How to tell if pirates are comeing : FFXI General Discussions

did a search, and couldn't find this posted so thought i would post a short guide.


How To Tell If Pirates Are Coming:
Get on the boat from Selbina to mhaura (or mhaura to selbina). Wait for it to depart. After the animation plays, and the boat loads you in again, immediately try and target the door that leads to upstairs (there are two of them, either will work). If you can target the door right away, this means pirates are coming. If it takes you 2-5 seconds before you can target the doors, this means no pirates. Simple as that. There are other ways to tell just by looking, but they all have to do with the same idea, and this is the easiest way to explain it. But as you do it a few times, you will start to be able to tell just by how the zone loads in.


Why would you want to know that pirates are coming.
1.) if you are farming the WHM weapons from the pirates NM's.
2.) If you are on a low level job and don't feel like dieing and want to stay down where its safe (of course still sea horror to kill you)
3.) if you are fishing ebisu rod and want to catch gugrusaurus's (and aren't in the mood to ride the ToAU boat at the moment..lol)
4.) Your farming sand charm and want to be able to afk for 15 min or so whenever pirates don't pop.
5.) make your own reason here.


anyway, simple as that. Hope some people find it interesting and useful. This is an old old trick, and I'm sure plenty know it by now, but since i couldn't find a guide on it, thought i would post it.

Um...

This wouldn't work, because this game is online-based, meaning there's a LOT of lag involved. So one time the door may be targetable instantly, another it may not. I have this issue in my MH sometimes when I go in there: takes a few seconds before my door is targetable, and sometimes it's instantaneous...

um, it has nothing to do with lag, its how the zone loads in. It works. iv done it on good computers and my crappy laptop as well as on PS2. It works. Go test it before commenting please

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying objects take longer to load depending on the amount of lag coming from the server. And what I'm saying anyone with internet access who spends a lot of his day on a computer would know. I'm not criticizing what you're saying, I'm just saying you can't rely on this (at least not all the time) because it is heavily dependent on 1 factor: no lag.

a better and easier way to tell is the black screen delay. if there are no pirates, the picture loads at the same time as the "entered new area" message
if there are pirates, the screen will be black for 5-10 seconds after the "entered new area" message appears

ive camped blackbeard before and this always happened when pirates popped. there were 2 people with me, a 360 user, a pc user with high specs, and me on my laptop with low specs, all noted the same thing

So since the zone takes a few seconds longer to load (Since the pirates are coming), the door will always be targetable instantly?

If they are not coming, the zone loads faster, thus giving the objects less time to appear?

This works perfectly, been using this trick for a few years fishing on the ferry.

Usually spam the tabkey, if door doesn't get targeted for ~5 secs it isn't pirates, but if it's pirates it's targatable as fast as the zone loads.

hope it to some use for ppl!

lag has never apeared to be a factor in this working for me over the 4+ years iv been useing it. And iv done it on PC and PS2 on high speed and dial up, with and without lag, very full and very empty boat..lol. I guess hypiteticly it COULD factor in..but i have never seen it ever not work. Iv not once not been able to predict pirates.

As far as the black screen way, its basicly the same thing like i said above. But this is the easiest one to explain and confirm.