What is custom here

A custom 99/99 server with faster progression rates and dozens of custom systems where you control a squad of your own alt characters as trusts (alt-trusts) through expansions that have been leveled up by 50+ levels to increase their difficulty. Two of those systems have no equivalent anywhere — a weapon that casts spells while you swing it, and a ring that makes one spell cast a second — and they are spotlit below. Under them is the rest of it, grouped and short, with a link on every line for when you want the long version.

Start here

Nine sections. The first two are the ones nobody else has, the third is every job that plays differently here than it does on retail, and the fourth is how much of Vana'diel is open.

Weapon Burst X-Magic Job balance Expansions Progression and the numbers Your account is your party Content built for here The economy, and your time The client and the launcher

Spotlight

Weapon Burst — your weapon casts

A Weapon Burst is an augment you put on a wielded weapon. Once it is on, every attack round — hit or miss, and once per round rather than once per swing — that weapon rolls to fire a real spell at what you are fighting. Not a proc animation with a damage number stapled to it: a real cast, with real damage, real resists, real enmity, and it can magic burst inside a skillchain window like any other nuke. The roll itself doubles while the target is holding a skillchain, so a squad that chains is a squad whose weapons join in.

How you get one

Climb the Gauntlet. /arena is fifty floors of rising enemies with up to eighteen seats, and clearing floor N pays every real player inside N Burst Tokens. A full fifty-floor clear is 1,275.
Buy it on the Drift Exchange. Every burst costs the same: 5,000 Burst Tokens plus 750 Drift Coins — roughly four deep arena runs — from the shelf under the rotating daily offers in /quests.
Put it on a weapon. The Exchange quotes the price and shows the item's four slots; only then is there a button that spends.

The rules worth knowing

One Weapon Burst per weapon. The shop refuses a second, though you can swap the element in the slot the burst already holds.
Wielded weapons only — main hand, off hand or ranged. Never ammo, and never anything stackable.
At most one burst resolves per round, even with three burst weapons on. All three still roll, so more of them is more consistent.
Your squad's weapons burst too. Alt-trusts inherit the gear they are wearing, augments included, with nothing to switch on.

The ten bursts

The percentages are per attack round for a 480-delay weapon, which is the benchmark the rate is stated at. The roll is normalised by your actual round delay — dual wield, martial arts and haste included — so a dagger rolls cooler per round and a greatsword hotter, and every weapon class lands about the same procs per minute. A roll past the listed weights is the window closing on nothing.

Every burst is the real spell, cast by whoever is swinging, so it hits and lands on that character's own magic skill, stats and gear — never the weapon's. A job with no rank in the skill named brings zero skill to the resist roll: the elemental bursts are at their best on a job that can nuke, Shield never rolls to land at all, and the tier II enfeebles carry potency floors that need no skill, though landing them still does.

Weapon Burst	What it can cast	Per round	Lands on	Scales with
Fire	Fire 20% · Fire II 10% · Fire III 5% · Fire IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Ice	Blizzard 20% · Blizzard II 10% · Blizzard III 5% · Blizzard IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Wind	Aero 20% · Aero II 10% · Aero III 5% · Aero IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Earth	Stone 20% · Stone II 10% · Stone III 5% · Stone IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Thunder	Thunder 20% · Thunder II 10% · Thunder III 5% · Thunder IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Water	Water 20% · Water II 10% · Water III 5% · Water IV 3%	38%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Light	Fire II · Thunder II · Aero II, 10% each	30%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Dark	Stone II · Water II · Blizzard II, 10% each	30%	What you are hitting	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Shield	Blink · Stoneskin · Phalanx · Cocoon, 10% each	40%	You, the wearer	Enhancing Magic skill sizes Phalanx and, with MND, Stoneskin; Blink and Cocoon are flat. Nothing to resist
Enfeeble	Poison II · Blind II · Paralyze II · Slow II, 15% each	60%	What you are hitting	Enfeebling Magic skill and Magic Accuracy to land; the MND gap sets Paralyze II and Slow II, INT sets Blind II, and Enfeebling skill alone sets Poison II

The Weapon Burst post

Spotlight

X-Magic — your spells cast twice

X-Magic is the caster's half of the same idea, and it goes on a ring. Wear one and a spell you cast can immediately cast a second spell — free, no MP, no recast, resolved on the spot. It is never a copy of what you just cast: you pick a kind when you buy, and each kind only answers the sort of casting it is for, because a healer's augment should not be paying out on nukes and a nuker's should not be waiting for you to cure something. Every proc names itself in your chat log, so you can see it working.

How you get one

The same price as Weapon Burst, out of the same purse: 5,000 Burst Tokens plus 750 Drift Coins, from the same shelf in /quests. That is deliberate — your tokens arm your melee or arm your caster, and not both at once.

The shelf now shows four of these augments per Vana'diel day, rotating on the same clock the daily offers use. The Augments tab beside it still lists every one, whether or not it is on today's shelf.

The rules worth knowing

Rings only, either hand, and one X-Magic per ring.
Two rings of the same kind stack the chance. It never makes the follow-up hit harder, and it gives back most on fast spells.
The follow-up is a real spell. Real damage, real resists, it can magic burst, and it builds real enmity.
The follow-up cannot itself proc. No chains, and at most one X-Magic resolves per cast.
Your alt-trusts get it automatically from the gear they wear. Put a ring on your alt and it works.

The six kinds

The percentages are what the table sends once the window is open, and the window opens on any cast of about a second and a third or longer; a faster cast scales the chance down in proportion. Fast Cast and haste are inside that measurement, so gearing for speed is not what costs you procs — the spell's own class is. Without the rule, spamming the cheapest spell in your list would be the only correct way to use X-Magic. A cast into an open skillchain window doubles the chance.

The follow-up is the real spell, cast by you with the same skill, stats and gear the spell you just cast used. Cures and buffs never roll to land; anything aimed at an enemy resists on the skill named in the last column plus Magic Accuracy and the stat gap.

X-Magic	Fires when you cast	What comes out	Per cast	Scales with
Elements	A spell aimed at an enemy	Fire II 10% · Blizzard II 10% · Thunder II 9% · Aero II 9% — never the element you just cast	38%	INT against the target’s INT, Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Damage+ for the number; Elemental Magic skill, Magic Accuracy and that INT gap to land it
Grace	A spell aimed at an ally, or at yourself	Cure III 14% · Regen 10% · Protect 8% · Shell 8%	40%	Cure III reads MND, VIT, Healing Magic skill and Cure Potency; Regen, Protect and Shell are flat by tier. Nothing to resist
Ruin	A spell aimed at an enemy	Bio 14% · Dia 14% · Gravity 10% · Addle 10%	48%	Enfeebling Magic skill lands Dia, Gravity and Addle (MND for Dia and Addle, INT for Gravity); Dark Magic skill and INT drive Bio and its damage-over-time
Siphon	A spell aimed at an enemy	Aspir 20% · Drain 15%	35%	Dark Magic skill sets how much is drained and, with INT and Magic Accuracy, whether it lands
Veil	Any spell at all — the follow-up always lands on you	Stoneskin 11% · Phalanx 10% · Aquaveil 10% · Blink 9%	40%	Enhancing Magic skill sizes Stoneskin (with MND), Phalanx and Aquaveil; Blink is flat. Nothing to resist
Song	Any Minuet, Minne, Paeon or Ballad	The same family one tier below, two seconds later, on the same target — a tier I casts tier II instead	Always	Singing skill plus your instrument’s Wind or String skill, and the instrument’s own song bonuses — the same numbers as the song you sang

Song is the one that does not roll. Cast any Minuet, Minne, Paeon or Ballad and two seconds later the same family one tier below is cast on the same target — a tier I casts tier II instead, so the bottom of a family is still worth wearing the ring for. The follow-up occupies one extra song slot that only X-Magic: Song can fill, and each new follow-up replaces the previous one, so it lengthens your rotation rather than adding a second bard. A cast fires one X-Magic at most, and Song claims it: on song casts a second ring sits out.

Elements never repeats the element you just cast. That is so it opens a magic burst window for your party instead of piling onto the one that is already there. Ruin deliberately stays off Weapon Burst's enfeeble list, so a character wearing both systems feels two things happening rather than one thing printed twice.

The X-Magic post

Reference

Job balance — how each job differs from retail

Every job that plays differently here than it does on retail, in classic job order, with the number. Jobs that are not on this list — Dragoon, Blue Mage, Puppetmaster, Dancer, Scholar, Geomancer and Rune Fencer — play exactly as retail does, apart from the server-wide numbers under the table.

Every recast below is the base number the ability carries. On top of it the server takes 15% off every job ability recast, every job, so Boost's 30 seconds is 25 seconds in play and Barrage's 3 minutes is 2:33.

Job	On DriftwoodXI	Retail
WAR	Warcry lasts 60 seconds	30 seconds
MNK	Boost’s attack bonus is +25% per press	+12.5%
MNK	Boost’s base recast is 30 seconds	15 seconds
MNK	Impetus’s critical hit rate bonus caps at 35%	50%
MNK	Formless Strikes lasts 30 seconds	3 minutes
MNK	Formless Strikes’ base recast is 5 minutes	10 minutes
MNK	Chakra restores twice the HP	1x
WHM	Club skill is rank S-	B+
WAR	Great Axe skill is rank S+	A+
WAR	Axe skill is rank S-	A
WHM	Divine magic skill is rank S-	A
BLM	Elemental magic skill is rank S+	A+
BLM	Dark magic skill is rank S	A
RDM	Enfeebling magic skill is rank S+	A+
THF	Dagger skill is rank S+	A+
PLD	Sword skill is rank S	A+
BST	Axe skill is rank S+	A+
RNG	Archery and Marksmanship skills are rank S+	A+
NIN	Katana skill is rank S+	A+
NIN	Ninjutsu skill is rank S	A
NIN	Throwing skill is rank S-	A+
RUN	Great Sword skill is rank S	A+
WHM	Divine magic deals 1.75x damage	1x
BLM	Elemental magic deals 1.75x damage	1x
RDM	Enspell damage 1.75x	1x
RDM	Saboteur’s base recast is 2 minutes 30 seconds	5 minutes
THF	Sneak Attack and Trick Attack base recast is 45 seconds	60 seconds
PLD	Chivalry’s base recast is 5 minutes	10 minutes
DRK	Dark magic damage (Bio, Kaustra) deals 1.75x	1x
DRK	Souleater costs half the HP for the same damage bonus	Full HP
BST	Ready gains a charge every 25 seconds	30 seconds
BST	Scythe skill is rank A	B-
BRD	Every Bard has All Songs +1 innately	None
BRD	Buff song duration is doubled	1x
RNG	Barrage’s base recast is 3 minutes	5 minutes
SAM	Hasso and Seigan last 15 minutes	5 minutes
SAM	Meditate, Hagakure, Sengikori and Konzen-ittai recast in 5 minutes	3 minutes
NIN	Ninjutsu deals 1.75x damage	1x
NIN	Innin and Yonin last 15 minutes	5 minutes
SMN	Every party-wide Blood Pact: Ward has twice the radius	1x
COR	Every Phantom Roll and Double-Up has three times the radius	1x

Server-wide

These apply to every job at once, so they are not repeated in the table.

Weapon skills deal 1.5x damage.
Cures restore 1.5x.
Blue magic deals 1.5x damage.
Items are 3x, deliberately the outlier — potions and ethers are a combat strategy here, not vendor fodder.
The enmity tools are worth double: Provoke, Flash, Sentinel and the rest had their flat and percentage enmity doubled, because enmity from damage scales with damage and enmity from a button does not.
Job ability recasts are 15% faster than the base numbers above.
Elemental magic recasts on 3x the retail timer — the counterweight to its 1.75x damage and to ancient magic’s shortened cast times. Dark, enfeebling and enhancing black magic recast as retail does.

The balance pass post

Where the server is

Expansions — how much of Vana'diel is open

4 of 6 are open right now. Expansions open one at a time, once each has been play-verified here — never before they work. What is still dark is listed rather than hidden, because the shape of what is coming is half the answer. This is the same list the launcher shows on its own Expansions tab, in release order.

Final Fantasy XI Open Base game · 2002 The three starting nations, the original jobs, and everything through Bastok, San d’Oria and Windurst’s own storylines.
Rise of the Zilart Open RoZ · 2003 The Zilart mission line, Tu’Lia and Ru’Aun, and the six advanced jobs.
Chains of Promathia Open CoP · 2004 Tavnazia, Sea and Sky, and the Promyvion climbs.
Treasures of Aht Urhgan Open ToAU · 2006 Aht Urhgan, its 48 missions and Whitegate, and Blue Mage, Corsair and Puppetmaster. Every monster out there is raised 60 levels — endgame, not level 60 content.
Wings of the Goddess Not yet WotG · 2007 The Crystal War past, Campaign, and Dancer and Scholar.
Seekers of Adoulin Not yet SoA · 2013 The Ulbuka continent, Reives and Skirmish, and Geomancer and Rune Fencer.

The add-on scenarios (A Crystalline Prophecy, A Moogle Kupo d'Etat, A Shantotto Ascension) and the Abyssea trilogy have no tile of their own: they are small, and they arrive with the expansions around them. Nothing above is a release date — an expansion opens when it has been played through on this server, and that is the only schedule there is.

Why one at a time What is in today

Everything else that is different

The rest of it, short. Each line links to the page that goes deeper.

Progression and the numbers

Generous, not trivial — the fights still have to be fought.

The rates. Experience, gil, capacity points, tabs and fame pay triple; drops are doubled; Fields and Grounds of Valor pages pay 1.5x and are enabled everywhere; weapon skill and skillchain points are ten times retail, Magian trials included. Movement is 1.5x on foot and mounted, and death costs half of what retail charged and only from level 31. The full table The numbers at a glance
Level without interruption. Jobs start at level 1 and the limit break quests have been removed, so you go to 99 without stopping. Your support job runs at the same level as your main job. Six jobs start unlocked and every other one can be accepted at level 1. What you start with
Skill-ups without the grind. Every swing rolls for a combat skill-up, hit or miss, and every roll under your cap lands. A fresh weapon catches up inside a session. Every swing counts
Merits, roughly doubled. The Weapon Skill category went from a combined 15 points to 70, both job ability groups from 10 to 20, and HP, MP and the seven attributes to 30 upgrades each. Lowering a merit refunds the point it cost, which it never used to. The dwmerits window What changed
Ascension. Limit points stop vanishing once your merits are full — every one is banked for life, and the bank buys permanent Mastery tiers: HP, MP, attributes, accuracy, attack, damage taken and regen. Limit points as a currency
The item level ceiling. The item level ceiling has moved in brackets — 104, then 109, then 114, now 119. Every classic armor family climbs from the Outfitter to item level 109 through the forge, the Empyrean weapons sit on the Arms Dealer shelf at level 99, and Oboro in Port Jeuno takes weapons on toward 119; Antonia in Upper Jeuno sells the Arasy item level 119 weapons at 3,000,000 gil apiece. A reforged item level 109 piece now climbs one rung further, to its +1 at item level 119, at the same forge — the raid shop itself still sells nothing above item level 109. The armor ladder Empyreans and Oboro

Your account is your party

The thing the whole server is built around: one client, sixteen characters, six of them fighting together.

The Squad. Register up to five of your own characters and summon them as party members. They wear their own gear, fight on their real jobs and bank real experience to their own rows, and when one levels up mid-fight it is put back to full HP and MP on the spot. DWSquad How it works
Rule sets, the way FFXII did it. Write ordered gambits for each squad member — an ally under 40% HP gets the biggest Cure that member can land — pick which weapon skills they use and at how much TP, and set how far back each one stands. DWGambits Rule sets Weapon skills
Alliances, battlefields and pets. Squads join alliances up to eighteen strong, battlefields that refuse trusts admit your own characters instead, and squad summoners, dragoons, beastmasters and puppetmasters bring their real pets along. Alliances Burning circles Pets
The mercenary board. List one of your characters with an hourly rate and the rule sets you wrote for it, and other players hire it as a trust while you are logged off. Your gear, your gambits, their gil. DWMerc

Content built for here

Battlegrounds and contracts that do not exist in retail, every one of them entered from a window rather than a walk.

The Gauntlet. Fifty floors of rising enemies, up to eighteen seats, alt-trusts summonable inside. Clearing floor N pays every real player inside N Burst Tokens plus experience and capacity points — this is where Weapon Burst and X-Magic are paid for. DWArena
The Raid. Eighteen boss trials across thirteen venues, at five tiers from Easy to Promyvion -- or all of them in one arena as a Chain Trial, or boss after boss as a Circuit with a Grand Circuit leaderboard -- entered from anywhere and reaching into Chains of Promathia. Clears pay driftmarks, which buy the raid shelf and the Reforge tab, now two rungs deep: item level 109, and since Treasures of Aht Urhgan its +1 at 119 -- and the board now pays extra for variety: the day's element, a chain of different trials, and repeats that step down. DWRaid The raid grows The wind pair
Nemesis. Two hundred and forty famous notorious monsters -- the Sky gods, the Sea Jailers, the Zeni monsters and the Salvage chariots joined on 2026-09-10 -- each fought a hundred levels above its retail self in a private arena. Your own chest, their real drops, and one to four random augments on what comes out -- and every victory pays your account a trophy for that monster, fifty of which buy its item level 119 +1 with four Super Auged augments. DWNemesis The announcement
Unleashed. Every two to three hours a Legend-tier notorious monster breaks loose at an outdoor site in a real zone and the whole server is told where — never when. Ten minutes to gather, then it wakes, and it answers to no claim: anyone in the zone may strike, heal or buff. Every account that took part is paid Drift Coins and Driftmarks at the kill and rolls for an Esper Core, and the fare to the site is free while it stands. DWUnleashed The announcement
Politics. Six seats of power — the Crown, four Mayors and the Royal Treasurer — won by a vote of every account on a four-week season clock, and climbed a rung at a time: a town, then Jeuno, then the Crown. Real levers, public records, a Chronicle nothing edits. DWPolitics
The Drift Board. Ten daily contracts and nine weekly ones roll on the Vana’diel clock, accepted from where you are standing rather than from a quest giver you walk to. Under your own board sits a contract for the entire server that every credited kill on every account pushes. DWQuest Contracts in your pocket
How much of Vana’diel is open. The base game, Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia and Treasures of Aht Urhgan are live; the rest open one expansion at a time, once each has been play-verified here. The Expansions section above has the whole roadmap, tile by tile. Dynamis runs on a one-hour shared lockout, Garrison restarts every ten minutes, and the road to Tu’Lia is open. The expansion roadmap Content unlocked Why one at a time Aht Urhgan is open Finishing CoP

The economy, and your time

Most of these exist because the retail answer was a walk, a second client, or an hour.

Storage that follows the account. A thousand warehouse slots your whole account shares, earned up to two thousand and extendable with gil, opened with /warehouse from anywhere. Beside it, /bags reaches every bag on every character you own without logging out. DWWarehouse DWBags
A market that tells the truth. Every listing at its real price, buy orders that escrow your gil, selling from anywhere with no listing fee, and an account wallet. Beside it the conquest exchange puts every nation’s shelf and every merchant’s counter in one window, payable in points or gil, mounts included. DWAH DWCPX
The shelves. Drift Coins from contracts buy the Exchange’s rotating augments, the Outfitter’s artifact, relic and Empyrean +2 sets, the Jeweler’s Promathia-era accessories, the Arms Dealer’s relic and Empyrean weapons, and the Artisan’s crafting-guild key items and Lu Shang’s Fishing Rod. The Pop-Items shelf is priced in Dynamis hundred-pieces and job testimonies instead of points. The Outfitter The Drift Exchange The Arms Dealer The Driftmark armory
Crafting, fishing and gathering. Every craft reaches 70 and three of them reach 110 on one character, HQ chance is doubled, and harvesting tools never break. /craft shows the crafter’s ledger the game hides, and /fishing costs out a route from 0 to 110. Crafting with an identity DWCraft DWFishing
Drops and chests. A Rare drop your main already owns goes to the next character on your account instead of being destroyed. Treasure caskets are rarer than retail but three in four are the locked kind and full of randomly augmented gear, and Treasure Hunter is tuned exactly as retail tuned it, on top of the doubled rates. Rare drops Caskets Treasure Hunter
Spoils. Every monster that pays you experience carries a small chance of handing you an ordinary piece of equipment with one to four random augments on it — straight into your bags, no treasure pool and no lot, levelled to the thing you killed, and about half the time picked for a job somebody in your squad plays. Real notorious monsters (an hour-long timer, a placeholder or a pop — not one that respawns like its camp) are ten times likelier, one award in twenty is Super Auged — higher-rolling augments, announced to the whole server — a four-augment award is announced too, and full bags never lose the item. The same kills can also hand your account a Rune: one augment, banked, that the window’s Runes tab puts on a piece of your own gear it fits, at a random rank in that item’s Super Auged range. DWSpoils
Enemies that read honestly. Aggro and link radius are halved, and the /check con agrees with the experience curve — anything that pays experience cons Easy Prey or better. Ordinary enemies carry less padding at high level while notorious monsters keep theirs, and a con-coloured pearl sits over every nameplate around you. They notice you later The honest con DWCon

The client and the launcher

You bring your own copy of Final Fantasy XI. Everything after that is handled.

The launcher sets up everything. Press Install Ashita and it downloads a checksum-verified Ashita v4 with the whole DriftwoodXI add-on set, configures it, and keeps both itself and the add-ons current. It can also verify your game files against a published manifest and point at any FFXI install. Download How it installs Verifying files
HD textures without touching a file. The launcher ships XIPivot, the DAT overlay loader, and two switches under Alternate graphics — NextHD textures and XICombinedMaps. Flip one on and it downloads and layers the pack over the stock game, modifying nothing. HD packs
Yours stays yours. Your own controller mapping and camera settings survive a launch, streamer mode hides your login name everywhere it used to leak, and a Custom commands box carries anything you used to keep in default.txt. Controller and UI Streamer mode
Linux. There is a by-hand guide for Linux players on this site, and the launcher itself now ships an AppImage. The Linux guide The announcement
A posted add-on list. Everything the launcher installs is allowed. Anything not on the allowed list is not, until somebody asks and it gets added there by name, for everyone. The allowed list

None of it is sold

There is no cash shop and there never will be one, so nothing on this page can be bought with money. One account per player, sixteen characters on it, and everything above is reached by playing.

Create account See the 33 add-ons Every command