new player, few things

[Frizze]

Some of your questions and concerns have already been addressed, but ill go for a few answers too.

Race vs class/starting area/class lock: Makes very little difference. Once you complete the level 10 class quest(and i saw that you had) you open up the armory system. This lets you switch to any class in the game that you have unlocked just by equipping the proper tool/weapon. So your class becomes whatever you want after a short while. You can level up everything on one character, and are encouraged(but rarely required) to try new things. The difference in stats between the races is almost non-existent, and any race can play any class at a high level. You can also buy a potion on the mogstation to change your race, should you choose. As for the starting area, the main storyline has 3 different versions, based on which town you started in. However, around level 15 the quest from your hometown sends you to visit the other two towns, and at this point all 3 versions converge and its the same for everyone the rest of the way to 60. You eventually are asked to join one of the 3 grand companies, but you can pick one from whichever town you like(not stuck with where you started) and can even change this later on if you want. You can buy housing in any of the 3 cities(provided you meet the requirements and find an open plot). Really, city only affects your opening 15 levels of quests.

Crafting: Crafting is completely optional. The very best gear isnt crafted. And it can be a lot of work to get all the way into. With that said, id recommend trying it. You could level woodworker to 15 or so without even leaving the guild, and it would likely take you less then an hour to do. That would certainly give you a taste of it. Most people who get into it eventually level all 8 classes all the way. This is because the cross-class skills you get along the way make it MUCH easier to finish/hq the items you decide to make. A single class character can succeed in crafting, but its a lot more work. Also, many crafters pick up botany and mining(and maybe fishing) so they can get some of their own materials to save money. So with the costs covered, what are the benefits? Theres good gear you can make for yourself at all level ranges. None of it is the best, but you can make sure you always have something serviceable. This is especially helpful when leveling up a 2nd or 3rd(4th 5th whatever) class, as you can outfit yourself with decent stuff while working on getting good stuff. Alchemy and culinary disciplines also make things that are in short supply from quests/npcs. They can make potions and food to give you advantages. The medicines from alchemy arent amazing, and the potions have long enough cool-downs that you cant guzzle them to fight completely over your head, but they can help(and the stat enhancing potions are often staples of end-game raiding). Food boosts your stats a little, as well as your experience. You can buy cheap stuff in town, but you can make better stuff if you choose. Final point on crafting/gathering. The levels all line up fairly well. What i mean by that is that a level 20 crafter will mostly use level 20(and lower) gathered/killed for materials to make gear that is usable by a level 20 adventurer. So if you are up to date with these, youll be able to make items that are currently useful to you. That strong looking tree in the level 30 area might be harvested by a level 30 botanist and used by a level 30 carpenter to make you a new level 30 bow.

Leveling: Do the main story quests, do your class quests, do any unlock quests you see(those are the ones with the plus sign). When you get there, do the hall of the novice training in western la nosca. Already mentioned i know, but the bonus exp ring is nice and you can use it for every class you level. There are many additional ways to level, and you should try all of them to see what you enjoy. You can run dungeons, clear your hunting log(full of big one time bonuses for each adventuring class), run fates, do sidequests, complete entries in your challenge log(resets weekly so can be used multiple times), explore potd, and a few other options. The one that ill highlight though is your roulettes. Once you unlock your 2nd dungeon(happens around level 17) the duty finder will unlock your first roulette - leveling. It randomely puts you and a group of 3 others into a scenario from a list based on your level and what you have unlocked. The leveling roulette has all the 4 man dungeons from level 15-59 and all the 4 man trials from the same range. Once per day you get a big bonus for completing each roulette - for the leveling roulette the bonus is a ton of exp(usually close to a levels worth). Theres also a guildhest roulette you can unlock by doing the first few guildhests - same principal as leveling, but shorter instance and smaller exp bonus. You open up more roulettes at level 50 and 60.

Classes and jobs: Eventually you will want to graduate from your base class into a job. To do this you need to level your base class to 30 and complete all the class quests. You also need to level a side class to 15. For archer, this means leveling pugilist to 15 so that you can unlock bard. While playing as a bard your archer level continues to go up, you continue to have access to all your archer skills and you still use archer equipment, but you get extra bard skills you can use as well. For the most part, once you unlock a job theres no reason to go back and be a class again. You can customize your class/job a little with your choice of cross class skills. As a bard you can pick from a set of pugilist and lancer skills. With that said, for most classes its pretty obvious which skills are the most useful. Bard is still a DPS class, so youll probly pick the the skills that boost your damage(internal release, blood for blood) or improve your abilities(invigorate - gives you back some tp). Therefore, to get your stealthy type and your tanky type you like youll likely end up leveling up extra classes and jobs at some point. Ninja is a stealthy one, paladin is very tanky. As mentioned, you can be everything so you are encouraged to try these out.

Player experience: One of the reasons this game feels more "solo'ish" is that there arent any public chat channels like there are in other games. Oh sure, you can shout at the guy across the bazaar, but the person on the other side of town doesnt hear it. This feeling will change a bit if you get into some more channels(also, some cities/hubs are just busier feeling then others). Youre still low level, so i would recommend the novice network. Any mentor can invite you. You could join also join an FC. Either of those options also potentially provide in-game help and answers to your questions. The game also uses Linkshells as a means of communicating. These are private chat channels that can be devoted to anything or nothing. You might join one only for crafters, one devoted to lala worship, or just one where people can chat while they play. I see that youre on my server, and im in one of the chatty ones. Shoot me a tell in game, and ill send you an invite if you want.

Endgame: So currently the cap is 60. Endgame content is therefore level 60 dungeons(sorta), and level 60 raids. There are 12 group raids(each has a normal and a "savage" difficulty) and 3 alliance raids(these are 24 man instances). The most up to date gear comes from the most recent 4 group raids(hard versions) and the most recent alliance one. Dungeon gear isnt as good as raid gear, and the dungeons are all fairly easy to beat. However, all level 60 content rewards currency(tomestones - as does level 50 but with a different version) that can be used to buy very good stuff(the best available will be a combination of raided and bought for many classes). The most recent patch also re-introduced the diadem, a level 60 multi-group instance where you explore and fight tough monsters for rewards that are sometimes great(and other times not so much). PotD isnt strictly end game content(you can unlock it at level 18), but the deepest floors are plenty tough.

Forums: Sorry for your difficulty. Already mentioned, but ill restate. If you edit your post, you can exceed the character limit. For instance, this post is 8610 characters long. I typed the whole thing out, cut out most of it, then opened edit and pasted back what i removed. Its annoying, but its a work-around that actually works.

Come back with any further questions, continue enjoying the game, and happy hunting!

[Lakhi]

Palace of the Dead:
It's a little difficult to explain. You're in a party of four, but there are no set restrictions on class types (Example: you may have four tanks in one party). Each run consists of 10 floors. When you first enter, you're level 1 and your level will increase as you continue through. At the end of each run (10 floors) there'll be a boss. There are I think 200 floor total. Your gear when you go in doesn't matter, as long as a piece of armor is there. There are silver chests in the dungeon that will increase your armor strength for the Palace of the Dead only. The levels you get does not affect you outside the Palace (so like if you get to 60 inside the palace but only level 5 irl, then when you leave, you'll be level 5 again). Though it does grant items and EXP for completing 10 floors.
To unlock it, there's a quest in New Gridania called "The House that Death Built"

I'm sure someone more eloquent than I can explain it better lol. There's a wiki page too

[Frizze]

One quick note. You actually can see the gathering nodes while youre out adventuring if you want to. The level 1 abilities of miner and botanist that let them see nodes are cross class skills. You could set either or both of them for your archer and walk around hunting while noticing gathering spots. Youd still have to switch to miner/botanist to open those nodes and harvest their goodies though. If you do this, just remember to switch back to your combat skills before you get into any seriously dangerous situations.

And yes, you can have every class and job on your one character. You can be a bard when you want to hunt and switch to a paladin when you want to tank. You dont even need to wait until your bard is level 50 if you dont want to. You could go unlock gladiator now and in between bouts of sticking things full of arrows you could spend a little time practicing with your sword and shield to become an almighty tank. Its more work to level multiple jobs at the same time, but if its what you want to do there is nothing stopping you. If you decide you like tanking more it can even become your "official" class. The game and storyline quests dont care what class you do them as, or if you switch along the way. You could be a paladin saving ul dah from great threats, then switch back to bard when its time to save gridania and none of the NPCs would bat an eye. Thats how amazing the Warrior of Light is to them.

Short on PotD. Its a recently discovered hidden "dungeon" that goes on to untold depths. The magic inside saps your strength, and you need to build yourself back up to fight it. Further, the magic inside seems to cloud the mind, as the rooms seem to be in a different order from one trip to the next. Luckily the npcs outside are working on a solution. Or, in laymens terms... its a 200 floor dungeon that you explore in 10 floor increments. The layout is randomly determined each trip, though every 10th floor is a boss floor. Your gear and level dont matter inside, as you cant use them. Instead you have separate gear and level that are only effective inside. You could be a level 60 bard inside, without getting your actual bard level up past 30. Your gear improves randomly as you open the silver chests inside. Instead of individual items you just get a plus rating for your weapon and armor to a limit of +99/+99. There are chests with special potions you can only use inside, there are traps you might trip. You can explore the whole thing solo if you want a challenge, or join a group of 3 other people and do your best. The reason people run it are 4 fold. First, every 10 levels you complete you get some actual exp and can use that to level up your classes. Second, one of the npcs near the door will exchange your potd weapon for an actual weapon if you get the rating high enough - so people will run it to get a decent weapon later on in the game(the weapon is level 60, so it wont benefit you until then). Third, there are a few treasures inside you can find(music scrolls, a mount, materia, some glamour items) and some people will do anything for the right treasure. And finally, some people just do it because its different. It eventually offers an extra way to get end-game currency, it isnt the same thing every time like some dungeons, and some people just like a change.

Hope that helps.

[Crossidy]

I feel you, Im bit over 150h into game and I still find it hard sometimes to use forums and find answers to stuff I ponder on.
But luckily whatever you choose to do ingame doesnt affect in negative way, I mean, you can always alter your looks, change your class etc if you wish to do so. You can even reset your attribute points! I found it very helpful to just try out every class and explore craftings stuffs.
Only negative thing about taking a liking to crafts is that youll very soon run out of inventory space even with two retainers.
I also found very useful to just google stuff instead of trying to find answers in active help or the lodestone

[hawkemoon]

I definitely see now that with the number of things you both gather, and need to craft that inventory space will be at a premium,
the bank(retainer) system, and heck the inventory system is way clunky, you cannot auto sort, you cannot search, its time consuming and irritating to go thru my bags and try and clean things up, why cant you even open multiple tabs to move stuff about?
wish some bored dev would have an epiphany and copy WoW of Rift banking system
other than that, my best resource is FF14 wiki, like ohh ya!, answers at your fingertips (for the most part)
while I am definitely liking this game in comparison to both of the above mentioned ones, I would like to point out that I have had problems figuring out things especially in relation to questing, like the game expects me to know what's going on and what to do next and honestly, I have no clue. I spent 15 min running round trying to get a guildhest to start when I needed to go to a location, open quest and select initiate. all I am saying is the learning curve misses sometimes.
on Palace of the Dead, how does random grouping up for it work? can you "que" and be put into a group, similar to the duty roster? how does my PotD lvl effect grouping, do I need to be about same lvl as rest of the group? how do I get going inside when I have never done anything?

[Frizze]

I could try to explain all this, but i feel like im going to leave out something important. Ive dabbled but not fully dove into PotD personally. Yeah, you can que(this is done at the entrance, not via the duty finder) and get put with random people. Getting started is as simple as doing the unlock quest in Quarrymill, then either going in solo or with people. You may have already found this, but some info from here might prove useful.

[Niwashi]

the bank(retainer) system, and heck the inventory system is way clunky

The upcoming Stormblood expansion is supposed to include an expansion of inventory space. We don't have much in the way of details yet, so not only do I not know yet how much more room we're getting, but I also don't know whether there will be changes to the inventory interface to go along with the upgrade in space available, but it wouldn't be surprising if there is.

you cannot auto sort

There is an option in Character Configuration to specify whether new items you receive should Fill tabs in order (the initial default) or Sort items into tabs based on category. I tried sorting into tabs briefly a long time ago, but found it a bit clunky. (I couldn't select which tab got which categories, and any overflow from any of them get jumbled together on the first tab.) I ended up deciding I prefer the control that arranging it manually gives me.

There's also a sort option by right clicking an item in your (or your retainer's) inventory and choosing "Sort" from there. It will group all your current items by category and level. I do that pretty regularly with my retainers' inventories, though my own inventory I prefer to arrange manually. For retainers, I've found it also helps if you stay consistent on which types of items are held by which retainer. For instance, I have one that holds all my leather, bone, reagent, and wood materials, while another holds stone, metal, and cooking ingredients, and a third holds extra gear I'm keeping either for glamour or for when I level the rest of my jobs up high enough to use it.

And there's command line sorting options through the /isort command that can specify in detail what order you want to sort stuff. I've never tried it, but some people come up with macros for specifying how they want everything arranged.

you cannot search

There is a search function. The easy way to do it is if you have the item or a link to it that you can right-click on and select "Search for Item". I do this a lot for crafting mats, by right clicking items in the materials list of recipes in the crafting log. Market board listings are another place you can do that if you want to check whether you already have an item. It will search your inventory, armory chest, and your retainers' inventories, though it does not include your retainers' MB sell slots if you have the item but are offering it for sale. (If it's an item that has both normal quality and high quality versions, it will find either.)

If you don't have a link to the item convenient to right-click on, you can also use the command line for that with the /isearch command.

Details on the text commands and their usage can be found at: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest.../text_command/
The /isort and /isearch ones are both found under the "Other" category.

why cant you even open multiple tabs to move stuff about?

There's an Inventory Settings option in Character Configuration to display either one tab at a time, or four tabs at a time (two separate options actually, as you can adjust either how your own inventory is displayed or how your retainers' inventories are). Switching that to use the larger inventory window might help.

[ArcticFoxPG]

I might be a bit late, but I did a small video to answer some of those questions new player's often have, maybe check it out!

Thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...or-new-players

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq1naHCeiPk&t.