The Effect of Your Starting City

[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.)

[Canadane]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...uide/db/quest/

And some unofficial sites,
https://minionguide.com/
http://ffxivtriad.com/
https://apkallufalls.com/ (not the biggest fan of this one personally)

[KisaiTenshi]

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.

There is very little that is relevant to the starting city, let alone the race or gender picked.

Generally the only barely noticeable difference is in dialog, and it's very minimal, for example Admiral Merlwyb makes references to "one of our own/us" in some MSQ dialog. However I'm not sure if that's specific to starting in Limsa Lominsa, or specific to Limsa's GC the Maelstrom. For all that matters, each starting city has it's own set of busywork level 1-15 sidequests, that you can do, and the remaining ones require switching GC's, which you can skip until you've maxed out your rank and seals in the GC you're in.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...cenario_Quests

The quest chains that start with Mother Miounne/Baderon/Momodi 1-15 are the only ones you can't ever do, and they basically have the same premise.

[enthauptet]

The separate questlines converge at level 15, so you can just make an alt at the other two cities if you are interested in doing their questlines it does not take very long.

[Enkidoh]

To say nothing of there being plenty of short-time achievements in the game that the window of opportunity for attaining them was limited and are thus now forever unattainable if you were unlucky to miss them (the Legacy achievements from FFXIV 1.0 quests/content are an example of this: the 'Legacy' achievement tab in the menu isn't even accessible unless you are on a character that was created in FFXIV 1.0 - it's missing from the Achievements tab of players who started in ARR. Also seasonal events all give achievements that become unattainable once the event ends, and because these events change every year - the currently running Moonfire Faire being an example - you need to do the events each time they appear to get their achievements, otherwise they're gone forever if you miss them).

So I'm afraid if you've just joined FFXIV there is a lot of things you've missed that you will be forever unable to attain sadly as they were only available for limited times.

[Iscah]

I'd say it's not worth deliberately mass-crafting HQ items to begin with unless you've already reached all the other crafting targets and you really want to grind for it - since any quick-synthing you do will have a chance of producing HQ stuff as a side-effect with zero effort.

On the other hand, there's the weekly challenge log EXP bonus for crafting 20 HQ items, so do aim for that each week.

[Iscah]

I'm fairly sure that every early-game quest will have an equivalent in each city, down to the rewards. As long as you can get a list of those quests, you should be able to "match them up" across the cities. Most likely, the journal will list them in the same order.

I have an alt character who has just reached the merge point for the stories (plus the first few dungeons) so I will try to remember to get some screenshots of his 'completed quests' list next time I log in as him.

[mduncan50]

If your main and the alt both did all the quests they could in their starting areas (assuming they started in different cities) and then did what they could in each other's starter areas that would be extremely helpful. A screenshot of their side quests up to lvl 15 would be a big help to me. Thank you very much Iscah.

[mduncan50]

Just a little bump with the hope of assistance.

[Nihility]

It's really just the 1-15 of main story quest which are city specific before they all merge.
and the very early quests that are like the 'teach you how to do quests' quests don't show up in the other cities for you

low level side quests are available though