New guy. Help please

[Rinari]

I second MistakeNot's suggestion. Focus on main quests (MSQ) at 50 until you get to Ishgard. It's a long slog through the lv 50 MSQ, but you need to do it to unlock he lv 51+ content. The main quest will gear you up through quest rewards and forcing you into dungeons/trials that give poetics tomes you can use to buy gear.

Of course, don't burn out. MSQ can be tiring and it's very long. You can do hunts for allied seals (buys some nice 110 accessories). You do PotD and secure a padjila (ilvl 235) or even kinna (ilvl 255) weapon. You can work on crafter and gatherer classes. You can work up grand company ranks and build a squad to send on missions. You can run some extra dungeons for fun and end up with more poetics tomes than you know what to do with. I did all that and had fun with it.

Oh, if you do end up nearly capping on poetics... buy some unidentified craft materials (300 each). They are used (10 each I think) for the anima weapon at 60 in the first stage. That stage can be skipped with if you did the lv 50 relic weapon entirely (I think). There is no reason to do that lv 50 version though. It will be much quicker and easier to wait to 60 for anima chain. Just make sure you buy something useful with poetics so you don't hit 2k cap. I'm still hazy on the whole relic/anima weapon thing, since I haven't done it yet. Maybe a more experienced player can chime in.

[Amzz]

Can you/somone explain anima and relic weapons, poetic tomes and the grand company missions thing a little more in depth. Also is the only benefit from leveling gathering classes is the gil u can get.

[Rinari]

I'll give it a try.

'Relic' weapon is a quest weapon at lv 50. You go through a series of quests requiring grinding out various aspects of the game to upgrade the weapon between stages. 'Anima' is the same thing, but at lv 60 with a better weapon. You can ignore relic and just work on anima when you get to 60. The anima weapon ends at ilvl 270, making it tied for second best weapon in the game ilvl-wise (there is a 275 that's higher). I haven't done any of that yet, so I can't speak from experience.

Poetic tomes are a form of currency you get from completing lv 50 dungeons/trials/potd (potd = palace of the dead). Poetics buy ilvl 120 gear. Lore and Scripture tomes are from lv 60 content and potd. For potd, you must be lv 50 (outside of potd) to start getting poetics, and lv 60 to start getting lore and scripture. Lore buys ilvl 230 gear and scripture buys ilvl 260 gear. The gear you buy can be upgraded later.

Gathering classes get many of the materials that crafting classes need to craft things. You can sell that for gil or use it in your crafting classes. Some of the equipment crafters make is great stuff, but you also have to consider glamours and furniture for housing. While that stuff may not be objectively useful, it is highly desired and fun! Also, gathering classes can find treasure maps in lv40+ nodes, but I don't know how useful those are yet... almost to 40 on my miner though, so I'll get to try it soon.

[Urthdigger]

Relic weapons: There's two kinds: Zodiac weapons are the level 50 ones, and Anima weapons are the level 60 ones. Rinari did a decent job explaining them, but to go a little more in depth, they require a questline to create, and are notorious for the amount of grinding required. While older steps have been reduced in difficulty since being introduced, the fact remains that they take far more work to create than a weapon of similar power. The main advantages of a relic weapon are prestige (It's a sign of dedication), and that it's the only way to get an "endgame" weapon without stepping into raiding or extreme mode primals, albeit at the cost of taking far more time. You also get to choose the stats on the relic, which is good for those who aim for specific substats. So, all things considered, I wouldn't go for either of the current relics currently unless you want to just do them for glamour/prestige, but I would recommend going after whatever relic they add for 4.0.

Poetics tomestones: As Rinari mentioned, these are used to obtain ilvl 120 gear. However, they can ALSO be used to obtain upgrade materials to make that gear ilvl 130 (and in fact a set of ilvl 130 gear will make you start off Heavensward in prime condition, you won't need any gear upgrades until well into it). Furthermore, there are an assortment of other materials you can purchase with them, such as crafting materials or items used in relic quests. Lore and Scripture tomestones are the current two endgame tomestones, allowing you to purchase equipment for level 60 characters, with Scriptures being the highest level and lore being second best. Whenever the item level cap raises with a new cap, they introduce a new tomestone for the new item level, the previous best tomestone gets downgraded to second best, and the previous second-best tomestone gets removed from the game and the items previously purchased with it become acquirable through other means such as grand company seals or centurio seals. In any case, the highest level tomestone is only used to acquire gear, and has a weekly limit of 450 able to be earned, which limits how fast you can acquire the best gear. The second-best tomestone has no such cap, allowing you to get the second-best tomestone set as fast as you please. The second-best tomestone, like poetics, are also used to acquire a number of miscellaneous items.

Grand Company missions are fairly simple. Basically, you want to train your squad three times a day and send them out for missions once a day to level them up. Every so often there will be a difficult mission you need to do to rank up. The main advantages for these missions are the first lieutenant upgrade which unlocks more items you can buy for GC seals and raises your cap, the scrolls from the highest tier of missions that essentially function like personal FC buffs, and the various goods you can obtain from Squadron Chemistry such as materia or crafter/gatherer scrips.

Gathering classes can indeed be boiled down as just there for the gil you can get, though for plenty of people like me, there's satisfaction in having gear you created completely from scratch. I do wish there were untradeable items one could gather, such that you can't just replicate having a gatherer by having a lot of gil... but I know whenever I suggest untradeable items for crafters/gatherers, I get a lot of pushback from people who feel the main purpose of gathering/making items is to sell them. Kind of a catch-22 really...

[Amzz]

Thanks alot guys im still sketchy on some of it but i feel like itll clear up as i progress further on and encounter and experience the stuff you guys have mentioned. Ill definitely check back and reread yalls info.