Hello - New to FFXIV, wondering some things ^^

[Laughlyn]

Well, it's true that there is no AH atm, instead we have Retainers
wich are located in something called the "Wards".

There's 1 in each of the 3 cities, before entering the wards an
option will pop up asking your to either look for an item in particular, when you find that
item you get the option to "Mark" the retainers selling these" (cheapest first), so ya
much like an Auction house. They also act as your personal storage NPC. (like the Moogle in FFXI)

It's a fairly easy system, some like it & some dont.

Leveling atm currently involves Doing the Quests-leves where you
gain both class rank (SP) & physical (Exp).

A maximum of 8 battle / Gathering leves /reset is allowed.
If you fail some or all you can redo them again next day and still get 8 new leves.

It's kind of repeatative doing these leves, find X amount of monsters & kill them.
Gathering leves are abit diffrent, like fishing for example you need to go to a
specific spot & fish up X amount of fishes.

You usually get rewards such as Gil, Cystals, some item or Guildmarks.

Craft leves usually involves making X amount of crafted items & then hand them in to
some NPC (mentioned in the Journal, also shown at map), for these you dont need to buy
materials / crystals. (you get these from the quest giver)

Then there faction leves wich could grant you access to try defeat some NM's etc.
You usually gain access to these by collection factions points from regular leves.

Atm there's no such thing as exp chains implemented at all in the game, however
using AoE attacks on mobs not realated to the Leve-monsters will most likely yield less
SP/Exp, or doing damage to more than 1 monster at the time.
To get best sp/EXP per kill, take down 1 enemy at the time.

For parties, its more or less the same thing, however since you have the
ability to teleport to "Aethers" you have located you can invite ppl inside
the city & then teleport to the Aether when everyone is ready.

Only the player thats teleporting needs to have found the
Aether crystal to be able to teleport the entire party there.
(Even if someone in the PT dont have that Aether yet.)

Might not sound much, but if leveling a battleclass gets boring you should
really try one of the Gathering classes & some craftclasses.

Currently there's no sub-cap for the classes so you can level any class
and as many as you like to 50. (maximum level cap on all atm)

If you looking to make profit & get a decent start in FFXIV,
i suggest starting as Botanist, cut some tree's (specially marked)
Sell some of what you find, buy a Scythe to cut grass. (alot of loot / profit from this)
Then when you have enough, buy a weapon for the class you wish to level & go to it.

If going botanist to make profit i also suggest, leveling Clothcraft & Alchemy or Cooking.
Many of the required regegants comes from botany for those craft classes.

Hope this helps & justifies the game abit. ^^

And if all else fails, try Explore no matter how far the road takes you.

- Sorry for any typos.

[UrbanLucrece]

Thank you very much for typing that together!

Been playing some more, and found the wards and got a good hang of it, it's kinda interesting! =P A bit limited to only seek for 1 item at a time, but other than thats it's nice, feels more social than just standing by the AH

Also been leveling a lot solo so far, and found it nice that changing class gave lots of exp for your physical level from the lower level mobs

So far enjoying a lot more than I did when the game was released, think I'm hooked xD Though! I'm 99% certain that when I played it long ago I redid the levequest over and over, but now I can only do them 1 time, has that changed?