Well, this sure happened to me. I was just wondering through Korroloka tunnel, Looking for a fishing spot someone told me about, when I came across what I thought was a glitch in the game. I see what appears to be about 1/2 a dozen mobs stuck in one place, twitching. I thought it was kinda funny to see them piled like that. I tab through just to see if there was someone on the other side fighting them, in case they need some help (I'm a WHM so I always stop and help cure people if they need). I only tab the mobs so I do a quick scan around and don't see anyone. nothing! All the while I'm thinking this is the weirdest thing I've seen in game yet.

I was actually about to just keep going When I figured 5-6 mobs stuck in one place would be a good way to test out banishaga II (I have not had the opportunity to use it yet, so I figure, what the hay).

This is when it turns REALLY bad. As soon as the spell goes off, there are now Dozens of mobs covering my screen, attaching me. I start panicing... cast another banishga II (only kills like 4-5 of them). I'm then casting Cure V trying to stay alive and manage to finally get a Warp off.

I barely manage to catch my breathe to figure out what just happened when I start receiving tells. They said I just MPK'ed their mobs and they called the GM on me. Hell, it took me a few seconds to even remember what MPK stands for. Their chewing me out, saying I wasted an hour of their time, And all I could do was try to type as fast as I can trying to explain what happened (from my perspective) and apologize.

Now I feel like crap for doing something that I didn't know I was doing. I didn't even know it was possible for someone to pile mobs up like that.

One thing is for sure... If I ever see a "computer glitch" again... I'm just gonna ignore it!

P.S.- IF anyone on Alla was a member of the group that I managed to screw, I AM REALLY SORRY! I never try to do anything that would spoil the game experience for someone else. I'm REALLY REALLY SORRY

Don't worry about it.

The only reason they got so upset was because people will frequently interrupt SMN burns... if the group is efficient, they're usually just jealous of their EXP rate, but they'll say it goes against their principles or some sh*t, or that it's not fair, etc.

Honestly it's a pretty mindless process to gather the mobs together. It takes a little while but it's worth it. It just gets annoying when people repeatedly steal your pull to kill EXP and ruin your PT. Luckily this community is pretty forgiving of little mistakes like what you did, though

Edited, Oct 31st 2009 2:46pm by Poubelle

If I was on I could have told you that wasn't a glitch.

(I went from COR 10 to COR 22 in one of those parties.)

Knowing It was an ignorant mistake, that many people would forgive me, helps a little.

I'll still be kicking myself

I really do hate when some people mess up the game for others, so just knowing that I attributed to it accidentally will play on my conscious for a while

I think, just to be safe (for others) I'm gonna stay out of korroloka tunnel

you cant get in trouble by a GM either, so dont worry about "mpking their mobs".

i know this because a smn in one of my shells hates the astral burns. she leveled smn to 75 a few years ago and despises everyone trying to go around leveling like she had.

anyway, she prides herself in that she will wait till they have a full pull, then run in and diaga all the bats. it makes killing all the mobs worthless and ruins any chance they had a doing their astral burn. shes probably on a sh*t ton of people's blacklist by now. they call GMs on her all the time but she never gets in trouble. all the mobs are actually 'unclaimed' so killing or casting on any of them is not an offense.

When I started the game and first got Warp, I didn't realise it only worked on yourself. I thought you just targeted someone and warped them. Soon after, I saw someone offering a 1k reward for Warp so I invited them, targeted them and cast Warp.

Needless to say, I warped myself back to my HP. I didn't realise what happened, I just thought I must have targeted myself by mistake.

I sent a /tell to explain but got no response. Then I noticed I was DC'ing. I was logged off and couldn't get back on for ages. And I forgot his name and didn't know enough then how to search for him.

The guy must have thought I took his money, warped myself and logged off. :(

Actually you can. Dont shoot the messenger, because I dont agree with it either. It counts toward griefing if you do it for no reason other than to disrupt the groups activities and I know people have have been punished over it.

Now, lets say you were farming Bat Fangs and Spiders Legs however, and explain to the GM that they were unclaimed and you need the items they drop, that is legitimate :)

Its all about how you come across. The rules are hazy and as Poubelle says, are they really hurting you personally by doing it? Is getting a bit of oneupmanship really worth it? I just ignore them, unless theyre also gathering slimes and im farming oils, in which case I will wade in and pick the slimes out.

Edited, Oct 31st 2009 5:10pm by Kordain

For the pullers this is a horribly annoying, mind numbingly boring process that takes about 40-60 mins and they repeat it over and over again. The pullers who are usually nice enough under normal situations go bat sh*t crazy if you ruin the pull cause it's just so damn horrible and long to do. Don't take the ranting too seriously, as I say they just force themselves to do a horrible process and get really grouchy about it.

You didn't really do anything wrong, you didn't know any better. Don't stress over it, they rounded up all those mobs again after they repopped and did it anyway.



It's not an exploit anymore than high chaining collibri for merits, if it was an exploit it would of been stopped by making unclaimed mobs give no xp. Easy, they didn't do it becuase the devs had no problem with it. Ruining an astral burn on purpse is as bad as someone going to a merit camp and pulling a few mobs here and there to solo with the express idea to break chains for the merit party. You can and will get in trouble from a GM for doing both if you are doing it with the intention of harassing them.

Edited, Oct 31st 2009 6:51pm by preludes

You won't get in trouble for what the OP did, but you definitely can get in trouble for purposely griefing astralburn groups (though like everything else, it varies by GM). My group had at one point, for whatever their motives, a group of people who got their jollies out of diaga-ing our pulls. We called a GM, he came to Korroloka and watched invisibly as he saw it happen, and the perpetrator immediately went POOF. I think I even have an SS of the chat log of our party leader with the GM around here somewhere. Here's an except from the transcript:

If a GM is going to reprimand someone for doing anything, for any reason, to any of the AFB mobs - malicious or not, then I think there are some BSTs that would like to have a word with that GM regarding the blatant stealing of NM's while pet swapping.

You made them go korroloco. Astral burn party got burned.

Those people sound like jackasses to me. They didn't even give you the benefit of doubt before calling a GM on you. Also MPKing their mobs? What, I don't even...

Lesson learned though right? No need to feel all sh*tty about it, even more so because they were jackasses.

I admit, I really don't like astral burns, but I see it as a legit way of leveling. ^^

One time I went down there to hunt Dame Blanche for a birthday present for my brother (I was getting him a dragon subligar made, his main's thf.) It took me all afternoon to get it to pop, I saw a puller that I guessed was pulling for a astral burn a bit before I got it to pop for me. I told him, "Look out, I'm trying to pop a nm. Please don't pull here, I don't want you to pull the nm by mistake and MPK your party." He was really nice about it; I told him when I got the nm and when it was safe to pull them ghosts as well. ^^

Got two cloths that time. I hope no one else who pulls for astral burns would of minded. Yes it might of eaten into xp (I'd been killing those ghosts all afternoon, Dame Blanche was being VERY stubborn) but I'm glad it didn't turn into a fight.

And yes, compared to that taru I had to (politely) deal with because of what I was hunting, that guy seems awful rude. Must've gotten up on the wrong side of the bed...

But don't go beating yourself up over it. Ya know now, next time don't mess with it. ^^

Edited, Oct 31st 2009 11:15pm by maryadavies

Monster Player Killed*

For the record, SMN burns will not pull either ghosts or crabs. The main reason for this is that they do not link.

Ghosts have a nasty habit of casting magic, which slows down the pulling process and could potentially kill or interrupt summoners when they are using Astral Flow. They also tend to be very resistant to ice.

As for crabs, they won't even aggro, so there is no way to pull them and still have the SMN party get exp off of them lest they just happened to be standing there (which is probably why they chose that camp to burn at.)

Im my eyes those yellow mobs dancing around you are fair game. But I wont steal them.

I was farming slime oils on the way from desert to bastok.

Noone else was in the zone except me at first. Because the drop rate was really good i stuck around. More and more people showed up in the zone and when a rdm ran by me with a ton of mobs around them i followed them.

I was expecting this to be a flow burn so i stayed to watch. It seemed like a long wait but eventually a couple of other pullers showed up and i could see the smn party there.

I saw them ready their astral flows and i waited. I wondered if they messed up.

I got a tell from their leader asking if I was farming slimes and I said yes.

Apparently, a slime respawned on top of them and proceeded to wipe them all before they could get to do their flows.





Edited, Nov 1st 2009 3:23pm by knips

That makes complete sense.

No one's grieving anyone. It's only grieving if it's intentionally ruining another player's ability to play.

It's not just SMNs that join these parties.

Heck, SapereAude used this method to level most of their jobs to Maat Cap levels. It's just an effortless way to get levels faster than people that perhaps don't have the convenience of a level 75 guy to pull the entire zone for them, or 3-4 summoner friends that can sync low, or a few COR 2hrs to keep the party going for 3 hours straight.

It isn't item duplication, correct. SMNs do not have a great time leveling, also true. Having said both of those things, you would rather have seen this job relegated to being the best at leveling for a short burst every 2 hours.

That's really nice and everything, but most people would rather see their job become more than a novelty used to powerlevel others (or merit) from 12-75 in a few hours/days.

Don't forget to mention that experience rings like Empress Bands provide the EXP boost past their cap as long as the mobs all die at the same time. Which is exploiting a glitch, if anything.

wtf? Was sure it was Monster Player Kill

What things are so exploitable that they can get a job from 12-40 in about an hour? And if you're extremely lucky, make a LS event out of it, get a lot of corsairs and what not, you could honestly go from 1-75 in a day with it. That's not an exploit by fact? Yes, Square Enix hasn't fixed it, god knows why. No, it's not illegal, and yes, there are other "exploits" in the game that have not been fixed for whatever reason (Hello Dragon's Aery). But that doesn't change the fact of the matter of what an exploit is. Are people going to get banned for it? Right now, obviously not. That doesn't mean people are doing something highly unintentional. Do you think SE intended everyone to bot the kings? Have they changed that system? Right.

Being fast, even extremely fast, does not make something an exploit. There is no glitch, there are no third party tools, there is nothing broken about how it works. Comparing it to botting kings is childish at best.

It's dead horse subject, and you're calling people retarded and such, then using "SE intended" as an argument. I'd say that's pretty childish.

I'm calling people retarded for not knowing the definition of what an exploit is and recognizing that while it might be legal, it is in reality what that system is, by definition. People are arguing it just to rid their conscious of guilt and to try to prove their case more valid. I'm calling people who defy logic retarded, yes. And I don't see how saying doing something against what SE intended to gain a huge advantage as a argument is childish. I'd say arguing against it and not accepting the fact of what something really is, is the childish thing here. Morons like yourself will sit there all day and argue it back and forth though without seeing something so obvious so I'm done with it. You can believe whatever you want. I'll explain the system for everyone to see as my final post on this subject.

A Astral Burn party, which normally takes place in Korroloka Tunnel starting at a level capped around 13, is where you take 4 or more summoners, and perhaps another job or two if they wish to leech. They stand in one spot, while a tank or two (some one high level, usually 75 Paladin) goes through the entire zone, linking every single mob they possibly can, usually equating out to hundreds of mobs.

They bring them back to the place where the Summoners (which are currently capped at level 13) are standing. The puller will usually only have aggro on one mob, and all the rest are links. He/She will then call-for-help on that mob, and the summoners will target it. They will send their Avatar onto that mob which is called for help, and use Astral Flow, 1 at a time. This will kill every single mob within range and give them EXP off of every single one of them except for the one that the tank had hate on. This allows them to get what can be many many thousands of EXP in a mere instant, and can be done whenever your summoners two hours are up.

Most of the time, people will go back to Bastok Mines and switch to Corsair to see who can reset their two hours, they then go back to the Tunnel and try again. Depending on how much time people have and if it's a static or not, you can easily go from 12 to 40 within a couple of hours, or from 40 to 50, etc. You always take some one who is level 13 though, to level sync to so that you get the EXP they would get.

Some people will actually do this to level jobs to 66 for maat's cap, or as a fast ticket to 75. There are people who can and do static this, and will get jobs to 75 within a week or so of doing this, while never having actually played the job, and having all the skills as they were at level 12.

This is not the way Square Enix intended for people to level in Final Fantasy XI. Saying that me stating this is childish just goes to prove exactly what logic some people can defy. Currently it is legal to use this system, and I'm not sure why. It could easily be fixed by Square Enix making Astral Flow not give EXP, but... People like their easy way out, and will get mad at you, rate you down, and argue with you if you say otherwise.

On that note, I will let everyone with a brain decide how they feel on the subject. I'm not going to argue it anymore.