Melee Mobs: Positioning your Character : FFXI General Discussions

As we all know most mobs melee at close range and follow when aggroed. Well there are some points or spots in the world of Vandiel where Mobs have to travel "around" objects to get to you.

I used to solo most jobs til 30 so I found this information useful with slow to normal speed mobs. With my Rng and Big delay weapon jobs such as Drk I would use hit and run tactics while avoiding getting hit and thus reducing my Damage taken over time.

Some rocks and trees you can run past and the mob will travel around rather than through the terrain to get to you.

There is an actual point from the Jueno to Sauramauge Exit right by the wall on the out left side where you can hide. The Mob will travel all the way around the wall until you pass the "imaginary line" that is right outside of the corner. Yet you can just casually walk right into the left side corner with no Bumping or POS or any hack(I assume that mobs have a "code" for there bounderies they can actually cross, This would be interesting to create "walls" for pure melee mobs and get kills with ranged jobs without getting hit).

I've found many other positions such as Mobs not being able to "climb up" terrain or have to travel around. But for the most part while soloing you should be running and repositioning yourself if you have a longer delay than your mob.

If anyone finds this useful aside from soloing feel free to post back. I would love to hear about hacks for limiting Mob movement or creating these barriers they have to go around. I'm sure the coding in the Bind Spell might have something to do with these Walls I'm talking about and Weight would of course do with there speed. Let me know if anyone takes the extra step further or finds any really cool mob solo spots with just melee mobs.

I don't see how this would work. When the dunes were a popular place to level, sometimes my lizard parties would gave mages camp up on top of this wall. To get up there you had to auto-run up this one crevice until your character suddenly shot up the wall, then we would walk down the wall a bit. If we pulled aggro on top of the wall, the lizard would ignore all clipping and go straight up the wall at a point that players are unable to run up.

Unless you wrote up a guide of where to do this and to which mobs then it's quite useless. Mob pathing isn't an exploit or anything.. SquareE told us how to do it and said it was good to use terrain lol.

In my experience mobs only bypass clipping and climb impossible slopes if the game can find no other way to get them there.

I think what he/she is trying to say is that he/she is using pathing issues to kill mobs. For instance there are gates in East Ronfaure [S] that are up against the side of a hill. As a player I can run around then entire gate, but the mob can only run around the bottom part(relative to the hill). Therefore, if you stand at a certain point and move left and right the mob will have to go all the way back around, then you just step aside and they turn around and run back around. I can farm Ts with a magic or ranged or high delay job while rarely if ever getting hit by the mob.

As a former WoW player, I loved searching for pathing issues to give advantages against mobs you normally wouldnt be able to kill. It appears FF has the same exploit.

HOLY NECRO BATMAN!

The 'exploit' was dead for a reason xD.

It's lame. And btw before someone gets hopeful, the hacks propositioned above are near to impossible to make, probably illegal if anyone managed, and will definitely get you banned.

HOLEY RUSTED METAL, BATMAN!!! (Yes, holey. I stole it from that movie)

And in reply, mobs do NOT need to walk around. They are on a completely different x/y plane than normal characters, and they don't adhere to the same laws as your characters have to.

If you are on an object, let's say a large hill for instance, and you use a ranged attack on something off the cliff, instead of walking around and fighting like you would have to, it will do 1 of 2 things:

1) Teleport straight up to your character and beat you senseless.
or
2) Walk up the seemingly non-climbable wall and beat you senseless.

The first one is less-likely to happen because of the environment laws in FFXI, but it DOES happen, and there is proof in Valkurm Dunes on the broken boat. The second option is the most frequent because it adheres to the mob-movement laws.

Holy learn to read batman!

Hate to break your bubble but there are pathing issues in the game. I'm not talking about things you can stand upon that mobs cant get to. I'm talking about the PATHS they run in certain spots, HENCE pathing issues. It is still there and not illegal(not sure where you came up with that).

If there is a small fence, and a mob happens to only be able to run around one end of it and you stand at the other end, you can move over an invisible line and bounce the mob back and forth. It is a very worthwhile exploit and im not sure why its such a tough concept to grasp. Were not talking about standing in places where "mobs cant reach you", because clearly they will get to you one way or another. This is a spot the mob can run to but because of the pathing they continue to have to take a long path, hence easy solo experience.

I'm not sure how else to explain it, maybe ill get a 5yr old to draw a picture...

First of all, the insulting isn't needed.

Second of all, the only person here not understanding what is being said is obviously you.

I wasn't doubting your little "pathing issue," I was simply explaining mob movement. There are no set paths for a mob to take, because there would be ultimately too many variables. That's why mobs are in a totally different x/y/z plane (I forgot the /z before (meaning they can travel in ways normal characters can not)).

And yes, there are SOME objects which mobs can not cross over and need to move around. Those objects are very small, and become more limited practically with every update, as they were not intended to be used as an exploit, which this is suggesting to be done. Even more relative to my point, you may SEE the monster walk around, when it is actually on top of you.

What you see being done in the game is only a small fraction of the whole picture. There is a visual realm and a code realm. Sometimes these objects can desynchronize the connection between the 2 realms, which is usually a decent connection. (Differing from the point for a second, this usually occurs with lag. I'm sure you can comprehend that concept, or should I draw it for you?)

For example: you just walked passed a fence, while running from an aggro'd monster. Now let's say that the coding is telling the monster to go over the fence like normally, but because the object is abnormal itself, the monster can't actually do so. This would cause a type of disruption, if you will, between the visual and the coding. This would create a horrid loop between the choices, and the path the visual takes, following the mob's normal movement patterns, may ultimately be different than what the mob is allowed to do.

Then again, SE does actually have a decent control over game-movements, and has ways to prevent these anomalies. The problem is mainly that they can't predict every single object-based issue inside the game until it actually happens. Meaning until they actually get rid of every single object of which we're speaking (not going to happen), these anomalies may still occur, which can be exploited until either fixed or banned.

And once again, don't insult me. I know what I was saying and the relevance to the topic. I just didn't portray it as accurately as I had wanted to through the examples.

And now on to my next point:

Therefore, if you stand at a certain point and move left and right the mob will have to go all the way back around, then you just step aside and they turn around and run back around. I can farm Ts with a magic or ranged or high delay job while rarely if ever getting hit by the mob.

This is exactly why SE implemented a system to prevent people from targeting/attacking mobs through objects. To prevent the exploitation of these objects to kill mobs without the danger of being killed.

What is supposed to happen when an object is between yourself and a target, you are supposed to receive a message when you try to attack, "You are unable to see the target." or something relatively close to that.

Basically, this is saying that SE's solution to fighting-through-objects is that you can't use any type of attack because you can't "see" the target through the object.

This concept is also apparent when small objects are in the way too. If they are anomaly-type objects (meaning what I just went over), no matter what the size, and they are in between you and your target, you will MOST LIKELY be unable to attack. The reason for "MOST LIKELY" is because there are always unexpected anomalies, no matter what anyone tells you.

If you understand the concept which you claim you do, why are you going on and on about how the mobs are on a different plane. No one is arguing that. If you're claiming that what I've seen in multiple locations for consecutive pulls while I'm xping off these mobs is lag, then it is you who needs the picture drawn of what lag is. I'm pretty sure I didnt lag for three hours straight while exploiting the path.

If you agree that the paths are there then there's no need to argue, unless you do this with every exploit posted. It works, the OP was posting about it, I was confirming that it can be used(I've found multiple locations in which it can be used to my advantage and gained multiple lvls using it).

I apologize for insulting you but you immediately claimed that mobs can jump anywhere which clearly isnt the case in this situation.

Firstly: I used lag as an example, not related to the topic, in order to explain another way the visual and code realms could be separated.

In World of Warcraft as well, the 2 realms are often separated with lag. I used that as an example because you said you played WoW, so I figured you would understand it. It's the same reason why the monster looks like it's 3726534 feet away from you, yet it's attacking you as if it was only an inch away; because the two realms became separated due to either lag or an obstacle in the way of the visual.


Secondly: Let me rephrase how I stated the other things:

There aren't any set paths, like you're trying to say, but there are obstacles that the visual monsters can not cross over because of boundaries and the way the game was created. I understand what you're trying to say about the mobs moving AROUND these obstacles, because that's what they're supposed to do in case of these "anomalies" which I'm trying to define as a solid object which can not be crossed over, but must be walked around.

I understand that there are land masses that the mobs must walk around and I'll even give you a specific example that I remember: in the lizard camp in Valkurm Dunes, if you pull a goblin from around the corner, it needs to walk around the hill side to get to you.

The reason for the above example, is because that hill is not actually part of the map, and there is no where for the goblin to walk. They're the boundaries of the game, which even the mobs must follow as a rule.


Thirdly, my point of separation: Sometimes these obstacles prevent the mobs from visually climbing over them, but do not stop them on a coding level. Meaning, the visual part can walk around, but the ACTUAL MONSTER (the coding behind it, the program and all its components) can walk straight through the object and attack you.

In this particular case, FFXI would most likely automatically speed up the monster so it can catch up to its "code." Either that, or it will reset the monster's program so that it resynchronizes with its visual counterpart.

So yes, there are safety measures that FFXI takes for certain situations like this...


I hope this helped to better understand what I'm trying to say. Sorry if it's so "out there" and you're not getting what I am trying to say... Basically, you're only looking at this on the visual level, but you need to take in the coding level to understand the whole picture.

LOL, what am I only looking at on a visual level? Don't insult my knowledge of code as I am very successfull on many levels in my job(programmer) and probably know more about game code(worked for multiple small game companies) than you ever will. That being said, I understand what you are saying about lag(in WoW and FF) which has nothing to do with this topic. I also understand about mob boundaries, hence the exploit. There are a lot of locations that mobs cannot go or cross or at least they cant, or arent supposed to, directly. When they run into this "barrier" many checks go off, "usually" if there is another way to get to the location desired they will use it, hence running around a fence. I get this, I understand it all very well. The point I was making was that the exploit is in the game, it works, its helpful. I'm not sure why it couldnt just be left at that.

Just a quick interjection; you meant xz-plane earlier, y is vertical height in FFXI.

Most of FFXI's programmers will never have worked on the pathing. It is also unwise to say something like "than you ever will". Waitinginshadow is not old; none of us can possibly predict what he will do in later life.

As a programmer, you should also realise that it would be utterly trivial for SE to prevent this kind of abuse. Yes, they have been lax in the past, but it really wouldn't be hard to prevent this.

The fundamental issue is the exploit is useless without specific locations; it is not 'helpful' if nobody can find a way to use it (without the aforementioned "cannot see" issues).

Not a whole lot of people work on actual game code, therefore when I said "Probably" there's a good chance that I will "Probably" end up being right. Second, I didnt make the original post, all I did was confirm that the OP was correct in this. I gave a zone in which it worked in, do I feel like going around and trying to find every pathing issue in every zone, no. If you want to find the exact locations more power to you. Do I think SE cares about this, probably not on the top of their list. Do I care if they care, no. Do I care if you know about the planes in which mobs move, no. I'm sorry I tried to confirm an exploit that does in fact work, while a mod no less was trying to say that "mobs do NOT need to walk around an object" when in fact they do in the instances mentioned.