Ballista (term)

Ballista, also known as Conflict, is a ritualized form of combat in Final Fantasy XI. This is the first and currently the only form of Player versus Player (PvP) available in the game. Ballista occurs at regular intervals. Each time it occurs the game will pit two of the three major nations against eachother, Bastok, San'doria, and Windurst. Players do not necissarily have to fight for their own country, since clearly that would mean only 2 out of 3 players could participate in any particular ballista. Up to 72 players can play ballista at any given match. Teams must be ballanced to be within 1 player of eachother for fairness consideration. There is also a minor monetary fee players have to pay to enter. The winning team then divides the pool of money between them after the match.

Rules of Ballista
Ballista can be played in two different ways. The first being one giant match that generally lasts about 45 minutes to 1 hour and the second being the best of three short matches. In either case, the objective is the same.

Query
Players from both sides must use a ballista-only command called /query in order to try to find Petra. These petra are what ultimately determines the winner of the game. Query can also be used to find temporary items. These can be familiar items like hi-potions and either or they can be ballista specific, like a Jar of Carnal Essence. Each petra can be used to score one point. There is no limit to the number of petra that can be held by a player at any given time, but only 10 temporary items can be carried at any given time.

Also see: Ballista Specific Items'

Rooks
Objects known as rooks, which actually look similar to chess rooks, will appear out of the ground at various places during the match. The number of rooks and their distance from one another is directly effected by the number of participants in Ballista at that time. Rooks are the "goals", if you will, through which petra can be tossed to score points.

Gate Breach
As mentioned before, this is a PvP event. This means that players can kill other players. These players have to be on the opposing team, obviously. Due to the nature of the game though, it is not wise to brashly run about trying to kill your opponent. Whenever a member of the other team is KOed, the team that killed the player gets a Gate Breach status. This means that the door on the rook's front opens and petra can now be put into the rook to score points.

If a player is KOed, he has a few options. He can try to wait for a raise or he can rejoin the battle. Raise takes a lot of MP and the player would remain in a weakened status for 5 minutes to this is not likely to happen unless the player has a particularly large cache of petra. If a player opts to join the battle rather than get a raise, he loses all of hits petra, though he will keep any temporary items he is carrying.

Ballista Locations

 * Pashhow Marshlands
 * Jugner Forest