New player with few questions

[Rehayem]

Hey. I started playing few days ago and decided to get myself the full game, originally hailing from Aion (as main game) where I spent years playing. FFXIV is very vast in game content and got me confused in some areas.

1. I'm aware glamours are used for skins? I'm not entirely sure where do you get those glamours/skins in general.

2. Free Company is guild/legion I presume? If I'm Maelstrom, does that mean I can't join a FC if it's aligned with the other 2 Grand companies?

3. I love the fact there's so much crafting in the game, am I allowed to master all of them or is there some sort of limit?

4. I know the Market works like broker/auction house and that I need to use a retainer to sell the items, but if something is sold, does Gil come directly to my character or do I need to pick it up from the retainer?

5. How does housing work in this game exactly? In Aion, bigger house meant bigger space for items, but you could still get yourself a free studio (apartment) but I know people wish to have it to remove a character debuff upon dying (soul sickness is called) that lowers a lot of your stats like HP down. People would mostly get a mansion, estate or palace to remove it, since a house and studio wouldn't.

6. I'll be going away on holidays for a while and wanted to play from abroad, should I be concerned of being "banned" for playing from a different IP?

Any help is appreciated.

[Brightamethyst]

1 - Glamours unlock from a quick quest in Vesper Bay at level 15. Have you noticed the Glamour Dresser in the inn rooms? If you have Glamour Crystals (crafted, bought with CG seals, or bought on the Market Board) you can put a piece of equipment into the dresser. That piece of equipment can then be used as a skin. The dresser lets you set up glamour sets that can then be applied any time you're in a major city.

2 - Doesn't matter. The Grand Company/Free Company thing doesn't matter in the slightest. You can join any FC regardless of which GC you are affiliated with. The only real difference is the location of the vendors.

3 - No limit. If you want to level every single class, go for it.

4 - You have to pick it up from the retainer. It's the second option on the retainer list.

5 - Hosing is a weird thing at the moment. You can buy a house but there are no direct gameplay benefits, outside of having a personal garden (if you're into that.) No extra storage or buffs from having a house.

Houses are not instanced, meaning there are a limited number of them in the game. The odds of being able to buy one for yourself at this point are fairly low. You can buy apartments and/or personal rooms in a FC house though. They're smaller and have no yards, but they're not limited like houses are. Apartments also have communal chocobo stables.

6 - If you try logging in a from a different IP it'll do a security thing and make you change your password. IIRC this can be avoided by using the one-time password securtiy thing though.

[Allooutrick]

Amethyst nailed it on the head. Housing is also incredibly expensive to purchase. So much so that you likely won't get enough gil without getting into end game with a crafter or gatherer. Apartment and FC rooms are much more viable.

[Niwashi]

BrightAmethyst seems to have answered most of them pretty well, but I'll add a bit about housing.

Having access to some form of housing, whether that's an apartment, a personal house, or an FC house, gives you access to a chocobo stable, which helps with training your feathered companion and lets you adjust the color of his plumage.

Any housing, even an apartment, allows for at least a limited version of gardening using flowerpots, but some seeds can only be acquired by crossbreeding different plants, which can only be done in an outdoor garden of a house. (Apartments don't have a place for a full garden, just flowerpots.)

FC houses can also have a workshop. (Personal houses cannot, though. It's strictly an FC thing.) A workshop lets crafters in your FC build airships and submersibles to send out on voyages to collect stuff, or build special house exteriors, or a few other projects.

Houses can have furnishings that offer a boost, like crafting stations that boost your CP (crafting points), or food items that boost any of a variety of combat stats.

NPC vendors can be stationed at your house or apartment. Though they don't offer anything that isn't available elsewhere, they do provide some added convenience in offering items in one place that you'd otherwise have to travel around to different NPCs in different areas to get (at least when the market board doesn't have them at a good price).

Unless I'm forgetting something, I think that's all the housing benefits apart from the obvious having a place to decorate and call your own.

[Frizze]

One extra note on glamours. In addition to using the dresser to set up glamour plates, you also have the option to manually set glamours from your inventory. You pick the item you want to wear, choose apply glamour, and it asks what look(the choices will be what else you have in inventory) you want to apply. Confirming the change burns a glamour prism, and the new look is applied to the item. And regarding glamours, you cant glamour an item to look like a higher level then it is and if you glamour it to a look that the class in question cant wear then the default appearance applies. So if you have a level 50 robe, you cant glamour it to look like a level 60 robe(though you could make the 60 look like the 50). And if you took a generic level 50 robe and glamoured it to the summoner artifact set, then equipped it on red mage it would just look like the generic robe.

Oh, and if youre worried about getting a good look the game has lots of outfits that are "glamour only" - level 1 gear that looks good with no stats that exists for the express purpose of building a nice glamour profile.

[Naryoril]

A small addition to crafters: There is a bit of a limit: You can only be specialist in 3 of the crafting jobs. Being a specialist gives you a few extra skills to use, but i'm not sure how much of a difference they actually make and if omni-crafters actually use them.

[einschwartz]

I'd like to add another very important note about housing is that for Personal House, if you as the owner doesn’t enter the house in 45 days, it’ll be automatically demolished. You will receive email from the game reminding you (several times) about this auto demolition timer starting when you have around 10 days left or so.

Let say you did not login or enter the house for more than the allocated time, you have 35 days to reclaim your furnishings item from an npc AND 80% of the price you paid for the house!

If you're like me who might take a few months off from the game, it is better to get apartment or FC room as you do not have to worry losing them when take long breaks. Smaller space but no commitment.

[Naryoril]

I'd like to add another very important note about housing is that for Personal House, if you as the owner doesn’t enter the house in 45 days, it’ll be automatically demolished. You will receive email from the game reminding you (several times) about this auto demolition timer starting when you have around 10 days left or so.

This as also true for FC houses if no FC member enters the house for the period. Just that all FC members will get the notification E-Mail.

[Rehayem]

Thanks for the answers, fellas, really appreciate it. I had to research a video about glamours in order to understand how it's done. I've always loved the idea of housing, so I think getting an apartment would suffice either way. What's the prices on the different houses?

[Brightamethyst]

Small houses are in the 2-3 million gil range. Mediums are 16-20 mil, and larges are 40-50 mil (varies based on the specific plot and how long it's been sitting unsold.) Apartments are a flat 500k.