Deepest, Darkest FFXI Confessions, Let's Go!

Well, if you know something I don't, please share it with the class. I'll be happy to pass it to my contact at SE and make the game a better (and more profitable) place, and you get to one-up me in front of everyone!

Heyyy, I remember that one! Darn guy was standing there forever

Woah bro, unlock those pouty lips from thornys *** cheek.

Why the *** would i share anything with someone who openly admitted they run to mom and dad to fix anything they don't personally take advantage of?

Why should anyone believe you if you aren't willing to provide a shred of evidence? What's the point in posturing like this?

I've supported my knowledge of the game's client and server behavior in dozens if not hundreds of ways, many of which directly solved real problems with the client and improved gameplay for players(even those on Windower). You say 'nah we know so much more than you but we cant tell you'. It's absurd.

I'd love to hear about patched out exploits, as someone who isn't proficient in it I'm fascinated by the game of cat and mouse between the devs and players.

Most of these are fixed.

Most of them are exploiting manipulated packets sent to the server to do invalid things, such as using *** points you dont have so you go into negatives or get unintended effects or responses from triggers.

Dynamis was infinitely farmable by clipping the floor and zoning on the death plane, this reset zone timer. Rmt used this for awhile. Similar exploit in salvage to farm pouches from bosses.

It was possible to wear gear on any slot, even duplicating a piece on multiple slots. Crafters used this to break past tier zero. Everyone was so focused on crafters doing this that its a shame there wasnt more combat classes trying ***with it.

Crafters could use swapping mog house floors to interrupt crafts and not lose mats, pumping out hqs.

There was an npc or two you could get any item you wanted from.

I'll offer the same opportunity to you as I have to others in similar discussions. List the 10 most prolific contributors to the FFXI/Windower dev community:

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I think calling out an expert and asking for proof when they've proven their expertise time and time again is ridiculous and counter-productive. Meanwhile, you provide absolutely no proof and make wild claims and...who are you? What code have you contributed?

There's not really a whole lot of 'cat and mouse', the majority of the major exploits have been poorly designed menus. Player finds a NPC that doesn't validate menu properly, sends packet to get free item. Eventually someone starts NPCing the item to cap gil and gil detection catches them and it gets patched, or they run their mouth and someone reports it. As soon as a dev knows about any of this stuff, it's trivial for them to fix.

The most interesting of the menus, in my opinion, was the walk of echoes reward chest. If you provided an invalid index to remove from it, the server would read an item ID from a certain buffer and give you that item for free. So, someone with basic understanding would think they could get free random items.

However, I figured out that by trading an item to the ??? used for unlocking empyrean weapons, the buffer could be manipulated to that item. So, one character could trade an Idris to the ???, and if another character tried to receive an invalid index from the reward chest quickly enough, they would receive an Idris. This could be repeated with high value NPCables like Dark Ring to rapidly cap gil, or to duplicate relics/mythics/etc across multiple accounts.

Some other things out of player control modified the buffer, such as distribution of temporary items. But, because the temporary flag is tied to location rather than the item itself, any temporary item removed from the box became a normal item. This allowed you to get primeval brews you could take with you, and once you had one you could retrigger it with the ???.

Meeble burrows reward NPC didn't cap the index on reward buffer, so providing an index too high would overread into abstract memory. This means you'd get what amounted to a random item at a random cost. Mapping it out automatically let me effectively read a ~400KB chunk of server memory, and that also allowed for easily capping points using the optimal negative cost and buying anything in there (including bonanza kupons, afterglow weapons prior to beitetsu, etc).

There have been a couple over the years that allowed players to provide an item ID and get the item back, which let you get unimplemented items like GM gear, permanent versions of temps, etc.. more easily. But, those are less interesting because there was no nuance to the execution.

Others just didn't verify. The crystal moogle let you pull out crystals you didn't have. You could sell them and cap gil in a few hours with efficient packet structuring.

You could flag gain exp (and other limited time ROE) by sending the packet outside the window. This was widely used by chinese RMT.

You could return coalition imprimiturs for assignments you hadn't flagged, and you could request assault tags when you shouldn't have any. Obviously, the assault tag time gate is no longer relevant, but it was pretty significant when it took months to make a mythic.

Many systems didn't verify you have access to commit a menu transaction, so using packets let you do it regardless. Home point, survival guide, etc.. are some examples. But, vendors that gradually unlock stock also apply. Some of these haven't been fixed, but I consider them relatively mild because any relevant player can easily unlock the options.

The trade(medal) one has some 30+ page topics here already, I won't go into specifics again because it was covered.

You could respawn salvage bosses by POSing to the prior floor and warping up again.

You could use blue magic up to your main job level as /BLU by sending the packets, so MNKs used this to cast erratic flutter in salvage.

Frod covered several others, the crafting retry thing could actually be done about a dozen different ways (the issue being that items weren't consumed until the craft ended, while result was displayed at start).

Didn't you run to the official forums to complain about the WSD glitch that pushed SMN even further down the pecking order? My memory's a little hazy

I'd be curious what the server side logic for that one is. I guess the ??? and chest share an item buffer of some sort and they figured by putting items traded to the ??? at an index outside of the box's legitimate item range, no one would get it then just never checked the index submitted? Do they normally share buffers like this? Is it too optimistic to think/hope this was a logic issue and not some *** up non-validated pointer arithmetic?

Seems bizarre they'd share the same buffer given they have two completely different purposes and the chest one is presumably flushed when people interact with it, seems like that would interfere with the other.

I reported the wildfire (?) Ws breaking 99k because it was *** hilarious

I say buffer, but I'm using that as a general term.. it's also possible it's just uninitialized memory in the S>C packet buffer. Might be something like:

-Build packet to tell player they received item in a buffer that hasn't been zeroed
-If index is valid, overwrite the 2 bytes where item ID goes into the message packet
-Read those 2 bytes back to do everything else involved in generating the item

Obviously, whatever it was wasn't used for every packet. Only a few things actually changed it, and ability to figure out the cause was very limited. I don't think anything specific to the ??? is likely to be involved, besides it actually listening for trades (trading to the fluxes or anything else didn't work).

A similar issue in Provenance allowed you to get an item that matched the bitmask of which of the first 16 jobs are unlocked (amusing, but since the base 6 jobs are always unlocked there was only so much manipulation that could be done. Ormolu ingots were possible!).

My apologies. It wasn't you.

I have cybered with every race and gender in game except Galka, including my EGLS leader too. And I leaked ToD from my LS to my BF. Then I was banished from LS for betraying the LS for my BF.

Those are mostly 75 era LS drama though. Less chance to do evil deeds in game post Abyssea.

So there you go. kinky, crime, bribery and robbery altogether. Did I win the award Panta? The only evil deed during 75 that I didn't get to do is ninja lot.

I think if you play since post Abyssea, you'll get a lot less opportunity to do or experience to evil deeds. Most of the worst ones happened during 75 in endgame environment.

I remember something akin to this being uttered about an NPC in port bastok. But my memory is hazy.

I did get a hearty laugh out of the early fishing exploits. Fishing anywhere you wanted, pulling up simple NPCable items called "."

When I think back to all the unchecked requests I ... I kinda get it. A lot of developers trust that their system works as intended and not circumvented.

Me? I just wrote bots to handle mundane things.

Batman couldnt waterboard that information out of me.

Nynja has a pure mind I see.

Oh and I forgot to add that the LS leader forgave me in the end because reasons, so the story was happy end. But I figured happy end wouldn't be dark enough for Panta and I don't want to ruin my villain public image so I left that part out in the story.

Just to be sure


This is you, correct?

Yeah. I guess not knowing what OF is gave me more pure mind points too? Yikes.

This is literally the only hint I'm dropping. If you legit dont know, its for the best, and I mean that sincerely.

OF us Official Forum.

Any FFXI nerd knows that

That's what I thought when I read the term OF too, lol.

I guess that makes me a FFXI nerd with a pure mind instead of villain. THANKS FOR RUINING MY LIFE PANTA!

Oops, wrong thread


BTW, learn with me, the Master of Meme, how to properly make one based on context!

THIS is how you should do it.

This is absolutely mind-boggling. I'm sad I'll never get to see SE's code that caused this bug.

I remember my 72 hour ban well. Circa 2005/2006 where people discovered if you disengage and then reengage it resets your weapon delay and when you enagage you instantly make an auto attack. So for two-handed melee, we would make a macro that had you /attack <t>, /wait 3, /disengage and repeat ad nauseum. This was functionally equivalent to about a 50% haste but during the lv 75 era. It was patched out eventually but for about 3 weeks, merit parties were lit.

I feel bad, A ban for that is such ***. Somebody probably snitched because your party was out pulling them.

IIRC at one point WSDMG was glitched and applied to all hits. ? Everybody did it at the time.

Those were fun times. Stardiver/Reso/Decimation were a joy to use when that was bugged.
It made DRG real fun lmao.

It sure sped up job pointing.

I don't think S/E punished anyone for that.

There was a week or two week period during "2h adjustment" time at 75 cap where all 2h WS were crits, 100% of the time.

Good times.

No one got banned for it, wtf.

I highly doubt an in game macro is what got you banned, you were doing something else and got reported for it.

That was great honestly. DRG and polearm SAM demolished lolbri even harder.

Also attributes were insane... 1Str/dex = 1atk/acc for 2 handers.

One is an abnormal act designed to exploit an issue.

The other is gearing for WSD and having the game apply to all hits. What are you supposed to do? Not use weaponskills? Also, its hard to say that "there was a glitch where WSD affected all hits", because that could have been the short sighted intent when they started throwing WSD stat all over the place. The WSD trait still affects all hits.

Its like saying "I didnt deserve to get banned in 2009, its not our fault your code tripled drops if we broke alliance within Salvage". Thats an abnormal act. Disengaging and re-engaging to bypass attack speed is an abnormal act. Equipping "weapon skill damage" equipment prior to weapon skilling is not an abnormal act.

I do agree someone snitched though. I highly doubt SE parsed logs to try and detect this.

I'm surprised there were no WoJ bans though. I'm also surprised no one got banned for the mazurka fleehack bug.