Jumping into FFXIV

[saYnt]

just about to play for the first time, anything I need to know before hand? best server for new players in UK/EU?

[Thorley23]

Originally posted by saYnt:

just about to play for the first time, anything I need to know before hand? best server for new players in UK/EU?

I'm just starting to play myself, and am waiting in a queue at the moment, and wondering if it hung up. I can't say what the situation is for UK/EU but I know I was able to find a lot of servers that would let me make a new character on Primal/Famfrit and while I've barely gotten a chance to play since when I was on it seemed to be running pretty well and was clocking itself at 60 frame per second.

I did play years ago and got up to 16, but I'm starting again from the beginning, especially as my old character is on a congested server (Siren).

At any rate you can check this to see what servers will take new characters:

https://arrstatus.com/

Seems that in EU you have a choice of Chaos Or Light, both seem to be in a similar state and there are 3 congested servers in each of those data centers and 3 you can create on. I don't see any designation as to whether they are language specific from that site though, so I don't know if that will further limit your options.

Personally if I was going to create an EU character I would probably roll try and roll on Light Data Cluster and on the Twintania server. The reasons are of course deeply scientific.... (J/K) I've noticed over the years the more aggressive edgelords and annoying players all tend to gravitate towards the most edgy names. As a result I figure most of them decided to pick "Chaos". Further breaking it down I figure Liches are generally evil so that is another place the edgy and predatory crowd would go, and "Zodiark" sounds the same. Twintania sounds weird but I'm guessing it's a reference to the faerie queen Titania and sounds a bit more friendly, so there is a fair chance you'll find the highest population of normal, laid back, players.

Of course if your a PVP or want an aggressive, edgy community just looking at the names you should probably consider most people liking that sort of thing probably chose the Chaos Data Center, and of the three remaining options there I'd think they would go for "Omega" because you know it's the end, and the endtimes are dark and edgy! :)

At any rate, all rambling aside, welcome to FF X IV. Regardless of where you go I hope the queues aren't too bad during your your play time.

[Lucian Winters]

The best server for new players is, in my admittedly limited experience (I've never needed to make more than one character, but I've moved about a lot. I've never really had problems on Zodiark, amusingly.), fairly moot - there's a Novice Network in-game where mentors can give advice on what you need, help with queues or at least nudge you in the right direction, as well as a hall of the novice system where you can learn the basics of the basics for whatever role. Without knowing what you plan on really doing it's hard to give specific advice, though...

1: Arrstatus is a good site. It shows you exactly when the game comes back up after maintenance, too.

2: Planning on playing a healer? Healers do DPS, and you are even taught this in-game at various points iirc. DPS contribute roughly 60% of a group's overall damage, with tanks and healers taking 20% each to do. Playing as a pacifist or lazy healer makes the fight take longer, which leads to more damage being dealt to your party, which leads to higher chances of death.

This being said, at the end of the day, your job is to keep everyone alive - if you have to choose between saving the DPS at 1 HP or throwing an extra rock, you might want to pick the former.

3: Planning on playing a tank? Make sure you get into the habit of using your defence buffs often. Try and space them out over the fight too so you're not out of options if the boss deploys its biggest attack.

4: You've likely heard this from elsewhere, but you can play everything on one character. If you get bored of tanking or healing, pick up a DPS and off you pop. Or fish. Or craft. Getting into crafting and gathering early can save you millions of gil down the road, actually.

5: Eventually, you'll have the option to upgrade your basic classes (Archer, Conjurer) into actual Jobs (Bard, White Mage). Most of your kit is locked behind these upgrades, so take them and never look back. You lose absolutely nothing and have no reason whatsoever to switch back to a generic class.

Hope all that helps!

[Justin]

Jocat recently did a good video on what to expect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM08VrEs6k

[Benevolent]

One thing that I learned from various YouTube videos (and highly recommend following), is solely focus on your MSQ (Main Scenario Quest) and Call Quests (these unlocked every 5 levels per class). You can waste hours running side questions and grinding enemies and suddenly you're level 20 and you have only completed you level 10 class quest and MSQ. As a result, you feel like you need to rush through the story to get caught up to your level.
The Class Quests and MSQ give you more than enough experience to flow quite naturally through the levels. There will be brief periods where you need to grind a level or 2, but that minor. Doing Daily Duties and the odd dungeon as you unlock them also help a lot for experience.

Also, you can unlock a job once you've completed the appropriate level 30 class story. However, you can't actually unlock a job until you've reached one of the level 22 MSQ. So that's another reason to not get too far ahead of the MSQ.

Have fun and welcome!

[weiss]

the hardest part is to survive the basegame, from there on gets everything better. if it dosnt gets better for you at that point (like when you reach heavensward) is the game (which is very story driven) nothing for you. so you will run a lot from npc to npc, with lots of dialogue, so be ready for that, tho really important cutscenes are voiced. x3 voiced cutscenes get with every addon more frequent too and better. you can literarly see how the experience on the dev team grown with each addon ^^'

technicly, jocats video is pretty on point xD.

[Citronvand]

1. Don't bother with normal yellow '!' sidequests. Focus instead on the MSQ (Main Scenario Quest) and the blue '!' that also has a little '+' as they unlock content.

2. Only leveleing a single job will make you overleveled and 'waste' MSQ xp so don't be afraid to level up multiple jobs if that is something you are interested in.

3. The Story is a BIG part of the game and it is recommended that you don't skip cutscenes e.t.c. even though the beginning is a bit of a slog. It will pay off later.

4. Personal experience/opinion: I thought the combat was really boring at level 30. Don't worry though, it will get a lot better later when you unlock more skills, especially those that can be used outside of the global cooldown aka OGDC skills.

[Will]

Originally posted by saYnt:

just about to play for the first time, anything I need to know before hand? best server for new players in UK/EU?

I just finished having to replay the entire story because i was a brainlet that skipped all the cutscenes, dont do what i did.

[Thorley23]

Speaking of the mentor system and the newbie channel, how does one exactly meet a mentor? I got the tutorial for it, but I've literally seen nobody with the mentor tag. Even if they didn't help me out much I'd like access to the newbie channel. It actually seems kind of counter intuitive that you'd meet a mentor to get access to newbie resources, as opposed to using the newbie resources to meet a mentor.

[weiss]

Originally posted by Thorley23:

Speaking of the mentor system and the newbie channel, how does one exactly meet a mentor? I got the tutorial for it, but I've literally seen nobody with the mentor tag. Even if they didn't help me out much I'd like access to the newbie channel. It actually seems kind of counter intuitive that you'd meet a mentor to get access to newbie resources, as opposed to using the newbie resources to meet a mentor.

i would recomment to you to AVOID the mentor chat or mentors in general. 80% of them know everything better and if they make a mistake was it YOUR fault ... not theirs.

if you have a mentor with a sword in your group, be prepared that said person is probably like described because they did so much stuff vs you with your little sproud icon and you are nothing compared to them

but if you really want to be in the mentor chat ... where i would say to avoid said mentor chat too, talk to a person with a crown next to their name. they will invite you.

i hope you run into the 20% which are not like described.
edit:
this only counts for EU/NA servers. peoples say that on the japanese ones are mentors the best into what you can run ö..ö

[Igni]

Socialize, be friendly, try to find a free company with like-minded people.

Seriously, just those three things will vastly improve your in-game experience.

[Benevolent]

Another thing. Once you reach level 15 talking to the "Smith" guy with the green sprout over his head (usually found in the main cities near the inn, but also scattered in other areas in the open world.) He will let you do a series of training duties. You get a good set of gear as you go through it and at the end you get a ring to equip that give you a 30% exp boost up until level 30.

You can do this quest for all role types (healer, tank and dps.)

[Cpaw]

If your new, then let me warn you before you spend to much cash on it, most classes have "100" skills you need to use...
So if your like me that just wanna jump in and do some healing now and then, just forget it, you need to learn to use "100" skills first..(thats why my healing jobs are collecting dust.)