The Effect of Your Starting City

I know that the city you start the game in will prevent you from getting some side quests, achievements, and even a couple of FATEs, but I cannot find a place where all of these things are listed together in full. I'm nearing completion on a 100% checklist spreadsheet, and these would be extremely helpful to know. Thanks for any help you can provide.

The city you start in does not prevent you getting anything. All side quests, achievements and fates are accessible to everyone. Its only the MSQ that is different.

Edit: You miss TWO achievements, "Leaving Limsa Lominsa", "Gone from Gridania" and "Out of Ul'dah" are each of the achievements when you leave your city-state. However, the other two do not appear in your achievement log, so they are basically different names for the same one achievement that everyone gets.

Mostly just impacts where you meet your first RMT bot.

You won't be prevented, but I wouldn't recommend getting too achievement fixated in this game. Many are insane grinds.

Like you can switch GC as you need to start over. But for example, the top tier guild levequest achievement asks you to do something like 500 of them, when they only give exp from 25ih to 50, and poor exp at that. The "jewelry" achievements would require you to do a lot of work if you wanted all three GC gear. SOmething like the pvp wins too would require 100 wins per GC, but thats easily 600 or more matches played with 10-30 min pops.

Some of the achievments are just nuts. To get the master crafter/gatherer titles, you need to craft or gather something like 10,000/20000 HQ items, at a proc rate of maybe 20% overall average And there are multiple crafts/gathering jobs. A lot of them you won't even get close to just by ordinary play or even levelin all jobs to 70.

I mean, have fun, but keep in mind in-game achievements aren't something that's going to be anywhereeasy to max.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

The city you start in does not prevent you getting anything. All side quests, achievements and fates are accessible to everyone. Its only the MSQ that is different.

Edit: You miss TWO achievements, "Leaving Limsa Lominsa", "Gone from Gridania" and "Out of Ul'dah" are each of the achievements when you leave your city-state. However, the other two do not appear in your achievement log, so they are basically different names for the same one achievement that everyone gets.

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This is still incorrect.
There are some side quests that are unique to each starting city. They're all low level, iirc level 8 and below.

I don't have an exact list, but I could probably put one together by isolating the completed quest names between all my alts' journals.

I know Limsa starting city has a couple unique quests in Middle La Noscea at Summerford, and a more comprehensive quest line from Red Rooster Stead culminating in a fight with some Kobolds in Lower La Noscea.

The Gridania quests aren't nearly as exciting, and mostly involve some "extermination" quests where various NPCs have you go around the Central Shroud and eliminate pests. For example, one NPC asks has you go to a location and click on a tree which spawns a bunch of funguars to kill and another NPC asks you to destroy diremite eggs.

Can't remember unique quests in Ul'dah atm.

Each city has its own MSQ plot as well as the unique sidequests. They merge together at story level 15, just before the first dungeon.

The main lasting difference is that you get some ‘unique’ Lv1 glamour items (the models are reused later though) - “dress shoes” from the Limsa questline, a wooden mask from Gridania or amethyst earrings from Ul’dah. The earrings are probably the most useful prize (if it suits your character) as you don’t get any other fancy earrings until Lv28.

There’s also a unique ring from each city, but with minimal stat benefits, and just a different coloured gem on it.

Ul’dah probably has the most useful worldbuilding questline as well. (Though if you’re into the story, I recommend starting a character in each of the three cities to get all the stories.)

Rowde, if it wouldn't be a big hassle for you to come up with the list of those low level side quests, that would be exactly what I'm looking for, so that I can grey out quests based on the user's starter city, I've already done so with the Main Quests, lvl 1-15 up until they merge. I've still got another week of work to do on the checklist at least, so it's nothing I need in a rush, but I sure would appreciate it and will cite your contribution. Also, the one other thing that I seem to recall from playing previously is that each area has 1 Battlecraft Levequest that you will only receive if you start in that city, I believe it's a lvl 10 or 15.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Mostly just impacts where you meet your first RMT bot.

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Ha! Nicely done.

Lambdafish, thank you for the info on the achievement names, very helpful.

If you go to https://ffxiv.gamercorner.net/ffxiv/quests/ and sort by Plotline, it will list every quest specific to each starting city, both main scenario and sidequests. (Enter ~"main scenario" in the search bar, include the ~ and quotes, to filter those out.)

All starting city-specific sidequests are level 13 or below, and they vary in number by city. Gridania has a measly 11, Limsa Lominsa has 20, and Ul'dah has 19.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

You won't be prevented, but I wouldn't recommend getting too achievement fixated in this game. Many are insane grinds.


Some of the achievments are just nuts. To get the master crafter/gatherer titles, you need to craft or gather something like 10,000/20000 HQ items, at a proc rate of maybe 20% overall average And there are multiple crafts/gathering jobs. A lot of them you won't even get close to just by ordinary play or even levelin all jobs to 70.

I mean, have fun, but keep in mind in-game achievements aren't something that's going to be anywhereeasy to max.

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I haven't had many issues getting some of those more grindy ones.
Why play am MMO if you're not prepared to grind?

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I haven't had many issues getting some of those more grindy ones.
Why play am MMO if you're not prepared to grind?

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Agree completely, that's why I'm creating this Checklist. Because I want to make, kill, find, and quest everything there is for me to do.

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Originally Posted by mduncan50

Agree completely, that's why I'm creating this Checklist. Because I want to make, kill, find, and quest everything there is for me to do.

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I like this mindset.
Thankfully the journal helps track completed quests and the achievement list ingame is great for most others.
The game us full of almost endless content to enjoy. Hope you have a blast!

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I like this mindset.
Thankfully the journal helps track completed quests and the achievement list ingame is great for most others.
The game us full of almost endless content to enjoy. Hope you have a blast!

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Well, They help you track the ones that you have found. But beyond just the quests, achievements and the like, it's also including all mounts/bardings, minions, TTriad cards and players, Orchestrion rolls, etc. I mean, I am doing it for my own OCD reasons, but I hope others will find it a useful resource as well.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...uide/db/quest/

And some unofficial sites,
https://minionguide.com/
http://ffxivtriad.com/
https://apkallufalls.com/ (not the biggest fan of this one personally)

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I haven't had many issues getting some of those more grindy ones.

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...every single craft has its own achievement for creating 3,000 items from 41-50, and 1,500 ones from 31-40. That's 36,000 items. Every craft also has the "10,000 HQ" item achievement, for 80,000 HQ items total. For Botanist and Miner, its 20,000 HQ items. Lifer 3 involves doing 10,000 instanced trials or dungeons. For the Hoard IV is finding 5,000 pieces of treasure from the Accursed Hoard, which at best you can get 4-5 a run, and may get 1 or even zero if people speed run it.

The max pvp frontlines achievement for each GC requires 1,000 pvp wins. For each GC. I don't really think getting the truly grindy ones is as easy as you think. The achievements ramp up exponentially towards the end.

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Originally Posted by mduncan50

I know that the city you start the game in will prevent you from getting some side quests, achievements, and even a couple of FATEs, but I cannot find a place where all of these things are listed together in full. I'm nearing completion on a 100% checklist spreadsheet, and these would be extremely helpful to know. Thanks for any help you can provide.

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There is very little that is relevant to the starting city, let alone the race or gender picked.

Generally the only barely noticeable difference is in dialog, and it's very minimal, for example Admiral Merlwyb makes references to "one of our own/us" in some MSQ dialog. However I'm not sure if that's specific to starting in Limsa Lominsa, or specific to Limsa's GC the Maelstrom. For all that matters, each starting city has it's own set of busywork level 1-15 sidequests, that you can do, and the remaining ones require switching GC's, which you can skip until you've maxed out your rank and seals in the GC you're in.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...cenario_Quests

The quest chains that start with Mother Miounne/Baderon/Momodi 1-15 are the only ones you can't ever do, and they basically have the same premise.

The separate questlines converge at level 15, so you can just make an alt at the other two cities if you are interested in doing their questlines it does not take very long.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

...every single craft has its own achievement for creating 3,000 items from 41-50, and 1,500 ones from 31-40. That's 36,000 items. Every craft also has the "10,000 HQ" item achievement, for 80,000 HQ items total. For Botanist and Miner, its 20,000 HQ items. Lifer 3 involves doing 10,000 instanced trials or dungeons. For the Hoard IV is finding 5,000 pieces of treasure from the Accursed Hoard, which at best you can get 4-5 a run, and may get 1 or even zero if people speed run it.

The max pvp frontlines achievement for each GC requires 1,000 pvp wins. For each GC. I don't really think getting the truly grindy ones is as easy as you think. The achievements ramp up exponentially towards the end.

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Yes a lot of the achievements are ridiculously grindy but to be fair in terms of the crafting ones, even quick synths count, and when you sit down and quick synth 400 mortar just to finish one crafting log, that adds up really really really fast. They're marathons, not sprints. If you sit down and craft even 10 HQ items a day (and it can be ANYTHING, like a copper ingot) you'll have your 10,000 HQ items achievement in less than 4 months. i'm incredibly stupid

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Originally Posted by Elamys

Yes a lot of the achievements are ridiculously grindy but to be fair in terms of the crafting ones, even quick synths count, and when you sit down and quick synth 400 mortar just to finish one crafting log, that adds up really really really fast. They're marathons, not sprints. If you sit down and craft even 10 HQ items a day (and it can be ANYTHING, like a copper ingot) you'll have your 10,000 HQ items achievement in less than 4 months.

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um... if you craft 10 HQ per day, in 4 months you only have 1200 HQ items. You'd need to craft something like 85 per day to make it in 4 months. Quick synth can automate this, but you're are looking at crafting that 400 mortar to get the 85 HQ every single day. You can level 1 item cheese it, but even assuming you manage to do it...you now have 7 other crafts for their achievements.

Gathering is worse. It's 20k HQ, and while i feel you have a much higher HQ chance than quick synthing, you have no real way to shorten it. You have to grind those 20k items. And you can only get the higher HQ chance if you specifically use abilities for HQ over yield.

I'm kind of working on my cul achievements now (the 1500 and 3000 ones) and for me to do the 1500 one is going to require a grand total of 6000 noble grapes (since dark vinegar is the easiest one to spam at that tier, with one ingredient but 4 required.) Virtually all have to be retainered or gathered, since no one really gathers many lower tier stuff. Crystals also become a gil sink then too, since you cannot gather shards quickly. It's a pretty long grind, and i just wanted to warn the OP not to get too deeply in them.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

um... if you craft 10 HQ per day, in 4 months you only have 1200 HQ items. You'd need to craft something like 85 per day to make it in 4 months. Quick synth can automate this, but you're are looking at crafting that 400 mortar to get the 85 HQ every single day. You can level 1 item cheese it, but even assuming you manage to do it...you now have 7 other crafts for their achievements.

Gathering is worse. It's 20k HQ, and while i feel you have a much higher HQ chance than quick synthing, you have no real way to shorten it. You have to grind those 20k items. And you can only get the higher HQ chance if you specifically use abilities for HQ over yield.

I'm kind of working on my cul achievements now (the 1500 and 3000 ones) and for me to do the 1500 one is going to require a grand total of 6000 noble grapes (since dark vinegar is the easiest one to spam at that tier, with one ingredient but 4 required.) Virtually all have to be retainered or gathered, since no one really gathers many lower tier stuff. Crystals also become a gil sink then too, since you cannot gather shards quickly. It's a pretty long grind, and i just wanted to warn the OP not to get too deeply in them.

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Hey I'm really dumb and put in an extra zero in my head for some reason so can we forget that awful math please, thanks

There are achievements that literally no one in the world has globally. There are some in the single digits.


This is coming from someone who has done literally every single sidequest in the game except for one (the final level 50 FSH quest which would take weeks). I also have every class at 70, I have every single vista, I have every single Anemos Weapon, and I would not be surprised in the slightest if I've crafted over 10,000 HQ items. When you're a high-end omnicrafter with all your gatherers, once you truly know what you're doing, anything that is HQ-able you should be able to HQ successfully unless you're entering a new tier of difficulty or press the wrong button. So that's not the best example. But then again crafting is my specialty. The best raider I know, someone with Ultimate wins and no job and no life, cannot craft for sh*t. You need to be a long-time specialist in just one or a few things to get some of these.


Killing 2000 S-Ranks? This will take you a full year. I founded a Hunt LS with over 100 people in it, only one person in it has gotten that achievement. And they just added a much harder one. I'm not even going to touch it, because I value my sanity, because I have everything else to do.

Beating Ultimate-level fights? You not only need to be an elite raider yourself, you need to be in an elite static with seven other elite raiders, and these are level-synced and probably will be right up until the game goes into maintenance mode.

Wanna solo Palace of the Dead? Last I checked, there were two(?) people who had that achievement globally.

Want every Zodiac and Anima weapon? I severely pity you.

Wanna get all the PvP achievements? Better be on one of the best Feast Teams on the Data Center. I'm not sure if SE pays your way to Las Vegas but that's where the NA regional finals are held now. Also, better join the Rival Wings Discord, since other than a brief few hours every Saturday, Astralagos is dead content (it does drop one of the game's best mounts after 100 wins though).


Wanna get every Diadem achievement? See what I said about Astralagos: it's dead content but there's a Discord channel dedicated to it and they run Diadem stuff about once a week, only with a bunch more achievements linked to it.


Doing every sidequest is child's play compared to what you're looking to do here, and also not something you need to ask other people about. Just do every quest icon and they'll be yours (some might unlock a bunch more all at once btw, just an advance warning). Literally no one has 100%'d this game in its current form, so in all seriousness:

I'd recommend not getting too hung up specifically on getting every Achievement. I do wish you the best of luck though.

To say nothing of there being plenty of short-time achievements in the game that the window of opportunity for attaining them was limited and are thus now forever unattainable if you were unlucky to miss them (the Legacy achievements from FFXIV 1.0 quests/content are an example of this: the 'Legacy' achievement tab in the menu isn't even accessible unless you are on a character that was created in FFXIV 1.0 - it's missing from the Achievements tab of players who started in ARR. Also seasonal events all give achievements that become unattainable once the event ends, and because these events change every year - the currently running Moonfire Faire being an example - you need to do the events each time they appear to get their achievements, otherwise they're gone forever if you miss them).

So I'm afraid if you've just joined FFXIV there is a lot of things you've missed that you will be forever unable to attain sadly as they were only available for limited times.

I'd say it's not worth deliberately mass-crafting HQ items to begin with unless you've already reached all the other crafting targets and you really want to grind for it - since any quick-synthing you do will have a chance of producing HQ stuff as a side-effect with zero effort.

On the other hand, there's the weekly challenge log EXP bonus for crafting 20 HQ items, so do aim for that each week.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Why play am MMO if you're not prepared to grind?

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Story, glamour, exploration, making pretty characters in the character creator, making glamours for all the pretty characters, replaying the story....

>_>

<_<

Okay yeah, it's still grinding but not in ways that fit into the achievement log.

I feel that what I am looking to do has gotten a little bit lost in translation here. I know that there are some things that will take an ungodly amount of time, and that there are some things that are no longer available. I am just trying to make a checklist for "100%"ing the game more as a means of trying to do everything you can do and collect everything there is to collect. In addition to the "Y" or "N" status on whether or not you've done something, there is "X" to list things as being undoable, and thus to not count against your score. That was actually the point of this thread to begin with. I already have it so that when you choose your beginning class, that the introductory quest chain for the other cities are Xed automatically, and I am just looking for info on the other things in the game that I need to X out automatically. Thankfully, I was provided with the one achievement per city already, and I think it should be relatively easy for me to find that one one BQ Leve per city. Really the big one I need help with is the low level side quests, because while I know that a LOT of the side quests in the cities themselves and the 2 beginner areas are only available to people starting in that city, many are still available, so I am just trying to work out which is which. And again I thank everyone for their responses, I am appreciative.

I'm fairly sure that every early-game quest will have an equivalent in each city, down to the rewards. As long as you can get a list of those quests, you should be able to "match them up" across the cities. Most likely, the journal will list them in the same order.

I have an alt character who has just reached the merge point for the stories (plus the first few dungeons) so I will try to remember to get some screenshots of his 'completed quests' list next time I log in as him.

If your main and the alt both did all the quests they could in their starting areas (assuming they started in different cities) and then did what they could in each other's starter areas that would be extremely helpful. A screenshot of their side quests up to lvl 15 would be a big help to me. Thank you very much Iscah.

Just a little bump with the hope of assistance.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

If you go to https://ffxiv.gamercorner.net/ffxiv/quests/ and sort by Plotline, it will list every quest specific to each starting city, both main scenario and sidequests. (Enter ~"main scenario" in the search bar, include the ~ and quotes, to filter those out.)

All starting city-specific sidequests are level 13 or below, and they vary in number by city. Gridania has a measly 11, Limsa Lominsa has 20, and Ul'dah has 19.

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I checked the link, and that site works for sorting out the quests.

Sort them by clicking on the Type category. Then as you scroll through the quests in a similar type, f.e. "Lominsan Sidequest," you will see that a majority of the quests have no entry for the Plotline category. However, under Plotline for some of the quests it will have "Limsa Lominsa" written instead. The quests with nothing listed under Plotline are accessible to all characters regardless of starting city, whereas the quests with a specific city listed under Plotline are restricted to character that started in that city.

It's really just the 1-15 of main story quest which are city specific before they all merge.
and the very early quests that are like the 'teach you how to do quests' quests don't show up in the other cities for you

low level side quests are available though

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Originally Posted by Nihility

It's really just the 1-15 of main story quest which are city specific before they all merge.
and the very early quests that are like the 'teach you how to do quests' quests don't show up in the other cities for you

low level side quests are available though

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A lot of them aren't though. I remember last time I played I started in Limsa Lominsa, and when I went to the Ul'duh region there there was one of the surrounding areas that didn't have a single sidequest that I could do, even though there was a dozen or so listed. Plus there is at least one achievement and one battlecraft leve available only to starters of each city.
I will try doing what the last poster suggested and hopefully that will give me the info I need.

That site was a decent starting point, but I also know that it is missing some that I already know about. If anyone is willing to send me some screenshots of all of the sidequests they were able to do in each starter region and tell me which region they started in, I can compare them to get a more precise look at things. Also, as an update I only have Fates and Achievements left to do before the primary draft is ready to be released.