Advice for a New/Veteran Player

[devilxinside]

Hi everyone! My friends and I have always wanted to play FFXI, but due to a variety of circumstances, we've been unable to all get into the game until this year.

I played the game a few times on my own (in early 2004, and again in 2009), but I am unfamiliar with all of the new things in the latest expansions, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

We all started our characters in Windurst last night, but I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for things to do early on to get us to a place where we are capable players (frankly, I just want to figure out the easiest ways to get around, and to make some gil to buy those expensive early spells for my BLM).

Thanks!

[Lithera]

One way is to rank up, every time you rank up you get some Gil. Also raise your fame in Windy. The higher your fame level is the lower the prices are at the stores not connected to the guilds. The star onion bragade quests are really quick and easy to do. Also killing mandies and turning in their leaves, the corrientes are used in a repeatable quest. Other quick ways to get some Gil is do field or grounds of valor pages once a game day. Also if you get any geodes or rites ex garudite sell them on the AH they sell quickly and others sell for a good bit of Gil. Hope this helps a bit

[Concerned4FFxi]

Hi. Head out to gusgen mines and start getting xp off the mobs there. In gusgen, that's a low level party spot, look for someone you like or get along with and ask for a linkshell pearl. This will get you and your friends started.

[Concerned4FFxi]

Keep all your beastman seals, they can be traded to an npc in jueno who will hold them all for you.

Don't buy gear if you have no gil, focus instead on a new weapon every 8-10 levels.

Do FOV/GOV books in gusgen mines and crawlers nest when you are able to.

If you level a mage job first, then you can get into abyssea to xp at a low level (under 50, once you get cure four on any mage job you can get into an abyssea pt, that's were xp really rolls in). if a dd job, I'd say level 70 is about your entry point for xp pt in abyssea. you can also leech, but that requires knowing someone to let you leech, paying gil, or starting your own pt so you can leech it. if you do the later, please learn about abyssea first, and do several pts there before you try to organize. Making a bad pt can cause you to look bad, and these SOBs on this game can be so uptight and unforgiving, were they would actually case you trouble months from nopw because of a noob fail when your just starting out.

Get into abyssea and dynamis, asap.

Good easy jobs to level and you the gear you want as well as giving you a job that can be used in many situations, are bst and whm. Read on

Whm, gets you into abyssea as soon as level 42 with cure four. Whm with barely any gear can still get invites to do endgame level events. It's one of the few jobs people will take that are gimp. Not suggesting you gimp it up, but if that's were your at now and want to fast track, give it a try.

Bst, great solo job, in SOA area, dynamis (this can be the best place to farm currency for relics, to make your own relic or to sell the currency for gil so you can buy good AH gear). Again, a gimp Bst can still solo in dynamis, so like whm you don't need much to get this job off the ground. Keep in mind though, Bst is more expensive than whm, pets cost money and that's what you will use in abyssea and dynamis.

Abyssea, great xp and cruor. Cruor can be converted into gil, and is a by product from killing things in abyssea (abyssea gil). So cruor, either by buying "chocobo blinkers" in abyssea and selling to npc outside, or buy VW cells from VW and put them on he AH.

Once you hit 75, get all your cutscenes for voidwatch (vw). this is great way to teleport/warp around, same as the SOA warps, get those. Abyssea has a warp system too. Unlock them all!

Once you hit 30 start you cutscenes and quest for abyssea. Abyssea and VW have a stone timer system, sooner you start the quests the more time you will start to store up to use later.

Pearl/teal/aurora gear are all basic, almost free gear from abyssea for level 78+. Don't waste your gil on gear, right? Get these instead once you hit 78. Rock them out till you cap at 95. Start work on your 99 cap. If on bismarck, shoot me a /tell I'll tank it for you on BST or PLD, otherwise your gonna need to farm some tails.

At 75, start work on a magian weapon. You want to consider your endgame weapon , now, if possible. Or, at least make a decent weapon to hold you over.

Get some AF3+1/2 and AF+2 that matter for the jobs you are going to play. If you have bst leveled, take it to SOA areas, start working on the new colition gear sets. It's designed to be not too intense to get, replaces the 78+ abysea gear in most senses.

Read up on macros if your not already proficient.

You want a few different sets of gears to use in those macros. Example:
mage- nuking, healing, enfeebling, and idle/pdt/refresh set
dd- tp set, ws set, evasion or pdt set (my thf has an evasion set, my war a pdt set since no gear is going to help that thing dodge, lol!)

FYI- pdt means "percentage of damage taken", refering to gear that reduces this, hence pdt gear.

[Concerned4FFxi]

Like I said above, don't waste your time on gear till you hit cap. Most the stuff gets outdated fast, so why bother. Good weapon and your good.

On a DD job, if the job can use it, I recommend using the 78+ abbysea gear, along with brego helm, gloves, and jingang hose. There's also dusk gloves+1 you can consider instead of brego gloves. there's cheap AH haste belts out now, too. For DD tp set, you want 25-26% haste in gear to cap haste (cap is 25.6% i think)

Whm you are going to want your af3+1/2 head asap, as well as the legs. the body is another good peice, although you might shoot for noble's tunic first because the body for whm may take you a minute, i don't know. All mages are going to want a chatoyant staff, but for your whm I recommend a light staff to start with. If whm, start the arka IV staff trial, 24% cure potency staff. A whm with noble's tunic, af3+1/2 legs and head plus a light staff, subbing redmage with refresh or sch can start endgame (sublimation is a job ablity for sch and is free, so you might go /sch first till you can do bcnm that drop refresh or just buy it from spamming abyssea cruor and dyna currency.)

Start working on COP missions, you want to finish that and get the reward, asap.

Don't forget to cap your skills or get close enough to it. A level 99job with skill level of a 30something is still going to hit like a 30something.

Make sure to purchase a mog sack from artisan moogle for 9999 gil.

[Lithera]

Also start in on RoZ missions. Mage jobs have it easy armor wise as the others have said. The lv 29 Mage gear will last till you can get help with your AF gear. Once you have dynamis acess which you get at lv 65 and at rank 5 if not 6. Then spend some time getting relic armor which again for most Mage jobs will serve you until you can get your hand on the AF 3 set if the lv 78 doesn't fit your play style. Also a lot of Mage spells are "free" in which they are rewards from quest completion. Your warps, drain, all the teles, the cura spells, retrace, recall spells, sleepga II. Get your chocobo lisence, airship passes, out post warps. Save your crystals they're used in filling up the rank bar and to trade to the waypoints so that you can use them. Try and get into a limbus group or find some cheap ABC that you can use to get some really good earrings and back pieces.

[Rustic]

We all started our characters in Windurst last night, but I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for things to do early on to get us to a place where we are capable players (frankly, I just want to figure out the easiest ways to get around, and to make some gil to buy those expensive early spells for my BLM).

Thanks!

I'm a big fan of hunting where the money is, and NOT taking the superfast road doing it. People will aim you at the 1-10 solo, 10-30 Gusgen, 30+ Abyssea/30-50 Crawler's Nest route because it's fastest DING DING DING LEVELS!

It's also absolute garbage for money, though it's perfect for leveling a second, third, fourth job up. It sucks hard for actually having characters skill up as well.

I do tell people- gear up about every 10 levels, 5 for weapons. Hunt in dungeons when and where you can. GoV > FoV for rewards, since some of said rewards are going to up your odds of treasure coffers from monsters or +Treasure Hunter. And this way, what you get is getting shared with the rest of the people you're with, rather than being lotted on by an entire alliance. 18-way splits tend to make for cruddy loot!

1-10 in Sarutabaruta, 10-24 Dangruf Wadi, 25-35 Maze of Shak, 36-49 Delfkutt's Tower, 50-55 or so Garliage. There's some points in there you can opt to go outdoors- Qufim Island, for example or Batallia Downs. Focus on splattering lots of easy prey. The more bodies you pile up, the more treasure coffers. The more treasure coffers, the more loot in your pockets. @50 you'll be doing your first level cap quest, and these days those can be done by sneaking around the maps and grabbing ??? marks rather than killing the oft-nasty monsters that drop them, should you desire. By 50th or so, you should be well grounded in doing stuff together. After Dangruf @24th, the Selbina subjob quest is cake. By 30th, you'll be able to squash the Rank 3 fight and go pick up many of the job quests you might want (and start Abyssea to build up stones, even if you're not going in). By the time you're done with Delfkutt's at the top, you'll already have Poryiphon flattened for your key and Rank 4, and 50-55 in a party is fine for getting Rank 5 done. Do the quests for your spells, screw buying them. Need Tractor and Escape? Rip up Qufim Island undead, save yourself the money and you can always cash in the extra copies to the lazy on the AH for 20+K each.

As a BLM, elementals are good prey and good money. Abuse them, especially once someone in your party can Silence them. Make sure you've got someone in your group that does THF because TH is always handy, and your meleers will almost certainly want to grab the Dancer job when they're eligible at 30th. It makes melee easymode.

Don't worry about hurrying to 99/endgame. Endgame is forever. The trip there is the only thing you'll do once. Have fun doing it. Explore. Do lots of quests, make that fame, enjoy the game as it was designed to be played. Abyssea short-circuited that when it removed most of 30-99 in favor of sitting on your butt while someone spams Fell Cleave. Get your money's worth out of playing instead.

[Rosalie]

Start Voidwatch as soon as possible. When you hit 75, immediately just pick up the key items. This will grant you access to instant teleports to quite a few locations, even without getting the clears. As you clear more tiers, you will get access to even more warps. When you hit 99, if you see a shout for Voidwatch clears you need, you should place a bit of priority on doing them so that you can get access to more warps.

Additionally, get your proto-waypoint quests done in Ru'Lude Gardens for more warps. The waypoints are fueled by crystals... so unless you're selling your crystals or crafting, DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY OR NPC THEM. Just trade them to the waypoint in either Ru'Lude Gardens or Lower Jeuno for more 'kinetic energy'!