Notorious Monster is a term used to identify a special category of enemies that appear in Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. The official short form of this term is NM.
Appearances
Final Fantasy XI
Template:See Also Notorious Monsters tend to be plot-related, quest-based, or important to the world of Vana'diel as a whole. These can include great beastmen heroes, unique monsters and rare encounters on the field not unlike Rare Game in Final Fantasy XII. Notorious Monsters are typically known to have special qualities that set them apart from normal monsters. These include unique monster behavior, higher stats, special attacks, and rare or exclusive loot.
Most Notorious Monsters are not easy to run into because they spawn infrequently, or under very specific conditions. NMs that do not spawn automatically may also require a player to spawn them by checking markers on the field, or trading trigger items used to cause them to spawn, amongst other things.
One typical way of identifying notorious monsters is when a player Checks a notorious monster to determine the relative difficulty of the enemy. With notorious monsters, the player will simply be told that this creature's strength is "impossible to gauge" regardless of how difficult the fight will actually be.
High Notorious Monsters
High Notorious Monsters (or HNMs in short) are a subset of Notorious Monsters that are known for their high level. These monsters are infamous for being very challenging encounters, often requiring alliances of players to defeat and dropping highly prized loot. Most HNMs are also either very elusive or take a lot of effort to even get to encounter.
As there is no official word on what qualifies as a High Notorious Monster, the definition is highly disputed amongst the player community, although it is generally accepted that all HNMs possess the following traits:
- HNMs grant titles on defeating them.
- HNMs are of very high levels, starting from at least higher than the original level cap of 75.
- HNMs are able to damage players that are not involved in the party fighting them (i.e. bystanders) with their attacks.
- As a corollary, HNMs are found only in standard, openly-accessed zones and not battlefields.
- HNMs drop rare equipment and items which are usually highly prized, although this is subjective based on player trends in the game.
Final Fantasy XIV
Notorious Monsters work similarly to their Final Fantasy XI counterpart, having some background importance and some are Guildleve-related. They are often much stronger versions of normal monsters and beastmen that roam the land, with unique appearance and sometimes enormous in size. Most Notorious Monsters give a lodestone achievement when defeated for the first time.
However, this time, every Notorious Monster must be killed under 30 minutes, or else they will "enrage"—receiving a great stat boost and more often than not wiping out an entire party in seconds. If a Notorious Monster is engaged and then kills the engaging party, he will despawn if it's not engaged again in roughly 15 minutes. In case this happen, he will appear again on the same spot after two hours, fully recovered and not enraged.
Another difference is that this time, there are some Guildleve only NMs, that don't require any chance or luck for spawning; they are always present on their guildleve and can only be claimed by players doing that leve. To fight them, a player must follow a chain of three faction leves, using a total of 600 faction points, and the Notorious Monster will always be fought at the end of the last one.
Just like Final Fantasy XI, NMs's strength is "impossible to gauge", a fact shown by their level icon. Instead of showing the target level like normal monsters, it's simply a "?" shape.
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