FFXIV Cool things for multiboxers.

I had 4 clients in the last Phase of Beta, and was pleasantly suprised by not only how fun, but actually how possible multiboxing is.

For those who havent I want to try and get a list of all the cool things we have seen in the game, worthy of notice regarding multiboxing.

1. interact button ( Num0 by default) this is KIND of like an IWT button, but it wont move your character (or, I havent been able to do that). However, it alleviates the need for assisting near NPCs, since it will choose the closest targetable NPC or item in the world near your characters, so you can press the button, and just be CLOSE to an NPC you want to grab or turn in a quest to, and it will select them and interact. COOL.

2. Melee is actually pretty good. Because melee classes can get some healing, for PvE at least, it seems like boxing 4 melee wont be a huge problem.

3. HEALING! As stated, many classes can heal, which makes this game really flexible with teams. Even mage-types can heal, with the exception of black mage, and a couple others, but you can always make a WHM or a thaumaturge to heal as well for when you need it.

4. Auto-linking mobs. OK, this is a double-edged sword, since when you aggro a mob in a party, even a 4 player light party, you will aggro any mobs near your target which are "linked".
- PROS: You can see the link first, and be careful about linking too many mobs, or mobs too high for your level.
You can pull a bunch opf mobs easily if you want to, and then AOE them down.
- CONS: You might pull too many, and die.

5. Job and Class flexibility. OMG. Yes. This is all.

6. Automatic targeting. You can flip a switch which will let your toons choose any target within range. This sounds like a disaster, but RIFT has this, and it was amazing. It makes grinding on mobs in an area of your level or under very fast. If you have aoe target abilities, this is also really good.

OK, I have to run out, but lets add some more. I only played for a few days, and I have some more to add when I get home from work.

[MiRai]

2. Melee is actually pretty good. Because melee classes can get some healing, for PvE at least, it seems like boxing 4 melee wont be a huge problem.

We don't really know how unforgiving any PvE instance may be after level 20 (while multiboxing) for melee. My advice to anyone who is new to multiboxing Final Fantasy XIV would be that they should probably roll ranged classes to learn how to play before having to worry about melee characters and special positioning.

4. Auto-linking mobs. OK, this is a double-edged sword, since when you aggro a mob in a party, even a 4 player light party, you will aggro any mobs near your target which are "linked".
- PROS: You can see the link first, and be careful about linking too many mobs, or mobs too high for your level.
You can pull a bunch opf mobs easily if you want to, and then AOE them down.
- CONS: You might pull too many, and die.

If you're aggroing large packs without a tank leading the party you can expect to take a lot of damage. When I ran 4x THMs I was extremely cautious with what I pulled and my main character could still end up dead (I had 4x Cure as well from CNJ); but when I had my mixed team it was extremely easy to pull a group of linked mobs because the tank could actually take damage and I had a real healer to back her up. So, people should definitely be aware of what classes they're playing and the fact that mobs link with at least 3 in the party (not sure about 2).

I'm speaking from an outside PvE questing perspective since anyone doing instances should not be trying to tackle them without some sort of tank or healer in the party.

6. Automatic targeting. You can flip a switch which will let your toons choose any target within range. This sounds like a disaster, but RIFT has this, and it was amazing. It makes grinding on mobs in an area of your level or under very fast. If you have aoe target abilities, this is also really good.

I'm on the complete other side of the fence with this one. I disabled this feature as soon as I could because it can quickly end up being a disaster since it's likely you'll accidentally pull something off in the distance. All of a sudden you've got 3-5 more mobs on you because the one mob you accidentally grabbed was linked to all of his friends. I died too many times from accidentally pulling things I shouldn't have while tab targeting in FATEs and randomly casting.

Especially when it comes time to start CC'ing mobs, if your casters don't have a target when trying to cast, they may just end up picking a CC'd target.

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Some other things people should probably know:

1. In order for you to progress through the main story line quest, you are forced into instances -- There's no way around them. So, if you're thinking about rolling 4x DPS class then you're most likely going to be running each of them solo (or duo) for those particular quests. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something for people to know beforehand.

2. The global cooldown in this game is 2.5 seconds -- That's a long time to recover if you make a mistake.

Yikes, you had the complete opposite experience I had, im sorry to hear it.

I leveled THM and CJN to 15+ and didn't experience that at all. Now, I was pretty careful with where I was questing, and I did a lot to do all of the hunting logs I could, so I was usually in an area of mobs my level or perhaps +/- 1 lvl at the most when doing crazy aoe stuff. BUT, with my CNJ at least, I was able to go into lvl 16-18 zones and pull groups of 3-4 while I was still lvl 12 (for the huge hunting log exp bonus) and survive with some attention to pre-emptive healing and focus targetting. The aoe heal from CNJ is REALLY nice, and the single target heals are also very handy, like the ACN one.

I am sure this all changes 20+ and im SURE you can not leave the auto-targeting on all the time, but for some areas, you can just sit there spamming your dps key while moving your camera around and pull mobs to you non-stop with respawns. I really liked this, I could lvl and watch a movie without being too worried.

[MiRai]

Yikes, you had the complete opposite experience I had, im sorry to hear it.

I leveled THM and CJN to 15+ and didn't experience that at all. Now, I was pretty careful with where I was questing, and I did a lot to do all of the hunting logs I could, so I was usually in an area of mobs my level or perhaps +/- 1 lvl at the most when doing crazy aoe stuff. BUT, with my CNJ at least, I was able to go into lvl 16-18 zones and pull groups of 3-4 while I was still lvl 12 (for the huge hunting log exp bonus) and survive with some attention to pre-emptive healing and focus targetting. The aoe heal from CNJ is REALLY nice, and the single target heals are also very handy, like the ACN one.

I am sure this all changes 20+ and im SURE you can not leave the auto-targeting on all the time, but for some areas, you can just sit there spamming your dps key while moving your camera around and pull mobs to you non-stop with respawns. I really liked this, I could lvl and watch a movie without being too worried.

It really only ever happened when I was in a large scale FATE where I was trying to do my best to keep up with the players so that I'd get the full reward from it. Quickly tab targeting and attempting to assist when dealing with any sort of server latency will usually cause random characters from your team to target random things, and sometimes those random things can be an entirely new group of mobs that you now get to unknowingly tank.