Pros:
-It has plenty of information on quests, missions, and jobs.
-There're pretty pictures! :\
-There's a big list of all the spells.

Cons:
-Alot of the information is incorrect, or vague, at best.
-There're many things that aren't even covered that are important, and very useful, including, but not limited to: Residence furnishings, Artifact Weapon information, and certain special job abilities(Wide-scan, anyone?), just to name a few.
-Some of the "strategies" seem a bit opinionated. In some cases you need an experienced opinion, but not in most. Example: His belief that ninja is not particularly a good support job. Many players do think that it is.
-Lack of ANY maps aside from the four main cities and the port towns, Selbina and Mhaura.
-Lack of much real...er.. Strategy. Particularly for areas. The only "strategy" in the guide comes from the Job section, where he mentions things you should do as a .

All in all, this guide is not worth the buy, heck, Elshimo is like an afterthought in the guide, despite the fact that you spend way too much time there, in many cases. I think that this guide could be actually good, given that it had alot more real information, and some real strategies for alot of other things.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:


OK to get you started, but take it with a grain of salt  Sep 12, 2005 By D. Smith
The good:
For getting started and getting your fame up, it has a good selection of quests for each nation--though it gives you no idea of the minimum level you should be to take on those quests. It also gives some (very short) crafting recipe lists that will help you get started. It gives you an idea of what each job is about, as well as listings of spells & abilities and when you get them, but be sure you read the rest of my review.

The single most helpful thing in the book is the little chart of monster family weaknesses. FFXI has an elemental system, but it frequently violates its own rules, and this table does help to keep some of that straight.

The bad:
Some job combos suggested are just horrible. The writers don't really seem to "get it" as far as what Ninja is about, for example. They make claims that Ninja doesn't make a good subjob (so why is EVERYBODY subbing nin?) and that parties that are light on healers will likely not invite a Ninja (on the contrary: the Ninja's ability to avoid taking hits makes them ideal for a party light on healers, provided you go against the right targets). They give no real in-depth info on how to play any of the jobs. I get the feeling that none of them played any of the jobs past level 30. All the cool stuff happens later in the game. The Red Mage section doesn't talk about Refresh, or emphasize enfeebling, or let players know that they aren't really a substitute Black Mage or Warrior. The Dark Knight section doesn't caution players against trying to be a melee'ing Black Mage, but even suggests BLM as a sub (only workable in the right situations with Taru, and even then I'd rather see /WAR or /THF).

It gives NO info on artifact armor, level caps, Zilart (I can excuse Promathia because this was published before then). Stopping missions at Rank 5 is a travesty, as the original (pre-Zilart) release of the game went up through Rank 6 (defeating the Shadowlord) and level 50 to "complete" the storyline.

A lot of info is wrong. Flash, for example, is not a RDM spell. It flat-out doesn't talk about the real pros and cons of the races and what jobs suit them best. It instead tries to find something good to say about all races for all jobs. While I'm not about to say that a Taru can't be a Dark Knight or a Galka can't be a White Mage, it would be nice to see more guidance given in that area--so that new players could at least start out with a combo that isn't going to take a million gil to get through level 25. On that subject, some much more detailed crafting info and general gil-making info would be useful to the novice.

In short, this guide is ok for looking up quests quickly, or looking up monster weaknesses or what element Fragmentation is, or at what level your job gets its next cool ability, but that's really about all it's good for. I don't know anyone who uses the lists of equipment. They are so outdated it's a joke anyway.

If all the useless fluff were taken out and it were published in a ring-binding that you could lay flat or fold back on itself, and cut the price in half, it would be worth that. But for this price, I can't really recommend it. There are plenty of websites that will help you more.

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