A couple of new player questions

[eliot]

first, thanks for reading this post and i hope you can help me out.

i have a copy of ff xi on the way from ebay and have been doing a lot of research so that i'm not a total noob on my first day. anyway, i have a couple easy questions i was hoping to get help with.

1) i'm leaning toward windurst as my starting town for various reasons. the major con here i've read is distance toward common lvling grounds 10-20 (dunes). is the distance that big of a deal? will i be kicking myself for choosing windurst b/c of the trek?

2) you start w/ only 30 bag slots and a mog safe. if i fill up all my bag slots in a place like dunes do i have to leave loot until i go all the way back to my hometown and deposit in my mog safe?

3) i've read that the AH's are separate. are the starting town AH's still active? or am i not going to be able to really use it until jeuno?

4) i'm also somewhat worried about the missions. it seems like early in the game's life there were tons of people working on the missions and so finding a pt to do them would not be terribly difficult. is this going to be hard to the point of impossible? i don't want to drop 500000 gil for a airship pass cause i can't find groups to get rank 5.

sry if that's a lot of questions. just trying to get a handle on the game. eliot the taru WHM should be storming an FF XI server in the next couple weeks .

[Tatsuhara]

Re: A couple of new player questions

Join Hades! :D

[DustyThePirate]

Re: A couple of new player questions

I havn't played in like a year, just returning tonight actually, but I think I can help.

1) You'll kick yourself hard. But honestly, by the time you're r eady, you'll have people willing to escourt you. BUT the boatride is really fun.

*) You can switch hometowns. I'd go with Sandy, t'is closer.

2) It takes a long time to do stuff... so like... you won't be filling your stuffs up... Yeah, don't even worry.

3) AHs are all active. Jeuno is massive, but there are always AHs going down.. cept... blah.. Windy never had a great one because nobody is there. The missions imo were pretty fun, but like, Sandy has a strong AH.

4) I did the first few missions solo. And by the time you lvl up, you'll have met plenty of people and surely joined a linkshell.

[Aksannyi]

Re: A couple of new player questions

1. I wouldn't worry too much about this, and really there are plenty of other places to level besides the dunes. If you feel like it's an issue to travel, either ask for some higher level help to escort you there or solo a few more levels before you go.

2. Use the auto-sort feature, put things up in a bazaar. You will only be able to hold 30 items until you do the gobbiebag quests. You might want to sell lower value items to NPCs in Selbina. I wouldn't recommend staying at the Dunes all the time from 10-20, though. You will want to get back to town to sell your outdated gear, buy new gear, and just take a break from xp-ing. After you make your initial trip to the dunes you can travel to one of the closer nations if you wish.

3. All the separate towns' AHs are still active. You won't find much there, but there is plenty of low level armor to be found there, though my advice is to find out if a merchant in your town sells what you are looking for, as it's usually cheaper that way.

4. Rank 1 missions can generally be soloed. I actually soloed quite a few of my missions up until rank 5, but just keep in mind that you'll need to get some levels before attempting most of them. Finding a group to help with the dragon fight shouldn't be difficult, and if you get a good social/rank/help linkshell you shouldn't have any trouble finding someone to help you out.


EDIT: I second Tat's post - join Hades! As long as I'm around and I'm not busy, I'll help you out with missions and other such stuff. That goes for you, too, Tat.

[Tekumel]

Re: A couple of new player questions

1. Not really. Valkurm is 3 zones and a ship ride away from Windurst, which you can pretty easily do at level 10 as long as you're careful. I'd recommend packing gear ahead if at all possible so you don't have to make the trip back to re-equip as you progress to 20.

2. You can always NPC anything you don't want to keep. The dunes doesn't offer TOO much in the way of drops worth keeping, so I don't think it'll be that big of an issue. The biggest worry will be gear.

3. The starting cities AH are pretty active, for level appropriate gear. For anything 1-20, they're pretty good. Anything above that is really sketchy, Jeuno is definitely the place to go. Crafting materials can be found in Jeuno, as well as the home city to that guild (Woodworking materials are common in San d'Oria, cooking in Windurst, etc.).

4. Rank 5 is really overrated on the difficulty. I can only speak from a San d'Orian perspective, as that's all I've ever played but...as long as you have Sneak & Invis, there's really only 3 missions from Rank 1-5 that you'll need help with. The Dragon fight, at Mission 2-3, the Delkfutt's tower climb at 3-3, and the Beadaux portion of the Magicite Mission 4-3. Other than that, Sneak & Invis can get you anywhere you need to go. (Admittedly, this is expensive if you need to use items instead of the spells. But you say WHM, so you should be good.)

Hope that helps a bit.

EDIT: Screw Hades! Come rock out with your sock out on Kujata!

[DustyThePirate]

Re: A couple of new player questions

Hey, could that go for me too? I'll be up and running in like, 30min. ^^

If you're offering help, I'll join Hades with a suggestion for like, nationality n whatnot. Seeing as I don't think gold pass is going to work out. >.>

[little ninja]

Re: A couple of new player questions

first, thanks for reading this post and i hope you can help me out.
i have a copy of ff xi on the way from ebay and have been doing a lot of research so that i'm not a total noob on my first day. anyway, i have a couple easy questions i was hoping to get help with.
1) i'm leaning toward windurst as my starting town for various reasons. the major con here i've read is distance toward common lvling grounds 10-20 (dunes). is the distance that big of a deal? will i be kicking myself for choosing windurst b/c of the trek?
2) you start w/ only 30 bag slots and a mog safe. if i fill up all my bag slots in a place like dunes do i have to leave loot until i go all the way back to my hometown and deposit in my mog safe?
3) i've read that the AH's are separate. are the starting town AH's still active? or am i not going to be able to really use it until jeuno?
4) i'm also somewhat worried about the missions. it seems like early in the game's life there were tons of people working on the missions and so finding a pt to do them would not be terribly difficult. is this going to be hard to the point of impossible? i don't want to drop 500000 gil for a airship pass cause i can't find groups to get rank 5.
sry if that's a lot of questions. just trying to get a handle on the game. eliot the taru WHM should be storming an FF XI server in the next couple weeks .

1) Bastok is probably the easiest place to go from 1-12. Since it resides near mountains. Thus it puts the mobs closer together. thus you can pretty much steam roll thru the early lvls. 1a) its closer to the starting off meeting place in the dunes. everyone meets near the npc next to the highland zone. from 10-14. so to come thru windy or sandy youd have to cross over a zone of gobs. That is unless you lvl to 15 near those zones, then you want have a problem.

2) If you fill up your 30 bag slot, you will be passed when the system does its auto loot roll. or you will be forced to pass otherwise stuff drops, an nobody get the item.

3) For low lvls the starting towns are very active. Thats where crafters go, an other lower lvl jobs get there gear from. The jeuno A.H is for higher lvl transactions. They are not tide in. So jeuno is different then bastok, thats differnt from sandy, thats diffdernt from windy.

4) Actually im not sure about missions, I do know that there are alot of young ls's out there. An you will quickly be joining one. From there i noticed with my Mules. The newer ls crowds are alot more helpful then they were in the early days. So most likely they will be lending a hand to help you out. as long as they feel youve earned it. Then again When you join a realm/server. Visit other sites an see what starting cities are all 1 group. Youd be surprised there are alot of Bastok only linkshells out there. As well as other city only shells.

[eliot]

Re: A couple of new player questions

wow, didn't expect all the responses so fast. thx guys. i also wasn't going to ask what server to join, but it looks like i already got a couple of suggestions .

1) i was kind of thinking that, even if the trip was long it would make it that much more fun. esp. b/c it ended in a boat ride . i honestly think that one of the best times in any mmorpg is that first long trip from your noobie zone, dodging "high" lvl monsters, scared to death trying to get some place else. good times. thx for the advice here.

one more question, of the crafting professions i'm most interested in fishing and cooking and i read somewhere that windurst was the best starting town for this. any advice here would be appreciated.

[Tatsuhara]

Re: A couple of new player questions

You don't need to start a craft as soon as you start, but it would be a good way to burn gil away... Unless you do a low-gil eating craft. Smithing is not one of them.

[Tekumel]

Re: A couple of new player questions

wow, didn't expect all the responses so fast. thx guys. i also wasn't going to ask what server to join, but it looks like i already got a couple of suggestions .

1) i was kind of thinking that, even if the trip was long it would make it that much more fun. esp. b/c it ended in a boat ride . i honestly think that one of the best times in any mmorpg is that first long trip from your noobie zone, dodging "high" lvl monsters, scared to death trying to get some place else. good times. thx for the advice here.

one more question, of the crafting professions i'm most interested in fishing and cooking and i read somewhere that windurst was the best starting town for this. any advice here would be appreciated.

Windurst would be ideal for those two crafts, as both the Fishing & Culinary (Cooking) guilds are located there. Fishing is a good way to make money early, once you can afford a decent rod (Hume is a good starting rod, and relatively cheap), and some bait. They are also complimentary crafts, as Cooking makes many types of fishing bait (such as the ever popular Insect Ball), and Fishing will get you ingredients for later Cooking recipes (such as Fish Mithkabobs, the various types of Sushi, etc.).

I wouldn't suggest diving into crafting right away. Even though both of those crafts are fairly cheap, that's still money that at early levels would be better spent equipping yourself in good gear & making sure that any & all spells are up to date. I wouldn't recommend crafting until you are able to buy equipment & scrolls BEFORE you need them.

[little ninja]

Re: A couple of new player questions

Fishing isnt worth the time or effort if you ask me. But cooking is a nice, easy craft to lvl early on. An yes if you want to do cooking or fishing. windy is the place to start out at.. Because thats the place you need to be to join the cooking an fishing guild..

[Tekumel]

Re: A couple of new player questions

Fishing isnt worth the time or effort if you ask me. But cooking is a nice, easy craft to lvl early on. An yes if you want to do cooking or fishing. windy is the place to start out at.. Because thats the place you need to be to join the cooking an fishing guild..

I don't know if I'd go that far Ninja...it's a good way to pass time, make some money while LFP, waiting on the airship, whatever. I didn't mind it for the easy crafting ingredients either...bastore sardines are easy as hell to catch (can easily catch them at 0 skill), and are used in quite a few cooking recipes that are off the beaten path, but cheaper to skill up on than the "recommended" recipes. Like Fish Broth...they were great for that one.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: A couple of new player questions

first, thanks for reading this post and i hope you can help me out.

i have a copy of ff xi on the way from ebay and have been doing a lot of research so that i'm not a total noob on my first day. anyway, i have a couple easy questions i was hoping to get help with.

1) i'm leaning toward windurst as my starting town for various reasons. the major con here i've read is distance toward common lvling grounds 10-20 (dunes). is the distance that big of a deal? will i be kicking myself for choosing windurst b/c of the trek?

2) you start w/ only 30 bag slots and a mog safe. if i fill up all my bag slots in a place like dunes do i have to leave loot until i go all the way back to my hometown and deposit in my mog safe?

3) i've read that the AH's are separate. are the starting town AH's still active? or am i not going to be able to really use it until jeuno?

4) i'm also somewhat worried about the missions. it seems like early in the game's life there were tons of people working on the missions and so finding a pt to do them would not be terribly difficult. is this going to be hard to the point of impossible? i don't want to drop 500000 gil for a airship pass cause i can't find groups to get rank 5.

sry if that's a lot of questions. just trying to get a handle on the game. eliot the taru WHM should be storming an FF XI server in the next couple weeks .

(1) If you're inclined to go with Windurst, go with it. Many players who have done the missions regard Windurt's Rank Mission storyline to be the most compelling and interesting of them all. The distance from Windurst to Valkurm is large, but its really a minor inconvienice in when set against the big picture of the game.

Plus no other city has a really huge tree and a large population of mithra like Windy does.

(2) as you progress you'll get quests to expand your inventory, so look for these opportunites. Until then, sell the things you don't need or make an extra character to store them on.

(3) The AHs in the starting cities are all pretty much geared to handle your needs at low level. The Jeuno AH is a catch-all, so you can find pretty much anything you'd want at any level there save for rares.

(4) If you have items/spells that allow you to move undetected by monsters, you'll be fine on your own to do most missions. If you have any problems and have make some higher level friends, they should be more than willing make some time and help you. Just be sure to return the favor when your character is strong enough to do so.