World Concepts

In MMOs, you spend a lot of time running from place to place, especially starting out. Along your adventures you're bound to run into a variety of things that will either screw you up or help you out. The following are a few of the most important ones.

Aggressive Monsters and Linking

Many monsters around Vana'diel are quite tame and won't attack, but others will. You can avoid fighting these aggressive monsters if you know how they detect their prey, and use that knowledge to your advantage. Whenever you're attacked by an aggressive monster, they're said to have "aggro." You'll be seeing and using this term a lot, so you'd better learn it.

Many monsters attack on sight. You can avoid being attacked if you sneak behind them and they don't turn around to see you, but an Invisible spell or an application of Prism Powder will eliminate that risk entirely. Almost all Beastmen attack on sight.

Above: The five types of enemies. Clockwise from top left: Sound, Unaggressive, Truesight, Magic, Sight

Other monsters attack based on sound. These monsters don't need to see you to know you're there, just hear you within a certain radius, so there's no getting around them in many circumstances. The spell Sneak or an application of Silent Oil will quiet your movements, allowing you to move by undetected.

Monsters classified as "arcana" or elementals attack when they sense magic in the area. With no way to mask magic, players simply must not use any.

Undead monsters can sense the wounded, and try to kill them to increase their ranks. If you're around undead monsters, be sure that your hit points aren't yellow or red, as this will draw them for miles.

Finally, some monsters just simply can't be avoided. These typically are known as "Truesight" or "Truesound" monsters. They behave the same as the sight and sound monsters, but there's nothing you can do to stop 'em.

While many monsters have loose guidelines as to if and when they'll attack, these are not entirely consistent, and may require research or testing before you understand them. Just because a bat in one area doesn't attack sound, doesn't mean it won't in the next.

Most monsters, regardless if they're aggressive or not, will "link" to other monsters around them,bringing their pals into the fight.