The Effect of Your Starting City

[mduncan50]

I know that the city you start the game in will prevent you from getting some side quests, achievements, and even a couple of FATEs, but I cannot find a place where all of these things are listed together in full. I'm nearing completion on a 100% checklist spreadsheet, and these would be extremely helpful to know. Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Lambdafish]

The city you start in does not prevent you getting anything. All side quests, achievements and fates are accessible to everyone. Its only the MSQ that is different.

Edit: You miss TWO achievements, "Leaving Limsa Lominsa", "Gone from Gridania" and "Out of Ul'dah" are each of the achievements when you leave your city-state. However, the other two do not appear in your achievement log, so they are basically different names for the same one achievement that everyone gets.

[Hasrat]

Mostly just impacts where you meet your first RMT bot.

[RiyahArp]

You won't be prevented, but I wouldn't recommend getting too achievement fixated in this game. Many are insane grinds.

Like you can switch GC as you need to start over. But for example, the top tier guild levequest achievement asks you to do something like 500 of them, when they only give exp from 25ih to 50, and poor exp at that. The "jewelry" achievements would require you to do a lot of work if you wanted all three GC gear. SOmething like the pvp wins too would require 100 wins per GC, but thats easily 600 or more matches played with 10-30 min pops.

Some of the achievments are just nuts. To get the master crafter/gatherer titles, you need to craft or gather something like 10,000/20000 HQ items, at a proc rate of maybe 20% overall average And there are multiple crafts/gathering jobs. A lot of them you won't even get close to just by ordinary play or even levelin all jobs to 70.

I mean, have fun, but keep in mind in-game achievements aren't something that's going to be anywhereeasy to max.

[Rowde]

The city you start in does not prevent you getting anything. All side quests, achievements and fates are accessible to everyone. Its only the MSQ that is different.

Edit: You miss TWO achievements, "Leaving Limsa Lominsa", "Gone from Gridania" and "Out of Ul'dah" are each of the achievements when you leave your city-state. However, the other two do not appear in your achievement log, so they are basically different names for the same one achievement that everyone gets.

This is still incorrect.
There are some side quests that are unique to each starting city. They're all low level, iirc level 8 and below.

I don't have an exact list, but I could probably put one together by isolating the completed quest names between all my alts' journals.

I know Limsa starting city has a couple unique quests in Middle La Noscea at Summerford, and a more comprehensive quest line from Red Rooster Stead culminating in a fight with some Kobolds in Lower La Noscea.

The Gridania quests aren't nearly as exciting, and mostly involve some "extermination" quests where various NPCs have you go around the Central Shroud and eliminate pests. For example, one NPC asks has you go to a location and click on a tree which spawns a bunch of funguars to kill and another NPC asks you to destroy diremite eggs.

Can't remember unique quests in Ul'dah atm.

[Iscah]

Each city has its own MSQ plot as well as the unique sidequests. They merge together at story level 15, just before the first dungeon.

The main lasting difference is that you get some ‘unique’ Lv1 glamour items (the models are reused later though) - “dress shoes” from the Limsa questline, a wooden mask from Gridania or amethyst earrings from Ul’dah. The earrings are probably the most useful prize (if it suits your character) as you don’t get any other fancy earrings until Lv28.

There’s also a unique ring from each city, but with minimal stat benefits, and just a different coloured gem on it.

Ul’dah probably has the most useful worldbuilding questline as well. (Though if you’re into the story, I recommend starting a character in each of the three cities to get all the stories.)

[mduncan50]

Rowde, if it wouldn't be a big hassle for you to come up with the list of those low level side quests, that would be exactly what I'm looking for, so that I can grey out quests based on the user's starter city, I've already done so with the Main Quests, lvl 1-15 up until they merge. I've still got another week of work to do on the checklist at least, so it's nothing I need in a rush, but I sure would appreciate it and will cite your contribution. Also, the one other thing that I seem to recall from playing previously is that each area has 1 Battlecraft Levequest that you will only receive if you start in that city, I believe it's a lvl 10 or 15.

[Ilyrian]

Mostly just impacts where you meet your first RMT bot.

Ha! Nicely done.

[mduncan50]

Lambdafish, thank you for the info on the achievement names, very helpful.

[Talraen]

If you go to https://ffxiv.gamercorner.net/ffxiv/quests/ and sort by Plotline, it will list every quest specific to each starting city, both main scenario and sidequests. (Enter ~"main scenario" in the search bar, include the ~ and quotes, to filter those out.)

All starting city-specific sidequests are level 13 or below, and they vary in number by city. Gridania has a measly 11, Limsa Lominsa has 20, and Ul'dah has 19.