Extreme Acts Of Relentless Kindness

"Hook and weave"
I had a friend called Peon on Diabolos that told me it worked on the kon. Highlands worms, as they nuked me to ***on my lvl 10 war. He was a 30 whm. Kept raisinf me and telling me I was doing it wrong. I also didnt know whms could cure. In fact he didnt tell me I could seek party at level 10. He just kept raising me over and over again until I dlvled. He's also thr guy who introduced me to RMT.
Come to think of that first week set the entire tone for the next 20 years od XI. Mpking, trolling and RMT.

I've camped this guy twice and both times we all grouped up to pick up slack where others couldn't be there, one time we had basically 24h shifts going until everyone got their clears, even some who already had them stuck around. When we moved on to Hoverpot and the others, same thing.

Definitely a good community moment for me.

The situation I remember best happened many years ago, probably somewhere in 2005 or '06.

For some background: I began my time in FFXI as a WHM, despite the friends I started playing with warning me that this would make my first steps quite rough. They were of course right, but I went ahead anyway. I "grew up" in a social LS where we regularly helped each other with the more challenging content, such as missions and AF fights or famous NMs like Hakutaku.

It was a time when even some lower level spells were rare drops that could set you back several hundreds of thousands, if not millions of gil. Most of the valuable loot came from the HNM/gods endgame, but that didn't interest me, since it featured a lot of highly competitive, RMT-infested camping that often turned out to be a waste of time.

So, not even in my wildest dreams could I imagine owning something very expensive like a Noble's tunic, of which even the NQ version fetched up to 15 million at the time. But then there was Sushix, a more accomplished WHM from my linkshell who was also a clothcrafter. At some point he just said he would craft one for me. I think I asked how I would ever be able to pay him, but he said that wouldn't be necessary. He kept his word, giving me the best piece of WHM gear of the 75 era for free. I will never forget his incredible generosity, it's easily one of my fondest FFXI memories. Needless to say, I proudly wore that tunic for many years!

Although I've never done something quite as generous, I think my helpful LS and Sushix in particular definitely influenced how I play the game myself. For example, I don't want gil for helping out with some synergy or NM, and I think the current mercenary culture on Asura sucks. I enjoy helping people who are just getting their bearings in newer content just as much as I enjoy grouping with and learning from more experienced players. And I still enjoy playing WHM!

Smaller population server players: “a complete stranger helped me deck out my character for years. We became so close we met up irl and they are now my husband”

Asura players: “once a merc gave me 5% off in exchange for my soul”

I’m not certain this was necessarily selfless of the ‘husband’ lol.

Years ago I was camping for the Joyeuse. I was up for hours, on and off sleep cycles to even get the claim nevermind seeing it pop.

When I did get the claim, the rush of adrenaline was overwhelming, and I died due to stupidity.

Corner of my eye was a group waiting in the shadows. I was very upset.....they reclaimed the NM and stood silently for a minute or two.

They raised me...invited me into the party.....passed on the Joyeuse and it dropped to me. It was a party of 5 JP players. Moment stuck with me for the past 18 years at least.

I have quite a few more, though total recall is a bit harder these days.

I had a good RDM friend named Calmwind who PL'd me multiple times across two characters, who I got to play with all the way up into the Abyssea era, though he left XI for XIV fairly quickly and stayed in XIV until I had left Asura (these tales are all from on Asura from the years 2003 to 2012).

Calmwind was a guy who could take it slow and liked to, but if push came to shove, he could really bust out some progress in play time.

Anyway, once I'd caught up to him in level on his RDM at the 75 cap, we started camping Ose together. I was of the mind that we'd get him the Assault Jerkin first, since I had a Hauby, and I didn't have my THF high enough to use the AJ yet.

We must have killed Ose 6 or so times without a drop. Best TH we could manage at the time was Calmwind subbing THF on his RDM. I was War/nin with barely 1 brain cell, and that brain cell was for counting shadows.

Well next kill Assault Jerkin finally drops, and I'm waiting for Calm to lot on it, and he just puts in the chat log, "I passed." And I freaked out. I was like, "Bro, I was mainly camping this for you." And he was like, "Ehh, I think you care about the Jerkin more than I do anyway. Just take it." So I took it, and then I got my THF up and really appreciated having it on THF. And I still have that AJ on Vyre.

And also hilariously slightly negative tidbit. When I was fool enough to get keylogged or whatever by a phishing site and had Vyre stolen by RMTs and transported to Ragnarok, they of course put him in all R/ex gear and sold off everything else. So the Assault Jerkin was the first thing I saw when I got him back. I managed to get my account restored so I got everything back in the end (except my capped Throwing on Ninja well before Daken was even a twinkle in a SE XI dev's eye). But if I hadn't been able to get restored, that Assault Jerkin woulda been my best body piece until I could make gil to recover heh. Which kept my spirits up, "Well, at least I still have my AJ."