Guide FFXIV: Tips and Advice

[Mitsuki]

Do you have any general or personal tips/advice you can give us, especially for new players? Maybe you have your own questions and would like a personal feedback/help from our community. Here's the place to do it!

Since the world of Eorzea is huge, it's hard to narrow things down in one go, so here's a more laid-back discussion or Q&A if you have anything specific in mind.

My tips to new players:

-No such thing as 'useless' items. Even if they don't sell well in the market or are only 1 Gil in the Market Board, chances are, they will serve a purpose as we get patch updates. Also depends on supply and demand.

-Hit the main scenarios as soon as possible until you unlock the quest for chocobos. It will help you in your travels and save you on teleportation fees.

-Use a chocobo porter instead of teleporting everywhere. Seriously, those little teleporting fees will add up, especially if you're still new to the game.

-Continue main scenarios until you unlock retainers. You can use them to sell your stuff in the market. You can have two free retainers, each with 20 available slots to hold items for sale.

-If you're out of things to sell but would like to make quick Gil, hit the vendors for Mineral Water, Distilled Water, Rock Salt, Quicksilver, Rubbers, etc for 4 - 20 Gil. Check the Market Board first and see how much they're going for. If it's more than 100 Gil a piece, buy that item, sell high but in lower quantities, or sell low but in higher quantities. Up to you. Last week I was lucky enough to catch the Growth Formula Alpha/Beta/Gamma. Alphas (the lowest level) were selling for 900 Gil a piece. o.o The market changes drastically so it really depends.

-Spiritbond your gear/tool/weapons (from all classes) to 100%. Don't discard unless there is no option to convert them into materia. Crafting/Gathering materia sells particularly well in the Market Board.

-Undercut other people's items in the Market Board. If it seems like there's a little 'war' going on with undercutting items, it's probably time to stop. Some items are not meant to be sold cheap especially if you've gathered HQ ones, so hold off on selling those items and try again next time.

-If you see people selling items for cheap and you know for a fact that they're essential (and high in demand) in crafting recipes, grab some if not all. Then you can set your new price and start a trend - that's the fun part. In all seriousness, you never know when they'll go up in price again and you need them for something later on. So might wanna stock and save up anyway.

-Control Lamia's economy.


...I'm probably missing most of the basic essential tips in the game, but I'll let others get to it.

 

[Linnaete]

Duty calls! Your first dungeon:

DISCLAIMER: I have no tanking experience, so I can't say anything about how tanking in this game works.

- Yes. Queue times for DPS players will be extraordinarily long compared to healer and tank queues. It's simply because there are a lot more DPS players running around the realm. To pass the time as you wait for your dungeon duty to pop up, you can go elsewhere. Do some FATEs. Do some Levequests. Go screw around in the Gold Saucer. Or find some people to queue with to dramatically cut down on the wait.

- If you are a DPS or healer, the first cardinal rule of dungeons is that you NEVER run ahead of the tank. It is the tank who chiefly dictates the pacing of the dungeon, barring certain circumstances. You are not helping the survival chances of your party or the speed of the completion if you are bouncing ahead pulling everything that moves.

- If you have enmity and mobs are chewing your face in, try not to run AWAY from the tank. Simple survival instincts makes this understandable. You're under attack, so you run. But in dungeons, mobs don't care how far away you run. They won't break their contact with you until you either kill them, they kill you, or someone else pulls them off of you. When you have enmity, STAY NEAR THE TANK, so he or she can easily reestablish enmity.

- If you are an Arcanist, you will notice you have a healing spell: Physick. Unless there is an emergency situation where your Physick can mean the difference between life and death (I very much doubt it, but you never know), there should never be a need in a dungeon to use this spell. Your healing potency with that Physick is likely to be a fraction of that of a Conjurer's Cure spell. I have seen dungeon runs with Arcanists running around throwing Physicks on party members with 75% health. Let the healer handle it. Your job is to keep the DoTs (damage over time abilities) ticking.

- Healers' primary role is to heal, yes. A good healer however, can dance between the different stances and dish out some DPS when it isn't absolutely necessary to heal. If the party is in good shape and you have assessed that no one is about to be wrecked in the next five seconds, why not throw out a Stone spell and an Aero now and then? Sure, it won't speed up the kill by a dramatic amount, but every little helps. It's better to be proactively dishing out some damage than to stand there twiddling your thumbs.

- There's absolutely no need to fire off a Physick or Cure if the target's HP is at 85%. To "overheal" is to essentially be MP inefficient. Additionally, spamming Medica at every opportunity is not only bad for your MP, especially when you are a Conjurer/White Mage, but it can have every mob enemy in the room suddenly switch from the tank to you. Try not to do that.

- NEVER be afraid of stating in chat to your party that you are new. These days, with low level dungeons often a requirement for Level 50 endgame players to rush through for certain rewards at the end (like Animus books and Tomestones for equipment), high level players often just default straight to speed-run mode, which can and will be intimidating for fresh new players. State from the outset that you are new and never underestimate the importance of communication.

- Likewise, don't wallow in silence if you're unsure of the strategy for a boss ahead. Ask your group: hey guys, what are the tactics for this guy here? This isn't Binding Coil of Bahamut or the Extreme Primals where you really can't afford to go in blind and expect to succeed. In earlier dungeons, it is completely reasonable for a player to go in blind and unaware of how the bosses work. If you're not sure, simply ask. There are bad eggs in the FFXIV community (as with all communities), but most players are happy to quickly devote 10 seconds of their time to explain.

- ULTIMATELY, take these leveling dungeons (up to your first lvl 50) as an extended learning experience, which is what the leveling process is. All of this is to slowly introduce you and test you on mechanics and procedures that you will encounter in abundance come endgame time. If you're going through the game desiring only to be carried without properly learning how to play your role/job, then I'm sorry, but you will be wrecked at endgame level while garnering little to no fun from it, and rightfully so.

 

[Harlequin]

Crafting

- Crafting in Eorzea can be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as not crafting. During your adventures you'll frequently need the services of a Disciple of Hand, whether it's for a decent set of gear early on or materia melding for your relic weapon. When it comes to prices you'll quickly learn how unscrupulous DoHs can be with their wares and services; they know exactly what you need and ruthlessly exploit that necessity. In the long run you're better off investing some of your time in crafting.

- Materials are easily procured early on. The vendors in the respective DoH guilds offer almost every basic material required to craft early recipes, but soon you'll find ingredients hard to come by and just like their DoH counterparts, Disciples of Land want as much bang for their buck as possible. Take up a DoL class. If you're starting off as a Carpenter, Weaver or Alchemist then go for Botanist. If Blacksmith, Armorer, Goldsmith and Leatherworker are more your thing, be a Miner.

- Levelling in FFXIV can be a tedious process, but DoHs have it comparatively easy to other disciplines. You get a big bonus in EXP for completing a recipe for the first time, your experience scales with your quality percentage upon crafting any item and "turn in" quests like Leves and Grand Company provision missions offer you the chance to snipe a bargain off the Market Board and cheat your way to success. Turn in high quality items to double the reward (experience included). Later on you'll even be given the opportunity to grind daily Ixal beast quests for great EXP gains, along with other benefits.

- You'll soon come to realise that no DoH class (with the possible exception of Culinarian) is independent of the other classes, but it's rather like a web of interdependence. Blacksmiths aren't only working with metals, but wood from Carpenters, reagents from Alchemists and leather from Leatherworkers. The materials you can't procure and craft yourself can be bought on the Market Board, but as a general rule of thumb DIY is always better than expenditure in the long run (and chances are you're being ripped off).

- It's generally advised to level every DoH class to at least level 15 in order to grab the useful cross class abilities. The more of these abilities you incorporate into your crafting, the easier (and more profitable) the whole DoH experience will be for you. Star crafting demands a big pool of cross class skills, two of which are generally considered indispensable: the Blacksmith's Ingenuity and the Carpenter's (correction!) Byregot's Blessing. It's a long road to master crafting; Rome wasn't built in a day.

- When one of your DoH classes reaches level 30 you can unlock Desynthesis, a process that allows you to break down items and salvage their materials. Do not neglect desynthesis, it's one of the best ways of grabbing high level materials at a bargain and the only way of obtaining demimateria short of buying them from the Market at (you guessed it) a premium.

- Desynthesis is currently the only aspect of crafting that forces the player into making a decision on where they'd like to specialise. There is a point cap of 350, with the max point investment in any one class set at 110 meaning a maximum of three classes reaching their full desynth potential. You'll want to hit those sky high numbers rather than spread the points evenly in every class to ensure you're getting the best items from desynthesis.

- Desynth points are only acquired by desynthesising items, with diminishing returns similar to EXP. The rate of success is entirely dependent on desynth points, irrespective of your current class' level. Expect progress to slow down dramatically from 50 points onwards.

 

[Thief of Hearts Joker]

Aggro Levels and What you can do to avoid hateful stuff from your parties!

-First off this is normal for new players joining dungeons/parties to not know how aggros works, it is based off player skills and frequency of attacks/heals used in combat with multiple monsters you do not want to provoke the monsters aggro off the tank since this not only risks wiping and wasted time but can also lead to players(namely the tank) to quit.

-If you are a DPS Class such as a Archer/Lancer/etc. you need to watch your aggro meter next to your icon in the party list, there should be a 1,2,3,4 labeled on each party member in combat the tank should always be #1 on this listing if you're #2 and moving close to #1 's spot take a breather for a few moments and let the tank keep his aggro. This happens ALOT with Rogue and Archer Classes since their attacks are very quick they can steal aggro off the tank the fastest.

-If you are a Healer you're just as much at risk to steal aggro as a archer, if you constantly spam your heals on the party you're putting yourself on the chopping block, gauge how much you heal on the party and only heal when a member is around 50-60% hp, only use AoE heals when party members are around 60-65% hp total. Try to keep your healing to a minimal on DPS unless its absolutely needed keeping your tank alive is the most important part.

-AoE's are yet another no no for dungeons/mob fights, unless you are speed running something or the tank is a marauder who can spam his AoE never use it outside of boss battles, you will steal aggro of the other mobs off the tank by hitting them, most tanks only have single target skills, the ones that have multi-target ones cost alot of TP/MP and cannot be spammed to help cover you.

-IMPORTANT This rule is kinda the most important, Focus on the same enemy as your tank, this should be a given but I've been with many a new party that just hits the nearest enemy moving, most tanks will mark (place a marker with 1,2,3 order above monsters) monsters to show the order, but even if they do or dont you must focus on the monster your tank is attacking, this keeps you from dying from aggroing a monster or dividing heals off your tank, this also brings down monsters alot faster.

Pretty much sums it up in a nutshell, Watch how often you attack, Keep a eye on your aggro meter, Focus as a team on the same target for great results.