An introduction to chat channels

[Sagittarian]

For all new players, here is a basic overview of chat channels.
There is (finally) a starting level quest for basic usage but it doesn't explain the different channels and (importantly) how to see/chat in them. I'm going to skip auto-translate because the quest does cover that.

You have 15 chat channels although 3 of them overlap:

1. Say - this is the default. It will broadcast to people near you.
2. Yell - this broadcasts to people a medium distance from you.
3. Shout - this broadcasts to everyone on the same map.
4. Party - this goes to everyone in your current party no matter where they are
5. Free Company - this goes to everyone in your Free Company no matter where they are
6. Alliance - this goes to everyone in your alliance. This is currently only used in Crystal Tower.
7. Linkshells 1-8 - You can belong to up to 8 different linkshells. Each broadcasts to everyone in the linkshell no matter where they are. There is a linkshell vendor in each city where you can create a linkshell for yourself or alter shells you have already created. In game lore they are essentially specialized ear buds.
8. Tell {player name} - this goes only to the indicated player. It cannot be used in dungeons and players in dungeons cannot receive tells.

Technically there is 1 more, echo, that displays a message only you can see.

The lodestone manual has a section for switching to each chat channel, but I'm copying it here:
Command Default Key
Ready Chat Prompt Enter
Ready Text Command /
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Say Alt+S
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Shout Alt+H
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Party Alt+P
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Yell Alt+Y
Reply (Repeat to Cycle Through PCs) Alt+R
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Free Company Alt+F
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Linkshell (Cycle Forward) Alt+L
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Linkshell (Cycle Back) Alt+Shift+L
Temporarily Switch Chat Mode to Alliance Alt+C

This page on text commands is also useful - http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest.../text_command/. Again, I'll mention the chat specific pieces here. If you type just these commands they set your default chat channel until reset or you log out. If you type on of these commands followed by other text then only that text will be broadcast on that channel and your default channel will be unchanged:

1. /s for Say
2. /y for Yell
3. /sh for Shout
4. /p for Party
5. /fc for Free Company
6. /a for Alliance
7. /l1-/l8 for Linkshells 1-8
8. /t {player name} for Tell {player name}
9. /r to reply to the last tell you received - *warning* - the system tracks tells you receive from people you have blacklisted so you may get an error message when using reply if an unseen blacklisted tell came in.
10. /e for Echo

Now to the different tabs in your chat window..
You start with 3 tabs with some default filters. These can be removed or altered. You may have up to 4 tabs total. Under character configuration you can set the filters for each tab. You should check the filters for each of these tabs. I've seen people new to linkshells and free companies not know people are trying to talk to them because that channel was not on for the tab they were in.
I keep one tab that shows all of the chat channels just to make sure I don't miss anything.

And for your own sanity, when you start receiving tons of tells from spammers, you can select their name in the chat window and select Blacklist. This will prevent them either of you from sending tells to the other. You can also type "/blist add {player name}".
You can also set yourself to /busy either by typing or going to Party Members under the Social menu and changing your Online Status. This will prevent you from receiving ANY tells so I don't recommend it in general because then we can't talk. ^_^

[Elvie]

Thanks for posting this. It's very helpful, and answered a couple of things for me I couldn't work out, so cheers

[Bixby]

Very nice. Thumps up.

Two things you might consider mentioning.

1. The fact that you can't send or receive tells while you're in an instance. I'm pretty sure the game tells you this if you try it, but new players might not catch that.

2. /blist add <r>. Or, in general, the fact that <r> expands to the name of the last person to send you a tell. It's just that this is the most common use for it, and it makes for a handy macro on servers that are really plagued with RMT spam.

[Niwashi]

2. /blist add <r>. Or, in general, the fact that <r> expands to the name of the last person to send you a tell. It's just that this is the most common use for it, and it makes for a handy macro on servers that are really plagued with RMT spam.

This was extremely useful before patch 2.1, but now that we can just right click a name in chat (or on consoles, select the name and press X) to get a Blacklist option, the usefulness of "/blist add <r>" has dropped significantly.