Brand new player growing extremely frustrated very quickly.

[Torvin]

You're on Gigglemesh? I'm on Sargatarga.
Let me know when you're gonna be online.
We can meet up and I'll literally buy you a full set of gear

Thank you for the offer, that's kind. But I'd like to make this work myself. I just didn't want to grind low level mobs for a hours to do it. Heh.

[ItMe]

Thank you for the offer, that's kind. But I'd like to make this work myself. I just didn't want to grind low level mobs for a hours to do it. Heh.

Hey yo, I get that.
Though if you're just looking to come into some quick gil I believe that side quests are much more rewarding than grinding mobs.
Also, if you complete the Hall of the Novice you can get about 2k gil and a nice pile of exp. That should go a long way at level 6.

[DPZ2]

Hey yo, I get that.
Though if you're just looking to come into some quick gil I believe that side quests are much more rewarding than grinding mobs.
Also, if you complete the Hall of the Novice you can get about 2k gil and a nice pile of exp. That should go a long way at level 6.

Level 15 before you can do Hall of the Novice, but it'll gear you up for the first three dungeon instances in the MSQ, give you the gil, and perhaps teach you a little bit about what that orange 'tell' on the ground means... definitely worthwhile. Plus you get that nice ring that adds 30% to your XP until you hit level 30 [on every class you work on].

As an addendum to a previous post: do your Class Quests. Level 5 class quests gives you your chest piece.

[Torvin]

Hey yo, I get that.
Though if you're just looking to come into some quick gil I believe that side quests are much more rewarding than grinding mobs.
Also, if you complete the Hall of the Novice you can get about 2k gil and a nice pile of exp. That should go a long way at level 6.

Yep. Just logged in and ran a few "go explore the city" quests and picked up a quick 200 gil.

I really appreciate all the helpful replies from everyone. I'm feeling much better about this than I was last night.

[Iscah]

And I'm still in my race gear except for a pair of boots I got at the beginning of Dressed for Call. It's all showing as level 1 gear so apparently it's not sufficient.

Note that there are two level values for your gear. It's primarily level 1 gear (this you can equip it at level 1) but it's also "item level 5" in the black bar on the description panel and this is what the quest is actually looking for.

(Item level only really becomes important after level 50 - up until then it's usually the same value as the equip level.)

The only thing you actually need to buy - or ideally pick up from a sidequest - is a hat. I think the game intends that you've done all the level 1 quests around the town and collected gear from there as well. One of those quests will have a hat as a reward.

It's worthwhile doing sidequests - particularly your class/job quests (which are necessary for learning a lot of your skill set) and anything marked with a blue marker and plus symbol, which will unlock some kind of game feature.

[Iscah]

The first, and most immediate problem I'm having is that list of chat commands from this link appear to be non-functional. None of them work except for /say and /yell. Everything else tells me it's not available at this time.

A number of those relate to game modes and features you won't have access to yet, so don't fret about that. They'll work when you can use them.

[Frizze]

If you havent put in credit card info yet, another great piece of advice would be to snag a friend code. They get rewards for "recruiting" you, you also get free stuff to help you out. A hat that gives bonus exp, some gear coupons, free teleport tickets. That sort of thing. The thread at the top of this forum almost always has some current codes waiting to be claimed.

[Torvin]

If you havent put in credit card info yet, another great piece of advice would be to snag a friend code. They get rewards for "recruiting" you, you also get free stuff to help you out. A hat that gives bonus exp, some gear coupons, free teleport tickets. That sort of thing. The thread at the top of this forum almost always has some current codes waiting to be claimed.

Thanks for this. And I wanted to thank everyone who chimed in here again. I'm really enjoying the game now and I'm glad I didn't let my early frustration taint the experience. This is a fantastic community.

[Maeka]

First of all, thank you for the replies. I'm encouraged to receive feedback so quickly and for it to all be helpful. That speaks well of the community.

And I bought the full version of the game, used the registration code in my account page and installed the additional updates that come with that. So I'm in the full version, as far as I can tell. It came with a free month of subscription, so I haven't inputted a credit card yet, but I can if that's necessary to fully unlock all the features.

And I'm still in my race gear except for a pair of boots I got at the beginning of Dressed for Call. It's all showing as level 1 gear so apparently it's not sufficient.

If the answer is to run side quests, I'm happy to do that. I only avoided them because I was told they were a waste of time. I'm not in a rush to get to endgame.

Thanks again.

Try doing some more questing. Side-quests, and also the Main Story Quest (unless that is what you're hung up on). Some sidequests give you free gear, and I think what that quest is trying to do is get you to do other quests to get gear. It's been awhile, but I do seem to remember an early quest wanting you to do quests and I had to look around to find all the sidequests to do until I could pass that quest.

Early-game you don't want to skip the side-quests because they are a good source of gil and pieces of gear to fill slots, definitely wanna do the side-quests.

Perhaps around Level 20 or some-such you can back off on the side-questing some, because you will have dungeon roulettes available then and you'll get far more XP, gil, GC seals, etc out of those to get you whatever you need.

EDIT: Also, with side-questing... I suggest doing side-quests again early in an expansion. For example when you get to Ishgard in Heavensward quests (you'll know when you get there), you should do some sidequests to keep your gear current unless you ground up tomestones to fill all slots with ironworks gear (and same goes again when you start Stormblood, unless you're already wearing full Shire gear). Sometimes, the main story quest will leave you lacking in gear a little when it comes to jewelry and you might fall short of a required item-level to Q for your next dungeon. And I suppose that's another point -- as soon as you can, make sure you keep a steady stream of Tomestones of Poetics when you get to 50+. Probably the easiest way to get gil and gear. Until then, just keep at the dungeons, the daily Leveling Roulette and you'll easily keep ahead on XP.