A couple of questions from a new player.

[Vasoka]

Hey there.

New player here, got the game yesterday. I've been doing some reading and would like to ask what's the current state regarding two points:

1) Housing. I really like housing, as I Like to RP. I read that it's really hard to get a house in this game due to limited plots and that you are basically allowed only one house per account unlike in ESO where you can have all houses if you buy them, and that the house is basically only accessible from the character you buy it from, not from alts.

Can someone tell me if that's true? And, if it is, can the alts have "apartments", if not more houses?

2) Classes or "jobs". I like leveling different characters, a bit of an altoholic. I like different races, genders etc etc. I read, however, that the game is extremely alt unfriendly. Would I be gimping myself if I level different jobs on different characters (for example have one rogue character, one warrior character, one mage character... etc) too much, or is it a viable way to play?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[nickerber]

I'm new-ish as of Feb 2019. I can't answer the housing question.

I'm similar in that I like to switch hit while playing, I get bored playing ONE job for hundreds of quests. You will get TONS of exp doing the MSQ, i.e., I hit lvl 60 on my BLM main while doing the 100 quests between ARR and HW, so I started HW at 60. I've also got a PLD to 40, WHM to 30 and AST to 35, Arcanist to 20 and Warrior to 15 (which isn't that big of an accomplishment, I know). In my experience it's easy to get exp on alts. As long as you don't start a NEW character... if you start a new character you start at zero with MSQ (I think, I haven't started a new character yet). You can play all the jobs on 1 character, so that's what I do.

[Raldo]

1) Houses are definitely limited. Some servers moreso than others, but I think most servers are pretty filled up at this point (did they ever reinstate auto-demolition for inactivity?). I don't know the specifics regarding what you can and can't do with your alts, but a quick google indicates that you can own an apartment on a per-character basis (unless that information is outdated, idk). With that said, even apartments are limited (why???), so I wouldn't be surprised if some servers had zero apartments available.

2) This game used to be more punishing to alts (since it required you to level up several different classes in order to have the appropriate cross-class skills to be useful), but that system has since been abolished, so there are no explicit downsides to leveling just a single job on a single character without touching any other professions. As the previous poster mentioned, however, you would need to re-do all of the main story, unlock duties, etc. for every alt.

From my perspective, this biggest alt-unfriendly aspect of this game is that you can't befriend your alts. This means that there's no easy way to transfer money/items/whatever between characters. Also, any achievements/mounts/minions/etc are tied to each individual character, so you'd have to re-obtain anything you wanted across multiple characters.

The game was made such that you can do everything on a single character, so anything involving alts is usually annoying/tedious at best. Even the friends list / black list is separate per-character.

[Naria]

Housing is limited, however, all your alts can own a personal and FC apartment of their own. Also individual and FC housing are considered separate. Apartments are limited but to my understanding the only server that was ever actually run into the cap is Balmung, which is the largest server in the game by far.

The demolishing timer (45 days) has been turned back on for the NA servers recently so we should start seeing housing more regularly demo from lack of activity at the end of this week. That shouldn't matter for you on an EU server since I don't believe that timer was paused recently. If housing is a goal for you I'd recommend checking out the Housing Census thread in the Housing forum, but last I heard Omega is one of the servers with a good amount of housing available, although larger houses will still be rare.

A note on the Demo timer: When the timer is active you must step inside your house every 45 days to keep the house from auto-demoing and returning to the server. If your house (or FC house) is in danger of demolishing an email will be sent to the email registered to your account in advance, however, there is no in-game notification. You can check in game under the second tab of "timers" to see if your house is scheduled to be demolished although the count down won't show up until until a week or so before the scheduled demo. For a personal house only the owner can reset the timer, tenets do not count. Having an active sub is not enough to keep your housing from demoing.

Personal apartments are permanent so even if you let your subscription lapse your character will retain ownership until you choose to relinquish the apartment.

Obviously if a FC house is demolished or if you are kicked from or leave the FC, you will loose your FC apartment if you have one.

[Frizze]

The most recent count i saw showed more then 100 houses currently available on Omega, so if you want one its certainly there for the taking. And the apartment cap is really high. Its 60 per building(and they said they could expand this if they needed to), and theres an apartment building in every division and subdivision of every ward of every housing district. I dont recall the exact cap on FC private rooms, but it was like a couple hundred per FC. As far as ive heard, some individual apartment buildings have sold out on Balmung but there are still apartments to be had in every city if someone wants one(and doesnt care who their neighbors are).

As for your alt question, the biggest downside to seperating classes by character is having to unlock everything again(which means buying a skip potion or replaying the MSQ for each character). This game is set up so that a single character can do all classes at a high level with very few restrictions.

[Niwashi]

Would I be gimping myself if I level different jobs on different characters (for example have one rogue character, one warrior character, one mage character... etc) too much, or is it a viable way to play?

As others have mentioned, it adds additional work to unlock everything repeatedly, but some players with a lot of time to spend on the game prefer to have their jobs separated out like that because some of the endgame content has weekly limits on loot you can get. They can gear up multiple jobs faster if they can earn that limit per job or per role, which is only possible if those jobs or roles are divided between different characters. (Where this is the main reason, the jobs are likely to be divided up between just two or three characters --like maybe all their DoW jobs on one character and all their DoM jobs on another. A character for each one would probably add too much lead time for anyone who's that focused on endgame.)

There are frustrations, like when you get a bound loot drop on a character who doesn't want it when you have another character who could have really used that. Having all jobs on one character means that, depending on level, you might be able to use the tank armour you got while playing your your rogue, or the Disciples of War boots that dropped while you were on your healer. You'd be giving up that flexibility in order to split the jobs between different characters.

[EaMett]

Going to chime in on other having alts. There are very few pros and a lot of drawbacks

Pro:
- You don't need to use fantasia to change your race and you don't need to purchase services for name change
- You can RP multiple characters at once if that's what you're into.
- You can bypass some loot restrictions to play savage content with friends without penalizing them if you've already cleared on your main.
- You can access multiple FCs or data centers if your friends are a little spread.

Cons:
- You need to go through the story each time. You can purchase a story and level skip from the shop though to avoid everything but the most recent stuff.
- Like the above you will need to unlock all the content you plan on running (this can be a significant time sink)
- You can't befriend your alts
- You can't share a house with your alts (though you can make housing access public and still access it that way). Worth noting I think you can purchase a house or apartment for each of your characters. I'm not sure there's an account level restriction.
- You can't trade with your alts. No trades, no mail, nothing. You will need to trade to a third party that will trade to your alt. Or you can have all alts in the same FC and use the FC chest if you have access to that and trust players who have access to the same tabs as you.
- If you enjoy the novice network and want access as a mentor you'll need to meet requirements on all your alts (which includes leveling 3 jobs so that's redundant)
- Mogstation optional purchases are often character restricted. Meaning you would need to purchase glams on every character instead of once.
- You would need to do events on all characters for the rewards.
- You will miss out on gear. Most gear you get from encounters is untradable. Usually you would take your main character and farm some content for an item, picking up many items for other classes along the way. One farm session would cover multiple classes. With alts you would have to do a farm session for each and every one of them.
- You will have to farm currencies (apart from gil) on each alt. Things like tomestones, MGP, GC seals etc. You would get these as a byproduct of regular play and then spend them towards alt classes once your main is geared. But alas not if you have an alt character.
- If you're into crafting you need to level all your crafters on the same character to gain cross job abilities that are a requirement for high end crafts

I think that somewhat covers it. I have 1 alt I use to bypass loot restrictions on savage. Needless to say I've only unlocked the bare minimum to run content with them and I keep farming to a minimum.