Possible Returning Player, was a vet at one point...

[Raxiaz]

Hi guys. It brings me great joy to be posting here once more...

After having not played this game for several years now, my interest is coming back to get into it once more. I've recently been filling my time with FFXIV (bleh) which has already run its course with me in terms of what I like doing on there. I plan to still play it in the future, but with the lack of variety in jobs, it's kind of hard to keep interest. I'm also not a fan of WoW-like games.

When I left, there was still so much I wanted to do. Abyssea had made getting every job to max level actually viable, but I never did find the time nor motivation to go through with that. By the time I'd quit I had gotten RDM, WHM, SCH, and THF at 90+, whereas BLU was 99 (my favorite job). I quit mainly due to a loss of direction/interest and RL was getting too hectic to play the game regularly enough to warrant paying the subscription.

I am interested in coming back to the game but I wanted to know a few key things before starting:

1. What are some things a returning veteran player should do first? The last time I played, abyssea was only a few months finished. Is it still commonly active inside?

2. I've heard they've introduced "item levels" to the game. How does that work? Is every equipment slot expected to have an item level of 100 or more? Rings, earrings, back, waist, etc? If so, seems a little overwhelming to me. If it's only main parts like weapon/sub, head, body, feet, legs, then I'm more comfortable with that. Collecting & upgrading gear was never really my primary focus with this game.

3. Activities & socializing. I'm sure the game still has plenty of players, but I want to know what sort of content is regularly done by them? Also, what's the primary/most-efficient method of leveling up, group- or solo-wise?

Thank you for your time reading.

[Stompa]

Welcome back^^

Item level / iLvl, aplies to some level 99 gear, but not all. The iLvl will be marked on the item, but it will also say "level 99" which means you have to be 99 to equip it. Then the iLvl reflects the power of the item, going from 99 --> 119.

ILvl weapons benefit from skill+, in the case of weapon skill +242 for example, this raises your weapon skill by that amount while the weapon is equipped. So if you base is sword skill 400, you will be sword skill 642 with a a skill+242 iLvl weapon. This doesn't show up in the skill tag in Profile, but it shows up in your attack rating and your accuracy rating.

If you are just coming back you should activate Seekers of Adoulin, and activate the Records of Eminence quest. RoE is very useful for getting stuff. People still xp in Aby Altep on sandsweepers, but also in Seekers areas. Trade your green mog pell to the Festival Moogle, mine is at wind-walls MH entrance. I picked 10 copper vouchers which you trade to the Records of eminence NPC, and convert into currencies such as sparks or delve plasm etc. I convert it to sparks usually.

Most content now is merit-points BCNM where you buy a bcnm pop using merit points, also Delve, Voidwatch, Skirmish, WoE etc. There is a lot of stuff going on. You need to get a new LS to help you re-start and do current content, because it is too vast explanations to outline in a forum box.

[Pixela]

1. What are some things a returning veteran player should do first? The last time I played, abyssea was only a few months finished. Is it still commonly active inside?

All home points are now warp confluxes, so you want to click every one you can find. They let you warp anywhere in a few seconds (something they copied over from xiv). So get lots of those activated.

Get all your trust npcs asap.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Trust

Goto the quest sub menu and start that system, spark of eminence system (ffxi now has a very in-depth quest based system/not open world ! quests it's all done in the menu). Once it's started activate as many as apply to you (and keep checking to add more since more unlock as you change area/finish quests), they give huge amounts of XP and items (keep all the items it gives, plutons etc) that you'll need. As you get more points (within a few hours/days) you can buy really powerful armor and weapons (which looks crappy but has amazing stats) for all your jobs as starter sets from an npc in town.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Ca...ds_of_Eminence

After that you can upgrade AF and AF2 armor to really powerful versions of them but that's later on. You can also get 119 weapons from an npc in port jeuno after you finish some harder content (new bcnms/new battle mission bosses like revamps tenzen etc) later on.

Abyssea is dead right now (except for worm parties, which is a good way to get into the swing of things and talk to people/get a ls I guess), you can do everything with no competition in there right now. This won't last because AF3 is going to be upgraded in a future patch, which will pack the place out again.

Abyssea isn't even the best way to get XP anymore, adoulin EP mobs give like 600-700xp per kill at 99.

If you don't already have it, you'll need to get the adoulin expansion. This offers something called reives which are open world events that give you balyd and items, balyd is like conquest points and it's pretty important.

Later on you can do WKR, which are boss type reives which everyone can fight (kinda like campaign), but you need to pay some balyd to enter the zone.

Current endgame is skirmish (easy) which gives gear that you can take up to 119, WKR (easy and open to all) which is an amazing way to get great gear you can augment and delve (current hardest content...although you can do the lower tier stuff fairly easily).

Check wiki for these things.

2. I've heard they've introduced "item levels" to the game. How does that work? Is every equipment slot expected to have an item level of 100 or more? Rings, earrings, back, waist, etc? If so, seems a little overwhelming to me. If it's only main parts like weapon/sub, head, body, feet, legs, then I'm more comfortable with that. Collecting & upgrading gear was never really my primary focus with this game.

Item level isn't like in other games, in my last MMO each piece had an item level and it all worked together to give a character wide ilevel. FFXI is not like that. The new weapons and body armor parts have individual item levels, 119 is the current top tier gear. All the item level does is show the strength of the stats of the gear, however lower ilevel gear can still be great if they have good augments or something (occasionally attacks twice etc). For instance you can get full Ilevel 117 armor and weapon from the spark quest system I mentioned above in a few hours/days, this trumps pretty much all gear you've seen before.

3. Activities & socializing. I'm sure the game still has plenty of players, but I want to know what sort of content is regularly done by them? Also, what's the primary/most-efficient method of leveling up, group- or solo-wise?

Get trusts (strong npc leveling partners) to make a 5 party with those, activate quests and kill mobs solo (since the bulk of your xp is from quest rewards you can target EP mobs and get more xp that way). You'll level/merit really fast, way faster than you used to in a party. You can get paladin/ninja trusts, healers, bards etc and they are as good as normal players.

Community content at 99 is basically wild keepers reives I guess, which is kinda like old campaign except it's bosses and lots of mobs (you can just kill side mobs). You get really good gear drops right to your inv after the fights but you need balyd (new ype of conquest) to get a KI to enter.

The busy spot has moved from port jeuno to now west adoulin area.

[Raxiaz]

Thanks for the responses everyone! I'm still in the process of reacquainting myself with all of the controls and stuff (I'm wayyy too used to FFXIV's setup). I remember when I knew how to fluently maneuver around the GUI, now it's like I'm tripping over myself every time. XD

Maybe I'll see ya in-game, Pixela. I'm still on Sylph, I never plan to leave this server. It's been my home ever since I started... D:

[Raxiaz]

Is it possible to solo (or at least use Trusts) for most of the starter city rank missions up to Rank 10? I already have R6 in Sandy & Bastok. Windurst is R10. That was one of the things I always wanted to accomplish with this game. XD And, how hard is finishing WotG's story line without other people to help?

[Sonicblue]

I was thinking of returning in to ffxi but have no clue where to start if I did return I think it's been almost 3 years. I played bit of abyssea I got AF 3 for 2 jobs and stopped. How hard is it to get relic weapons now days? And is sylph server have a good amount of people playing in JP times? Cause that would be the hours I play

[Selindrile]

Both of you may find this link useful: http://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Returning_to_Vana'diel

Now to reply to the op: (Blu has gotten a lot of buffs lately and is now rather decent, so nice timing on that.)

1. Abyssea is no longer the common endgame, upon returning, immediately start working on Records of Eminence, can buy all sorts of gear with sparks, get at least 2 jobs to 99 through abyssea, a melee and a support, and then get moving to Adoulin, where you'll gather bayld and start doing the main questline and your Imprimateurs, unlock your waypoints and crystals, start doing Macrocosmic orbs, Wildskeepers and Skirmish for gear, once you have better gear (refer to FFXIAH posts about your job to have a decent idea of what's good, for example: http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/30...-to-blue-mage/ for Blue Mage)
Then you can start doing delve/delve2/incursion/high tier fights.

2. Gear grind is one of the core tenants of XI now, for better or worse, however it is only : weapon/sub, head, body, feet, legs, as you guessed, neck/rings etc do not have iLevels, though there are still upgrades to them, mostly, but you know how XI is, every melee still uses a Rajas Ring most of the time, some old stuff is still relevant, though a lot less these days.

3. Activities & socializing: There are still linkshells though they tend towards smaller as pretty much all of the endgame content with the exception of divine might is done in groups of 6. The big social events are Skirmish/Incursion/Delve/Difficult+ fights, but Voidwatch and Legion is still done as a group, most other activities are solo, and the best way of levelling is still generally abyssea.

[Pixela]

Is it possible to solo (or at least use Trusts) for most of the starter city rank missions up to Rank 10? I already have R6 in Sandy & Bastok. Windurst is R10. That was one of the things I always wanted to accomplish with this game. XD And, how hard is finishing WotG's story line without other people to help?

Spark gear on a dps job makes you very strong, so yes.

[Lithera]

WoW-like games read to there and stopped because for so many years some demented people said XI was a WoW clone.

[Pixela]

WoW-like games read to there and stopped because for so many years some demented people said XI was a WoW clone.

FFXIV is a wow clone.

FFXI is an everquest clone.

Nobody, EVER said XI was ever a wow clone. It's going that way now but that's more due to XI devs being ex/current XIV devs.