Originally Posted by
gattsuru
A lot of Free Companies just do active recruitment. Some are actually decent leveling groups that'll help out, most just want your delicious delicious activity points.
For the most part, you don't need to buy gear upgrades. If your weapon is more than ten levels out of date, or your accessories more than fifteen, it can help, but you can get away with a lot during leveling as long as you understand your class. Note that you can buy normal-quality gear from vendors that isn't terrible.
That said, enough grade II and higher materia is worth enough gil that it can often cover the value of the gear.
You can expect most of a level from the Duty Finder Low-level roulette every day, and the main story quests keep throwing EXP at you pretty constantly. It very seldom gets to the point of dragging on your first class, though it doesn't hurt to unlock your Challenge Log.
- Right now the easiest way I see of making gil is simply selling loot I pick up, whether from quests or dungeons. I might dig into crafting when I get bored with leveling ACN/SMN (not bloody soon); is crafting good for money? Looking at Alchemy.
Most of the high-value sales won't be cost-effective to work toward right now: augmentation books or the Kirimu grimoires take a lot of work to be able to make, and there's not that much demand. Raid potions (X-Potions of Strength, Potent Poisoning Potions) can sometimes be valuable enough to make a bit of gil on, though.
Can only Need on gear you could currently equip as your current class. Greed is for items that you might use for alt classes, or to sell to vendors for gil or to trade into your Grand Company for seals.