What is a Renkei?

A skill chain is a synchronized use of weapon skills or blood pact abilities, to create bonus damage on an enemy.

Skill chains, otherwise known as a Renkei, used to be a melee feature to create bonus damage in parties. Even though magic jobs can perform skill chains, we have not much use for them in a party situation due to our lesser melee abilities.

As of September 2004 patch, avatars can now also perform or participate in skill chains to create bonus damage.

How to Skill Chain

To perform a Renkei you need to have at least two weapon skills or blood pacts, or both that follow each other on the Renkei chart....and time them correctly, to be within three seconds of each other.

A successful skill chain will result in an elemental effect as shown below, which can then be magic burst if possible.

Level 1 Skill Chains

Level 2 Skill Chains

Level 3 Skill Chains

Using a Skill Chain Chart

I recommend that Summoners use Aden's Renkei chart, because it simple to use, prints beautifully on A4 paper using the Acrobat version below (get your free Acrobat Reader here), and includes all the blood pacts.

Aden's Renkei chart website can be found in the links section or click here.

*Note* Open one of the above versions and look at where the blood pacts are positioned, you will notice that some of the Blood Pact's elemental attributes, has nothing to do with the avatar's elements. For example, Shiva's 'Double Slap' is in the 'Earth' section of the Renkei chart, not Ice.

*Note* The level 70 blood pacts, and Fenrir's level 65 blood pact has not been found to link in the level one skill chains yet, and will most likely link in the level two or three skill chains).

Now you need to see what weapon skills your party has, and find a blood pact that will link to it. For example, if the party (player 1) was using the 'Backhand Blow' weapon skill in the 'Wind' section of the Renkei chart, the Summoner (player 2) could follow that with 'Double Slap' in the 'Earth' section to make a successful skill chain and give the 'Scission' element effect.

The Words of a Wise Samurai - Aden's Chart Explanation

Firstly print off a copy of the Renkei chart, and put it in front of you.

Look at the boxes that have elements in them:

Ignore the level three for the moment as these are not listed in the boxes, I will explain that in a moment.

Level One Example:

If you perform an Earth attack, followed by a Fire attack, you get Liquefaction. Liquefaction has one elemental property, Fire. One elemental property in the resulting Renkei is a Level one.

Level Two Example:

Now look at the Light area. See how when it connects to Earth, it makes a Renkei with two affects? Distortion, which has two elemental properties, Water and Ice. Two elemental properties in the resulting Renkei is a level two.

*Note* Notice how the elemental effect of Water and Ice are not related to the two attacks that caused it.

As you can see, there is one way to make each level two Renkei on the normal chart (ignore the chart in the upper right hand corner for a moment, this is explained in level three Renkeis).

Basically, level two Renkeis tend to do more damage than level one Renkeis, so there is an advantage. Also, EITHER of the magic types (in this case Ice and Water) can be magic burst, so it's twice as likely that the monster will be weak to an level two Renkei. However, they do have a disadvantage. The reason it is called Skillchaining is because you can connect two, three, four. . . really as many Weaponskills together as you want. However, if you create a level two Renkei, you CANNOT chain a level one Renkei after it.

Level Three Example:

Level three Renkeis are the same concept, only one step further. Just as a level two distortion has two property elements ( Ice and Water), a level three Darkness Renkei has four property elements (Ice, Water, Earth and Dark).

The level three Renkeis are essentially made up of a PAIR of level two Renkeis. This breaks the elements into two distinct groups of four elements each. This system prevails throughout FFXI's magic system (for example, often you can stack Ice, Water and Earth debuffs, since they are all part of Darkness, but adding either Fire, Thunder or Wind will remove the old debuff).



In order to create a level three Renkei, you must chain the correct pair of level three Renkeis together. Now look at chart above, which is the top right corner of the main chart. Here are the special high level Weaponskills that, when chained, automatically create a level two Renkeis. The upper half are the two components needed to make level three Light, and the lower half are what is needed to make level three Darkness.

Generally, level three Renkeis are far, FAR more powerful than level two Renkeis, and can be Magic Bursted on with FOUR different elements.

*Note* Level three Renkeis have not yet been confirmed to include blood pacts.

Priority

You will notice after some of the Weapon Skill names there is a letter 'A', 'B' or 'C', this is called its priority.

A-B-C is nothing to do with the Renkei level, it is simply the flow of the Renkei chart when more than one option is available. As you might have noticed, some Weapon Skills have more than one attribute (they can belong to more than one element). A common example is the Sword skill 'Red Lotus Blade'. It has a listing in both Fire and Wind. Now, let's suppose someone chained:

As you can see, Red Lotus Blade has two possible results. Whenever this sort of thing happens, the game always picks the result that has the higher priority. In this case, Red Lotus Blade has an A in fire and a B in wind, so the game always picks fire. Therefore Fast Blade > Red Lotus Blade will ALWAYS make Liquefaction (Fire) even though it could, in theory, chain to make Detonation (Wind).

The reason that the "secondary" effect is there, though, is that other chains are possible. For example, suppose you did:

Red Lotus Blade (Wind) > One Inch Punch (Dark)

Well, Red Lotus Blade A (Fire) cannot chain to Dark, but Red Lotus Blade B (Wind) can. Thus you would get Gravitation. In other words, the game always checks for Renkei that starts with an 'A' attribute, but if none are there, it will then use the 'B'. Knowing which is A and which is B is important for keeping your Renkei effects straight. It's also one of the main reasons that these charts list Weapon Skills by their primary attributes rather than just by the effect they create. As you can see, those effects are not always constant. Really, it's less of a chart and more of a map.

*Remember* The game ALWAYS uses A, and if it cannot, then it uses B, and if it still cannot, in those rare cases, it will use C.

Timing a Renkei

OK, so now you know what weapon skills and blood pacts to use, you need to know what to do with them.

Blood Pacts take slightly longer to execute than Weapon Skills, this complicates the timing a little. So first I will explain the Weapon Skill way to do it, and then how to adjust them for Blood Pacts.

Weapon skills need to be activated within three seconds of each other to perform a successful Renkei. The best way to time the Renkei is to use macros as shown below. Player 1 executes their weapon skill macro, and as soon as player 2 sees the weapon skill readies text, they active the Player 2 macro.

Player 1 (Melee)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming. ~
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>

Player 2 (Melee)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming in 3 seconds. ~
/wait 3
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>
  1. [player1] ~Weapon Skill incomming. ~
  2. [player1] readies Backhand Blow.
  3. [player 2]~Weapon Skill incomming in 3 seconds. ~
  4. ...3 second pause
  5. [player 2] readies Vorpal Blade.
  6. Skillchain effect: Scission.

Using a Blood Pact takes about seven seconds from pressing the macro to needing the next Weapon Skill to execute, unlike three seconds for a standard Weapon Skill. For example see this solo Summoner Renkei:

Burning Strike (Thunder) > Earth Crusher (Wind) = Detonation (Level one Wind)

Player 1 (Summoner solo)
/pet "Burning Strike" <bt>
/wait 7
/ws "Earth Crusher" <bt>

Timing Problems

Player 1 problems: If your in a Summoner in a party (Player 1), and the melee (Player 2) executes their Weapon Skill macro as your avatar readies its Blood Pact, the Renkei will be successful. However, if the melee executes their Weapon Skill macro as soon as you press your macro then the Renkei will fail because the melee will Weapon Skill too early.

Successful:

  1. [player1 (Shiva)] ~Weapon Skill incomming in four seconds. ~
  2. [player1 (Shiva)] readies Double Slap.
  3. [player 2]~Weapon Skill incomming in 3 seconds. ~
  4. ...3 second pause
  5. [player 2] readies Circle Blade.

Fail:

  1. [player1 (Shiva)] ~Weapon Skill incomming in four seconds. ~
  2. [player 2]~Weapon Skill incomming in 3 seconds. ~
  3. ...3 second pause
  4. [player 2] readies Circle Blade.
  5. [player1 (Shiva)] readies Double Slap.

In this case the melee would have to wait upto four seconds after the Summoner presses their macro before seeng the readies text and pressing their own macro.

Player 1 (Summoner)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming in four seconds. ~
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>

Player 2 (Melee)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming in 3 seconds. ~
/wait 3
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>

On the other hand the Summoner Blood Pact maybe the second or last player to execute in the Renkei.

Player 2 problems: If your in a Summoner in a party (Player 2), and the melee (Player 1) executes their Weapon Skill macro before your turn, you will have to time your Blood Pact before you see the Weapon Skill readies text.

Player 1 (Melee)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming. ~
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>
 

Player 2 (Summoner)
/p ~Weapon Skill incomming. ~
/ws "Weapon Skill" <bt>

Usually in the Player 2 macro is a three second wait, but because our avatars take longer to execute their Blood Pact you can obmit the wait.

If any of this data is wrong please post on the 'Website Corrections' section of the summoner.info forums or email me at ukg@blueyonder.co.uk as I'm not the best person in the world for skill chain data. Working on it though =P, and I hope this helps.

Copyright © 2001-2004 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

Renkei
...What is a Renkei?
...How to Skill Chain
...Using a Skill Chain Chart
...Aden's Chart Explanation
...........Level one
...........Level two
...........Level Three
...........Priority
...Timing a Renkei
...Timing Problems