Random newbie questions

[Aekero]

Just started yesterday, and I'm a little lost. if anyone has some time to answer some questions I'd appreciate it!

1. Should I worry about gear? Or will questing be good enough?
2. What's a good realm to be on? I realized today I'm actually on a Japanese server.
3. Are jobs pretty rigid? i.e. white mage is always a healer, and paladin is always a tank?
4. Are mods really a thing for ffxiv? Tried a quick google search but they mostly seem for aesthetics.
5. I tried ff xi a long long time ago, and tried to play a taru taru warrior...and it was so hard to get an invite from anyone. Is that still the case or are all race/job combinations acceptable?
6. If I joined the gladiators guild, but then when I went to other guilds there are quests available, is it ok to take those quests too?

Any other tips are welcome, thanks for your time!

[DrWho2010]

hi! welcome to the game! hope you enjoy your time in Eorzea.

1. until you hit closer to 50 you will not need to worry much about gear. quests will give you what you need but please please do not be in a level 40+ dungeon still wearing level 10 gear. thank you!

2. are you in that part of the world? if you are in north america you should probably just start over on the primal or aether data center.

3. this game takes the whole holy trinity system pretty rigidly. so if you are tank, tank will be doing tanky things. Healers will be healing (and dpsing when they can).

4. mods are available for PC users but it's at the users own risk. most are for aesthetics/glamor, but there is a battle log parser to let people know how they are performing. technically all outside mods are against TOS but it's all in a grey area.

5. all race/jobs have no impact on the user experience of the game. play what you want!

6. you can switch to other classes once you reach level 10 - this game encourages you to have all jobs levelled on one character so feel free to take those quests to change your battle class or try out crafting and gathering too!

[Astrus]

1) Questing generally keeps at least your initial job in gear that is good enough but if you find one or two pieces lagging behind significantly it's not a bad idea to start looking for an upgrade. Just before you unlock your first dungeon you'll also unlock the Hall of the Novice, little exercises to get you familiar with basic mechanics. Absolutely do these even if you already have a good grasp of what you're doing, they provide a set of armor that will be adequate until about your twenties. (It is also worth noting that you can get a set for each role so if your first class is a tank and you later pick up a DPS it's worth going through the Hall of the novice with it again)

2) That would depend on what language, region and possibly gameplay focus you're looking for. As far as I'm aware we have one set of servers physically located somewhere in the US and another in Germany so your conection quality may very well differ between the two.
There are servers that are the unofficial <language> server, RP server and the like. If you have any preferences regarding these criteria it can help narrow the selection of servers down but I'm not really on top of what community laid claim to which servers.

3) FFXIV is a pretty damage centric game. There's a joke that there's only red (your regular DPS classes), blue (tanks) and green (healers) DPS classes but each class is expected to perform its primary role. As a tank class you'll always be the tank role, as a healer you'll always be a healing role. A special mention goes out to Scholar and Summoner, since they both branch off Arcanist they gain levels in tandem but you'll still have to gear each seperately.

4) Mods are in violation of the ToS so you'll find no discussion about them here.

5) While each race provides slightly different stats and resistances they are so negligible that you can decide solely on aesthetics. For the bleeding-edge progression folks there is some class bias based on potential and utility a class may or may not offer but for the majority of people a player who knows to play their chosen class is as good as another in the same category.

6) Yes. You can unlock all classes with the same character. It is generally recommended to do the Main Scenario Quests and any Quests with a blue + icon as those gate various features. The other side quests are often left for leveling other classes as those won't have the experience rewards from the main scenario available to level with but if you want to you can also do them with your first class at the expense of having a little more grinding to do with later classes you decide to pick up.
Speaking of quests, do keep up with your classes guild quests as those will unlock additional abilities and at class level 30 the advanced job associated with the class (so Paladin for Gladiators for example).

If you're not already in your servers Novice Network ask around in one of the main cities for a Mentor to invite you to it. It's a special chat channel where new and returning players can ask questions and generally gets you answers faster than the forum.

As a last piece of advice: Auto-Translate! When you start typing a word and then hit Tabulator you'll get a menu with words to choose from. Clicking on it will paste it into your chat with red and green brackets around it, those words will always display in the client language of the player reading the chat. It's a handy trick for communicating around language barriers even if the auto-translate dictionary is limited.


Also, since I just had to do it: If the forum complains that your post is too long you can just cut part of it out, post, immediately edit the post and paste the cut part back in. Silly character limit.

[Niwashi]

1. While it is important to have gear appropriate to your class and level, the stuff you'll get from quests will take care of most of that. Occasionally, one or more pieces may fall a bit behind if you're relying just on quest rewards. You can buy something off the Market Board or from NPC vendors when that happens.


3. Individual jobs are quite rigid and can only be used for one role. But in place of the way many games allow jobs a second role, this one lets you pick up multiple jobs instead. So while it's true that White Mage is always a healer and Paladin is always a tank, your character can be both a White Mage and a Paladin (and any of the others besides), and swap between them when you want to play a different role. (You can unlock and advance as many of the game's classes as you're interested in, but each one levels up separately. The ones introduced in A Realm Reborn are available once you do the level 10 class quest in your starting class. The ones introduced in the expansions require you to get to 50 first.)


4. There are no mods for FFXIV (or at least none that are allowed). This is at least in part due to being multi-platform, and not allowing mods that don't support all platforms equally. (Way back when the game first released, there was talk about setting up a mod system for it, but apparently they never got it to work for the consoles, so the idea was scrapped.)


5. Race and gender in this game are almost purely cosmetic. (Well, technically it can change a point or two in some stats, but that's a point or two out of thousands by the time you get to advanced enough content for stats to matter, so it's effectively meaningless.) This was a deliberate change from FFXI because SE wanted players to be able to play the race they liked best rather than being pressured into using the one that gave them the best stat boost.


6. Yes. Some of those quests are for unlocking other classes. (As mentioned above, you can unlock as many of them as you'd like.) Others are just basic sidequests that can be done with any class.

[Eloah]

Everyone is giving great advice but I'm gonna ad just one thing to your server inquiry. If you are on a Japanese server and are finding it difficult to play, but have already invested some time in your character, then you are in luck. There is going to be a server restructuring for the NA and EU data centers. Along with that transfers will become free of charge. That could be your chance to switch servers and not gave to pay for it.

[Seraph522]

Everyone is giving great advice but I'm gonna ad just one thing to your server inquiry. If you are on a Japanese server and are finding it difficult to play, but have already invested some time in your character, then you are in luck. There is going to be a server restructuring for the NA and EU data centers. Along with that transfers will become free of charge. That could be your chance to switch servers and not gave to pay for it.

Actually, free transfers will only be made available for players 'in affected data centers,' i.e. NA and EU data centers. If he's on a JP server, he won't have access to the free transfer during that time. OP, if you are interested in playing on a North American or European server, I'd recommend just making a new character and starting over; if you're still below level 10, you'll get back to that point in no time.

[MistakeNot]

Everyone is giving great advice but I'm gonna ad just one thing to your server inquiry. If you are on a Japanese server and are finding it difficult to play, but have already invested some time in your character, then you are in luck. There is going to be a server restructuring for the NA and EU data centers. Along with that transfers will become free of charge. That could be your chance to switch servers and not gave to pay for it.

The free transfers will only be for characters already on NA/EU servers when the respective data centre shuffle happens.

[MistakeNot]

Just started yesterday, and I'm a little lost. if anyone has some time to answer some questions I'd appreciate it!

1. Should I worry about gear? Or will questing be good enough?

If you do all quests (side quests as well as the main story quest) you will get all the gear you need while leveling. At level cap you will need to worry about gear, but that is a long way off.

2. What's a good realm to be on? I realized today I'm actually on a Japanese server.

One which suits your timezone, geographical location, and language.
There are three groups of data centers, one in each of Japan, North America, and Europe. It is typically recommended you pick a server in a data center close to where you live for best performance.

3. Are jobs pretty rigid? i.e. white mage is always a healer, and paladin is always a tank?

Yes, they are pretty rigid. But you can pick up any and all classes and jobs on single character and thus switch between roles that way.

4. Are mods really a thing for ffxiv? Tried a quick google search but they mostly seem for aesthetics.

Mods are actually not allowed at all for FFXIV. There do exist some, and using them will probably not get you into trouble, but all of them are really disallowed according to Square-Enix's rules.

5. I tried ff xi a long long time ago, and tried to play a taru taru warrior...and it was so hard to get an invite from anyone. Is that still the case or are all race/job combinations acceptable?

FFXIV is not FF XI. Races make very little difference in game play in FFXIV.

6. If I joined the gladiators guild, but then when I went to other guilds there are quests available, is it ok to take those quests too?

Definitely! All quests are meant to be done - but not all need to be done at once.
Like I said above, you can pick up all classes and jobs on a single character.
At start - at least until the main story leads you away from your starting city - it is probably best to concentrate on a single class, but should you start to outlevel quests you should feel free to switch between classes/jobs to share the XP between them.

[Frizze]

Lots of good answers already. Hopefully this one doesnt lower the average.

1. Questing should be fine. In general, its a good idea to look at your gear every 10ish levels(1-49) at first, then start checking every 5 levels(so 50, 55, 60, 65, 70 - bold levels are the ones with the biggest jumps). If anything looks like its way behind, check on it. In some cases the difference wont matter(a bracelet only getting 1 extra point of your main stat shouldnt need to be upgraded yet), but checking doesnt hurt. In general you want to prioritize weapon, then body/legs, then head/arms/feet, then belt, then jewelry.
2. Starting over an a NA/European server wouldnt be a bad idea assuming you live in one of those regions. A lot of the content in the game allows you to team up with people from outside your server, so what data center you wind up on matters more then your individual server for most things.
3. A class is what it is. Every class has damage abilities and is expected to contribute some, but a white mage remains a healer and a paladin remains a tank. This game doesnt offer many ways to customize your classes battle capability. Instead, you switch your capabilities by switching classes. As others pointed out, your character can level as many classes as you like.
4. Not really a thing.
5. In this game race is 99.99+% aesthetic. Every race can play every class to essentially the same level. Some jobs will still be more popular or in demand then others, but very few people will care which race you play(and those who do care will be for aesthetic reasons also).
6. Part of the set of quests in your starting town will involve you meeting the people at all the guilds. Most of them will have some minor task to ask of you(eliminate some pest, deliver some message, etc). You can do these quests as a "getting to know the area" sort of thing(probly what the devs intended them to be), or you can save them and use them later on to help level up a secondary(or tertiary etc) class. Once you reach level 10 and complete the class quest from your primary guild each of the other guilds will offer a new quest(something like "So you want to be a goldsmith"). These are the quests to unlock the other classes and your ability to switch to them. Do as many or as few as you like. And if you do find yourself enjoying another class more then the one you started with than you can just stick with the new one. Or go back and forth. Or whatever.

Other tips: The most important thing for this game is to follow the main storyline quests. This is a story-focused MMO, and most of the game areas and features get unlocked as you finish certain checkpoints in the main storyline. That doesnt mean you have to love the story(it certainly helps to like the story but there are some people who skip cutscenes and dont read quest dialogue), but if you dont do the quests you cant advance. Second most important are your class quests, as many of these unlock new and more powerful moves you can use in combat. There are additional quests that unlock optional features(the casino, the glamour system, etc) and these are all good to do as well. You can tell all these quests apart because they have different icons. The main quests have a meteor shape to their quest bubble, the class and unlock quests have a plus added to the quest bubble, the rest of the quests(the ones that just provide lore, exp, and maybe a piece of gear) have a plain oval bubble.

Best of luck, and welcome to the game!

[Aekero]

thanks all, that all makes sense, rerolled in NA and giving it another go