The first online title in the Final Fantasy series, the eleventh installment gained a lot of fans and its virtual community is continuously expanding, proving to be a competitor for World of Warcraft. The world of Vana'diel is huge and you might ruin your social life exploring every corner of this virtual universe. Don't expect any free gil tips or some cheats that will make you invincible, as this is an online game and people get banned all the time for using cheats or trainers in FF XI. Hundreds of thousands of items and quests await the eager players and frankly, they're far more challenging than any WOW quest ever made. FF XI might have been a success for those MMORPG aficionados, but the older Final Fantasy fans were disappointed and that shows in FF XII that went back to the single-player mode. You might want to check out some strategies and hints below if you want to get some of the best items in FF XI:

Overview
Chests and Coffers in Final Fantasy XI are a way of obtaining items and gil by a method unlike any other in the game. The treasure from chests and coffers includes gil, general armor and weapons, precious stones, map key items, rewards or requirements of Artifact quests, and more. Every character will need to access chests or coffers while leveling up in FFXI; completing a full set of Artifact quests for a job requires opening at least three chests or coffers. For most jobs, this involves going into the Dungeon where the chest or coffer is located, and killing specific mobs until the appropriate treasure key is dropped for it.

A Thief job of high enough character level does not need the specific chest or coffer key, and instead go straight to finding the chest or coffer. Once the chest or coffer is found, it is opened with the appropriate key; a Thief can attempt to pick it, by using special generic key items. An item or chunk of gil is obtained whenever a coffer or chest is opened. The coffer or chest then reloads in the zone after a period of time, and can be opened again. This guide explains the specifics of going through these steps, and provides a full list of the chest and coffer contents.

Differences Between Chests and Coffers
Coffers and chests are fairly similar in most aspects of how they work: they both take specific keys to open, a Thief can pick them, and each reloads regularly in their zone. There are some zones that only have chests, other zones where there are only coffers, and a handful of zones that contain both. Chests and coffers each have their own independent spawn locations and time; both a chest and a coffer can be loaded at once, in the zones where they both exist.

Chests are located in many of the Dungeon zones, from mobs level 15 all the way up into the 60s. Coffers are found only in higher level zones; almost all mobs that drop coffer keys are level 60+. In zones that contain both chests and coffers, the mobs which drop chest keys are always lower level than the mobs that drop the coffer keys. Since they are harder to open, coffers tend to give more gil and better items than chests. Thieves have a harder time picking coffers than chests, with potentially much more dangerous results if they fail.

Locations & Loading
All chests and coffers only load in Dungeon zones. Within those zones where they load, there are specific locations that the coffer or chest can appear. These load spots are fixed by zone and by type of treasure: in a zone with both coffers and chests, coffers have specific load points, and chests have other ones that they can load at. A chest or coffer will load randomly into one of the load points assigned in its zone, and stay there until it is successfully opened; they do not disappear by themselves.

Once a chest or coffer is opened, it usually takes 25-30 minutes to reload, although chests opened during the The Goblin Tailor quest to provide a Magical Pattern reload in as little as 15 minutes. Coffers will reload immediately when the attempt to open one fails, and a Mimic is loaded. When a chest or coffer reloads, it appears in another one of its pre-assigned locations, chosen randomly.

Opening a Chest or Coffer with a Treasure Key
All jobs other than a Thief must obtain a specific Rare/Exclusive key from a mob drop to open a chest or coffer. Chest keys are often found when gaining experience in a zone, or the mobs that provide them can be hunted specifically. Because so many jobs need coffer keys to obtain various Artifact pieces of armor, there are regularly coffer key hunting parties which are formed by characters in the level 50s or above. These groups will go to a specific Dungeon zone and kill the mobs that drop the coffer keys there, to obtain enough for everyone in the group who needs them. Once a character has a key for a chest or coffer, they need to find the chest or coffer loaded in the zone.

This involves moving around the zone and checking the various spots where the chest or coffer can load. In a zone populated by many characters, it can be difficult during the busiest hours of the day to find a coffer or chest loaded; sometimes it is worthwhile to wait at a specific load spot for a chest or coffer to appear. Once the chest or coffer is found that relates to the key, the character has to move right next to the chest or coffer, and trade the key to it. Neither chests nor coffers can be opened while invisible. They can be opened with Sneak, but the Sneak effect will wear off when it is opened. When a character successfully trades the key to a chest or coffer, it is opened and the gil or item awarded, and the chest or coffer disappears.

Picking a Chest or Coffer as a Thief
The Thief job has the unique ability to pick a chest or coffer, without using the regular treasure keys from the zone. Instead, a crafted item is utilized that is used up in the process of trying to pick the chest or coffer. There are three of these tools that a Thief can choose to use, which seem to provide slightly different degrees of success: the Skeleton Key has the highest chance of success, the Living Key is less effective, and the Thief's Tools is the least successful.

Using these items can only be done by a Thief main job, not when using a Thief as a subjob. Whichever item is chosen to try to pick the chest or coffer, it is used up in the attempt, whether the Thief succeeds or fails. If the Thief does succeed, he obtains the treasure just as if the chest or coffer was opened with a regular treasure key. When the attempt to pick a chest or coffer fails, the Thief can be in serious trouble. The potential hazards are different, depending on whether the Thief is trying to open a chest, or a coffer.

Chest Failures
If a Thief succeeds in picking a chest, the tool is used up and he obtains the treasure inside. An attempt to open a chest can simply fail, using up the tool. A critical failure when picking a chest also causes the Thief to be affected by a powerful weakness, which cannot be removed except by wearing off over time or by the death of the character. This weakness can last from 10 minutes up to an hour of real time. The weakness prevents the Thief from attempting to open any other chests or coffers, and acts as a powerful curse.


Check out this fight to see what happens when a couple of characters meet in Vana'diel:



Coffer Failures
If a Thief succeeds in picking a coffer, the tool is used up and he obtains the treasure inside. An attempt to open a coffer can simply fail, using up the tool. A critical failure when picking a coffer also spawns a Mimic mob. These are monsters that look like a chest or coffer and are very difficult opponents, especially for a solo character. Mimics have a stun attack, a powerful poison, and use Draw-In on their opponents to keep them from running away. Only high level Thieves can safely solo a Mimic; most Thieves bring a Warp scroll when trying to pick a coffer, to get away if a Mimic appears. The success rate for picking a chest or coffer varies widely, and is based partially on the tool used when trying to pick it. There are many theories about whether other things can change the success rate, whether they are certain stats (DEX, INT, etc.) or more esoteric variables such as the moon phase.

What is known for certain is that the higher character level a Thief is, the better chance he will have in picking a chest or coffer. This is especially true in zones where the monsters are higher level; it is very difficult to pick a chest in a place where the average monster nearby is higher level than the Thief. The success rate varies from zone to zone with chests; there seem to be around five tiers of chests, with the higher tiers increasingly difficult to pick. This tier can be determined by the amount of the gil found inside, or by the level of the enemies in the zone; chests in lower level zones are much easier to pick than those in higher level zones. Coffers generally present the same difficulty when it comes to picking them; all coffer zones contain high level monsters. There is always some risk involved for a Thief trying to pick a chest or coffer. It can be worth the risk, though; a Thief who gets lucky can make a nice amount of gil from opening chests and coffers in the higher level zones.

The Loot
When a coffer or chest is successfully opened, a single item or chunk of gil is obtained from it. Items from chests and coffers are handled in much the same way as mob drops; a solo character obtains them immediately, while in a group the item is put into the item pool. In zones with regular items in the chest or coffer, any of the items is chosen at random as the treasure. In some zones the map key item can be obtained from the chest or coffer; these are usually obtained the first time a character opens that chest or coffer. The only items from a chest or coffer that are given higher priority than a map are items used in quests, which are always obtained first.

These quest-related items are always given to a character that has the quest activated regardless of the character's current job, even if the quest required a different job to start it. This is possible even for Artifact quests; for example, the Old Gauntlets item can be obtained by any job once the appropriate quest is activated by the job that is getting the hands Artifact piece. A character that has a leveled Thief job can also pick a chest or coffer for any quest-based item as well, and obtain it without procuring the chest or coffer key. Note that this is only possible when obtaining an item used in an official quest (a quest shows up in the character's quest log.) There are Mini-Quests throughout the game that do not show up in the quest log, which can require that the character be a specific job when opening a chest or coffer to obtain an item.

The following is the order that a character obtains items from a Chest or Coffer, from highest priority to lowest. The first three selections can only be obtained once; a reward of gil or a random item is always provided last, if none of the other options are available.

1.Quests: An item obtained from or used in a quest is always obtained first, whether Artifact or a regular quest.

2.Mini-Quests: Items obtained from or used in a mini-quests are next, primarily Artifact rewards that are only obtained when the character opening it is a certain job.

3.Maps: A map key item is obtained next, if there is one for that zone's in-game map.

4.Gil or Items: Either gil OR one of the items that can load in the chest/coffer is chosen, as listed below for each zone. These are the lowest priority, and are only obtained if none of the previously listed options are active. As more chests or coffers are found in the zone by a character, more gil or items chosen randomly from the pool are awarded. The gil that is obtained from a chest or coffer can vary; there is a range of gil that can be obtained when a chest or coffer is opened.

For example, the Crawlers' Nest Chest can load from 5500-8500 gil in it. If a character opens it alone, they will receive a randomly chosen amount of gil within that range; when it is opened in a group, each character in the group obtains a slightly lower amount of gil, but the total gil rewarded is far more than any one character could get by themselves.