Avoid This Server At All Costs

Maletaru found a third option: build up players who aren't at your level yet but are willing to learn. Seems to work fine for him. Carrying isn't really that much of an option anyway unless you already have an entire multibox group. There isn't a whole lot of content that can be carried by one competent character.

I haven't seen a whole lot of people deciding, "well my group is only 4/6 I better make 5 mules myself" though. What seems more common is that everyone has a single mule for small content, then that turns into 2, and instead of replacing lost group members (which could've been accomplished), they drop a mule in instead. Gradual progression rather than overnight decision.

SE didnt exactly do things to quell that issue. The last decade of primary content was fixed-six. Sheol is 6, gaol is 6, sortie is 6. Even Omen was supposed to be 6, but they caved and made it alliance.

Ody and Sortie arent exactly PuG friendly content. Sure, a filler here and there works, but that filler is going to eventually find a group

Im not saying it would have prevented the multibox endemic, but it didnt help matters when groups become dead in the water because someone has RL obligations or quits.

Yeah, it's not as black and white as 6bot or play by yourself. My strategy has always been, and I've always advocated for the same thing for others, play with as many humans as you can. Fill in the rest with multiboxes as needed, on a temporary basis. It's a great backup when people are on vacation or whatever, but not something you use to substitute for grouping up.

When I first came back to the game a few years ago, I was 2boxing with my alt and then ran into some names I recognized from back in the day, started duoing with them, joined a linkshell, and started doing events with them, built a large network of friends, started leading events of my own, and turned it into a community. I didn't just randomly luck into a perfect 6-man static that's been the same for 5 years straight.

I've been in ody/sortie statics with EASILY 20, probably more, players over the years. When someone falls out, you grab another person from your community, help them get the gear they need, and continue. Fill in with boxes as needed. Not rocket surgery. Been doing it forever.

There's a reason for this, though:


^
Do you have any idea how unbelievably exhausting it is to find replacements for Sortie every single week? Groups break up over this ***. Building up another player to join sounds great, and is one step forward (growing pains, lost runs/Aminon blows up a few times while they learn), and then someone has a RL obligation and your group takes two steps back. Repeat this weekly (yeah you can set up discord bots to announce vacancies and encourage volunteers). After a point, players get frustrated and just say "fk it, i'll bring my GEO mule and write a profile for the roles it needs to do. better than sitting around for an hour every other night looking for a 6th".

Necessary evil. I don't think people are defaulting to the mule option immediately. They're tired of replacing people for grindy *** content, and just pick the easier option: get your own replacement (which may lead to 6-boxing eventually).

I dont do Sortie, so forgive me if Im wrong on this
But doesnt the 9 boss strat involve prefarming items for the next run? How do you bring in a stray when they dont have all the temps?

It doesn't, this is a unique boss path that some statics do (they run A>Aminon first or something, then E > rest bosses so they can start with A>Aminon the next run). Most 9b is done buffs > split objectives > DH>ABC/CBA (preference) > GFE > Aminon.

A group running the former path will not be able to do it their way with a stray.

This has been explained by myself and others so many times here, I just have to accept that others have some other reality where this doesn't happen and they can't grasp that it works this way for a lot of players.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there are players who can do things the way maletaru and others do. IMO that's the way it should work, but in my experience, it just doesn't and it gets old very quickly. You end up sitting around 30-45min trying to find a 6th then don't and just close out for the night and don't do anything.

All that said, I've never once had someone bring an alt in for any reason other than just not being able to place a human.

Tell me about it.

I had a pretty decent CAGE group explode because one guy was flakey and now I run solo and get about 7.5k a run.

Unless you are a hardcore pro with all the experience and exactly the right job to do full 9 boss, no one wants you. No one wants even slightly less that the most optimal all the time 24/7. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Would if I could.

I had a great friend group from 2005-2017? 2018?. They basically all quit the game almost overnight when SE said "alright no more content". I found a great ls in 2019 that broke up over drama in 2022 and everyone who was left funneled into statics with people they knew either irl or from their server that merged into mine (never once seen these people until 2019-2020 even though the merge was like 2012), which eventually caused me to take a break from 2022 until I felt the XI itch in 2025.
I came back and the game was so much worse. Siren (original server) went from 800-900 people down to 350-400 except basically everyone I saw had 2-5 characters in tow now. There was even a dude from my old ls who was now one of the multibots of another dude in the ls... It was wild seeing so many people doing it now because before I had only ever seen 1 dude do it.

A friend I met on XIV came back to XI and oversold me on his ls on Sylph, claiming his ls and friends would get us things we needed and we'd have tons of ls events, so I transferred over in January 2026. Yeah none of that happened and within the month, said friend ended up making 5 accounts and now he just plays by himself.
The ls finally started doing events around late March but it's just Oumen (only Ou...) and Dyna. Outside that, there's basically no conversations and it's mostly multiboxers who don't get on until 9-10pm because they don't need real people.
The ls started getting new people around April but like others, within a month they'd be multiboxing themselves or they'd just quit.
I'm honestly at the point of just going back home to Siren and putting XI down until the next time SE decides to give more story, if they do. I would love to actually play the game again, but it's become very difficult when most people either don't talk or they multibox.


Heh, I've been in one of these groups too... I've seen some people who appear good, but once they don't have their bots, they're actually really bad. One time someone came whm and a dude dropped his bot to let this guy in. The whole time the dude was complaining about how the whm wasn't as good as his bot, except said dude was barely wearing a DT set and standing in questionable positions so it was hard to keep him alive without 0.1 second script reflexes.
I've also seen some VERY questionable things being taught to people lately in the ls I'm in and it makes me wonder if all the actual good people left this server lol


100% this. I can't justify paying $100 a month to actually play the game and seeing so many people return to the game and almost immediately start multiboxing so it makes the problem of finding people worse makes me want to just quit again.


>_> I've had multiple arguments with a friend who brags how he can easily solo things or "It's quick, I solo it too", but my solo is me and trusts and his "solo" is him and 5 fully buffed rmea'd up alts running on scripts...

That sounds like a slur. You're being very ableist to assume this person is not 6 different personalities.

since my last visit, this thread has gotten fun.
Remember, don't come to Ragnarok, we're full.

Also, I have a hard time expanding my friend group to do content, when everything that matters is only 6 and everyone is hopefully contributing. Why bother bringing in a rando when 4 of the guys you're with have boxes they aren't even bringing just so they can hang out and one of them already is bringing a box because no one wants to play that job on their main? (tank)

Really wish we had alliance friendly content like VoidWatch was. That's where my friend group was largest.

I'm reminded of a saying when I read this thread:

"If you ran into an a-hole in the morning, you ran into an a-hole. If you run into a-holes all day, maybe you're the a-hole."

As one of the groups that runs a 9b that requires prefarmed shards:

We do a setup run for them. In my case, we generally have enough alts that we can just do it right before the run with our alts (all ours takes is killing A and D boss, which is dead simple). If you don't have alts to do this method you can either use a plate to do the same thing with your mains, or you can sacrifice a run. We'd do something like killing 6 bosses instead of 8, leaving the E/H shards for the next run. Sure, it costs you ~20k muffins (or 10k if you only prefarm one boss), but in the long-run it gives you another person to play with so it's worth it.

To be fair though, I'm not talking about a random that we take for a single run from yells, and then never see again. When I bring someone into my group, they often become a regular, playing with us every day, or several times a week, etc. So it's worthwhile for us to invest in them. We typically get them r25 nyame (if they don't already have it), help with other gear they might need, help making sets and luas, etc. It's not just getting them the sortie progress.

So idk, you have to prop people up and then after you help them, you have a valuable teammate to go on runs with for a few months, or years, until they have a baby and no longer come with you. Then you invite a new friend. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sure, is it a bit exhausting to have to repeat content you've already cleared and don't need anything from? Yeah, sometimes. But that's what you do for your friends.

I've done like 5+ clears of most of the odyssey bosses and dozens upon dozens of v20 bumbas. I've done the "kill all the fomor" objective in sortie dozens of times. Vagary bosses for empy armor, GF NMs for aeonics, etc etc etc

They don't respect you as a player because you're not a player, you're a bot.

The cap for ML is ridiculously high but it's not because SE are trash developers, it's absolutely because everyone bot the hell out of CP. SE tried to set a Vana'bout goal based on player participation in the previous month's ambuscade, but since it was frog... tons of players inflated the numbers by activating alts and mules to drag through the content for currency.

It really doesn't go both ways, my man. They are making decisions based on the data they receive from characters. They aren't parsing through all of our *** so they can't distinguish who is a real player and who is a bot, alt or mule.

I'm not here to tell anyone how to play, but having a choice means taking responsibility for it.

Those extra characters werent separate POLIDs. People werent paying an extra $12/month for frog ambu, they were $1 mules. If SE wasnt factoring in polid in that analysis, thats on them.