New player looking for some clarification

So I've been playing for a couple weeks and I have a few questions:

"Lotting": From context I think I understand what this is, but I don't understand the term being used. I assume this means that when a piece of gear drops, one would "lot" on it, and whoever gets the highest number gets the gear. Why the term "lot" though? Is it based on the expression "casting lots"? Because that doesn't really make sense, since historically casting lots was a way to receive divine revelation and naught to do with randomization.

"Turn": Maybe this will make sense to me when I get to end-game but what does the term "turn" mean and where does it originate? There are turns 1-5 and it seems like 6-9 soon to be released, and by context clues it looks like it means different dungeons (raids?) of increasing difficulty (signifying end-game content progression). I just don't see how "turn" relates to that in anyway.

Forum Medals: What do they signify? Why do some people have more than others?

Lotting = rolling, I have no idea where it came from.

Turn originates from the name of the section of Binding Coil, they have longer names that nobody remembers but SE has it shortened to turn1-5

Forum medals= number of posts.

You're correct on the origin of casting lots. Not sure why it came about though. As for Turns....It's how SE refers to each section of a certain dungeon. The dungeon area is the Binding Coil of Bahamut and thus each section of the Binding Coil is a "Turn" of the Coil.

Here is the etymology of the word "lot" and it'll explain, well, a lot:

Quote:

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Old English hlot "object (anything from dice to straw, but often a chip of wood with a name inscribed on it) used to determine someone's share," also "what falls to a person by lot," from Proto-Germanic *khlutom (cf. Old Norse hlutr "lot, share," Old Frisian hlot "lot," Old Saxon hlot, Middle Dutch, Dutch lot, Old High German hluz "share of land," German Los; Old English hleotan "to cast lots, to foretell"), of unknown origin. The object was placed with others in a receptacle, which was shaken, the winner being the one that fell out first. Hence, to cast lots. In some cases the lots were drawn by hand. The word was adopted from Germanic into the Romanic languages (cf. lottery, lotto). Meaning "choice resulting from the casting of lots" first attested c.1200.

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http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lot

Thanks, those were helpful replies.

It should be noted, Binding Coil of Bahamut is the end game of end game, and for the average new player you are not looking to do it, till you've got to 50, completed your relic, and have full darklight, now a days you can even skip some dl and get CT gear and be fine.

Once you get to 50, you start the endgame grind, you'll probably want to spam Ifrit, and get an ifrit weapon. You can buy the GC one too, but ifrit is so easy you can do it with a lvl 49 weapon. After that, you'll want to accept your "A relic reborn quest", from Gerolt (Fallgourd float tele, nw area), and he'll send you to do cool stuff like fight a chimera, and a hydra, do a dungeon, and then beat all the primals. So by the time you beat titan, you should have a relic, by then you start a "tome grind", first philosophy (philo) which grant you darklight, and more importantly mythology (mytho) which grant you Mythology gear like AF2. These are terms you will become more aware of later on, but basically until you start on your Mythology grind, the binding coil of bahamut isn't something you even need to worry about, you can't even do it until you've beat all 3 hardmode primals.

Since the other two questions were answered, I'll give you one snip of advice, find an fc, if you don't have one, they will answer questions like this, and help you get through this content, content like Titan can actually still be hard for most of the playerbase if not coordinated, so its nice to have an fc to teach you these things, and to have a good group of people to play with to make "game life" less stressful. There are things in this game that aren't outright said, like once you have a relic you buy 3 thavnairian mists and feed them to a forge by Gerolt to get a relic+1, there is an npc moogle nearby that hints to it, but really it just helps when you're at that phase to have someone who has done it, lead you through it . Most of us had to figure this out by ourselves, or wait for the one poor guy on the internet who did, now that the knowledge is more widespread, its nice.

Lot is mostly coming from the old FFXI players. Where as most MMOs use terminology like "rolling" for loot with a "Need before Greed" concept, FFXI had a similar system where you could simply either Roll or pass on loot. The term they used for this was Lot. I would say don't worry about it. As long as you understand the concept of Need and Greed rolling, you will be fine here.

Turn from the Latin Turnausance: A section of a coil used to bind or imprison an unusually powerful being, such as a Bahamut or a Hypnotoad, that a group passes through to make progress, usually vertical, to the center of said coil.