New to the Realm - Questions

[RogueGhost]

1.) Gil - What is the best way to build a bankroll, and is it really necessary? I am getting along just fine with items I have earned while completing quests/side missions, but it is nice to see that the money is should I need it. Is there a way to streamline this to generate Gil quickly?

2.) I noticed that there is something akin to a progress bar on the lower right-hand side of the screen - grayed out circles, some are green, one is red, and then there are some stacked nearby that seem to change color while playing through the game. What is this information telling me?

3.) Class changes - Seems I can get one character to try on a lot of different hats. So, if I want my Rogue to become a fisherman for a while then I can easily do that. But, is it best to start a new character whose sole purpose is to work that class? And, if so, can I trade items, rewards, gear between the characters that I have created?

[Urthdigger]

There are a few ways, mainly finding things that sell well on the marketboards, then selling them. As well as steady gil from things like field ventures, treasure maps, and duty roulette.

The first thing mentioned is your inventory. Blue are items, red are full stacks of items, and green is gear that's not in your armory chest. The thing to the left is equipped gear, which are blue and turn white once fully spiritbound and able to turn into materia.

It's best to level all those classes on one character. Outside of getting around lockouts (only useful if you have a ton of free time), there is no benefit to making alts, and many benefits to leveling everything on one character.

[sciondar]

One of the downsides to alts is you can't share stuff with them unless you have all of them in the same free company or have a trustworthy friend to hold the item while you change characters.

[Werhusky]

1) Additional to what mentioned above: Also Challenge log and roulette boni give free Gil. If you level your retainer for ventures they can bring pretty rare and worthy items but its pure RNG.

3) I recommend to use all on one char... I have all 50s on my main and an alt with 3 lvl 50s and a few mid levels... the point is less the sharing of items (I have friends that hand over from 1 to the other) but more the motivation to keep track on endgame... literally I only do weekly Tower Quest on my alt since T9 down on him because left raidgroup there due to the stress 2 chars create (and because I run blind on my main which causes interferences, but thats another story). The capping and stuff can be kept track of a certain while but 6 month after I just felt a lil exhausted ^^

[Niwashi]

Anything I can think of to answer your other questions has already been mentioned, so I'll just talk about this one:

1.) Gil - ... build a bankroll, and is it really necessary?...

The only really expensive thing that you buy directly from the game or from NPCs is a house. That's a big expense, but it's a one-time expense (and one that not all players are even interested in).

All the other big expenses tend to be things that you buy from other players, and that you could earn or make directly yourself instead if you prefer. For example, there's one stage of the Relic quests that requires a lot of materia. You could either spiritbond lots of gear until you manage to make all the materia you want yourself, or if you have lots of gil you could just buy materia from other players. So, while having a lot of gil is never exactly necessary, it can allow you to trade one kind of grind for another. (One player might choose to do a bunch of gathering or crafting to earn gil so that they can buy materia rather than spiritbonding to create it, whereas another might choose to do spiritbonding to earn gil but would buy crafted gear so they don't have to level the crafting classes to make it.)

So how necessary you find gil to be has a lot to do with how much you want to avoid or speed up certain grinds by buying their items versus how much you want to be self-sufficient and make or earn all your own stuff directly. (Even crafting itself, which is often seen as a way to make gil, can range from being a big gil-sink if you're buying all your materials, to costing nothing but time if you're gathering all your own materials.)