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 class story quests up to 20 don't have much going on. 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.

My big early mistake - I screwed myself over by trying different classes and crafting classes before unlocking my mount because my inventory very quickly filled up. Apparently your mount gets you saddlebags, but I basically had to dump a bunch of crafting mats and items, which is causing me to burn gil to buy them later when I realize I needed them, but I simply don't have inventory space to hold them all. In other games I've played, you can pay to unlock more inventory space and I was shocked that wasn't an option here. One player very graciously gave me some starting gil, and frankly without it I wouldn't have been able to start on crafting classes as I'm just burning gil buying mats to make items to sell to a vendor often for a measley 1 gil. I see low level crafted items (such as a level 15 armor piece) selling for 10,000 gil on the market boards, but I didn't see any option for me to sell the items I'm crafting on the market boards. Apparently, again this was me screwing myself over by leveling all the classes at once and not moving the main MSQ forward fast enough to unlock retainers which I finally did last night.

Also, 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. But this isn't obvious or explained in game that I've seen.

I asked a bunch of players if there was anything I should know as a new player going in, and no one warned me that trying to level multiple classes early was a mistake because it slows down getting to retainers and your mount and clutters your limited inventory. I wish I had known to at least get to your mount first and this is the biggest piece of advice I'd give to other new players now.

FCs - I hear that FCs have levels and abilities you get from them, but I don't understand what these are other than the combat bonus. I don't know if it matters which FC I'm in and if I should be looking for a higher level FC for better perks.