How is Mastery Rank calculated.

[Pixela]

Can we get official word exactly what counts towards mastery rank?

Which things are and are not included in rank?


Mastery Rank is a numerical value representative your completion of missions, quest, and various other types on in-game content. The higher the rank, the more you have completed. This rank has no effect on gameplay.

This is pretty vague. Missions is fine however quests, what kinds of quests and are we expected to do all the random quests? what other content and how is it calculated, is it linked to RoE objectives?

MMO players like to increase numbers, if you tell us what we can work on we are more likely to do it instead of just giving up due to it being too vague.

[Alhanelem]

I hope it stays a secret as long as possible, its only true intended purpose is to suggest a certain level of game experience to new adventurers in the assist channel, rather than being some sort of achievement thing to brag about. If everyone starts acting like it's some number they need to increase, it will lose what little meaning it already has.

[Pixela]

The most helpful people I've seen all have lower numbers anyway, the highest number players either never talk on it or just say hi to show off their number.

I think if anything it will allow the more helpful people to get a higher number, since they are usually far less driven to do everything in the game (which is why they have time to help people in the first place)

[Alhanelem]

You can be helpful to players without having done every content in the game. Most likely every distinct content area in the game contributes something to it.

[Stompa]

I'm only Rank 4 on the Mentor thing, but my fun exciting adventures in beautiful Vana'diel are infinite mega super high rank!

:cool:

[Avereith]

edit: updated later post

[Alhanelem]

All jobs mastered eh? I've barely had the patience to master one. props!

[Pixela]

Since they won't tell us, it could be anything. Could be time played, chat frequency, number of parties joined, number of alliances, GM calls made..

They log all this stuff as shown in the moogle stats thing. They even know how many times you died, or talked to an npc.

[BobbinT]

in case u're wondering, Records of eminence has unlocked quest with requirements as high as 900 RoEs done. It might affect, can't confirm though.

[Alhanelem]

Since they won't tell us, it could be anything. Could be time played, chat frequency, number of parties joined, number of alliances, GM calls made..

They log all this stuff as shown in the moogle stats thing. They even know how many times you died, or talked to an npc.
Let me just say if it was based on GM calls made, I'd have a higher mastery rank than most. :p

[Alhanelem]

in case u're wondering, Records of eminence has unlocked quest with requirements as high as 900 RoEs done. It might affect, can't confirm though.
Is that 900 uniuqe or 900 total? (Not entirely sure exactly how many unique ones there are, daily/weekly/monthly excluded)

[Avereith]

900 unique, and I think theres even an RoE unlocked at 1000+ RoE complete

[Avereith]

Edit: updated later post

[Dzspdref]

Gotta figure this out myself. The status screen says my Mastery level is at 5, but not sure how it got that high.

[Vonima2]

JP Devs replied to my post so replying here to share info.

Question
Can you please give more info about Mastery Rank? In Freshly Squeezed, you said "Mastery rank is determined by a combination of the clear status of various in-game contents and the comprehensive experience level of the player". Can you give us some more info besides this? What is in-game contents? Do titles matter? Is days spent playing related?

Dev Response
Hello. I confirmed as much information about Mastery Rank as I could that can be announced publically. I'll respond in a list.
Number of days played

Mission progression level

Number of completed quests

Combat Skills / Magic Skills

Synthesis Skill / Fishing Skill

Number of Trusts

Battle Contents. Ex: Dynamis, Nyzul, MMM, Skirmish, Omen, and numerous others.

Non-Battle Contents. Ex: Chocobo Racing, Mog Garden, Home Points, and numerous others


Because titles are closely related (they say 'nearly equal'), titles received from clearing content are related to Mastery Rank. To give one example, the title "Expeditionary Trooper" received from doing an Expeditionary Force qualifies.
There are a wide number of things related to Mastery Rank, so please explore Vana'Diel in different ways!

[Pixela]

Something I find confusing is the staff member that replied to you can speak English and posts in English quite often but ignores us here :(

Regardless it's nice to have some more information, although it's still a bit confusing if time is a factor in rank or the primary system that allows you to rank up at all.

[Alhanelem]

Something I find confusing is the staff member that replied to you can speak English and posts in English quite often but ignores us here :(

Regardless it's nice to have some more information, although it's still a bit confusing if time is a factor in rank or the primary system that allows you to rank up at all.
It's nothing to do with ignoring you and everything to do with either they don't have the information or aren't allowed to give it.

[Pixela]

It's nothing to do with ignoring you and everything to do with either they don't have the information or aren't allowed to give it.

They gave it when the person typed the question out in Japanese.

[Dragoy]

Regardless it's nice to have some more information, although it's still a bit confusing if time is a factor in rank or the primary system that allows you to rank up at all.

I would guess that there's just some minimum amount of time, and that it's not /that/ big of a number even. Also, considering that a lot of people leave their characters online as much as they can, even while AFK, it would be really silly to have it contribute more than once (not that silly things are not happening all the time... but I yeah).

[Avereith]

Just bumping and posting updated list. Hope I rank up to 7 and eventually get another meaningful data point -_-

Rank 6:
-All Missions/addons complete
-Crafts capped (110 gold w/ escutcheon; ebisu+1/lu+1)
-All jobs mastered
-850 records of eminence
-Adoulin ring+1/ygnas
-Monster rearing: Missing 4 mementos (in progress)
-Maat's Cap
-All trusts
-All spells except cruel joke
-All mounts except chocobo (in progress)
-All skills capped
-11 REMA (1 relic, 3 mythics, 2 empy, 2 ergon, 3 aeonic)
-Max Fame everywhere
-Homepoints: all unlocked
-Survival Guides: all unlocked
-Proto Waypoints:all unlocked
-Outpost Warps: missing Movalpolis for bastok, dont know others
-Vorseals: Missing 2 HP(kills), 1 Def(Odin II), 1 Atk(Choco Race)
(Also missing many dragon kill vorseals)
-UNMs: missing 4 clears (nothing hard, tumult curator downed)
-Abyssea complete/Atma of the savior
-Monstrosity: Highest Monster Level 90 (Toad)
-Campaign Ops: 7/a billion ;;
-Chocobo Digging: Level 0 (never dug)
-Voidwatch complete - Missing 4 periapt, 9 atmacite
-All dyna-d full cleared/judge,jury,executioner
-Master trial: zero completions
-141/145 atma
-65/65 abyssites
-677+ quests complete (pre-title hunt, needs recount)
-737/1056 titles
-924+ days playtime

To do: chocobo raising to end, 750 titles, 900 roe, fiat lux, buy useless guild items for titles (signboard, etc), conquest point purchases for titles (copper vouchers), kill(s): proto-omega, proto-ultima, arch-ultima, ouryu cometh, the wyrmking descends, meeble burrows (batallia side)

[Alhanelem]

They gave it when the person typed the question out in Japanese.
"they" isn't the NA community rep in question.

[Zehira]

"they" isn't the NA community rep in question.

I respect their privacy even some of them don't show their names in their signatures. I know one person who posted on this official forum is from Los Angeles or California in general. You can look up Square Enix on Linkedin.

I know the one that people miss the most:


Babban is back (http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/14816/detail.html)!

(Zehira beat me to it! :( )

:p

[Okieeomi]

Greetings and salutations adventurers!


Can we get official word exactly what counts towards mastery rank?
While we first want to thank Vonima2 for quickly sharing the response received on the Japanese side of the forums, here's the official translation for that specific post regarding what counts towards your Mastery Rank!


Greetings,
The following is the extent of the information we can share regarding Mastery Rank.


Accumulated playtime
Mission progress
Number of completed quests
Combat and magic skills
Synthesis and fishing skills
Number of Trusts obtained
Battle content (Such as Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, Moblin Maze Mongers, Otherworldly Skirmishes, Omen, etc.)
Non-battle content (Such as Chocobo Racing, Mog Garden, unlocking Warps, etc.)


Titles almost always correlate with content completion; titles obtained upon completing content are tied to Mastery Rank.

One example is the Expeditionary Trooper title that is obtained upon completing Expeditionary Force.

There are many elements that are tied to Mastery Rank, so please try out various things in Vana’diel.

We've seen a lot of discussion from players who have been sharing their personal findings throughout the community on Mastery Rank. (Personally, I find that really awesome to see!) So I do also encourage you all to try out new things and post away! :D

[Leny]

As much as not finding answers is still progress, there really isn't any positive progressing.

Doing things does increase the rank, this is a given. In what way though. Any actual information, other than the obvious? Are they specific goals to be achieved or an empty meter that you can fill with anything toward that end. Is rank 2 achieved a specified way, or could you potentially just go around doing any random things and obtain it. Are there things that don't count? Absolutely no information of any value. Throw your players a bone. You want us to work toward mastering the maximum rank right, so, how about the tiniest clue of some relevance.

[Alhanelem]

As much as not finding answers is still progress, there really isn't any positive progressing.

Doing things does increase the rank, this is a given. In what way though. Any actual information, other than the obvious? Are they specific goals to be achieved or an empty meter that you can fill with anything toward that end. Is rank 2 achieved a specified way, or could you potentially just go around doing any random things and obtain it. Are there things that don't count? Absolutely no information of any value. Throw your players a bone. You want us to work toward mastering the maximum rank right, so, how about the tiniest clue of some relevance.
Not sure in what way there were no answers here. First, while we had already figured most if not all content contributes, there are some notable things that are specifically excluded from their list:


- Job levels
- Monipulator levels
- Job Mastery status
- # of merit / job points
- item collection (so no need to do every REMA weapon etc)
- Gil/currency


While combat and magic skills tie somewhat into job levels, you don't have to play every job to (mostly) cap every skill. Since they specifically note that titles obtained from completing content are used, This probably (but not certainly) excludes seasonal events, not all of whose titles and quests are still obtainable, and almost certainly excludes Ballista, whose titles are temporary (besides, I highly doubt they'd make anyone do PvP to achieve a higher mastery rank)

Xbox achievements are also probably excluded since not everyone can get those (obvious but covering bases)

[Rosalie]

It seems to me from the Dev post that titles weigh heavily into mastery rank, so I would surmise that job mastery DOES play a factor since each job mastered grants you a title.

But that's just my 2 gil.

[Alhanelem]

It seems to me from the Dev post that titles weigh heavily into mastery rank, so I would surmise that job mastery DOES play a factor since each job mastered grants you a title.

But that's just my 2 gil.
Probably. But unless titles are weighed with different values (I suspect not honestly, because that would require them to run through almost every title in the game to decide each one's value, but that's just suspicion on my part) if, you just want to get as much mastery rank as fast as you can, the time it takes to get the job mastery titles vs. any of thousands of other titles you could go for would mean it's not really worth it until they're the alst ones left (with a few other possible exceptions).

I say almost up there because I really would highly doubt they'd include titles from past limited time events because that wouldn't be fair to people who didn't start playing on day 1 in Japan.

[Avereith]

Probably. But unless titles are weighed with different values (I suspect not honestly, because that would require them to run through almost every title in the game to decide each one's value, but that's just suspicion on my part) if, you just want to get as much mastery rank as fast as you can, the time it takes to get the job mastery titles vs. any of thousands of other titles you could go for would mean it's not really worth it until they're the alst ones left (with a few other possible exceptions).

I say almost up there because I really would highly doubt they'd include titles from past limited time events because that wouldn't be fair to people who didn't start playing on day 1 in Japan.

Titles already have a value, they cost a certain amount of gil to change back to the title at the adventuring bards. This would be a somewhat easy way to implement a system that involved weighted titles and a total amount of points required to achieve a rank.

[Avereith]

As much as not finding answers is still progress, there really isn't any positive progressing.

Doing things does increase the rank, this is a given. In what way though. Any actual information, other than the obvious? Are they specific goals to be achieved or an empty meter that you can fill with anything toward that end. Is rank 2 achieved a specified way, or could you potentially just go around doing any random things and obtain it. Are there things that don't count? Absolutely no information of any value. Throw your players a bone. You want us to work toward mastering the maximum rank right, so, how about the tiniest clue of some relevance.

So far in our "bang your head against the wall" method of research, we've seen what may be a pattern in rank ups simply from titles obtained. We don't enough people counting titles though and paying attention to their rank ups, so it's rather difficult to observe. We had someone rank up from 1 to 2 at what seemed to be 176 titles, which seems like an odd number, but if your initial title "new adventurer" is a given and the goal is simple "obtain more titles", then that would be 175 titles gained since starting.

I also recent ranked up from 6 to 7, and it seemed to be around 751 titles, which fits with the "obtain a certain amount of titles + the one you start with" pattern.

What we really need though is more people to help out, and no one wants to seem to manually count and have a spreadsheet of their titles, lol, which I'm sure you can understand :x

[Alhanelem]

Titles already have a value, they cost a certain amount of gil to change back to the title at the adventuring bards. This would be a somewhat easy way to implement a system that involved weighted titles and a total amount of points required to achieve a rank.
Maybe, but the gil price at the bard does not really correlate very much with the actual difficulty of attaining a given title in a ton of cases.

[Avereith]

Since I mentioned ranking up from 6 to 7, here are my latest stats at rank 7 if anyone else is doing research/has interest in figuring any of this out:

Rank 7:
-All Missions/addons complete
-Crafts capped (110 gold w/ escutcheon; ebisu+1/lu+1)
-All jobs mastered
-1001 records of eminence
-Adoulin ring+1/ygnas
-Monster rearing: Missing 3 mementos (in progress)
-Maat's Cap
-All trusts
-All spells learned
-All mounts except chocobo (in progress)
-All skills capped
-12 REMA (1 relic, 3 mythics, 2 empy, 2 ergon, 4 aeonic)
-All mythic ws unlock quests complete
-All empy ws unlocked
-Max Fame everywhere
-Homepoints: all unlocked
-Survival Guides: all unlocked
-Proto Waypoints:all unlocked
-Outpost Warps: All for Bastok, never attempted for other nations
-Vorseals: Missing 2 HP(kills), 1 Atk(Choco Race)
(Also missing many dragon kill vorseals)
-UNMs: Missing 1 (not tumult, hes ded)
-Abyssea complete/Atma of the savior
-Monstrosity: Highest Monster Level 90 (Toad)
-Campaign Ops: 12/way too many (fiat lux(s/b/w), splitting heirs, and plucking wings complete)
-Chocobo Digging: Amateur (only dug 30 items for RoE)
-Voidwatch complete - Missing 4 periapt, 9 atmacite
-All dyna-d full cleared/judge,jury,executioner
-Master trial: zero completions
-144/145 atma (missing guild signboard)
-65/65 abyssites
-677+ quests complete (pre-title hunt, needs recount)
-797/1056 titles
-932+ days playtime

To do: chocobo raising/racing, 800 titles, All RoE, buy useless guild items for titles (signboard, fool's gold), conquest aketon purchase for title when sandy/windy rank 1, unlock all monstrosity species (UGH), do SCNM titles, Event bc titles (the 10 login point items), Get missing NM titles (12 left), meeble burrows (batallia side), adventuring fellow to level 99, tons of misc quest titles

[Avereith]

title theory dead in the water it seems, we have a guy over here saying he's rank 6 now with only 427 titles, so I'm all out of ideas that can be easily counted and will be instead just content with it being some complicated hidden point background calculation for every single thing in the game that we will never figure out. Whatever.

[Avereith]

Have the devs said what the max rank is?

[Alhanelem]

No. But considering we have a few people here who have almost entirely conquered the entire game that are rank 7, if it's higher than that I can't imagine it being much more so.

Does th e game tell you in any way when your mastery rank changes? or do you have to just check it periodically?

[Pixela]

Have the devs said what the max rank is?

What it is now and what it will be are two different things, I think 7 is the max currently but it's obvious 10 will be the actual cap.

[Alhanelem]

What it is now and what it will be are two different things, I think 7 is the max currently but it's obvious 10 will be the actual cap. Obvious from what?

Based on what you seem to have to do to reach rank 7 I don't see how they could possibly add enough new stuff to get us to 10.

[Avereith]

We've had an NA player that ranked up from 7 to 8 now, prior to this guy showing his stats we've only seen a few from the JP players. This was his post.

"Killing Za'Dha Adamantking (present version) ranked me up from 7 to 8. I had already killed the Orc/Yagudo present kings, so I assume all three were needed.

Other relevant information:

-All Jobs 99, 9/22 Mastered
-All Combat, Magic, and Craft skills capped + Alchemy Escutcheon, Ebisu/Lu Shang's +1
-932/1066 total Titles (if I counted right)
-4/4 Master Trials cleared
-16/16 Aeonics, 1 Relic, 5 Mythics, 1 Empyrean, and Idris
-All missions complete up to latest Voracious Resurgence missions
-All quests completed except: 10k Carp, Fit for a Prince, Donate to Recycling, Five Seconds of Fame, and The Fighting Fourth (Epeolatry's initial quest completed, but nothing further)
-All NM titles (including all VD BC titles and Judge, Jury, and Executioner) except Sandworm, Lambton Worm, and Chest/Coffer O' Plenty
-All Conquest point titles
-Abyssea 100% complete
-Voidwatch 100% complete AND all Atmacite fully upgraded
-All trusts, including Monberaux and Ygnas
-Level 143 Incursion KI
-1075 RoEs complete (everything possible with Alchemy Escutcheon)
-All Vorseals except Chocobo Racing, 8/8 Regen, 9/9 Refresh, 9/9 Acc++
-All fish caught except Bibiki Urchin
-Maze Scholar title from MMM
-Monstrosity: Highest level 90 (Toad), nothing done with PvP
-Nothing done with Chocobo Racing
-Most Campaign Ops not done (Fiat Lux, Plucking Wings, Splitting Heirs completed)
-Mog Garden: 1.9k entrances, 620 furrows, 950 grove, 925 veins, 120 pond/coast, 1.1k monster cares, 40 creatures raised"

[Alhanelem]

"Killing Za'Dha Adamantking (present version) ranked me up from 7 to 8. I had already killed the Orc/Yagudo present kings, so I assume all three were needed.they give titles don't they? it's not about killing "the trio" it's about getting titles. You probably don't need "all three" to get to any particular mastery rank, they all contribute individually.

[Avereith]

We've also had people rank up just from activating homepoints for the first time, so it's more than just titles. It really is just a background point system that we will never ever ever figure out if the points are at all weighted towards certain content.

"I just unlocked homepoint to Attowah chasm and received a rank up from 4-5"

Also it's not pure titles because we have another player working this out with is that has just as many titles as the rank 8 guy and is still rank 7

[Dragoy]

-Mog Garden: 1.9k entrances, 620 furrows, 950 grove, 925 veins, 120 pond/coast, 1.1k monster cares, 40 creatures raised"

I don't suppose there is an in-game method to find these stats out that I've missed completely?

Would be nice to know mine.

[Pixela]

Talk to the moogle in your garden, i forget which option but it tells you these things.

[Dragoy]

Talk to the moogle in your garden, i forget which option but it tells you these things.

Dang, I wonder if I just forgot about that... I almost did go check before asking, but felt pretty sure it's not there!

Many thanks!

Hmmm.

"You have freed 14 creatures."
"44 creatures have passed on."

Hah. I only started putting them down once I noticed I got a title from that, too. Pretty mean to make us do that!

The other activities I stopped doing once I hit maximum rank on them, though I might not guess that from some of the numbers, though that's of course due to them having multiple actions available daily (visited 1005, furrow 745, grove 4209, veins 4048, pond 325, coast 326, cared 1749, reared 58).

[Alhanelem]

We've also had people rank up just from activating homepoints for the first time, so it's more than just titles. It really is just a background point system that we will never ever ever figure out if the points are at all weighted towards certain content.

"I just unlocked homepoint to Attowah chasm and received a rank up from 4-5"

Also it's not pure titles because we have another player working this out with is that has just as many titles as the rank 8 guy and is still rank 7


You didn't read the dev post did you?

They listed off tons of things that contribute to mastery rank, including unlocking home points etc. And they noted that titles are heavily tied to content completion and thus are something you want to go after.

You wrote this post as if you just discovered these things, but they were covered in the official post. blold/underline emphasis mine.



Greetings,
The following is the extent of the information we can share regarding Mastery Rank.


Accumulated playtime
Mission progress
Number of completed quests
Combat and magic skills
Synthesis and fishing skills
Number of Trusts obtained
Battle content (Such as Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, Moblin Maze Mongers, Otherworldly Skirmishes, Omen, etc.)
Non-battle content (Such as Chocobo Racing, Mog Garden, unlocking Warps, etc.)
Titles almost always correlate with content completion; titles obtained upon completing content are tied to Mastery Rank.

One example is the Expeditionary Trooper title that is obtained upon completing Expeditionary Force.

[Avereith]

I mean, of course I read the dev post. But I don't think it's a fair post. It still explains literally nothing except "Hey go do everything, ya jerks!" It even has an etc in the post, like we wouldn't want to know exactly what contributes to the system and the rankings

And yes, we did "just discover" those things. There was no actual proof that obtaining a home-point alone on its own would be enough to up the point system to rank someone up until someone reported it. Every new thing we do and every new rank up we hear about and exactly what happened during it is an addition to our collective efforts.

I think it's fair to say there may be weight given to more specific objectives, or even gatekeeping objectives much like a guild rank up test would have you turn in a specific item in order to rank up. I don't think it would be a stretch to believe that there is a point system as well as certain objectives that must be completed 100% to attain a rank

I think their answer is a crappy cop-out answer that anyone on this board could have given, and is hardly the kind of response I would expect from an official developer that sees actual fans of the game trying to puzzle out a new system and actually play the game again and do old content instead of rotating omen/dyna-d/reisen helms on repeat forever

[Avereith]

Dang, I wonder if I just forgot about that... I almost did go check before asking, but felt pretty sure it's not there!

Many thanks!

Hmmm.

"You have freed 14 creatures."
"44 creatures have passed on."

Hah. I only started putting them down once I noticed I got a title from that, too. Pretty mean to make us do that!

The other activities I stopped doing once I hit maximum rank on them, though I might not guess that from some of the numbers, though that's of course due to them having multiple actions available daily (visited 1005, furrow 745, grove 4209, veins 4048, pond 325, coast 326, cared 1749, reared 58).

If you're interested at all (probably not, who would be), there are many titles you've yet to attain from the mog garden, with the last ones coming at 1000 rearings, 1000 monsters killed, 1000 furrow harvests, 1000 pond, and 1000 coast. And yes that's as ridiculous as you think, considering that 1000 pond/coast means literally once a day for 1000 days

[Alhanelem]

I mean, of course I read the dev post. But I don't think it's a fair post. It still explains literally nothing except "Hey go do everything, ya jerks!" It even has an etc in the post, like we wouldn't want to know exactly what contributes to the system and the rankingsAs I noted, there are some key things not included in that list, like making gil or collecting items (Regular items are generally not tracked by the game- key items on the other hand are different."

I mean, its pretty plain from the dev post along with our own discoveries that most things contribute. It's going to be easier to figure out what doesn't matter than what does. You not thinking it's "fair" (whatever that's supposed to mean) doesn't make it such.

But regardless of that, you basically repeated many of the contents of the dev post yourself as if it was never made, which is itself pointless. They said warps count, you don't need to test to see if they count, we already knew that anyway.

It's honestly more clear when you look at a different way: Everything that is stated to contribute by them are permanent things.. with the exception of ballista titles, all titles are permanent and can be retrieved from a title bard. All non-temporary key items (duh) are permanent and can be used as a metric for progress. EXP and merit points are not, but job points as tracked by the Gifts system are. Playtime is permanent. Collecting teleports is permanent. Learned spells are permanent. Combat/magic/craft skills are permanent. Quest completions are permanent.

What I'm getting at here: anything that's actually permanent to your character likely counts. Regular items in your inventory, gil, EXP/meripo, temporary key items most likely do not. Gil almost without a doubt does not, otherwise the RMT would be all over that in a heartbeat, selling people mastery ranks.


Also: All of the above is testable: AFK powerlevel a new character and quickly get all their job levels up but don't raise their skills etc. Transfer max gil to a mule. repeatedly obtain and use temporary key items.

Every MMO has secrets they're not willing to give out. you say you think no competent developer would make a post like that. I say the exact opposite. FFXI has always asked players to figure out the ins and outs. Even FFXIV doesn't tell everybody EVERYTHING The spawn conditions for S rank hunts were not given directly. The XI devs specifically kept it vague to make it harder for players to game the system. It would admittedly have been easier to just say "almost everything affects it, don't waste your time trying to figure it out and just enjoy the damn game." but then we'd have been outraged at the rudeness. Besides, FFXI's playerbase is incredibly superstitious, everyone insisted and swore by standing in a particular direction while crafting enhanced the results until like 15 years later when the devs finally said it doesn't do anything.

Honestly, it was a mistake to put this in the game in the first place, because now hardcore players are having a p**sing contest trying to get the most mastery rank. The reason they put it there was so novices in the assist channel could get a loose idea how experienced the players they are talking to are.


It just beggars belief that the devs literally list all the things that contribute to mastery rank and yet you want to insist it says nothing and think there must be some crazy conspiracy.

[Dragoy]

If you're interested at all (probably not, who would be), there are many titles you've yet to attain from the mog garden, with the last ones coming at 1000 rearings, 1000 monsters killed, 1000 furrow harvests, 1000 pond, and 1000 coast. And yes that's as ridiculous as you think, considering that 1000 pond/coast means literally once a day for 1000 days

I did imagine there would be more, but I could not guess how high they'd set them (and I haven't looked for spoilers about it). Took a while to even realise they give titles due to the fact that the game doesn't tell us when the title changes, and that it changes the title every day if doing stuff like Domain Invasion.

Actually not sure now why I got so many interactions on things, when another character got to rank 7 on them with a lot less. I guess I did do the things a bit more than for the rank after all... heh.

Guess I'll start doing them again, at least when I can bother to. 1000 is a bit too much fer sure, and now I kind of wish I started going to the garden when it was released, but I didn't until a few years after the fact (well, a bit more than 1005 days ago, I maybe guess... and had I been using the things every day, I'd be done now!).

Thanks!

[Avereith]

As I noted, there are some key things not included in that list, like making gil or collecting items (Regular items are generally not tracked by the game- key items on the other hand are different."

I mean, its pretty plain from the dev post along with our own discoveries that most things contribute. It's going to be easier to figure out what doesn't matter than what does. You not thinking it's "fair" (whatever that's supposed to mean) doesn't make it such.

But regardless of that, you basically repeated many of the contents of the dev post yourself as if it was never made, which is itself pointless. They said warps count, you don't need to test to see if they count, we already knew that anyway.

It's honestly more clear when you look at a different way: Everything that is stated to contribute by them are permanent things.. with the exception of ballista titles, all titles are permanent and can be retrieved from a title bard. All non-temporary key items (duh) are permanent and can be used as a metric for progress. EXP and merit points are not, but job points as tracked by the Gifts system are. Playtime is permanent. Collecting teleports is permanent. Learned spells are permanent. Combat/magic/craft skills are permanent. Quest completions are permanent.

What I'm getting at here: anything that's actually permanent to your character likely counts. Regular items in your inventory, gil, EXP/meripo, temporary key items most likely do not. Gil almost without a doubt does not, otherwise the RMT would be all over that in a heartbeat, selling people mastery ranks.


Also: All of the above is testable: AFK powerlevel a new character and quickly get all their job levels up but don't raise their skills etc. Transfer max gil to a mule. repeatedly obtain and use temporary key items.

Every MMO has secrets they're not willing to give out. you say you think no competent developer would make a post like that. I say the exact opposite. FFXI has always asked players to figure out the ins and outs. Even FFXIV doesn't tell everybody EVERYTHING The spawn conditions for S rank hunts were not given directly. The XI devs specifically kept it vague to make it harder for players to game the system. It would admittedly have been easier to just say "almost everything affects it, don't waste your time trying to figure it out and just enjoy the damn game." but then we'd have been outraged at the rudeness. Besides, FFXI's playerbase is incredibly superstitious, everyone insisted and swore by standing in a particular direction while crafting enhanced the results until like 15 years later when the devs finally said it doesn't do anything.

Honestly, it was a mistake to put this in the game in the first place, because now hardcore players are having a p**sing contest trying to get the most mastery rank. The reason they put it there was so novices in the assist channel could get a loose idea how experienced the players they are talking to are.


It just beggars belief that the devs literally list all the things that contribute to mastery rank and yet you want to insist it says nothing and think there must be some crazy conspiracy.

This isn't a contest to see who's better. This is just literally the only piece of content in the game that isn't math'd out in spreadsheets. It's a puzzle. A fun puzzle for anyone to contribute and figure out how to works.

And yet like... 5? people total are contributing between two forums and those numbers aren't enough to figure anything out, and it's rather irritating.

We do have some people that are willing to make new characters and control variables and such, but others like myself only have one character and no mules and can only contribute with combined stats at rank up, which doesn't mean anything as there is so much uncontrolled.

I guess I just find it hard to believe that there is an actual mystery in FFXI to solve again, and yet no one seems to care.

[Pixela]

And yet like... 5? people total are contributing between two forums and those numbers aren't enough to figure anything out, and it's rather irritating.

We do have some people that are willing to make new characters and control variables and such, but others like myself only have one character and no mules and can only contribute with combined stats at rank up, which doesn't mean anything as there is so much uncontrolled.

I guess I just find it hard to believe that there is an actual mystery in FFXI to solve again, and yet no one seems to care.

There are people working on it, not only on the two forums you mentioned but on the JP side too.

The majority are always going to be busy on the things you find mundane, things like this are always figured out by the few willing to dig in the dirt.

[Alhanelem]

I guess I just find it hard to believe that there is an actual mystery in FFXI to solve again, and yet no one seems to care. I can respect that. I honestly figured that th is system was going to trigger big e-peen contests between all the most elite players "LOOK AT ME MY MASTERY RANK IS MORE THAN YOURS." But there's always been people figuring out things in FFXI just for the sake of figuring them out, so I suppose I should be less surprised.

I mean hey. I took the time to determine that Bubbly Bernie has about 337 MP (https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Bubbly_Bernie) (which it can't use but has by virtue of being a PLD) by aspiring it over and over. Prior to that I had thought that monsters generally had infinite MP. Then there was that tonberry NM in pso'xja where draining it of all MP became a tactic after a group discovered it would literally stand still and perform no actions when it runs out of MP.

[Avereith]

If anyone is still interested in bit of data involving mastery ranks. Today I ranked up to rank 8 finally. Here are my current stats.

Rank 8:
-All Missions/addons complete
-Crafts capped (110 gold w/ escutcheon; ebisu+1/lu+1)
-All jobs mastered
-1075/1075 records of eminence
-Adoulin ring+1/Ygnas
-All Monster Rearing KIs
-Maat's Cap
-Level 99 Adventuring fellow
-All spells, trusts, mounts
-All skills capped
-Gold Mentor Flag
-12 REMA (1 relic, 3 mythics, 2 empy, 2 ergon, 4 aeonic)
-Max Fame everywhere
-Homepoints, Outposts, Survival Guide, Waypoints, Etc: Have All
-Vorseals: Missing 2 HP, 6 regen, 6 refresh, 3 acc++
-Abyssea complete/Atma of the Savior
-Monstrosity: A few 99s, currently unlocking all species
-Campaign Ops: 41/way too many (fiat lux(s/b/w), splitting heirs, plucking wings, cracking shells complete)
-Chocobo Digging: Amateur (only dug 30 items for RoE)
-Voidwatch complete; all periapts/atmacites LVL 15
-All dyna-d full cleared/judge,jury,executioner
-Master trial: 2/4 complete
-145/145 Atma
-65/65 Abyssites
-Incomplete Quests: Sandy, Aht Urgan, Crystal War, Abyssea (resistance ops)
-980/1074~ titles
-1006+ days playtime

To do: chocobo racing (2 titles left), 985 titles, guild point item titles (11 left without lowering goldsmithing), incursion level to 133+, maze mongers clears/all maze runes (currently 50 completions), get all vorseals, unlock all monstrosity species, NM titles (2 left), Battlefield titles (4 left), complete all quests

I don't think we have seen rank 9 yet, but I will still be completion grinding, so we shall see eventually if a rank 9 pops up somewhere

[Pixela]

Back in the day, long long ago I was one of the first people on my server to get a Maats cap. It was a insane amount of work back then.

They should add some kind of reward for getting to rank 8-9 like this, even if it's just a reskinned black maats cap or something.

[Symbolah]

Sometimes the journey is the reward. They don't HAVE to give you something every time you do something.

[Alhanelem]

Is it not enough to say you made some arbitrary numeric representation of game progress larger than someone else?

[Avereith]

Sometimes the journey is the reward. They don't HAVE to give you something every time you do something.

This is why I'm doing any of this. For me it's just fun to know that such a large game actually has a measure of completion attached to it now. I enjoy being able to experience all the content offered by the game, and it's been a blast

990 titles now, and pushing towards 1000!

[Avereith]

Still looking to find someone that's rank 9 or hit it myself. At least with new stuff master level stuff getting added there will probably be more passive mastery rank points to be earned as well!

1002 titles now, so that's gotta count for something!

[Avereith]

If anyone has any ability to post on the JP side of things (where they actually get answers), could you please ask what the maximum Mastery Rank is at this time? We are still grinding away and trying to see if rank 9 exists, but it would be much easier to want to grind if we knew rank 9 existed, ha