new player, few things

[Lakhi]

Retainers:
In any of the big city (Limsa, Ul'dah, Grid, Foundation) market areas, there'll be an NPC at a counter called "Retainer Advocate", talk with them to make your retainer(s).

Jobs:
You can have all the jobs on one character if you would like. Since you're an Archer, you'll have to go to Ul'dah to pick up the Pugilist class and level it to 15. Once you do this and if you're caught up on your class quests, a new level 30 one will appear to allow you to unlock Bard. You are definitely allowed to pick up other classes and jobs and still keep your bard. For example, my main is BLM, but I also have most of the other jobs that I can change to and play instead. The nice thing about this game is that you're not limited to just one job You can pick these other classes and jobs up whenever you want.

Gathering:
Your Gathering Log will tell you where the nodes are for the specific things you want to gather

[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.