Making the game look better

[Heoki]

I was reading around the forums and ran across some people mentioning off handedly that there are .DAT files that users have created that help make the game look a little better. Can anyone explain and I noticed the link to download the .DAT collection in one download doesn't seem to work anymore?

[Arctic Wolf]

I was reading around the forums and ran across some people mentioning off handedly that there are .DAT files that users have created that help make the game look a little better. Can anyone explain and I noticed the link to download the .DAT collection in one download doesn't seem to work anymore?

In your Square Enix/Final Fantasy XI folder, there are several folders called "ROM" "ROM 2" and so on. In those folders are even more folders sorted by number, and inside them there are .DAT files. Each of these files stands for a piece of equipment, face, monster and so on. For example, if you wear Lizard Harness, the game loads the file "32.DAT" inside folder "25" in "ROM 3" (C:/Program Files/Square Enix/Final Fantasy XI/ROM3/25/32.dat).

[b]In order to find out which .DAT file is which armor, or the other way around, you can use a program called "Modelviewer." Use google for "FFXI Modelviewer" or search on these forums for a link to the download.

Now, if you replace for example the Lizard Harness .DAT file with the one from the Bone Harness, next time you wear a Lizard Harness, it will look like a Lizard Harness. You can for example, wear the Bone Armor set at level 16, and look like wearing a full relic set, using this method.

This will only be "looks," and it will only be visuable to you, or someone with the .DAT file switched inside their own game files.

The FFXICollection is a huge .zip file, containing a lot of custom-made equipments, faces, everything that uses .DAT files. I can't help you with a download link if the one you had doesn't work though.

[Kilandor]

Look at the very last page in the dat collection thread, I have a mirror posted