Niche FFXI Tips, Tricks And Other Oddities...

OK, another one of my threads where I ask the audience for your input on FFXI-randomness. All I ask is that you stay on topic.

Let's hear some of your really niche use-cases for anything within FFXI that has been beneficial to you. (It doesn't have to be beneficial to anyone else either. It just has to be something you decided to do because it was helpful to you, or a friend, or to get out of some tricky situation). These can be items used in a way that you hadn't considered before, or maybe you have a mule in a strange location ...or maybe you have a cooking mule that stores nothing but walnuts*?

I'll go first. I have a $1 mule that I use for troves, vouchers, login points, extra armor storage that I may need at a later date, so I activate/reactivate it as needed. For convenience sake, I also parked this level 10 character behind the Altepa Gate in Western Altepa Desert:



*Many years ago, before crafting shields, someone told me that walnuts were a really important ingredient to get Cooking from 100 to 110, so ....I also have a mule that stores Walnuts...that I just forgot about:



...OK folks, your turn.

I have posted about this before but many years ago.

Something little known about Aggro in FFXI is that monsters generally must be able to "see" you in order for them to behave aggressively towards you. There has to be a line-of-sight to your character model, or the monster won't be able to aggro you by sound, blood etc. The BG wiki page says nothing about this little aggro caveat, but I assure you it exists. You might not notice but it happens all the time in Nyzul Isle, where monsters in adjacent rooms or obstructed wall paths can't aggro you through the wall until they can actually beeline (see) your character, even if their detection method is blood/sound and you're within the range where you should have aggroed them. Sometimes blood aggro can be janky and ignore this at certain angles (and idk about True sound/sight mobs behavior), but it's rather consistent. It works even on smaller obstructions too, like rocks and pillars.

This is relatively informational tidbits, but there is some tactical advantage to it. I use this little mechanic when popping Chests in Sheols as a way to avoid Mimics. So long as the Mimic can't physically "see" me (line of sight is blocked by an obstruction), I can use pillars (when a chest is conveniently located near one) between me and the Chest to avoid the potential Mimic, which on higher floors usually ends my run.

Illustrated below (inb4 "Buukki you not vanilla bro")



I started recording after I popped it the other day, but notice the Mimic has not come out of his chest, is white, and completely passive, yet the message in my log indicates he did indeed pop. The pillar blocked the Mimic from aggroing me. Now had I allowed the Mimic to see me, he would have instantly aggroed, drew me in, and killed me, but once I was 20+ away, I could safely avoid the mimic, continuing my run.

Back in the day, it used to be a well known fact in the Bst community that charm worked off the Beastmaster job's main level, even when subbed.

Meaning a /bst with a 75 bst could charm as well as main job Bst at 75. If the bst level was instead 37, and main job was 75 they could not charm things a bst can at 75. AFAIK charm was the only thing that worked on the bst level even when subbed.

It made for some very interesting combinations, like I would routinely run around brd/bst and charm high levels mobs, have a pet and still be able to buff and sleep mobs as well as a 75 brd.

Charm is a dead ability now even for main bst so it doesn't matter if word gets out anymore. Doubt many people remember this.

Most probably know this one, but make the following macro to pop T3 VNM in abyssea to have a good chance of keeping the abyssite, does not work on VNM outside of abyssea.

/heal on <wait .1>
/heal off <wait .1>
/heal on <wait .1>
/heal off <wait .1>
/heal on <wait .1>
/heal off <wait .1>

They patched the Abyssea VNM thing a long time ago IIRC. Bgwiki has notes about charm accuracy and BST main level but it links to Alla so who knows if it is real now or ever was.

The whole forced delay stuff is probably the biggest / most important thing that people don't understand as well as they think they do: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Forced_Delay

I used that macro just weeks ago making a Daurdabla.

Abyssea vnm trick still works, always do it accidentally spamming R3/asterisk on the keypad

Charm macc based on BST level was (is still?) true too. Often saw it used by drks who couldn't get invites.

If you can't unity warp to Aht Urghan areas because you don't have captain mercenary rank, get a remnants permit and it should let you warp. Found this buried on some page on BG, don't recall which.

Charm thing was definitely real (and prob still is, who would notice?). I had a blast as rdm/bst back in wotg days doing those scnm's. Normal groups would bring an alliance but as rdm/bst there were plenty of pets around to chuck at NMs.

Perfect Dodge by default cannot cause a THF to dodge ranged attacks. This goes for most monsters as well, so if you are on a job that has Archery, Marksmanship, or Throwing, and you have a proper weapon/racc setup, then you can still hit and WS the mob so long as you use ranged weapon skills.

So if you know you're gonna fight say, Warder of Prudence, bring an Exalted Bow +1 or preferably an Ullr!

Defense down effects have tiers, and if you apply a higher tier effect, it will always overwrite lower tiers. It will also overwrite and make ineffective lower tiers of defense up. With this in mind, on certain monsters, this makes things like Shell Crusher or even Metatron Torment nearly useless to do, depending on the tiers of defense up you're dealing with. Use the right tier of defense down, and you save your dispellers a cast of dispel, as well.

Shining One pairs well with crit gear and blood rage. Every job that can use it can make self solo darkness via Stardiver > Sonic Thrust > Impulse Drive(Well in PLD's case it's Sonic > Sonic > Impulse or Double > Sonic > Impulse).

Auras / fields / bubbles have a minimum duration for the effect when you move out of their range. Particularly debuffing auras from monsters. It's always better to move a little further than it is to wait and see.

PAY MONBERAUX! Monberaux gets lauded as a great healing trust, and he is one. However, when dealing with any situation with multiple debuffs applied to the whole party, he often gets overwhelmed unless he's been paid. Paying him makes all status removal party wide automatically. Many many people who have him don't pay him and give themselves a harder time.

For Warriors past level 90, Berserk and Defender give 10% more of their buff than their debuff, meaning you can now activate both simultaneously for a boost to both offense and defense. This means if you pull hate, instead of turning off berserk, you can just pop defender. It'll save your life!

No light gets generated for cleaved monsters except the claimed ones(red names) in an aoe pull in Abyssea. If you want to build Amber for cleaving, it's better to go around sniping Ephemerals or spamming monsters one at a time until you get over 200. You must also claim individual monsters before you kill them. If you OHKO with a strong magic WS as the claim hit, you get no light.

If a monster doesn't build stun resistance and has a problem move you want to stun, and your TP generation is sufficiently high, then you can just stun every TP move. Works very well with Leg Sweep on Esurient Botulus.

Advanced Synthesis Imagery carries across zones. You can grab it at your crafting guild and then HP to Adoulin to take advantage of Ionis's bonuses on top of it.

Relic weapon aftermath overwrite themselves regardless of TP expended, and snapshot their duration based on total accumulated TP at time of WS execution, meaning you can get 3000TP and use a Relic WS with Sekkanoki active and receive a full 3 minute aftermath effect and only expend 1000.

Macc matters for additional effects on WS. If you need a WS's effect, stack macc for that WS!

On Dahaks and some Dahak NMs, the breed effect of water damage reducing TP can be abused to kill the dahaks without them ever using a TP move. Uncommon but good to know, and the Goblin Trust Fablinix only does Enwater, and he can keep a Dahak's TP usage down for you, if you are not Rdm or /rdm.

Anecdotal, but it seems to me like all drops are better in old Dynamis if you farm the Time Extensions. This includes things like Sadist's Fortune and the like. It's weird cause they're unrelated to procs, as procs make currency drop, but idk, I just never have the hours on hours of Dyna Beauc that I hear other people complain about when it comes to farming Attestations.

No better job than COR to do VNMs on. Bolter's Roll and Carmine Cuisses = =60% movement speed. You'll find yourself chasing the bead a lot less.

VNM titles and rings really are tied to their shadows. No shadow = You lose, you get nothing. GOOD DAY SIR!

In terms of raw galli, the Naakuals in the basement are slightly more than a ground floor boss(2058 for Naaks), and generally easier than B or C boss in terms of access/stringency. Naakuals in basement also come with Starstones and Old Case +1 chance. If your group has the accuracy requirement and needs +3 Empy, it can be a good idea to do E/F Naakuals instead of B/C boss. This, of course, is for more casual/newer groups that aren't rocking RP'd Odyssey sets who can't yet beat basement bosses beyond E(or maybe are missing members so have to settle).

Just get real players, notably a real tank and healer/support for the Chaos fight at the end of TVR. Chaos does a lot of damage, and isn't going down fast since the stun exploit was fixed. Fetters will have to be dealt with.

Some of us use OneDrive or Dropbox to install Windower so we can keep addons, gearswap, custom scripts (and save macros to server) no matter which PC you play. Handy if you play on PC and laptop while traveling about.

I want to add on to this feature for some of you that play FFXI with friends/family or close-knit groups.

With the findall addon, it's useful to find out which character has what. Well, I set up a shared folder within OneDrive/Dropbox with other irl friends playing FFXI with me. This allows our group to know who has items/gear so we dont waste time asking "who needs this drop??" amongst ourselves or "Does anyone have this item?"

It's all a //findall command away and it's always up to date.

This also works for Gearswap and lua's if sharing accounts (such as roommates/family in same network), set up the lua folder to shared and you have gearswaps ready when playing your wife's character.

The vast majority of non-notorious-monsters in the game will hold TP until it reaches ~3000, at which point it will unleash a random skill. At 25% HP, the enemy will change strategy to use abilities when it reaches ~1000 TP. This creates a scenerio where when low-health, enemies become more dangerous, spamming abilities.

When you are first starting out, this is not obvious, but if you save your own weaponskills / large damaging abilities on normal mobs until thier HP is roughly 30% HP, you can often finish the mob before it starts rapid-firing off skills on you.

Another "Niche" thing, is you can do PVP in this game (I don't know current PVP modes available, but ballista/Brenner/diorama's you could enter directly from towns were options back when I played. I'm not suggesting you -should- PVP in FFXI, but be aware of it's existance, because there are are some niche benefits when it comes to in-game testing. For example, if you want to test if a debuff stacks or not, you can go into PVP with a friend and test debuffs directly on another player, who can confirm whether or not multiple icons appear, or if one spell direclty overwrites another. This is also a great way to test resistances, where many years ago, we learned elemetal-resistant stats greatly affect spell resists (dual stun resist earrings with darkness + ribbon could completely negate sleep/stun), and would even generate 2 different kinds of "Resist" and "Resist!" messages that you'd be unlikely to see in the game naturally otherwise. Additionally, you can get items in some forms of the PVP that allow resetting abilities easily if you need to for event prep.

Similarly, you could use "maps" as a re-usable entry-key to gain access to a zone from within Jeuno Chocobo Stables called "Meeble Burrows". Once inside, you could interact with an NPC at the entrance and reset your 2-hour abilities (1hr I think these days - sorry I dont play anymore!), which was very handy to help reset key-player abilities between wipes on high tier content while learning it. The more people that had a map-configuration ready to go, the more times you could leverage this. A common pattern was called "colibri map", if you need to dig it up, I'm sure there's still guides somewhere, since it was a generally handy map to have for chilling with low-level friends / getting them into some content. Have someone in your LS make a map, and have as many as able keep a "copy" of the map since it's re-usable and copyable, and you'll be able to fairly easily "get another go" at tough content instead of waiting.

I see BST mentioned in comments a couple times already, but if you were lucky or had support, BST is able to charm things far higher-level than the player (might take some charm spam), and using your 1hr ability, you could hold onto the mob charmed for a minimum of 30 minutes (more with time extension gear). In tiered zones, this allowed fun stuff where you could charm something very high level, go to a lower tier zone, and annihilate stuff for fun. "Heel" or "Stay" would allow the charmed mob to heal back to full very quickly without the need for buscuits etc.

Another BST tip is "Heel" will not break invisible, but "Fight" will. This means you can send a pet in, invisible before engage (to minimize enmity gain, since it won't start until after pet engages), start running, "heel", and continue to run while your pet "kites" the mob. If there are adds, you can "release" and all mobs except the initial engaged mob will deaggro, allowing for a quick re-charm and fight vs one mob. This can be extremely handy in tricky zones like the old Nyzule Isle, where BST was secretly one of the best jobs to bring (albeit, reliant on jugs), since the less you faught, the more time you'd save, and pulls were difficult at times.

Another BST tip is that if you fight Cactaur-style NM's, where thier largest damage is "divided evenly" amung players, you can have everyone sub-bst and charm pets to divide the damage further, essentially bringing it to almost nothing once you have something like 18 players with 18 pets. Even lower level pets like the rabao dhalmels still have a boatload of raw HP, so when you bring the dmg down from 500~ per person to 250~, it can drastically reduce the difficulty.

A final BST tip: At low levels you can charm worms, and when engaging enemies from range, they will often begin with a casted spell, despite having no TP nor "sic" availability. This can make the first 10 levels of most jobs more enjoyable via sub-bst.

OK one more bst thing... Charms on non-charmable mobs are just a unique and spammable bind. Many sub-bst in a raid can "lock" most mobs, even very high level ones, completely in place by having the whole group spam charm.

Speaking on "aggro", not so "niche", but a new player might not know of "super tanking", which is a tactic of allowing a Tank to hold enemity on mobs by "aggroing them" but not "engaging them". As long as you don't "engage" mobs that are on a person, you can heal-bomb the crap out of them and enmity will never break, allowing your team to pick off a huge group of mobs one-by-one with low risk. Late game, not as important since enmity is very well-understood (look into CE/VE 130% logic if you want to know more), but mid-game it can be a life-saver. There are "zone-wide" aggro zones that "break" this rule like "Master Trial" fights and "Ambuscade", but most everywhere else this is how it works.

Another, more malicious "aggro" trick is that "resting" generates enmity if very-close proximity to an enemy. This allowed for things like engaging an enemy with a low-threat ability like dia, dragging it to a resting person, and then "rooting" it in place with Bind-or-similar, where it would pivot to the person and engage them. The other player would not be able to defend themselves, since it is a "claimed" mob - meaning they have to sometimes move all the way to zone-exit to escape the frustration. I would never, but it was possible.

Speaking of Master Trials and similar zones, there are aggro tricks that work there as well, if you are willing to be a sacraficial lamb. There are many re-raise items and spells in the game, but some of them are easier to leverage than others. There is a chest piece with auto-reraise on it, that as long as you are wearing when you die, you will come back to life (minus a little xp). Though aggro in master trial style zones is zone-wide, there is still a distance preference taken upon aggro. It is possible to pull multi-mob fights apart and "die" intentionally far away from the rest of the group, reraise as fast as you can, and repeat. There is a "delay" from when the enemy kills it's target before it re-initiates and heads towards the group if you are far enough apart. This delay can be exploited by running back into aggro range before the "split" mobs register the rest of the team at a great distance, allowing you to perpetually "lock" a mob in place while the rest of the team widdles down thier target. It can get flakey, but it works and allows a lesser-geared player to "have a role" in a difficult event.

On the topic of Reraise, There was a trick used years ago in a "Maat" fight, where you'd intentially go in "almost" leveled (suicide until delevel, and then inch XP back up carefully before going in). There were XP scrolls you could use when you were "out of mana" (if BLM, which was my case those years ago!) or "almost dead" (squisier melee), and upon consuming the XP scroll, you'd restore full HP/MP upon level-up. If you were about to die, having a reraise could also result in a situation where you die, re-raise, and level-up again (albeit, in a weakened state).

Speaking of dying, another thing newer players might not realize is, if you are going to die or need to stall out on a mob after a wipe, you can re-raise and apply Dia, which has a very low resist rating on most enemies and applies a damage-over-time (dot) on them. Dots present on the enemy, even small, will prevent HP generation in most scenerios and "pin" the enemy HP wherever your group wiped, which allows for reraise -> dia -> die -> reraise -> repeat until the rest of your group is up and ready to go again (sometimes this takes several minutes while you wait on the group to lose "sickness"), allowing you to overcome mobs that have intentionally unavoidable raid-wipe mechanics.

Another "niche" thing was to use Monstrosity for scouting. If you are curious if an NM is up, but don't want to make the trek out there (or maybe aren't equipped to go alone), you can use monstrocity to get very high-speed remote-control scouting of zones in complete safety. If you see a mob up, assemble the avengers and go get your loot.

Call For Help can be leveraged in some instances to allow engagement on enemies by outside parties. Not useful in most places, but there are situations where you don't care what the enemy drops, you just want to accomplish a certain task (for example, zone-clears in areas that allowed more than a single party to be present, but were on a timer). I don't remember what all we used this for, but I DO also remember that could also be used to abuse other players, since you could for example, engage a very strong enemy, drag it to a party fighting, and then call for help nearby when AOE abilities were in play which would pivot the enemy to them. Not that I'd ever do anything like that, of course.

Abyssea is a wonderful place to "skill up" melee weapons fast. One of the fastest ways to do this in late game is to go anything/mnk (ideally war/mnk, if I recall) for base counterstance, and layer on Atmas for additional counter, drag dozens of MNK-based mobs (mandragora type, for example), and use the counterstance ability with many things beating on you with a low-dmg weapon. You'll cap skill very fast. War main I think also lets you layer retaliation on top of this for similar effects. Probably not neccesary today because trusts exist, but years ago this was very useful (minutes vs hours type of thing).

Speaking on Abyssea, most people know you can increase XP by sticking to killing the same mob-type over and over. Many do not realize you can increase Cruor by alternating mob-types. If you bring two people and take turns killing, or fight at the edge between two mob types, you can scale cruor up on a kill-per-kill basis. Niche as *** boi.

Self-poison-pots often nullified the ability for enemies with very-strong poison to apply said poison to you. If you brought poison pots to a poison-heavy fight, you could sometimes negate the enemies spells entirely for a very low dmg dot. This also helps avoid "sleep" spamming mobs since your poison can keep yourself awake.

If you walk on the airships and press youself against the mid-section of the boat wall, you can "jump" up the lip of the boat and walk to the front of the ship hull.

If you are in a difficult to get to location, but a friend has no reasonable way to get there, you can sometimes have them suicide nearby and "tractor" thier body to wherever you are (Batalia downs has a ledge, for example, that leads to a portion that connects to Beaucedine Glacier, and you can tractor folks up there. Poor example probably, but an example none-the-less).

Most locked doors in the game can be opened by mobs if they are aggroed from the opposing side. If you are able to press yourself against the door and spam self-targeted magic spells, magic aggroable mobs will often come and open the door for you (Uggalepih temple has some samples of this).

Reisen folks will likely already know, but a Niche use for sub-smn is that you can full-reset TP of mobs even with a very weak cait-sith. Used on rotation with careful planning, you can prevent a mob from ever performing even a single TP move.

More a Niche for the trolls, but if someone wants to inspect you and you want to *** with them, turn off lockstyle and swap gear. It will break thier inspect, usually causing them to try to re-inspect, at which point you can break it again, and again... and again....

Killer effects are actually just "affinnity" affects. If you have Dragon Killer trait (demon affinity), and wear Crimson scale set (dragon affinity), it is *(or at least, at one point was, not sure if still a thing)* possible to occasionally intimidate yourself.

Doesn't seem to work vs eschn shadow dragons, tested with /RUN unda runes, /RDM enwater and /RDM water spamming between every melee swing, they still got a TP move off.

Also tested with /RUN unda against beist which also got a TP move off.

It either only works for legacy content, maybe they added this mechanic to make exp parties vs dragons possible back in aht urhgan days, or on selected targets but it's not a universal thing.

Has anyone successfully tested this vs geas fete Neak or odessy Kuk?

Dahak are only the red dragons, Beist and Eschan Shadow Dragons aren't Dahaks, they're just Dragons.

I'm not sure how many Dahaks it works on since they're quite uncommon enemies, but I know it works on the Sheol C Dahaks, FWIW.

Random tip that took me 10+ years to realize:

When you trade an item usually you'll put it in the default top left square. Then to confirm you press right a few times or hold it down a second to get to the OK button. You can instead press up+down in one motion and it'll use the gil slot to shorten the distance to the OK button in one fluid and instant motion as well.

Try it next time you trade your Mars orb, or Oseem aug equipment, etc

We used to use this one for summoner burns. A red mage or sub red mage would grab a mob, then run around the zone gathering up everything that would link to it. At the end of the run, they'd take it to the group's supertank, who would be resting by the camp. Everything would turn and start attacking that tank.

It still works today, and actually does put you on the mob's hate list (tested with indi-poison, the mobs would begin to lose HP even though they hadn't been acted on.)

I'm not sure there are a lot of applications for it today. If you have a tough enough geomancer, maybe using it to apply their debuffs to a large crowd of mobs rather than being stuck with the normal 16 at a time.

That page is a little terse. Could you be more specific? (I think the assertion on the wiki page is that Waltzs and Steps in cure this forced delay which takes from Auto-Attacks/TP gain (and therefore WSes and Total DPS)? If this isn't it, then I didn't get it.

I'm sure most people know this already but on bard, if you need to give your mage double ballads or you tank multiple minnes, you can piannisimo whichever minuet you gave them as part of the melee song set, in zero duration+ gears, so that that song will become their lowest duration songs and will be overwritten by your next piannissimo ballad/minne.

Afaik all you need to know is if you use abilities time them so they are used right after a auto attack not right befor the next one would happen and if you use abilities chain them together instead of using one then wait for auto attack befor you use the next one.

Also do ability -> spell, not the other way around.

Let's see, niche specifically for me...

When my XI LP was in full swing, I restricted my character to level 75 so that story bosses presented a modicum of challenge(until after WoTG).

This also meant restricting myself and maxing out synergy for augmenting abjuration and sky gear for maximum power.

Turns out via synergy it is possible to gain even the 300 skill level 80 weaponskills at level 75 by obtaining a Sea Torque, full merits, and gaining skill from a synergy augment. The job needs A+ rating in the weapon.

Prime example in this case is Fell Cleave. With Fortitude Torque and augmented Hecatomb Feet, I was able to get Fell Cleave at level 75.

This made certain fights where you have to fight a lot of things at once and certain assaults with the same premise far easier than would have otherwise been. Plus I got to say, "Hey I'm not supposed to have this for 4~5 more levels."

Every sword job on Naegling can make self Light. The path to it is not damage optimal, but it goes Burning Blade > Flat Blade > Savage Blade. You will make Fusion and Light.

You can go to Aht Urhgan or the Shadowreign era to receive Sanction or Sigil with Enhanced Food Duration effect to double your food duration, eat you food there, and then go to any other region to do your actual event. When I'm gonna grind exemplar or JP, and I know I've got the willpower and time to do it for a long time that day, I will get a 3~4 hour food and go double its duration (8 hour food yes plox). Then I'll go to where I'm gonna grind and get Signet or Ionis instead.

The Moonshade Earring augment, "Occasionally increases damage based on TP +5%" scales with TP roughly like this:
1000TP = +33% damage on auto on proc
2000TP = +66% damage on auto on proc
3000TP = +100% damage on auto on proc
It also works on ranged attacks in the same manner. It also stacks with other % damage increases, such as Relic hidden/Empyrean aftermath/Armor set damage bonuses. This is a fun way to see 5 digit auto attacks, even if it's non-optimal.

Samurai has always been able to self darkness with great katana with Meikyo Shisui without some hamfisted switching of weapons. Jinpu > Kasha > Gekko.

Also, Tachi: Gekko is the only 225 skill weapon skill in the game that has two properties.

Staff is one of the few weapons in the game that cannot make a level 3 skillchain without the addition of a REMAP based weaponskill. Specifically Claustrum allows it to go from only making level 2 SCs to being able to make Darkness and Double Darkness solo. But also, the addition of Shattersoul allows it to make self Fragmentation with Shattersoul > Retribution. This allows for SMN with the SMN Mythic WS Garland of Bliss to make self 3 step Light without the Prime weapon in the same manner as the Prime Weapon.

Black Mage may also self light using Vidohunir by doing Full Swing > Full Swing > Fusion > Vidohunir > Light. Vidohunir is also the same properties as Ground Strike (the OG) and may open Darkness for Vidohunir > Retribution(or Shattersoul).

This makes SMN and BLM the only jobs that can take Staff to its maximum, in spite of both of them only having Bs (B- for BLM) in the weapon.

As a DNC or sub /DNC you can frame cancel your weaponskill animation if you use a Step and WS right after.

Not very well known BST jug - Viscous Broth

Pondering Peter (Rabbit Pet)

Is an amazing way to AOE heal the whole party with Wild Carrot

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Vis._Broth

Sigil is usually the better option. Sanction will always just double your food, but sigil will scale its benefit based on how many campaign zones your nation controls. It's double at 4 zones; this week, Windurst on Fenrir holds 7 zones, giving me +160%. Not as applicable if you're on a server that sucks at campaign, but I think these days the NPCs tend to be able to hold everything on their own anyway?

Oh, my sweet summer child. I was using this for Wild Carrot from Day 1. I told everyone who would listen. If they didn't, it was their loss.

Is the resting for enmity quick? Any testing done on range? I would gladly use this on GEO to get party hate in things like Odyssey.

Edit: by quick I mean do you need to wait for a resting tick?

If I may add something to this plethora of great BST information, here's something niche that the job is capable of...

Most times when a monster becomes aggressive toward a player (sight or sound aggro, for example), the player will be unable to summon Trusts.


But if you quickly issue the following BST commands: Fight, Ready, Heel
the monster's attention is completely diverted away and you can summon Trusts again (and use abilities/items without incurring enmity also).


The Ready move needs to be an attack or enfeebling move that will act upon the enemy target in some way (even if the attack misses or the enfeeble fails to take effect, the technique still works).

If the pet lands an auto-attack melee round on the enemy, the Master will end up back on the enmity list, so timing is key.
The usefulness of this is limited, and some folks here probably knew about it already...
Even though it doesn't protect the Master from enemy AoE abilities/spells, it can provide protection from certain aura effects (such as the 300 dmg/tic Bio effect after Tumult Curator's Bilgestorm). The Pet will still be subject to these aura effects, naturally.

To follow up on Falkirk's trick with something else slightly similar:

You can use Trusts to essentially sack/carby pull mobs for you. Valaineral uses Uriel Blade the moment a group is pulled, and they all get on his hate list, but if you never act on the rest of the group, only the individual target you attacked will retain hate on you. I've used this trick when soloing Agon Halos and Beastmen back when Odyssey C was still fresh. I would run in with Valaineral, attack the halo, he would Uriel Blade and claim everything, while I killed the halo. If he was still alive after then, I'd run away and dismiss him (and any other trusts that may have healed him in the process). The mobs will lose hate and return to their normal areas, which allowed me to single pull Nostos and carefully pull Beastmen and clear groups with less risk.

I also use him when soloing the UNM Borealis Shadow, which spawns 4 Fomor NMs. He will always open the fight with Uriel Blade, claiming all 4 Fomor. If he doesn't immediately die, I might be able to take out 1-3 Fomors while Ygnas keeps him alive, but even if he dies, the fomor will go after the mages first since they're on the hate list before me (I never acted on the others, but I have natural hate from popping the NMs). By that time, there's usually one Fomor left I can kill and get the Coffer. Takes about 45 seconds/kill. Then I just resummon the trusts and repeat the process.

Lastly, you can use him in a similar fashion when farming Swarts with larger groups. Pull on THF, engage something, he will take all hate initially, probably die, but then you can fire off a couple Aeolian Edges and kill the group, and resummon him after.

Most main drgs likely alrdy know this but, drg/rdm is one of the most cost effective healing methods, make a macro with some barspell for like 5MP and it will trigger healing breath as long as someone is below 75% and, with proper gear, will heal 1200~ in fairly rapid fire no hate heals.

I used this as main heals in parties a few times as well as events.