Top Tips For A New Player

[Sta]

I'm in the middle of installing and would like some tips that you wish you had when you first started FFIV.
This comes from me playing FFXI, I wished that somebody told me to level a craft as you level up, and not to toss away your Beastman seals =/

[Hiroishime]

http://ffxiv.yg.com/

probably would use this site for a long time if not your whole ff14 time. very good database, recipe, etc

[Cichy]

Wait till they announce next update than start playing when they release it.
Not trying to discourage you from playing but the players post updates will probably have way better experience than we had and you will have right now.

[Enygma55]

Start off as a melee or mage first as this will give you a chance to build up gil thru leves to support crafting, if you so choose to go that route. You can buy any crafting tool or weapons from NPCs, you just gotta hunt them down. Crafting is also a nice way to earn xp to build up your physical lv early on. Stack Vit to atleast 40-60 before you go all out on another stat and you can reallocate your stats fairly often (once an hour often)

[The Q]

My first reaction is to say, like Cichy, to not bother with playing at this time.

If you are going to play though, I would suggest levelling up a few jobs to 20 before trying to take anything further. After 20 the SP drops to about a quarter of what it was and the game really falls off at that point.

Not a lot of advice to give because, honestly, there isn't much in the game to give advice on.

[sruon]

+1 on discovering crafting first, this is a great way to hoard physical levels which in turn make levelling DoW/DoM easier.
You're going to want to get a lot of classes to at least 10 to gather useful abilities.

[Yoli]

Lancer's feint was exceptionally useful to me, and is only what... 20 lancer? Which might sidetrack you a bit. They increased the TP use from when i got it, but I think it's still a good deal at 500 (and the lancer trait you can get that lets you run around with your weapon out is handy to have anyways, so you might as well get it up to enjoy that). Other things that are good for soloing... having cure (2, ideally) from conjurer at (20?) and stygian spikes from thamaturge at (16?) lets you more or less keep up your hp and never run out of mp. Shock spikes from conjurer are also very handy.

Big thing you should know is that you can shoot through lower levels at this point by doing leves, especially if you can do them on multiple stars. I'd solo up to 10 (should be pretty fast, even without an existing job giving you physical levels) and then grind out to 13 on whatever class you want to play. Maybe xp/play around with a few other classes, and do the local crafting quests, and you should have a few easy physical levels behind it. Once you're at rank 13 and have a >13 physical level, go do the level 20 leves for a bazillion sp. Grind a bit more, and do them again the next day and you should be around 20. Of note: /some/ of the level 20 leves are kind of hard - especially if you're underleveled. Can't give a full listing off the top of my head, but you should probably look into that before blindly accepting them. You want to try and single out the easy ones at lv 13. As a rule of thumb, ones where you kill humans are difficult.

Don't worry about money. Stuff might seem expensive when you're first on (60,000 for an axe when you have nothing!?!) But, you get money. Fast. Just doing the leves for a few days..... If you have an ls, I'm sure you'll find someone willing to make/loan/give you a lv 10 weapon or something while you work on your own funds. Before you know it, you'll be laughing at the value of gil with everyone else.

Most important tip of all IMO: Pick what class you want to xp to 50 first, and find out how to repair its weapon. Then start xping that craft. Never ever stop xping that craft. Try to always keep it within -13 of your weapon (-13 of the "optimal rank" written on your weapon, that is. ... while we're giving out tips, don't use optimum 50 gear at level 10, it's really not worth it). You'll appreciate it so much later, if SE doesn't change weapon durability and/or if you still have to grind on coblyns like we did. I'm still using a lv 38 sword as I finish getting up to rank 50, just because it's the best one I'm able to reliably repair on my own. NPC repairs seem cheap at first, but rapidly rise enough you don't want to use them, plus weapons break often enough you simply can't go back to town to fix them regularly if you're planning on soloing decently (or partying in a group). And the change in effectiveness at 0 durability is too present to simply ignore.

Have fun and welcom to 14. Nice to see that people are actually still coming in to try the game out. If you read these forums too much, you're liable to get an overly negative impression (not that the real impression is all that sparkly but... whatever).

[Sta]

Kind of fed up already. I've done all my leves at the 1st camp and now i'm all out. There's no obvious way of telling me where to go next. Sure, i know the name of the area, but i have no idea on how to get there, even with the map.

Tried doing my mining leves too, ran to the flashing spot and clicked it, nothing comes up so i figured i needed a pick axe. I ran back to my town and purchased a mining pick and set out to do the other mining leve (since i failed the 1st one because the leve description wasn't detailed enough, instead of "examine the mining point and see if it's worth anything" i would rather it be "Purchase a mining pick and dig for materials") and now i'm standing here with with pickaxe not being able to mine!

Tbh i'm comparing the helpfulness of other games Aion/WoW to this one =/ they pretty much tell you exactly what to do all though the game. Need to put my FFXI head back on~

[Lucavi]

Now now, don't be a casual. You didn't know where to go in XI either, right? That was part of the charm, right?!! Its fun being lost and having no one to help you in-game. Super hardcooooorreeee.

In all seriousness, though, I second the crafting and Lancer tips. Crafting will boost your phys level, which will give you more attribute points to make your character stronger when you get around to leveling Lancer, which will give you tasty feint at 20. I also recommend eventually leveling Conjurer to 20 for cure II, which is rather nice.

[Achitophel]

Now now, don't be a casual. You didn't know where to go in XI either, right? That was part of the charm, right?!! Its fun being lost and having no one to help you in-game.

...That actually was.

[Lucavi]

For you. Not for everyone. You seem to -constantly- forget that different people played for different reasons.

[Hyan]

Take it easy and don't try to rush to 50... if you're lost, ask around.

If you can, share your leves(quests) with other people. The first quest tells you what's up, but you can grab more leves from the Adventurer's Guild (in which you spawn after the intros) as well before you head out.

[Yoli]

Take it easy and don't try to rush to 50... if you're lost, ask around.

Is good advice. Too late to be first to fifty, so don't stress yourself trying. You'll make your experience much more miserable imo. And asking around is definitely a good plan of action if you don't have ideas on what to do. Unlike the release, people broadly know where you can go at what levels now, and you might even run into a nice person or two by asking for help. Shame on you for using all your leves at the first camp and ignoring my advice though.

Not having particular step-by-step destinations in xi was nice, imo as well. So Achitophel isn't in the complete minority there. The thing that set that apart from fourteen is that xi did give you several random quests you could saunter around on while exploring stuff. Even if the rewards were useless, like in the one where you gave that wandering elvaan guard his ointment for... subligar I think? Here you just have a (very very large) empty void of nothing instead. Is a downer. Xi felt less empty too because of the smaller zones I guess. You could (and would) change up the scenery more readily. Suppose I'm just repeating things I've said in other threads though, and things that aren't tips. Will stop.

[Hyan]

The thing that set that apart from fourteen is that xi did give you several random quests you could saunter around on while exploring stuff.

Or the "ooh, an MMO!"-factor. Can't say I ever figured out any quest before looking them up on some database myself, lol.

[Achitophel]

You seem to -constantly- forget that different people played for different reasons.

Really? Is that why I continue to whine about how a game isn't suitable for my playstyle?

Or is that you?

[Lucavi]

No, I never forgot that about XI. Try again, without using a fail game like XIV as a reference point.

[Corrderio]

If you want to level it's best to find a shell around your level range since it gets pretty annoying around the 20 mark.

[Achitophel]

No, I never forgot that about XI. Try again, without using a fail game like XIV as a reference point.

Jesus, you're not good at this.

[Lucavi]

I have much to learn of the fanboy ways. I'll be in class next semester.

[Achitophel]

Fanboy for what? What are you even talking about? Weren't you the one that said "different people played for different reasons"? Then why act so derisively towards the idea that people could like walking around and figuring shit out? Or, if you just wanted to act like a douche, why cry like a toddler about how others are incapable of understanding that "different people play differently" when you were called on it?

You're not even logically consistent in your whining. Considering that that's your thing, you should get better at it.