Questions From Returning Players + Couple New

Looking to come back to FFXI again after a 2 year break or more and usually play for 6ish months and then leave for a while because of some RL events ruining our fun. Anyways...

Is finding a clear spot to grind an issue still on Asura? Always seemed like a never ending supply of Bots destroying good high level camps for exp grinding. Thought of starting fresh on a low pop server just to avoid any of those issues. Starting over would mean giving up 2 characters max level with most of the story stuff completed and A LOT of trusts. Thoughts or Opinions?


Our other issue is what are best setup would be. My wife likes support type GEO, SCH, BRD etc and I prefer NIN or MNK but ill play just about anything. This time we are bringing our 2 children with us (10 and 13). The 13 year old loves tanking so that is covered.

So I have support/heals filled, Tank, and 10 playing who knows what. What are the most important trusts for a team of 4? What would be the best Jobs to fill in as for me? Would we be better off letting a trust tank and adding more human dps? Our experience in ambuscade with trust tanks wasn't the best in the past.

Final question. How much content could we clear with just the 4 of us and trusts? 1 good gamer, 2 average, and 1 below average.

pretty far, see if you can get the 10 year old playing cor, it's an active job that he can put a lot of effort into or little and still be a help. as for grinding spots no clue about asura but Bismark is almost always open for camps.

You can clear most of the older HTBF on VD with just a good NIN and BRD.

Dyna D wave 1 bosses can all be easily cleared with a good COR and PLD (need good COR to get to the boss, the boss just need medioCOR, can run to the boss and dies + reraise to not need good COR). Can also try wave 2 bosses with addition of GEO and BRD if COR is really good.

Odyssey farming you can do pretty ok with just Tank, BRD, WHM, DD. Probably can clear most of T1-T2 and some T3 with those as well on V0.

Most omen bosses can probably be 4 manned without too much trouble now.

UNM except for Tumult Curator can be easily done with 4 as well. Shendu/Sarama/Thu'ban you can do with just RUN + BRD, Sovereign Behemoth you probably want GEO, BRD, BLU, DD.

Could probably do most geas fete with just 4 as well, aside from maybe Kirin/Warder of Courage/Reisenjima HELM/Maju/Yakshi.

A lot of FFXI is in preparing/tweaking gear set and knowing the buff/debuff for the fight rather than skill/reaction during the fight. So as a family the good player can help the other tweak their gear before the fight.

Its also two different kind of below average player. Like for buff job, you don't need very good reaction but you need to be able to follow direction and remember your buff. Use post it notes to help if necessary.

For job like mage and crowd control you need good player that know how long their buff/debuff last, how to react to situation as well as to not panic.

The worst player probably should play DD with the set/macro set up help from the better players. Having the right gear and being in the right gear set at the right time (which can be set up with macro) make more differences than skill for DD.

Anyway as a family, the good player can probably pull the rest of the team up a lot by taking the time to examining and editing their sets and listing out bullet points of what buff/debuff is needed for each fights and shouting out when to use each ability (like Bolster/Random Deal/Wild Card etc).

Tank and DD are very low skill/thought jobs. Put your highest skilled player on healer, they can actually make a difference that way. This is assuming you're defining skill as skill, and not amount of time to grind, since grinding more will benefit the DD and tank most.

Suph's assessment of what content you can clear is pretty reasonable. You can trio all dyna wave2 bosses with MNK/NIN BRD RDM, though adding a COR makes getting to them much easier.

Keep in mind, though, that these setups are being described by players who are maxed out or nearly so. While there's progression and you can get there without running into anything that's outside your reach, you still need to spend a considerable amount of time on things like mythics, side content for fast cast sets, and round out multiple sets for job for these setups to be viable. If you assume you can just hit 99 and start doing any of this, you're going to hit a wall very quickly.

Highest skill and most time to grind are both me. Also thinking I should do something that is quick for groups because I have more time to farm gear and it would help for doing content with my family.

What would function as a healer for this group? I don't know what works for that role anymore. RDM is a job I have always liked and I see they got some love since I left. So if RDM is an option I am sold.

I don't plan on doing anything quickly and that is why I like to know in advance that I am not screwing up big time. Spending months working on a job only to figure out its not going to work sucks.

EDIT: Thanks for the info so far. Helping a lot. I didn't need to transfer because right before I quit I had already transferred to a lower pop server. Been so long I forgot I did it.

If your concern is CP, then no. There's plenty of spots that are untouched - Rua had a video about a few of those camps. As for traditional EXP, most people tend to get power leveled and those are at specific camps. So it's a similar situation as CP, there's plenty of other camps that you can take advantage of.

RDM is, personally, one of my favorite jobs and they really make a huge difference in events like Dynamis.

They can do exceptional damage and are more than sufficient at main healing. Just don't tunnel vision and neglect enfeebling.

And if you find yourself back on Asura, I'd be more than happy to help you guys out when/if needed.

a lot of these low man tactics, while they can be done low-man, those low-man techniques usually require a far bit of skill, and decent gear.

My advice is to not rush it. Since you're starting over, its best to work through all to the missions, quests, etc, in order to max out your EXP/CP bonuses via the RoE quests. Not doing this will greatly reduce the CP/XP gain.

This will also give your family time to learn the game, the general mechanic of battles, and the finer points of their chosen jobs.