Maat

Maat is an NPC character in Final Fantasy XI. He is a very spry old man who can be found in Ru'lude Gardens. His stance indicates that he is definitely ready for action as he dances about in typical boxer form.

In terms of what Maat does, he is the person players will want to talk to once they hit level 50. The natural level cap in the game is actually 50, but at that point if a player speaks with him, he will offer a quest that needs to be completed, thus allowing the player to level to 55. At 55, he will have to return for another quest, another at 60, and another at 65.

At level 70, players also have to talk with Maat; however, in this case he is actually going to challenge you to a fight. If you can defeat him, you gain the ability to level to level 70. For this fight, Maat will automatically take on your character's job. While that may be true, Maat will always use hand-to-hand abilities and weapon skills. Access to your subjob is restricted for this fight. While there are many different ways of actually winning, the most direct way is to reduce his hit points to near-zero. Some jobs have an alternate method of victory. White Mages, for instance, will win if they cure a certain amount of damage to themselves over time and Thieves can defeat Maat simply by successfully stealing something from him.

Maat's Cap
It is only necissary to complete each level cap quest, called Renkai which translates to Limit Break in Japanese, once. After doing this, a player may level all of his jobs to whatever level cap he has unlocked to a maximum of 75. Thus it is only really necissary to fight Maat once; however, there are benefits to fighting him 15 times, once on every job that was released up to the Chains of Promathia expansion. If defeated once on all 15 jobs in that manner, Maat will grant you a head-slot item called Maat's Cap. The cap is undeniably good, though it is not exactly useful for all jobs over other headslot items. Needless to say, though many find the cap unattractive, it is an undeniable status symbol. In general, many high level characters can tell you about how many if not exactly how many players on their server have a Maat's cap, because the number is usually very small.

=Mythology= In Egyptian mythology, Ma'at was the goddess of Truth, Balance, Order, Justice, etc. She was essensially the goddess of all things good and noble. It fits in well that Maat controls whether or not you can bypass the level cap in FFXI, as she was one of the judges of the soul upon death in Egyptian lore.