you were by yourself.

Now let's say that you level up but your partner does not (level 6 and level 5). The xp the monster gives to the party is based on how difficult it is to the highest level party member. So the monster that just a second ago was giving 50xp/kill to a single level 5 is now only giving 35xp/kill to a single level 6. The problem here is that your partner is still level 5, so if they were to fight the monster solo they would be getting 50xp/minute instead of 35xp/minute off the same creature. There is another factor though, if you are grouped and you kill this monster the level 6 character would get 21xp/kill. This is 42xp/minute assuming you are still killing them at the same speed, better than 35xp/minute, but your level 5 parter is only getting 15xp/kill. This is because of the penalty placed on him for grouping with someone above his level. So the level 6 character is getting 42xp/minute while the level 5 character is getting 30xp/minute.

As you can see, grouping outside your level range at low levels can really hurt your xp/minute. This is why people think it's bad to group at low levels. However, as long as you stay grouped with people your level though, you will make better xp than if you were solo. I am hoping that the system allows for wider level variations at the higher levels, but it's too early to tell. Also, the larger the group the better the xp, partly due to experience chains.

Experience Chains

Experience chains can be a beautifull thing. First I will explain the benefits of getting an experience chain and then I will explain how to get them.

If you successfully do an xp chain, on the first monster you kill in the chain you will get a message saying "EXP CHAIN #1"!. When you get this message you will get a bonus 20xp for whatever it was you just killed. If you get a message saying "EXP CHAIN #2!", then you will get a bonus of 40xp for the kill. At "EXP CHAIN #3!" you will get bonus xp for the kill. As long as you can keep chaining the monsters, you can keep getting more and more xp for each one.

The first requirement for getting an xp chain is that you have to be killing creatures that are "even match" or harder. In order to have the best chance at an xp chain you will probably want to try for even matches with the occasional "tough". The next step is to kill these creatures in quick succession. To qualify as quick succession I think (I will do further testing soo to find out the exact time) you must start attacking the next one within a minute of the death of the first. If you want to get to the second level of an xp chain you will need to attack a third within a minute of the death of the second.

The key to successfully xp chaining is to have a white mage or two in your party and a lot of damage dealers that don't rely on mana. What needs to happen is you have to kill the monster before it can do a lot of damage to you, and the healers should keep everyone healed. With 2 healers they can take turns healing the fighters and resting, so during a fight, one healer heals and the other rests, then for the next fight they switch. This can be done with a single healer as long as the party isn't taking too much damage so the healer can rest every other battle. Obviously xp chaining works much better with a full group (6) because a monster that is "even match" will drop very easy due to your numbers.

Being A Productive Group Member

A group of well trained members can level very fast and efficiently while a group with members all fighting as if they were solo will have a difficult time.

White Mage

First we'll start off with the white mages. As a white mage your purpose is not to do damage, if you are doing damage and healing you will find that the monsters really dislike you and will frequently attack you. Also, at the higher levels you will do no where near the damage of other members, so there is no point in bothering with attacking.

What you want to do is hotkey 6 of your keys to Cure <p0> through Cure <p5> (see the guide on macroing). By doing this you will be able to throw around heals at a moments notice without wasting time navigating through all the menus.

Before you go into a fight you want to cast any beneficial spells on your party that could help with the fight, this always includes protect but some spells aren't very usefull, such as sleep protection when fighting a monster who doesn't cast sleep.

Once you are in combat you want to hit the enemy with your debuff spells, Paralyze and Dia are two effective spells at low levels. Many people will say that paralyze isn't worth casting. I think those are people that have never seen paralyze in action because it is a _very_ helpfull spell. What it does is gives the enemy a chance to be unable to move each time it attacks for the duration of the spell. So if you cast paralyze on an enemy and it lasts for 30 seconds, every time the creature attacks for the next 30 seconds there will be a chance that it will fail the attack and instead be held immoble. You can see when this is happening because it will say "<creaturename> is Paralyzed" in the chat window each time it tries and fails to attack.

Since mana regenerates faster than health, after the battle is over the white mage will want to use any remaining mana it has to heal the party and then /heal to regain all it's mana. White mages are the most sought after job for groups in this game. If you don't want to have to spend a lot of time looking for groups and being rejected, a white mage is a good choice.

Warrior

The warrior has a fairly simple job, and one that can easily decide the course of the battle. The job of the warrior is to use the Provoke ability. The most effective way to do this is to write a macro
/ja "Provoke" <t>
and put it in an easy to use macro slot. What provoke does is makes the target more interested in attacking the warrior instead of it's current target. Normally creatures will go for healers and high damage dealers first, but unfortunately those two can usually take very little damage compared to a warrior.

Provoke has a 30 second reuse time so if there are two warriors in the party it is best to organize with each other when to provoke. There is no point in both warriors provoking at the same time, so it's best if you take turns. One way is to just take turns provoking every 15 seconds. The other meathod is to only provoke when the creature starts attacking something other than the warrior, and just take turns doing pulling it off.

Monk / Black Mage / Thief

The purpose of these jobs is to do damage. In terms of grouping strategy there isn't much to them other than dish out as much as you can. If you find yourself getting attacked a lot it's best to slow down on your damage output a little to allow the warriors to keep the hate from the monsters on them.

Red Mage

The job of the red mage is to fill in for anyone that is missing other than the warrior. If your white mage is having trouble keeping up on the heals (or you don't have a white mage) the red mage can help with that. If everything seems to be going all right then you can just deal as much damage as you can.

Skill Chains

Do as many of these as you can. I will not go into detail on how they work right now as that is a topic for another tutorial, once you get to the levels where you can skill chain, do so.

Summary

Here are a few points to remember when grouping:
- Don't group outside your level
- EXP CHAIN as often as possible
- Warriors provoke all the time
- White mages healing first, damage last
- Skill chain whenever possible
- Talk with your party, decide on who will pull and when to stop for /healing