Server Guidelines

Nocturnal Souls is a safe, fun community that has zero tolerance for harassment anywhere within the community–in game, on discord, or otherwise.

A general rule of thumb: if you have to ask yourself “is this okay?”, then assume it’s not. 😉

Be Awesome

Nocturnal Souls is a service provided to the public at no charge because we’re passionate about having fun in Final Fantasy XI and creating a fun, exciting environment for others

  • Be thoughtful of other players and their gaming experience. Keep it friendly.
  • No harassment or judgment in how people play their game (assuming they’re not violating other rules).
  • Help the Nocturnal Souls community team by being polite and following requests from staff members, such as evacuating an area for maintenance or during a sponsored event.
  • Understand that the development, GM, and community management teams are providing and managing this environment in their spare time and on their own dime.

Bots and Third-Party Programs

At this time, automated game play, bots, and plugins that alter the intended play of the game are not allowed on Nocturnal Souls.

These include, but are not limited to: all bots, speed, position, and teleport hacks, item duping, item stat-changing, door opening, most treasure pool management plugins from Ashita and Windower, and any other bypass of normal game function.

Why not?!?111

Many, if not all, of these bots are unnecessary due to the enhanced environment of Nocturnal Souls. Skill ups, exp farming, and such are all simplified and/or entirely removed. In addition, the DSP login server doesn’t take kindly to multiple clients connecting from the same IP address, which can result in data corruption and loss on character accounts. In addition, most of the treasure pool management plugins spam the server with unnecessary packets, causing latency and reduced playability.

EXCEPTION: We’ve reviewed CurePlease and the CurePlease addon and approve of players using this bot as a cure/buff bot. However, this bot (just as with multi-boxing), cannot be used in Dynamis, Limbus, or other zones that do not support multi-boxing from a single IP address. We’ve tested and support CurePlease, available at https://github.com/DanielHazzard/Cure-Please/releases. Please be sure to configure CurePlease to use the addon for communication for the best game play experience.

Multi-boxing / “alt” accounts

At this time, we allow up to three additional “alt” accounts that players can automate using tools like CurePlease. For example, a WHM/SCH alt, a BRD alt, and a RDM alt.

These alts are meant to support the main character as they are playing the game in the event that community members are not around. Since CurePlease can’t engage, fight, or attack, it’s quite easy to spot who’s violating this rule and using an unapproved scripting system.

Keep in mind that Final Fantasy XI is a bit flaky with multi-boxing and multiple accounts logging in via the same IP address. This can lead to cutscene breaking, missions not updating correctly, rewards not updating correctly, or characters timing out during zoning. In addition, multi-boxing is not allowed in instance zones, such as Dynamis and Limbus as it will crash the zone server.

Also keep in mind that players who multibox are reducing the individual gains of each individual character and could extend the amount of time it takes to grow characters as the alts require gear, currency, and progression as well.

Players should multi-box at their own risk. The Nocturnal Souls team is not responsible for broken quest updates, corrupted characters, or locked accounts causes by multi-boxing.

The Nocturnal Souls community team will frequently hold sponsored events open to all players. Many of these events do have requirements, such as level and gear, but others are open to all players.

During these sponsored events, it is expected that players will follow the same guidelines as always; however, there are additional rules that apply:

  • Players should follow staff’s directions at all times to ensure the event is fun and productive for all participants.
  • Players who are multi-boxing cannot loot on items across all of their characters. For example, if an item drops, one character can loot on it and the others should pass.
  • Players who are multi-boxing may be asked at any time to choose a “main” character and remove the boxed characters–real players take precedence over boxed characters at all times.

During player events (those organized by non-staff members), rules around loot, participants, and targets are set forth by the sponsor of the event. Nocturnal Souls staff can provide mediation in the event of a dispute; however, keep in mind that being a jerk and not playing well with others will likely mean you’re simply not invited to participate in future events hosted by that sponsor (and the same, of course, works in reverse for sponsors and players).

Harassment

The Nocturnal Souls community is made up of a diverse group of individuals from all backgrounds, nationalities, and walks of life. Harassment has a zero tolerance policy within the Nocturnal Souls community that will result in either jail time or a permanent ban from the Nocturnal Souls community.

Some examples of harassment behavior include, but are not limited to:

  • Any language that targets and/or condems any race, color, religion, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
  • Any language, character name, or Linkshell name that is purposely meant to harm or harass other players or groups.
  • Any character name or Linkshell that is considered generally offensive or vulgar to the player community.
  • Any language that infringes on the privacy and/or welfare of other players or groups.

If you feel you are being targeted by harassment, please contact a GM or Staff Member on Discord immediately with log screenshots and any details you can provide. Keep in mind that we do not log chat, so screenshots of conversations and comments are required.

Unacceptable Behavior

While it’s assumed that all players are mature members of a helpful community, there are several activities considered unacceptable as a whole and will result in either jail time or, potentially, a permanent ban from the server.

  • Intentional use of a monster or game mechanic to kill another player (aka an MPK).
  • Breaking or circumventing normal game mechanics/physics.
  • Breaking or circumventing Level Sync functionality.
  • Intentionally attempting to login or “brute force” an account’s credentials to gain access to the account.
    • We have zero tolerance for this and will land you a Perma-Ban and a public shaming in the private server community.
  • Intentionally crashing, or attempting to crash the server.
    • We have zero tolerance for this and will land you a Perma-Ban and a public shaming in the private server community.
  • Multi-boxing or playing multiple characters from the same IP address in Limbus, Dynamis, or other instances where this is deemed unstable.
  • Using bots, scripts, or any sort of automation to monitor HNM TOD’s while AFK or in another zone.
  • Using bots or scripts to play characters while the being AFK for means of farming, experience point gain, or else. If you’re not at the computer and actively controlling your characters, you are in violation.
  • Using Ashitacast, or similar addon/plugin, to automate claiming mobs.
    • Ashitacast and Gearswap ARE allowed plugins, however, just not this particular use case.
  • Using plugins, packet injection, or other means to bypass normal game mechanics.
  • Exploits of any kind, including gil and market manipulation (buying an item from one NPC or vendor and easily selling to another for profit).
    • Exploits should be reported to a GM immediately.
    • Abusing any exploit is subject to a perma-ban from the community.
  • Spamming or misuse of global chat, either in game or on Discord.
  • Attempting to advertise or recruit for other services, be it Final Fantasy XI-related or not,
  • Attempting to or bypassing the security setup in place on community resources, such as the Members Portal, in any way, shape, or form.

Auction House

The Auction house normally only allows seven listings per character. A DSP “bug” currently breaks this limit in a way that other servers did (and some still do) deliberately. When you have several hundred items get returned by auction expiry at once, this is more than your delivery box can hold. Any items lost in this manner will NOT be restored.

Additionally, mass listings of any single item can break that item at the AH, displaying a massive stock yet nobody can buy them at any price due to the database error this causes. This requires an individual player to list the exact same item in an insane amount many times larger than the server’s entire player base. Should this occur, the overstock will be deleted without compensation in order to rescue the database from abuse.

We don’t care if you list more than seven, but you do so at your own risk. You probably won’t have a problem unless you seriously try to break something or don’t understand the meaning of the phrase “in moderation”. Fifteen isn’t going to be a problem, 1500 almost certainly is.

For more information on the Auction House, read our quick guide.