Minions and Mounts?

[Enkidoh]

Welcome to Eorzea!

Echoing Jeeqbit's info, minions are gained via a wide variety of means, some are sold by vendors for gil or special currency like Grand Company seals (and once you're a sufficent rank in your Grand Company, you can buy a 'materiael container' which when used will give you either a random mount or minion, with the added advantage that all the possible minions or mounts that you can gain from that are all sellable on the Marketboard so you're not stuck with a useless item if you already happen to possess it!); some are gained through the main scenario and sidequests, some are random drops from certain dungeons and trial battles, and some are potentially brought back from Retainer ventures.

Incidentally, Jeeqbit did not mention this but in every city there is a vendor that sells a couple of minions rather cheaply (it's the same vendor that sells racial starting armour) so that's a good way of getting started with minions if you haven't already gained them.

Mounts you can gain as you go through the main story in the expansion packs but you're not up to that point yet. Also you can gain certain mounts and minions through purchasing the 'Collector's Edition' version of each expansion pack (or purchasing the 'Digital Upgrade' for each expansion which will then grant you the mount and minion automatically on the Mogstation).

And it should go without saying there are some minions and mounts that were gained through past special events that are no longer available, although many of these do end up on the Online Store for purchase with real money (the Online Store also has a lot of unique mounts and minions for purchase there too).

Additionally, certain merchandise will often have a minion or mount included as an incentive for purchase such as the soundtrack albums or the artbooks, but the early ones are no longer available, like the Wind up Dalamud sadly.