Preword: I have been playing Final Fantasy XI for over 2 years and I don't play crazily(8hrs+ a day) and I don't play
once a month^^;
(If you haven't played FFXI, this won't make any sense to you, skip--)
I am BST75/WAR61/WHM38/NIN38/THF37~plus some othercrap
(stop skipping ^^;)
In final fantasy it is widely a "group project" If you're not a people person, have fun solo'ing past level
30! (there's 45 more levels after that, and it's extremely hard. Besides as BST!:P)
So I began looking at my brother, who started a month before me, I got to lv. 16 monk(hand-to-hand) and he was already
lv. 30 white mage + 16 bard. So I got to level 18mnk and I met a good friend, who was japanese(go figure with their
kindness) who helped me with suportjob quest. He was one of those people that didn't play to often. Lets just say I'm a
higher level than he is now. ^^
As I was saying, about the "group project" to level up quickly you depend much on other people in your party(group of people killing monsters for EXP.) So if one person doesn't do their part(or if the PT leader is stupid.) then you will notice your happiness level drop! In the first part of the game it is your highest choice to(in any aspect of the game) choose: Solo, Make a group, or let a group find you. You can also do half and half but... you know how those things work out.
So I chose to make a group for the first part of the game. Meaning I made parties, I made a linkshell, I made groups for events. You finnally learn that you probably wouldn't want to be the leader of a multi-billion dolar corporation if this is how people work together unless you seperate them into little offices of 3 by 3 ft rooms.
Leveling: Not exactly the most fun of the game. Now, that is just my opinion, some people love to just xp, but to me it's just repetative. So I was gimp and ran around as 30monk/5warrior(No, I did not forget to place a 1 in front of the 5.)
After lv. 30mnk/war5 I decided that PLD, MNK, WAR, RNG, THF was just not the right thing for me. So I decided to follow in the footsteps of many of my friends at the time: Beastmaster
At level 35 you have 9 lovely job abilties:
Charm: Charms the targeted monster.
Leave: Gets rid of player's pet.
Tame: Have a mischarm? This is your Morphine.
Fight: Makes pet fight targeted monster.
Heel: Makes pet come back to you.
Stay: Makes pet stay at current position.
Sic: Makes pet use a special attack(requires 100% TP or a mage pet.)
Call Beast: Uses a jug to call a pet.(Pets from thin air! *coughmoney*)
Reward: Heals targeted pet with pet food(item). up to 400-600hp as 75bst
Beastmaster is a solo job, sort of. You can party, but you may not get them unless you make them, for you are viewed as
a solo job and people do not invite solo jobs to partys!(I hope that makes sense) A very important job of solo is to be
able to heal yourself, therefor the subjob "White mage" is the greatest option.
Beastmaster takes advantage of the monster system in FFXI by using monsters to kill other monsters. In the game you will
notice that at level 1, it is very easy to kill monsters the same level as you. At level 75 you will notice something 15
levels lower than you will beat the crap out of you. Beastmasters are able to use monsters(with the job ability
"charm"), that are the same level as them! (Well, most of them at least.) Beastmaster does not do so well in
areas that there is nothing to charm.(Go figure, I mean that BST cannot charm dragons and notorious monsters, orcs
ect.^^;) Otherwise beast can be the most powerful solo job in an area full of monsters that can be charmed around level
75.
In other ways, beastmaster can join parties in areas that have a wide level range of monsters, so they can charm a pet that is the same level as them, and use it in the party to killed the targeted mob(;monster) I think it is the most fun of the jobs just because of charm><;. Then again, summoner just pulls its pets out of the air. (with magic:P) Who would want to join a party anyways? Sometimes you have to just sit there 3 hours for other people to log on! >_< (Beastmaster can solo!)
So I begin to level as beastmaster, slowly... and I mean slowly, like if a turtle took a year to get 50 inches out of 75 kind of slow(for me at least).(did you catch the concept?) But it was fun, dying over and over to stupid things like a monster not charming. (;mischarm: a monster resisting charm and attacking the person who tried to charm it.) Then you kite(;run around crazily so the mob may not hit you.) and then die after a while because you have two monsters on you and you can not charm one and the other is attacking you while you are trying to charm! (In otherwords, you die alot. >_< )
You can minimize the dying by not taking chances and killing things that are easy, but people like me try to kill the monsters 2-4 levels above them. Or... you can also minimize it by leveling with another beastmaster(to be continued)
So beastmaster isn't that useful end game for end game, you may find yourself thinking you're useless and not helping
much, and the truth is, you're not!
But that still doesn't change the fact that beastmasters have some hidden talents.
Beastmasters can Level together! You know when I said Beastmaster take advantage of the FFXI monster system? well you can double it! In certain areas level 75 beastmasterx2 are the most powerful jobs in the game because they can make other things do their work for them! At Lv. 75 there are monsters that have 4,000hp when the average player has 1,000HP, this is what causes the mass advantage, along with being in certain areas^_^' This can also be done from level 35+ easily because you have "Leave" and you can keep getting new monsters for pets! It also makes leveling extremely safe because you have 1 monster on the target monster at all times!(and it dies faster with two!)
At level 40 beastmaster you will be able to make tons of money as long as you have a certain item(x40) called a beastman seal which drops from almost every single mob in the game. Beastmasters join together(If you haven't met them from parting with them before.) and do these battles which may drop rare items ranging from 1,000,000G(Currency used in FF:Gil) to 15,000,000G!(depending on sever prices) That is why some people may call beastmasters the richest low level job in the game because when you level you may gain a good friend that always tries to duo(party with 2 beastmasters) with you, and then you may meet other people that they have made friends with as bst and then you may do these battles! On the otherhand, people in normal parties don't meet friends that often because there are alot more people that level crazily and play once a month as other jobs. It would be the same deal if all of the other jobs only leveled with each other, but... bst can solo and has charm and has Call beast!
So I had alot of friends as BST40(;Beastmaster level 40 if you haven't got that already...) We did plenty of battles and I became "rich" for my level. In some of the battles there are monsters that BST can charm and use them against the "boss" of the battle, which is what makes it so easy. Beastmaster can also "Call beast" to use those pets in the battle to, so if the maximum people allowed is 3, then you can really have 6!(Don't forget reward which can heal your pet 400hp every 2min)
Afterword:
Beastmaster is not exactly a "Loner" job. It is what you make of it, and what you make of it may be a
"Loner" but you don't have to be. Final Fantasy is a group project, and the only way you're going to get an A+
is if you join up with other people. That being said I still have no sky gear, (Requires 12-18 people to kill a monster
that is lv. 80+ that may drop nothing of value even though you spent 6 hours for the item to spawn it, 2 hours to get
there, 1 hours to kill it... Square Enix still says,"I hate you, come back later and I might give you a 5% chance
at it."- FFXI: Great work:reward ratio.- makes it so addicting. Have fun and remember, Beastmaster might just be
the way to go.
~Edited 5/5/06
