Weapon Skills vs Retail¶
Like Gear vs Retail, this page tracks where the server's weapon-skill mechanics intentionally differ from retail FFXI. Two things change: how far a weapon skill's damage can go, and which weapon skills you're allowed to use.
Damage is uncapped for you and your pets¶
On retail, a single hit — a weapon skill, a melee swing, a pet's attack — can never register more than 131,071 damage. That's a hard limit of the game's 17-bit damage packet, not a balance choice; anything above it is simply lost.
On this server that ceiling is lifted for player-controlled damage:
- Your weapon skills and melee hits land their full value on the target's HP, even when a hit is worth 200,000, 500,000, or more.
- The same applies to damage from your pets, trusts, avatars, and automatons — anything whose master is you.
- The floating number over the enemy still maxes out at 131,071 (no client
field is wide enough to draw a bigger one), so the game whispers the true
total to you in chat — a pet or trust hit is prefixed so you know whose it
was (e.g.
[Automaton WS] 250000). - Enemy damage stays capped. A monster can't punch through the ceiling onto you — the uncap is one-directional, players only.
Why the on-screen number looks wrong
When a weapon skill over-caps, the big yellow number on the mob is the packet limit, not what you actually dealt. Trust the chat readout — that's the real damage the target lost.
Two related tweaks build on this:
- Prime Aftermath grants a Damage Limit +% bonus on several Prime weapons, which raises the ceiling further before the uncap even matters — see Prime Armory.
- Automatons get a small flat outgoing-damage multiplier so a level-99-capped puppet can still contribute against the server's level-150 NMs. PUP's automaton hits land modestly harder here than on retail — headroom for high-level NMs, not a DD-tier boost.
Weapon skills retail won't let you use¶
Retail ships a number of weapon skills purely as monster abilities — the animations and effects exist, but no player can ever execute them. The Prime weapon overhaul turns a roster of these on as real player weapon skills, granted by equipping the matching Prime weapon.
The server enables 16 weapon skills that retail FFXI ships as monster-only skills — here they are usable by players wielding the listed Prime weapon. (Stock LandSandBoat leaves these commented out in sql/weapon_skills.sql; the Prime weapon overhaul turns them on.)
| Weapon skill | Weapon | Prime weapon | On retail | On this server |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarv | Archery | Prime Bow | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Blitz | Axe | Prime Pickaxe (Axe) | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Dagda | Club | Prime Maul | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Merciless Strike | Dagger | Mpu Gandring | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Disaster | Great Axe | Prime Great Axe | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Tachi: Mumei | Great Katana | Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Fimbulvetr | Great Sword | Prime Blade (Great Sword) | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Dragon Blow | Hand-to-Hand | Prime Fists | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Maru Kala | Hand-to-Hand | Varga Purnikawa | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Zesho Meppo | Katana | — | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Terminus | Marksmanship | Prime Gun | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Diarmuid | Polearm | Prime Lance | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Origin | Scythe | Prime Scythe | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Oshala | Staff | Prime Staff | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Fast Blade II | Sword | Naegling | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
| Imperator | Sword | Prime Sword | Monster skill only | Usable weapon skill |
Everything else about weapon skills — the fTP tables, hit counts, stat modifiers, and skillchain properties — follows stock LandSandBoat, which mirrors retail. Only the two areas above are changed.
Last updated: 2026-08-13 16:15 PDT