Thoughts from a brand new player

[Enkidoh]

You can't play completely solo - The main quest requires you to do dungeons. I was told you can play the main story completely solo, but that isn't entirely true. You sit in queue for a while as a DPS. I'm not sure I want to tank my tank into queue even though I know how to tank from other games, just because I don't know the dungeons and no one wants a tank who doesn't know where to go or what the mechanics are.

Actually, the ARR era dungeons can be run solo... buuuuuuut, there is a catch. You can set dungeons and trials as 'undermanned and unsynced' by clicking on the small button in the top left corner of the Duty Finder that looks like a cog wheel). This then removes party requirements for every duty (dungeon and trial and even certain raids) in the Duty Finder allowing you to enter them completely solo. However, going into, say, Stone Vigil solo as level 40 is tantamount to suicide. In these situations it's better to get a high level friend to duo with you and run you through them, but that does kind of defeat the 'solo' aspect (you could also hold off and keep levelling to a higher level and enter them then as you'd have a much higher chance of survival).

SE did eventually learn from their mistakes though and main scenario dungeons and trials in Shadowbringers allow you to take a party of story npcs called 'Trusts' in with you instead of having to form a party with other players, but alas that's just for SHB content and not earlier content.

Class Mechanics - With a few of the classes, the mechanics are fairly obvious early on. With my Gladiator, I need to do a basic combo rotation (Fast/Savage) to generate Enemity/Threat. I am a little shocked that by level 23 I don't have an AoE taunt however, which is a fairly basic Tank move

GLA/PLD did have an AoE hate generating ability called Flash that was gained at level 6, but it was removed at Shadowbringer's launch recently after constant player demands to add an AoE damage attack at that level instead, so now we have the weaponskill Total Eclipse at that level instead, which basically does the same thing but does AoE damage as well. I still miss Flash's simple utility however.

I'm also shocked there is no skill tree. I like being able to customize my character and having player agency.

Well, a lot of that is SE looked at their earlier FF MMO FFXI which had a fully customizable Job system (where you could add a secondary Job to the first one and at higher levels unlock customizable abilities), and saw that players were still just finding the most optimal path and sticking with that. And hence FFXIV has continuosly stripped down ability freedom in preference of a default ability path based on your class/Job's role. I do miss certain abilities that were formerly available (such as being able to set low level healing spells to GLA/PLD such as Raise and Protect), but new abilities do compensate for that mostly.

Really, all SE have done is taken the player's blinders off - no matter how liberal or varied the ability system may be in how you can set abilities, players will always inevitably find the 'meta' setup that gives the best return for the least effort, and will insist on only using that (and attacking/shunning other players who dared think outside the box - FFXI suffered from that terribly as I mentioned). Of course the trade off is everyone more or less looks and plays the same, but it's a small price to pay.

Either way, welcome to Eorzea!

[enderandrew]

Actually, the ARR era dungeons can be run solo... buuuuuuut, there is a catch. You can set dungeons and trials as 'undermanned and unsynced' by clicking on the small button in the top left corner of the Duty Finder that looks like a cog wheel). This then removes party requirements for every duty (dungeon and trial and even certain raids) in the Duty Finder allowing you to enter them completely solo. However, going into, say, Stone Vigil solo as level 40 is tantamount to suicide. In these situations it's better to get a high level friend to duo with you and run you through them, but that does kind of defeat the 'solo' aspect (you could also hold off and keep levelling to a higher level and enter them then as you'd have a much higher chance of survival).

What kind of level difference would you need? Could you run a level 20 dungeon solo at level 25? 30? Would you need to be higher? I've been encouraged to hop in queue with my tank, and that people will apparently be patient if I don't know the dungeon. But I'm still curious about running solo. When I'm really high level, could I run through dungeons solo with my high level character to make sure I get all the drops to help get gear for my alt classes?

Right now I'm 25 about to do the level 19 MSQ and should hit Infrit and my Chocobo soon. It makes me wonder if I could solo a 20 dungeon at 25 or so.

[Enkidoh]

Oh most definetely NOT, there is no way you would survive a level 20ish dungeon solo at level 20 (Thousand Maws of Toto Rak let me guess? That place is probably the first real test as things get increasingly difficult dungeon wise from then on out, although Halatali at the same level hints at that - that one's completely optional however). General rule of thumb is you would need to be at least 20 levels higher to stand a chance sadly soloing (and it should go without saying that you gear should be the best for that level).

I definetely feel for you as I too hate having to do mandatory party duties too as I'm a loner at heart (the only times I like to do party content is with my bf and friends), all I can really suggest is if you don't know anyone high level that can duo with you and run you through it, is to create a party through the Party Finder (not Duty Finder) and state you want to do it undermanned and unsynced. Often you'll get someone willing to help as it can often be more effective than simply queuing in Duty Finder (though if you were on my server (Balmung) I'd gladly help you myself ).

Either way soon to be knight-in-training, don't give up hope yet!

[RoyalBeef]

Leveling solo - As far as all the classes go, it is far easier to level tank classes or certain DPS classes. Healers can't do much DPS so they are a pain to level up solo. They're designed to work in groups, but my healer is squishy. So just trading damage to the enemy and myself over time doesn't work well solo. SWTOR is a game I played for years. I really loved the companion system in that game. It was great for story and also for gameplay. Leveling a healer allowed you to pull out a tank or DPS companion and heal them as they were fighting. Some of the magic ranged DPS classes are also a pain to level. I have a slow cast, but have to move out of the way of AoE attacks breaking my cast. These magic classes are also squishy. This reminds me of the Sniper class in SWTOR. They were a turret that couldn't move and could apply high burst DPS with a long "cast" time, and work well in a group setting, but not solo where you need to move. And at low levels, I'm not even seeing the high burst DPS from them.

Leveling some of these classes almost requires a group. But it seems most players are doing the end-game or new expansion content.

Solo leveling as in grinding mobs in the open world is pretty inefficient anyway. You really want to queue up for the highest dungeon you can run and do some FATEs while you wait for the queue to pop. Also afaik there is a nice exp bonus when you kill stuff that is your level, so you want to make use of that as well and not "waste" the levelling roulette on those levels but do it on the inbetween levels that don't yield an exp bonus for a dungeon. So ie. when you are Level 44 you run Dzemael Darkhold 1-2 times till you level up to 45, making full use of the exp bonus as mobs will also be level 44, then when you hit 45 you do the leveling roulette which might get you to 47 where you have the next dungeon available which will again yield that exp bonus for equal level.

Since even endgame players use the levelling roulette for endgame currency or levelling alt jobs there shouldn't be too much trouble queuing up for any low dungeon. I'm levelling a MCH alt atm and my queue times are between insta-pop to like 7-8 mins max so far.

[AnnaUK]

I was told the game had a free initial month trial, and elsewhere that the game is free up until level 35. But after buying the base game (Collector's Edition), Heavensward, Stormblood and the Shadowbringers (Collector's Edition) I couldn't log into the game without buying a subscription. That seemed counter to what I heard, but I happily bought a subscription to try it out. Apparently buying the game takes away the trial, which seems really counter-intuitive.

I played to around level 30 then bought the starter edition, I didn't have to sign up for a sub as it came with 30 days free time thrown in.

[Bakari_Pridemane]

Is there any place to purchase a NA pre-order bonus code?

Yesterday i saw an preorder code for NA on ebay. I have the same problem, i was looking for an european pre-order code.

Hopefully they have it in cash shop one day :/

[enderandrew]

Yesterday i saw an preorder code for NA on ebay. I have the same problem, i was looking for an european pre-order code.

Hopefully they have it in cash shop one day :/

I don't know what SE's policy is, but I know with other companies and games they often frown on third party RMTs. I'm forced to go the eBay route myself now, but I would encourage SE to consider putting them in their own first party cash shop on Mog Station.

[Niwashi]

Hopefully they have it in cash shop one day :/

Pre-order items have a promise of exclusivity for pre-ordering. They're never made available any other way. (The closest was when ARR was released on PS4 several months after it had been released on PS3 and PC. The new platform release led to players getting a second opportunity to pre-order it.)

SE could, however, create other items with a similar bonus. For instance, there's now several hats in the game that provide an XP buff for low-level classes. I believe the Aetherite Earrings are the first to combine that with level-adjusted stats (which make extending it into higher levels feasible), but I'd be surprised if they're the last.

[Niwashi]

I was told the game had a free initial month trial, and elsewhere that the game is free up until level 35. But after buying the base game (Collector's Edition), Heavensward, Stormblood and the Shadowbringers (Collector's Edition) I couldn't log into the game without buying a subscription.

The free trial version ends when you buy the full game. (It also has a lot of limitations that go away when you buy the game, so is really only suited to people trying to decide if they're even interested in the game enough to buy it. If you're sure you're going to want the game, it's better to buy it up front and start off with the full thing that gives you access to chat, trading, forming parties, joining an FC, etc, which are all either limited or blocked entirely in the free trial.)

But buying the base game should have automatically given you a 30 day subscription included in the price of purchase, so it should have taken a month from registering the game before you needed to pay for subscription time.

Many people feel that end-game is when a MMO really comes into its own.

Maybe for some other MMOs that might be the case, but not here. People who come here expecting everything to be at end game (based on experiences in other games) tend to be disappointed when they get there and realize most of the good content is in the stuff they raced past trying to reach something else. Explore. Try out everything. Enjoy the journey, it's the best part.

Early story isn't great - So far the story is barely present, but I've been warned that ARR isn't that great and it gets much better as you go along.

The story itself in ARR would be pretty good, except that it has some pacing issues which turn an otherwise good story into sporadic good segments interspersed among other stuff. There's places where it has lots of fluff content that does little to advance the story, and other places where it has long stretches of story exposition without enough activity.

I was shocked that a few quests I assumed where minor side quests in the world prompted full cut scenes are were in fact major story quests, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that they were different from all the other minor side quests I was picking up everywhere.

The main scenario quests can be distinguished from others by the type of quest icon. (Main story has a flaming ring around the icon where the icons for other quests just have a Q, or in the case of sidequests that unlock features, a Q with a plus sign in the corner.) Even the plain sidequests can sometimes have a story to them, though, or fill in some background lore. There will be more side stories with a substantial story to them at the levels that have been endgame at some point than there are during the leveling ranges, though.

I screwed myself over by trying different classes and crafting classes before unlocking my mount because my inventory very quickly filled up.

Saddlebags certainly help, but retainers are the bigger cure for inventory issues. Your saddlebags can hold 70 items, whereas your retainers can hold 175 each, and you get at least two for free (and can have more if you're willing to raise your subscription cost for it). Retainers are also unlocked earlier in the story than your chocobo is, as you can hire retainers any time after you join the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in a level 17 main scenario quest. That's the threshold I usually suggest getting to before getting too deep into crafting and gathering, though you can certainly unlock them and try it out a little before then.

Until getting retainers, I'd limit gathering to only those items you need for a craft you're planning to do right away or that you need for a quest, and limit crafting to items you want for your own use or things you need to turn in for a quest or levequest. The recommendations to make and gather one of everything for the first-time XP are fine once you have retainers to hold what you'll want later and sell off what you don't want, but not when you're keeping the resulting item clutter in your main inventory.

I was told there is an XP bonus for any class with a lower level than your highest/main class. But now someone is telling me it is proportional, so you really need to max one class first to get a proper bonus on the others.

This rumor started way back when ARR was first released, based on a badly worded help screen, and has persisted ever since, but it's wrong. The bonus is and always has been a fixed amount, and is not based on the difference in your levels. It's 100% up until you reach a certain threshold (on the class you're leveling at the moment, not on your highest class), and then 50% after that. That threshold used to be at level 60, but I'm assuming it changed to 70 when ShadowBringers came out (just like it changed from 50 to 60 when StormBlood came out). I haven't actually checked that detail, though.

Gathering class quests - Most of the quests and content are very self-explanatory with the map markers are such. I've found some of the gathering class quests aren't. There isn't a map marker for where I should look for mats. I found it really hard to start the Botanist level 5 quest. The map marker is there at the guild, but it tells me to go to Treespeak. I have no idea where Treespeak is.

With gathering quests, and occasionally others, the next objective is actually turning the items in, and you're on your own for where to find them. Many items can be gathered in multiple locations, but your gathering log should tell you where they are, with the specific area (Treespeak in this case) listed under a heading for the region (North Shroud). If you opened your map while there at the Botanist guild, you'd have seen the gate to the North Shroud is just south of it, between the BTN guild and the CNJ guild, and once you get to the North Shroud you can open your map to see that you're in Treespeak, as it's the first area just past the gate. IIRC, though, you might have to look around a bit for the right trees to harvest from, as there are multiple groups of them and only some yield the items you're looking for. (Though when you find the right group of trees, all trees in that group yield the same items.)

You can't play completely solo - The main quest requires you to do dungeons.

Having come from an MMO that did let us play solo all the way to endgame if we wanted to, I remember this taking me by surprise when I first started and hit that mandatory run of Sastasha. It didn't take long before I came to enjoy it, though. We seem for the most part to have quite a friendly playerbase, and being given a reason to run things with others got me to do so a lot more than I would have on my own if it had been optional.

With THM I initially had no idea when to use Ice or Fire or how to manage MP consumption. It looked like Ice and Fire did the same damage, but Fire would eat up all my MP quickly. I understand it now, but I wish this mechanic was better explained in game. I was in the middle of combat at it said I unlocked a meter or gauge of something, but I had to click off the help tip to finish fighting mobs.

I agree. That help tip only pops up once, when you're likely to be too busy to read it, and the most obvious place to look any other time is the skill tooltips that just say the name of the buf they add to or remove without saying what it does. Managing the Astral Fire and Umbral Ice buffs is so central to THM/BLM combat that it really needs to be described in the most obvious location where people can find it — the skill tooltips.

[AnnaUK]

SE did eventually learn from their mistakes though and main scenario dungeons and trials in Shadowbringers allow you to take a party of story npcs called 'Trusts' in with you instead of having to form a party with other players, but alas that's just for SHB content and not earlier content.

What about Command Missions? I have been reading a bit about those being new myself.. that's Stormblood right?

Command Missions is a feature of Adventurer Squadrons released in patch 4.1 of Stormblood. It allows the player to enter an dungeon with 3 unit members. While unit members have their own free will, responding as the situation demands, they can be given orders to guide their actions.

Halatali
The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak
Brayflox's Longstop
The Stone Vigil
Dzemael Darkhold
Aurum Vale
The Wanderer's Palace
Pharos Sirius
Copperbell Mines (Hard)
Brayflox's Longstop (Hard)
Sohm Al
The Vault
The Fractal Continuum
Pharos Sirius (Hard)

Players must have unlocked these dungeons prior to entering on command missions. Standard level/item sync and other restrictions apply.

Source: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...mmand_Missions