Lets Hear Some Of Your Best/worst FFXI Experiences

Let's hear some of your best/worst FFXI gaming experiences. Please do not name names. (I don't want Rooks to have to come and shut things down).

I'll go first:

Best: I was XP'ing in Den of Rancor when as a BST72, Rank 9 San' Dorian in ~2005. I get a /tell in auto-translate {Mission}10{Do you need it?}, from someone who is all the way in Qu'bia Arena. When I get there (had to death warp and choco-ride back then), there is 5 Japanese players and a line of about 10-12 people. To my surprise, these people were waiting to get their San'Doria Rank 10 clear. These generous people were rotating strangers into their party, helping them get Rank 10, just out of kindness or as a free public service. This was on Ragnarok. I just thought it was a very kind gesture, and something we don't see much of these days.

Worst: When I afterglow'ed my Guttler (and Aegis) at level 99 (legitimately), players would stop and examine me and ask: "Why are you glowing?" Some people thought it was cool, but about 10-20% of reactions from people were extremely negative. I'd get random threats from total strangers, being called selfish, that I didn't give them my umbral marrows and used it on a useless effect on Guttler/Aegis.

The juxtaposition and irony of these two events is not lost on me.

Your turn, FFXIAH locals.

Ok... I guess I'm next...

Here goes nothing... worst event...

This event happened to me the very first day I created my character on FFXI. After buying my PS2, and slooowly going through the 18 hour install of FFXI, I created my character in August of 2004 on Unicorn server (RIP Unicorn)!

After the initial running around in my selection of Bastok as a starting point, I ventured out into the vast realm of "South Gustaberg" on my very first adventure with high hopes of gil & glory. A couple levels, a couple handfuls of gil... everything seemed fine.

Until...

I suddenly got aggroed by a lizard! One I never seen before! Whelp, they all die like the rest, sooo... umm... well... oh no! He's not dying, I AM!!! But never fear! Here comes all these hordes of other players from out of nowhere to save me from this beast! Help me! Save me from this, "Leaping Lizzy"!

They all watch me die, then fight to claim the monster. I had no idea why when it initially happened.

Best event...

About 3 months ago I got the +2 SCH Sortie earring, and the Crepuscular Cloak... in the same day! I now know what a Powerball winner feels like. Makes me glad I did not let day 1's experience make me uninstall... lol.

-2007, Hades. That sex role-playing LS, pretending to be a legitimate social ls, and the Teamspeak shenanigans that followed once we found out what it really was.
-"Tighty whities" - Shoyu.
-MPKing Stanislav and Hmok 4 times with a million trolls in a row while they tried to hold cerb

Worst: Spent almost 18 hours shouting in Whitegate to build a Divine Might group. Wiped within seconds.

Best: The next day someone from the above group sent me a tell for an 18 BLM zerg and we won within seconds.

There's so many it's hard to pick just one, but the first "Best" memory that came to mind was when I was taking a second group through CoP missions. None of them had done it before, only I had, so I generally worked with what I had to clear all the missions. Got to that first Mammet fight, we were PLD SAM WHM BLM BLM RDM, I was the PLD. My plan was silly and I was unsure if it would actually work, but it did. Figuring our group lacked a good kiter, I told everyone I planned to power tank the mammets and we'd see how it went. We kinda stumbled across the finish line with only the RDM having MP because of Convert, but we did win it with no deaths! Probably my most fond memory in this game, or one of them at least. The HNMLS I was in when I first hit level 75 decided I needed to try day 1 level 75 WHM in awful gear healing Divine Might. It went fine, we won, but oh man was it nerve wracking. Talk about trial by fire, I'll never forget stepping foot into that arena, new as I was to the endgame.

The worst? Uh..........well, first thing that comes to mind is when my little social LS decided to make Empy's back during the Abyssea era for everybody. I was into PUP so I wanted a Vere, some DRG wanted Rhongo. We made the Rhongo first, then the whole LS basically decided "no, we aren't getting you Vere because farming the Rhongo was terrible and it's the exact same NMs as Rhongo." I was quite salty about that, never got an Empyrean until I could solo one. I'm sure something worse then that happened, but I can't think of it if it did.

Best:

Tie between that one awesome party at 60-ish in Labyrinth of Onzozo where Ose was a chain #3 and doing Dynamis D with linkshell on voice chat messing about and keeping score on how many people you kill when you get charmed before you are killed off by a nuke/WS.

Worst:

Hmmmm, probably just people being douches, in general. The guy that wants an invite when you claim an NM with a gil drop, lies about how much the drop is worth so you let him have it, then promptly pops it on the AH. Or the guy that always stirs up drama from nothing making everyone upset.

These are pretty rare thankfully.

EXP parties in Onzozo were some of my favorite, next to Garliage. Killing Ose was always icing on the cake.

I would say a best memory would be being part of the first NA HNMLS on the server and everyone getting started in it, getting all those fun drops. People back then helped each often. There were real senses of accomplishment.

The worst... coming back to the game after a very long break and seeing cheaters being revered.

Another one that comes to mind was spending a couple months trying to get claim/drop on a very rare item that required several people to kill. The alliance leader rolled against me, lost the roll to me, got angry and disbanded the alliance. All loot was lost.

One of my best moments was a solo claim of Fafnir (vs a full zone of rival shells) as a DRK/NIN and I held him long enough for my LS to run to DA and assist. I was a PS2 player at the time and the PS2 loaded mobs very fast which was an advantage for claiming. As stupid as those 3 hour camps were, they were very intense and awesome. Something no other game has provided.

I always liked this photo as well. I DCed during Odin 2 and came back to Zantesuken.



Adding this one. Back when Duplus was super rare:

My favourite moment is something I have uploaded here actually. Got doomed and realised I had no way of surviving it so I used a warp scroll, bought a reraise from the guard next to the Lower Jeuno HP, used it, ate ***and got back up. Still makes me chuckle a bit to this day.

'Nother good thread Felgarr!

Best:

Like Primex, my fondest memory is MPKing exp parties at the Delkfutt zone by pulling the Kraken to the zoneline, and watching deathga and level downs! Also I liked Abyssea because I was MNK and I basically afk'd Verethragna. I LOVED Skirmish (and the money it made me). Camping LL and VE too.

Worst:

Pretty much everything else. I had NO HNMLS experiences, and end-game in general, so I spent all my time soloing or LFP.

Hoo boy, so many memories in this game.

When its good its great, I absolutely loved the challenge of CoP missions back in the day, even if it could be a nightmare to get groups together. I attempted 2-5 so, so many times, including when a friend decided to help out on Ninja, and only when we got to the fight did we realize he was naked except for a pair of katanas. “It's np, I've got ni and the ele wheel, this is easy lol” He died like a ***, despite the best efforts of the support. One more loss on the pile was frustrating at the time, but hilarious in retrospect. The airship fight, on the other hand, we carefully planned for, and despite people who were laser focused on only certain setups being able to win, we tried one dry run, and then cleared on our first real attempt in a truly dynamic, challenging fight. Good times.

I remember Abyssea being new, how pissed I was about SE raising the level cap and invalidating so much work I had put in. I remember ending up on White Mage, solo healing an entire alliance for a level 75-80 level grind, being so bored out of my mind that I started playing Diablo 2 in a separate window, while keeping the heals flowing. Eventually it got to the point where I realized that I was having more fun in my D2 window, and there wasn't any prospect of fun in FFXI, so I just pulled my ethernet cord, and later unsubbed. Didn't look back until 99cap, and I still think it was the right choice.

Its people who make this game great or awful. I was blessed with wonderful Limbus and Salvage linkshells back in the day, where it didn't matter when someone completed their grind because we were all having fun running the events together.
Compare that to a memory a year or two ago when I joined an Odyssey C run on Warrior, with some folks many of you would know from Asura and/or these forums. I'd done plenty of Ody on War before, I usually went War/Drg with Naegling and Loxotic +1, and the run leader wanted me to come Shining One instead of club. Sure, can do, but I gotta check my setup first. I'd recently gotten rid of a piece or two from my move+ set, so I needed to fix that up, and I wanted to confirm that my Impulse Drive setup was good to go, since I didn't do that much polearm on War.
“Are we ready to enter?”
“No”
and so I found myself in Ody C with Notepad++ open to a partially and incompletely altered War lua that is missing a closing semicolon somewhere, who knows where my Naegling is, but I have a Chango on hand so whatever, here we go. I'm desperately trying to fight in one window and fix my lua so that it will at least load without an error. The party starts ***talking my GAxe, and then lo and behold, I'm somehow /Drk. I manage to get my lua to actually load, and now I'm trying to fight, defend myself in chat, AND make some keybinds to at least make some use out of Last Resort and whatever else is available on this subjob I would never use on War, but at least I found my Naegling!
Now the ***talking I'm getting in chat has escalated, they are accusing me of trying to leech a run by joining on a job I was never ready to play in the first place. No you ***, this is what happens when you want to be catered to, and won't leave room for the catering.
Imagine a client wants a tweak to a construction job, the foreman says “yeah, I can get on it after I take a piss.” And then when they are in the can, you pick up the whole port-o-potty they're in, throw it on a truck, and drive it to the spot in question. Then when they stagger out, covered in waste with their pants around their ankles, you tell them they suck at their job for not having the drafts ready now that they are on-site. No ***you aren't getting what you asked for.
Needless to say, I warped out and blacklisted most of the party. Its been at least a year and I'm STILL mad.

Anyway, tons of ups and downs in this game. Its the people who make it great, and also who make it suck.

I've got another one. It's not the best or the worst, but I'll call it an Honorable Mention.

If you leveled Beastmaster back in the day, you knew how it important it was to get to 35. (When charming pets, the Leave ability was too just good to have). The available charmable pets as BST32, were few and far between. I think I had to slow-grind mobs in Altepa Desert, which was a pain in the neck.

I decide to go to Garliage Citadel and pawn myself as a DD for any of the normal XP parties to invite me, as a Beastmaster. When I finally get an invite, I let a few fights go by and the party seems to be doing well. No complaints. I pull out my Sheep Familiar to help speed things up and half-way into the first Beetle fight, our Black Mage suddenly casts Escape and takes outside of the citadel. When we asked him "What happened?", he said "there was a sheep attacking our party".

TLDR: Level 32 XP Party in Garlaige Citadel. Black Mage thought a Beastmaster's Sheep Familiar was aggro and cast Escape on the whole party. XD

Still more believable than a Bst getting invited to an xp party - as a fellow bst.

They must have read "Bst" and thought it meant you were a beast of a dd or something.

best- camping Mysticmaker Profblix for a Moldavite Earring for days on end in the last days of my ex-wife's 1st pregnancy, losing claim so many times as we 1st-time expecting parents held our breath at any minute change^^ To get claim/drop(it was 100% hehe) 30 minutes before she went into labor. Got my Moldy and a Daughter the same day, so likely a little biased side-happy from RL spilled over ;)

worst- teaming up with some friends of about a year to farm a joytoy, only to see a good friend who came on NIN to tank for me get claim and leave party and join another w/ Charbydis in tow, to get an invite to the server's big "HNMLS" as he promised the leader a joyeuse as "admission".

Best:
Winning BallistaRoyale with the boys at Fenrir and making Quarterfinals in the cross-server tournament. The fact that we went against one of the top HNM LS's in the finals felt like a mountain with a summit not visible to the human eye, but we managed our way through it.

Worst:
Also back in 75era, when we claimed Fafnir, we were wiping one by one and he was at 1%. In a fit of panic as BLM, I spammed everything I had, only to be the last one standing and dying before another LS claimed it. Being berated by multiple members, I contemplated on just leaving the shell quietly. That decision was made for me not even 3 days later when there was a lot of infighting in the linkshell chat amongst other members, eventually leading to a massive falling out.

One of my best memories: Doing Divine Might with my first endgame LS using the Wipe + Reraise strat. Felt pretty awesome to run into the middle at the start, after the designated kiter/healer pairs picked up each of their AAs to hold and cream AA Tarutaru. He died so fast. Then we moved onto MR.

Kiter for GK got taken out by GK and an errant AOE from one of the other ones, so I picked up GK who'd actually had quite a bit of damage put on him by some other folks. I had full TP when I picked him up, so I did Mighty Strikes Rampage, Icarus Wing, Rampage, and then fought with him as MR went down and the leaders said, "Ok, wipe it. Wipe it. Make sure you die outside of the arena. If you die inside of the Arena, you'll have to stay dead."

So everyone is dying around me, and it's just me and GK fighting on the stairs. I'm blocking literally all of his hits with Utsusemi shadows. Got enough TP with Mighty Strikes to do a 3rd Rampage, and I killed him before I died. Which I died by getting Shield Bash'd down the stairs by EV. We wiped with only one or two people having died in the arena, so the other 16 of us got up, rested up, pulled. Killed HM and then EV no problem. Felt epic. Best of all, that first endgame LS I joined, I joined it with bros from my social LS at the time, so got to run with them to getting the earrings.

One of my worst memories:
I met some guy who was really rich, and he offered me his Aquilo's Staff if I camped Leaping Lizzy/Valkurm Emperor for him, with him in the party. I asked if I had to get him the drop, and he said, "Nah man, just makes sure we get the claim on both of them a few times, and I mean we'll probably get the drop, so don't worry about it." So I agreed. Camped each of the NMs for him, got him about 8 or 9 Leaping Lizzy kills and 3 or 4 VE kills, but no drops. He gave me the staff. I sold it for 3.6mil. Bought my Utsusemi Ni scroll that way, and treated myself to HQ food for the first time. Got to know the guy in that time. Turns out he was a young teen, a few years younger than me, and he made all his gil on a Mithra alt that he was pimping out to some Elvaan DRK who was cybering with him. He was like, "It's so easy man. I just type stuff like, "Ooh, *** me." and then I AFK while he sends me tells for about an hour, and then he hands me like 10 million gil each time! I never have to worry about gil."
Well, like a week or so after I got my Ni scroll and had basically spent all the gil I'd made selling the Aquilo's Staff he gave me, he tried to say I had to camp Leaping Lizzy and VE for him till he gets the drops. I agreed at first, but got tired of it pretty quick, and reminded him he first said the drops didn't matter, just the claims. He had a pretty big fit, and I felt kinda bad, but remembering his gil and HQ items were ill gotten anyway, I just told him to shove it. Blacklisted him, eventually. He's one of the very few people I've ever blacklissted, heh. Complained about it IRL at school to some friends, and they didn't understand, they were like, "Hey, man, it's just a game. Get over it."

Partaking in a wedding of our old LS mates and handing out subligar to everyone. I was the only one of us that equipped it, and during the ceremony the GM said in say "Firedemon {trousers}{please}".

At the height of the RMT monopoly on ***and when gear was stupid expensive, we ended up stealing Serket from the RMTs. We spammed abilities and spells on top of them to lag them out, and our bard spammed w/e that song was that had high enmity. We ultimately ended up gaining claim on it and snagged a ring and claw out of the deal.

Probably one of my favourites though was our weekly money-making schemes myself and 2 of my buddies had. A couple other good friends of ours in the LS consistently camped the SSG NMs and other NMs for the ancient magic scrolls and whatnot, and always made a killing. So myself and 2 others decide to try our own farming methods. They were always usually pretty ***-tier ideas, but man oh man we always had fun hanging out.

Monk shenanigans and memories:
Rotating in 4-6 monks for 1900-2500 chi hlasts on kirin using porter boost timer resets.
First 1-2 hit build with monk using stage 0 relic H2Hs for asuran fist spam.
My favorite memory and best was the day someone used flee and warp tool to pull vrtra out of her room into the monk donut exp area. We were doing the rounds, cut a corner and see 3 taru blms and a galka war dead then Vrtra. There were few WTF OMG moments in life as grand as that. I literally froze and needed a minute to understand wtf was going on. The closest thing to it would be that feeling of oh *** you get when Guivre would agro you on the way to crab camp in kuftal tunnel (around where Amemet js)

Oh man, that sucks. Some people are just selfish ***. Belated congratulations on the new daughter. :)

Worst: Spending months farming gil to make myself a pimped out MNK only to have to spend hours upon hours waiting for parties.

Missing out on joining one of the top endgame LS on my server because I thought it would be prudent to level my WHM sub to be the bestest MNK ever so the shell picked up some other subpar MNK instead and decided they didn't need more.

Deciding to hold out on selling my Alky Bracelets for 80m at the peak of inflation because I thought I could get more, only for prices to plummet in the following months.

Best: Camping LoO with a friend, me as MNK/NIN and them as WHM. They manage to claim with Flash and LoO decides to Waterga III+Cross Attack my friend right away, killing him. RMT circling around us waiting for the wipe, I managed to expertly blinktank and stun Waterga III long enough for my friend to recover and killed LoO and got our second KC.

Weird that this one is among the best, but I enlisted some of my RL friends who were level 30ish at the time to help me traipse through Garlaige to get my MNK AF head. We ended up getting aggro and our friend who played RDM and could have potentially healed us enough to fight off the aggro instead warped out on us and left us for death. We angrily lambasted him a bit for it at the time, but it eventually become a funny memory.

The real best though was the last day I played, when my shell and the people I played with said goodbye to me and told me how much they would miss me and how it had been fun to play together for the past few years. The cherry on top was a friend who was quitting at the same time messaging me directly to tell me his only regret was not meeting me sooner. Hard to not like something like that.

This is so wholesome. I love it. Also, I love old-school LoO Kraken Club stories. Those were extremely competitive days for NM camping! Also, traipse? ...I learned a new word today.

i kinda miss the legion era was fun

I once came to oddy C/. was supposed to be on war but forgot I had recently changed to mnk/rdm to do som WHM testing.
Stupid as i am i did not check what job I was on as I had been on for quite some time.
Well warped into oddy just to figure out none of my macroes are working.
Realized iwas on mnk/rdm which... I DO NOT PLAY.. No gear.. no macroes. no keybinds. no real lua.
Just like you sitting and trying tog et a decent tp set going, and then a tornoda kick ws set going and that was about it.

...not my proudest moment


A year earlier os so i came to Dyna-D on my whm mule, as the only healer for around half an alliance. no biggy. except again i forgot what job I was on and went in on BLM. You know what mage job is pretty bad at healing... BLM.... BLM is.

I did get some pretty big sighs and laughs at me, but never had to blist anyone.

Sadest was when SE announced loss of support back in 2014ish and I realized I didn't have time to work, take care of new daughter and play. I logged my char out on mnk in fishing gear with ebisu on the docks in port windy for it to remain forever... then happy was a lot of different things, but coming back in 2019 and slowly building my char back up and doing missions was fun. Shout out to all the folks in UDF and Inq for making coming back, in whatever way I can, such a blast thus far. The good people really make the game.