Ten tips for new player just starting out.Follow

In honour of the European release of FFXI, I thought I'd put together a short list of helpful tips I wish *I* had known when I was new to the world of Vana'diel. Hopefully some of our new friends will find this topic helpful. Feel free to add your own.

1. Don't buy from the auction house until you get a few levels under your belt. Most of the "newbie" armour, weapons and spells that are being sold at the auction house are readily available for much cheaper at NPC vendors in your hometown. Higher-level players will buy up these cheap scrolls and pieces of equipment and sell them at the AH for a markup. When you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of money to spend, so shop around for the best bargains. For instance, if you've started in Windurst there are several merchants in Port Windurst that sell low-level gear and spells for much better prices than you would find at the auction.

2. Do all the quests you can find. Many will reward you with gil or equipment/spells, and all will give you fame. Fame may not seem important early on, but the more fame you have the more quests NPCs will offer you. Also, with higher fame you can get better prices and sell items for more gil to NPCs.

3. Do missions too! There are a number of advantages to having a higher rank in your nation. Your signet lasts longer, as well! And the storyline in this game is truly excellent, you won't want to miss out.

4. Don't start partying right at first. Early on, it's much faster to fight solo, and if you're soloing you will get all the items the enemies drop. You can sell those items individually or in stacks at the auction house, which will help you start earning money. If you're in a party, you'll get less items and less experience. Most jobs will want to start partying at around level 10-11, when it just gets too hard to fight Decent Challenge or Even Match enemies.

5. Use the right weapon for your job. Warriors do best with greataxes and axes. Thieves will want to start out with swords. Monks should stick with hand-to-hand weapons. Red mages should use swords too. White mages should buy a hammer (listed under clubs in the AH, but hammers are different from wands... they do much more damage per swing). Black mages will want to use a staff or dagger. As a general rule of thumb, if you're soloing you'll want to wear a weapon with the highest DMG (damage) possible. Once you start partying, mages will probably do best with a MND/INT-raising wand instead of a damage weapon, since in parties mages don't generally melee on the enemy. It's important to use the "right" weapon for your job. Even though warriors start out with a one-handed sword, that's definitely not the best weapon for them to use since it does little damage compared to the axes or great axes they COULD be using.

6. Start crafting early on. Crafting is a wonderful way to make money, and the enemies near your city usually drop items relevant to that city's guild. While soloing, you'll pick up a lot of items that can be synthesised at your local crafting guild. For example, Windurst has the cooking, bonecrafting, clothcrafting and fishing guilds. Outside town, carrion crows drop eggs (cooking), pugils drop pugil scales (bonecraft), yagudos drop yagudo bead necklaces (which can be turned into grass thread for clothcraft), and goblin fishers drop fishing rods. Instead of selling those items, it might pay to pick a craft and start levelling it up using those items. It gives you a cheap head-start to crafting and doesn't cost you anything.

7. When you have gotten some levels and have reached the Tahrongi Canyon (Windurst) / Konschtat Highlands (Bastok) / La Theine Plateau (San d'Oria) zones, look on your map and find a large palace-looking structure. Head over to that structure (which will look like a large bone palace, they're called crags) and find one of the large glowing crystals on platforms connected to the crag. Click on the crystal to receive a key item. Now, any time you want to return to that location you can find a high-level white mage (level 36+) who can usually teleport you back to that crag for a fee. The crag in Tahrongi is called Mea, the one in Konschtat is called Dem, and the one in La Theine is called Holla. Teleport spells will be one of your main sources of transportation for the better part of the game, and they're a bargain at around 500 gil (depending on what the white mage you find is charging). You'll definitely want to eventually get the gate crystal for each of these crags, so you can quickly zip around Vana'diel.

8. When you reach level 18, you can do one of two different quests to get the ability to equip a subjob. One of the quests is in Selbina (the town in the much-hated Valkurm Dunes) and the other is in Mhuara (the town in Windurst's equivalent to the dunes, Buburimu Peninsula). If you are doing the Selbina quest, you'll have to gather a crab apron (drops from Snippers), a damselfly worm (drops from Damselflies) and a magicked skull (drops from Ghouls). All of these enemies can be found in Valkurm Dunes. If you're doing the Mhuara quest, you'll need a wild rabbit tail (drops from Mighty Rarabs), a cup of dhalmel saliva (drops from Bull Dhalmels) and a bloody robe (drops from Bogys), all of which can be gotten in Buburimu. A word of advice... If you're friends with some high-level players already, I'd suggest you do the Mhuara quest. Bogys are painfully hard to kill at level 18, but a high-level player can easily solo them and the bloody robes are a very common drop. Bogys spawn on the beaches in Buburimu at night, and while there are only a few each night, the drop rate is so good that you should have your robe in no time. If you're doing the Selbina quest, you'll find ghouls much easier to kill but their skull is a very rare drop. If you decide to do the Selbina quest, your very best bet is to go to Gusgen Mines off the right side of the Konschtat Highlands map (just to the east of the Dem crag) and fight ghouls inside. Ghouls in Valkurm are very rare to find and only spawn at night, but Gusgen is crawling with ghouls (and many nastier things). From the entrance, take the first right turn and then go north. Follow that around and go west, then south and east and you're back where you started. It's a big loop and there are lots of ghouls along the path. Bring a party of friends who also need the skull, and hopefully in a few circuits you'll all have one. Just be careful, ghouls will aggro you if you get too close, so try to pull one away from the rest.

9. Check people's bazaars. Often people will be selling random merchandise at a steep discount from AH prices. Mages would do well to keep an eye out for Orange Juice, which will slowly refill your MP when you drink it (and it should be around 100 gil or less for each). Carry a few with you and save them for emergencies. Melees might want to watch for cheap armour/weapons or maybe some food items like grilled hare (which raises your attack). Often, you can find some excellent buys in people's bazaars. Think of it as going to a garage sale, you don't know what you'll find until you get there.

10. The last and most important tip is this: Don't rush. Enjoy the game. It wasn't designed for you to rush your way to level 75 as fast as possible. There are so many things to do and sights to see, if you only level and level and level, you'll miss so much of it. Talk to all the NPCs you meet. Often they will have quests for you or local gossip to share. Buy maps when you can, and go exploring. Use Allakhazam to look up some new quests to do. Go fishing, or take up a craft, or find a cool linkshell to join. If all you do is level-grind, you're going to burn out and lose interest in the game. If you sample everything FFXI has to offer, you'll enjoy FFXI for a long time to come.

Welcome to Vana'diel. :)

Edit: Additional tip #1 - PLEASE be respectful of the Japanese players. Relations between English-speaking players and Japanese-speaking players is already very strained. All too often you'll see "JP ONLY" in someone's search comment, or you'll see an EN player complaining about how S-E supposedly favours the Japanese. Joining a multi-cultural and multi-lingual community like FFXI can be hard at first, but don't be nervous. Just be polite and treat them with respect, and if someone is rude to you be the bigger person and ignore it. If you get turned down from a party because you're not Japanese, just find another party. But please don't hold a grudge. Conversely, if a Japanese player helps you out, be nice and thank them and /bow, but don't go overboard with it. Just treat them the same way you would treat any English-speaking player, and make use of the auto-translator tool as much as possible. This isn't just "their" game or "our" game, despite what certain groups from both cultures may think.

Edited, Sat Nov 13 14:52:57 2004 by Saboruto

Just a quick add-on.

They should be sure to get signet cast on them everytime they leave the city so crystals will drop for them.


never never never EVER (almost never) sell your crystals to NPC save them till you get a stack of 12 and then sell them at ah.

When selling and buying at the auction house always check the price history of the item.

speaking of stacks. Inventory/auto sort is extremely important!! Live it love it learn it. You will start auto-sorting in your sleep.

Hex

EDIT: added price history

Edited, Tue Sep 21 11:50:00 2004 by Hexxum

I disagree with this. If you start partying early, you start to learn how party dynamics work when it is less important to be an effective party. In low levels, mistakes are more easily dealt with than at higher levels because each person is better able to survive on their own. Warriors gain Provoke at level 5. By that point, you can actually have a fully-functional party, and everyone can start to learn what their party roles will be, and how most parties will function. Many jobs start to experience an XP slowdown around level 5-10, especially mages who start to become a little weak at melee compared to the mobs they are facing. Even if your party consists of only two or three people, it can make leveling between 5-10 much easier.

Also, XP can be much higher in a party, even a low-level party. The reasons are the same as in a high-level party. With one person, you can probably solo Even Matches at best. With 2 or 3 people, you can kill Toughs. With 6, you can kill Very Tough or Incredibly Tough. If you kill them fast enough, you can build an XP chain, which multiplies the amount of XP earned. Several times around level 7, I joined full-fledged 6-person parties, and killed Crabs around the large lake in La Theine Plateau. The XP there at that level easily matches what parties can do in Valkurm Dunes a few levels later. I've also been in 2 or 3-person parties starting at level 1, and the XP went much faster in those parties than it ever did solo.

I agree about the drops though. If you're running short on gil, it's not a bad idea to go solo some Easy Preys for Crystals and items in the low levels. Before long, even soloing Easy Preys will become difficult for most classes, so take advantage of it while you still can.

Although you cannot activate the quest right away, you should start collecting the support job items early if you can. Also, once you hit 18, do not activate either quest unless you have all 3 items that you need. Once you activate one of the quests, you MUST complete that quest, and not the other one. If you don't activate either of them, you can collect items from both towns, then activate and complete whichever quest's items you get first. This can be useful if you are having a hard time getting the items you need for one of the quests -- try the other one instead.

I do aggree with craft early on. My home city is Bastok. When I started I went to the Goldsmithing guild and joined it. With my signet on I was constently getting Fire Crystals at low level. Now couple the fire crystals with the Copper and Zinc ore drops from worms, and you can start your Goldsmithing for FREE. I think that I got my Goldsmithing to level 11 doing just that. Yes, it is not very high and I didnt level past that, but now that I have many hours of play time and some steady cash it was nice to sit down and start leveling my Goldsmithing again from level 11.

Also, remember to STACK. Unfortunatly I didnt learn to stack until I was level 10 ><!

Lastly, DO NOT throw your BEASTMAN SEALS away. You will definitly want this to get some good cash later on.

Good Luck and Have Fun!!!

Just some quick things to add/correct... For weapons, Thieves will want to use daggers over swords. Also for crafting, it might not be wise at first because it takes quite some time or longer (depending on the craft) to start seeing a return. If anything, start with fishing to fund other crafts. Farming (killing monsters for their items) and quests will be the easiest ways to make money earlier in the game, especially the Beastmen, where you get items AND gil from them! ^^ Good luck and welcome all new players, don't be affraid to ask questions in-game, it's the only way to learn! ^^

Just thought I'd stop by to add that one incentive to doing Rank missions early on, is that for every level of Rank you are, your Signet lasts an hour longer.

That is to say, if you are Rank 2, and your nation is 3rd, Signet lasts for a whopping 5 hours. ^.^ /

the original post said thieves shoul;d start out with swords. with this i disagree thieves should keep a dagger to keep skill at max but should use hand to hand wepons by the time you reach lvl 15 and use sneek attack+ combo you'll see why :)

Wheeeee. Bump.

I agree, crafting at an early level is almost a sure way to get broke quick. I have cooking up to lvl 36 and still can't make any money. I suggest new players shy away from crafting, but they should deffinatly start saving for it. Once they get their subjob and are working towards gaining lvl 30 I would start to consider crafting.

Why not axe and shield? Sword is ridiculously easy to level and very weak, they'd make better warriors if they stuck to axes. I can understand about levelling shield early, it's PAINFUL to try to level. But still, I look at it like this: When I'm levelling my warrior (as I am now) to sub to another job later, that doesn't mean I'm not a warrior now. I play to be the best warrior possible while I am one. It makes the job much more fun while I'm playing it, and gets me groups more easily. As for THF, on my taru I used my dagger for farming and my sword or H2H for partying. Daggers just do too little damage to justify using them in a party, especially on things like Snippers and Clippers that have great defence. As I said before, if I'm levelling a job I focus on the job. Not on what I'll be in 10 levels. I play to be effective NOW and not gimp my way up. Besides, dagger's easiest to level while farming. But it is personal preference, I just like being as effective as possible. Regardless what I'm going to do in 10 levels, I want to be a great party member NOW.

Hey guys! I'm a new player, just started out today, and I wanted to say thanks for the tips. It's nice to just have a general guideline of ways to make the most of your first few levels.

I think you guys are overreacting to the crafting thing. Sabo doesn't mean power level your way to high stages, I remember when i was low level, i was an extremely poor WHM in the dunes without a clue to what was going on. I was partying with a Pld, who said that he makes 4k an hour... i was amazed, i had never even had 4k before! I asked how and he said smithing. After the party he took me to San'Doria and took me to the AH, he told me to grab a stack of fire crystals, and i did. We then went to the smithing guild, we did not get synth support, not worth hurting our profits eh? We would buy 3 copper ores one tin ore, then sit down and make a Copper Ingot, we would do this till the guild would run out, usually we were able to get a stack of Ingots made, sell on AH, and then go mess around till guild opened again. I only leveled to like, level two probably, but it was great for me, i was making money to buy new stuff for my White Mage, and it was cool talking with my LS and buddies while i did it. Pld and I are still good friends to this day, I think we both make a bit better profit than we used to, but back then to me that was amazing, all i did was spend 1.8k on a stack of fire crystals (WHY CAN'T THEY ALWAYS BE THIS CHEAP!?!?) and, didn't pay much attention to prices of copper/tin ore, so i was making like, 4 THOUSAND gil, and i only had to spend 2 thousand! So i took all the profits i made, and bought a bunch more crystals before i went to bed. When i woke up, i noticed Crystal Prices had jumped, ALOT! An entire 4 HUNDRED GIL overnight, now i surely wasn't going to pay 2.2k for a stack of measly crystals, so i put all my crystals which i got for 1.8k the night before on AH, and made even more "huge profits"...I didn't feel like crafting anyway, i had a good amount of gil, and i wanted to level up again lol. Anyway, that's just a little story, of waht i did, these new players won't be trying to power level their craft, just take a look at what you can profit on early, most crafts have something like that, where if you take your time you can make small profits, but at that level, it ain't so small. I did the same thing with Goldsmithing, make Bronze and Brass ingots, now that was some hardcore money right there!
Anyway, i REALLY suggest a craft low level, get a bit of gil and invest in one you like, research it a little bit and figure out what is best for the job you want to be, there is a ton of resources here at Allakhazam, and don't pay too much attention to the leveling, although i do suggest paying that hefty 30g fee for synth support, it's not "Hey they are trying to jip me! Two guys give support, but one takes my gil!" The guy who takes your gil, gives you better support, it is very worthwhile, even in later levels when the support costs 200-300g. (every 10 level's or so, you have to take a test, after your test, you have to pay another 30g, but you cannot level after a certain point without taking your test)

Good luck new players, have fun, and if you are on Bahamut, send Fistandantilus a /tell, i don't mind helping the new players, and i usually have a decent amount of time on my hands. Also, remember people with Rank 5 can travel between cities within minutes, so if you need help, but your buddy is in another city, if he's Rank 5, then it's not a problem, just a 5 minute airship ride away!

Paragraphs are you friend. Your post makes the baby Jesus cry, and blood pour from the eyes of midgets.



Thank you.

I've even run across experienced players that have the mental outlook of "This isn't my main job, so I'm just going to halfass it." I tell them up front impressions are made based on the performance I see you in NOW, not in the job you're 'majoring' in. If you're a Paladin, but use a 1Handed Sword while levleing your Warrior (just fu**ing die please -- I'd go to Valkurm if I wanted that crap) then you can guarrantee I'm going to remove you ASAP from the group. You are to perform your job well NOW while you're looking for a group.

Doing a half-assed job and using a weapon NOT tailored to it reflects badly on you, and those opinions DO carry over beyond that 'subjob' party. Warriors should be using a Great-Axe or a Shield and Axe. It's their highest ranked weapons, and they also have WSs that help the party immensely. Sturmwind is deadly against bats, and Shield Break can be used to help out on those monsters that have high evasion. Frankly, I want to start leveling Ranger after I get BRD to 75 (it's 63 now, been playing it 2 months). You bet my level 13 Tarutaru WAR is going to be using a GAxe, and have a shield and Axe on hand in case I'm asked to switch.

I also don't agree with dagger on Thieves before level 33. First of all, there's not any monsters that are tailored for Thieves and daggers, as (for the most part) the mobs chosen either give a penalty to piercing weapons, or they neither give a penalty nor a bonus. However, H2H is far from useless without a /MNK subjob. You miss out on Boost, and the very, VERY slight reduction from Martial Arts, but you gain a boost in attack and STR from going /WAR. It's a personal call -- either go with weaker attacks that are slightly more often, or go with stronger attacks that are evenly paced. Most of the damage done by a THF is from his SA (and later on SAnTA) and skillchain damage, so it really doesn't matter what you use pre-33. However, Combo with SA is the hardest hitting SA early in the game, and it also doesn't hurt that you can open Liquefaction or close Fusion with it for nice bonuses.



No, they want to use a dagger. DoT is what's important with a BLM, and missing 4 shots in a staff *HURTS* while soloing. Black Mages only have a D in dagger, but in those early levels that really doesn't matter -- the only difference is you get Wasp Sting at level 4 instead of 3, not to mention the poisoning effects are a blessing. Plus, Heavy Swing is absolutely horrible for Staff; it misses 50% of the time and the damage even with 300% isn't much stronger than a good hit from Wasp Sting.

Edited, Thu Sep 23 07:06:48 2004 by Russellius