I'm curious to see how many of you will understand what I write here. It's been posted before on other sites (by me - information is mine), but its a little secret i found out about 2 years ago that of interest to the FFXI community (even though many don't understand it)
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So being the person I am, I like to talk to every NPC I run across. Some NPC's give you different responses depending on quests / missions you complete. A few give different responses depending on time of day as well. When I run across some interesting information, I write it down. A while back while going through my notes, I stumbled across something interesting. After talking to enough NPC's, I found out that SE indeed gave us information about how we can create skillchains. And now, I want to share with you this information.
WS = Weapon Skill
SC = Skillchain
We first start out with the elemental chart - courtesy of FFXI ingame NPC:
Code:
F
/ \
W L I
| | |
T D Wi
\ /
E
and the Days of the Vana'diel week (Few Will D*ie*)
Fire
Earth
Water
Wind
Ice
Lightning (Thunder)
Light
Dark
Weapon SkillsThe first thing to remember is that each Weapon Skill has at least 1 element tied to it. The element is the colored box next to each WS. A Weapon Skill with produce 1, 2, or 4 Elements.
For example:
Burning Blade has 1 element tied to it "Fire"
Red Lotus Blade seems to have 2 elements tied to it "Fire" and "Wind"
Flat Blade has 1 Element tied to it "Lightning"
Circle Blade seems to have 2 Elements tied to it "Earth" and "Lightning"
Knights of the Round seems to have 4 Elements tied to it "Lightning," "Fire," "Wind," "Light"
SkillChainsNow by combining 2 Weapon Skills, we have the possibility of producing a Skillchain. Skillchains produce 1, 2, or 4 elements(lvl 1,2,3 SC respectively).
For Example:
Fusion has 2 Elements - Fire and Light
Transfixtion has 1 Element - Light
Distortion has 2 Elements - Ice and Water
Induration has 1 Element - Ice
Light has 4 elements - Fire, Wind, Thunder, and Light
Darkness has 4 Elements - Earth, Ice, Water, Dark
Understanding GrantedNow, look closely at our level 3 SC.
Light = Fire Wind, Lightning, and Light
Darkness = Earth, Ice, Water, Dark
Do you notice something intersting about them?? Take a moment and look at our element chart at the beginning. If you still don't quite see it - look below:
Code:
Light SC:
F
/ \
L
| | |
T Wi
\ /
Dark SC:
/ \
W I
| | |
D
\ /
E
HMMMMM - Interesting isn't it. HMMMM i see something interesting here

Those 2 separations give us a start as to what SC we can perform.
Looking at the Light / Dark charts, you can make a skillchain with the Element directly across reading from (Light / Dark) from Top-> Bottom and Left->Right. You may also take note that these same groupings are what you get with a Lvl 2 SC (Fusion = Fire/Light, Fragmentation = Thunder/Wind, Distortion = Water/Ice, Gravitation = Earth/Dark).
From these Diagrams we get these SC: Fire -> Light, Thunder-> Wind, Dark->Earth, and Water->Ice.
"But Nat," you say "that only produces 3 different SC (Scission, Detonation, and Induration). Where did the other ones go?" lets look at the charts again. From the full chart, we also get these SC: Light->Dark (Compression or Reverberation), and Dark->Earth (Impacation). Looking again without Light and Dark, we come with another SC: Fire->Earth (Fusion). Looking at the 2 diagonals on Light, we get Thunder->Light (Distortion) and Wind->Light (Scission). From the diagonals on Dark, we get Dark->Water (can cause Transfixtion) and Ice->Water(Fragmentation).
For the other SC's, we have to consult the days of the week:
Code:
F
/ \
T L E
| | |
I D W
\ /
Wi
Reading From bottom to top, we get the following SC: Ice->Thunder, Water->Earth, Wind->Dark, Dark->Light and Light->Fire. That now gives us 4 more SC: Impacation, Gravitaion, Transfixtion, and Liquification. Now, reading the diagonals, We get Water->Thunder, and Ice->Earth (both Impacation) as well as Ice->Dark (Compression), Ice->Water (Fragmentation), Drk-> Earth (Detonation), Water->Dark (Can cause Compression) and Drk -> Thunder (Transfixtion)
Wow!!! Thats a lot of information to digest. Looking at it that way, we kinda see that there is some structure to doing SC. Hope this has helped you.