New player saying hi

[Jessamy]

Re: New player saying hi

Thanks for the info about the quests. I'll have to keep that on my ever-growing to-do list. I definitely see the advantages of being able to travel to any district from my Mog house. I was running around today completing some of the quests in town and spent a good chunk of time running here and there. I think I'll give the first mission a go for a change of pace when I log back in.

Thanks again!

[Armando]

Re: New player saying hi

By the way, here's some tips for when you solo. I haven't played in quite a while so hopefully they're not outdated.
* Always target Easy Prey mobs, you can tack on a Decent Challenge if you have over 100 TP and you know your Weapon Skill will take away most of its life.
* Use Attack-boosting foods like Meat Jerky
* Don't waste MP enfeebling Easy Prey monsters, you're gonna kill it quickly. If you're playing White Mage or Red Mage you want that MP for Cure, if you're playing Black Mage (without a sub job) then you want to use nukes to kill faster.
* Abuse Fields of Valor and Grounds of Valor for free EXP and money. If you're using a job with MP, get the Refresh buff. Regen will help you on jobs without Cure.
* Always ask the gate guards for Signet before leaving town. Sell stuff in the Auction House, sort your inventory regularly and don't throw away Beastmen's Seals under any circumstance.
* You can often find low level equipment and spells at NPC shops much cheaper than at the Auction House. I hear there's hardly any low or mid level gear in the Auction House these days anyways... Use the GamerEscape FFXI wiki to see where items can be bought.

Basically when soloing you want to rely on melee as much as possible, since melee attacks don't cost anything. Each job has one or two weapons it performs best with. You'll want to use the highest DPS weapon within that category (except Thief, which technically excels at daggers but daggers suck before level 33. Swords are better 'til then.) Use FFXIAH's power search to look for weapons of a certain type and level range and sort the results by DPS to know what to get.

I hear leveling up is super easy these days but hopefully that'll make it even easier.

[Squiggs]

Re: New player saying hi

I'll have to keep that on my ever-growing to-do list.

Just an FYI, but that list never seems to get smaller. I'm two years in and the list grows daily.

I haven't played in quite a while so hopefully they're not outdated

Also, nothing here is outdated. It all very much still applies.

[Elwynn]

Re: New player saying hi

You'll want to use the highest DPS weapon within that category (except Thief, which technically excels at daggers but daggers suck before level 33.

I think I noticed that when leveling DNC. WIth all skills blue, I got better damage from bare-knuckles H2H at low levels. Of course DNC doesn't get to use half the daggers anyhow, just the kitchen knives.

[Jessamy]

Re: New player saying hi

Armando, for someone who hasn't played in a while, you still have lots of good advice. Thank you. I'm glad you warned me about the DC mobs. I've been fighting EP and DC. I assumed those were both the level I should go after. I've been leveling WAR so far, so maybe that's why I've been able to survive the DC mobs. I haven't tried anything higher than that though because I've noticed that it usually does take one Weapon Skill attack to keep it a fair fight. I've also been avoiding mobs when there are a few together that might all aggro. I imagine it wouldn't end pretty.

By the way, I've convinced my husband to play with me so at least now I'll have some support when I play. Actually, your advice about magic is timely. He will probably play a magic class to start so he'll need to know about MP management.

Thanks again to everyone who's offered advice. I'm trying to be self-sufficient (Lord knows there's enough on the web about this game!) but the tidbits you're sharing are definitely appreciated. It's funny because I can definitely see how they've been speeding up XP gains over the years. I've been using this thread:

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/ffx...-see-here.html

as a guide to help me acclimate to the world, and my character is leveling much, much faster than this guy did doing the same things.

Oh, and Squiggs, I'm glad to hear the list keeps growing and growing. I'm assuming after two years you're still enjoying the game?

[Armando]

Re: New player saying hi

I've been fighting EP and DC. I assumed those were both the level I should go after. I've been leveling WAR so far, so maybe that's why I've been able to survive the DC mobs.

When properly geared you should be able to fight Decent Challenges, it's just that they'll wear you down more and ultimately cause you to have to stop and rest early.

I should've mentioned, if you're playing WAR, you want to use Axes. I hate how the game starts you off with a sword, because it's very misleading. Either one-handed or two-handed axes is fine for soloing (though the first two-handed axe doesn't come until level 5.) One-handed axes have the advantage of letting you equip a shield, two-handed axes are more useful in full parties since WARs rarely tank and two-handed axes give you Shield Break, a Weapon Skill that totally cripples the mob's Evasion. Shield Break is so useful I strongly advocate only using that Weapon Skill until around level 50 when in parties. Also, two-handed weapons give you higher Attack and Accuracy.

If you're going to be playing with your husband, Easy Prey mobs may be too easy for the both of you. You may need to bump it up to Decent Challenge to avoid running out of mobs too fast. Another thing to consider when duoing is performing Skillchains and Magic Bursts. These tactics stopped being used in full group settings a couple of years back because of reasons I'm not gonna go into here unless you really want to know, but they're still powerful against the easier monsters. Just try to be in sync with your partner's TP - Skillchaining may not be useful if you're gaining TP twice as fast as he is. That's because most Weapon Skills are less efficient when used above 100 TP. Two 100 TP WS are better than one 200 TP WS.

On the topic of aggro and links, be warned that few things except the obvious (beastmen, undead) will aggro in newbie areas, but as you progress through the game you'll start to see bees, crabs, pugils, bats, etc that are aggressive. There's a number of detection methods in the game but early on you'll mostly have to worry about sight and sound. Sight-aggro monsters only aggro if you cross a cone-shaped area in front of them that represents their field of vision. You can walk right next to them, even bump into them, but as long as you don't get in front of them you're fine. Sound-aggro mobs will aggro as long as you're anywhere near them in any direction, but their aggro distance is shorter than sight mobs. You should also be careful around Undead and Arcana (Bombs and Elementals.) Undead aggro by sound but can also aggro by low HP - as your HP changes color from yellow to orange to red, their aggro radius will grow. All arcana aggro to magic, so be careful when there's a weather effect present because there'll be elementals around. Elementals don't aggro by any other means, Bombs can still aggro you by sight but they're more short-sighted than other mobs. By the way, bombs can self-destruct and if they do that with high HP it'll hurt a lot and possibly kill you. Bees can do it too.

In addition to aggroing methods, there's also tracking. Some enemies don't track and if you gain a big enough lead on them, they'll lose track of you. Others track by scent and will chase you to the end of the earths (or until you zone out) even if you can no longer see them unless you apply Deodorize on yourself, it starts to rain, or you cross a river.

Some enemies can also link, meaning they'll jump into a fight if they detect another mob of their type is in aggro mode. Some mobs that don't aggro do link. The important thing with linking is that the mob must detect the mob you aggro'd, not you. For example, you could pull a Goblin from outside its aggro range with a ranged attack, but if that Goblin passes in front of another Goblin's cone of vision, Gobiln 2 will aggro too even if it's too far away to see you. On the other hand, if Goblin 2 has its back turned to Goblin 1, it won't link. Obviously sound-aggro mobs are the worst when it comes to linking since as long as they're all near each other there's no way to pull just one.

It's good to learn these concepts early on before you start venturing into more dangerous areas. Start experimenting with running behind Goblins or seeing how close you can get to sound-aggro mobs before they'll aggro. By the way, stay the hell away from Ghosts and Slimes. They have very high damage resistance against weapons so even if the game says "Decent Challenge" it won't be a fair fight. Skeletons are also bad too, they have slight damage resistance and some powerful or obnoxious TP moves. Undead hounds are OK. If you do need to fight skeletons or ghosts, the spell Banish will remove their damage resistance for a short while.

By the way, enemies will almost always use a TP move when they reach 25% health and will start using TP moves frequently below that point.

EDIT: By the way, the person that does the first move on a mob gets extra hate. If you're gonna duo it's important that the person that's going to be tanking be the one to claim the mob.

[Squiggs]

Re: New player saying hi

Oh, and Squiggs, I'm glad to hear the list keeps growing and growing. I'm assuming after two years you're still enjoying the game?

I love it. I'm not the type to keep playing something just because of time I have already invested in. The minute I stop having fun will be my last minute in-game.


Edit: Also, as a Warrior, read Armando's sticky in the Warrior section on this forum. It goes more in depth about Shield Break than he did above. I can't seem to get the link to work, but it's the top one in that section. I wish I had found it before I started playing Warrior, it'll change your (figurative and in-game only) life.

[Jessamy]

Re: New player saying hi

I'll be sure to check out Armando's sticky in the Warrior forum. I already took his advice and bought an axe. I opted for the 2-handed. The thing sure is slow, but it hits like a truck.

My husband started playing with me this afternoon. His character is named Umberto. We ran across an old man NPC in Bastok named Umberto. I said it's his character come back from the future to warn him against something.

We'll have to practice the skill chains and magic bursts. Right now he's just getting used to combat as a Red Mage and gaining some levels to catch up with me. So far so good!

Glad to hear you're enjoying the game so much after two years, Squiggs. Part of me feels intimidated by the amount of content in front of me (Will I ever get to see it all?), but the other part of me loves that there's so much to do and explore. If only there were more hours in the day.

[Armando]

Re: New player saying hi

We'll have to practice the skill chains and magic bursts. Right now he's just getting used to combat as a Red Mage and gaining some levels to catch up with me. So far so good!

Don't worry too much about the Skillchains just yet, odds are you won't have many options right now. They'll open up as you level up and learn more Weapon skills. The basic thing you need to understand is that a Lv.1 Skillchain will do 50% of the Weapon Skill's damage, Lv.2 will do 60%. So ideally you want to start the Skillchain with the weaker Weapon Skill and close it with the stronger one. Since the skillchain power is based on the WS power, there's not much sense in picking much weaker WS just to pull off a Skillchain either since the Skillchain itself will also be weak. Magic Bursts will add around 33% more damage to the spell and make the spell less likely to be resisted.

Part of me feels intimidated by the amount of content in front of me (Will I ever get to see it all?), but the other part of me loves that there's so much to do and explore. If only there were more hours in the day.

The Abyssea add-ons pretty much sped the hell up out of the game. The level cap for most missions was removed (for example, the Chains of Promathia missions used to cap you to level 30, then 40, etc as you progressed) so you can blitz through them with high level help and I hear you can easily hit level 90 in less than 2 months. Some older players don't like the changes but it's definitely a huge boon to someone that's just begun.

My advice to you is to go at your own pace. Don't dilly-dally too much because the sooner you hit the high levels, the sooner you can start seeing everything FFXI has to offer. But once you reach the high levels, do take some time to smell the roses. Vana'diel is huge. I'm sure a lot of the older zones are pretty desolate right now because of lack of things to do there any more, but if you do some exploring you'll find some breathtaking sights in the outdoor zones and secret passageways in the dungeon zones. Some dungeons have fake walls that you can run through, for example.

I'm sure you won't have too much trouble seeing everything you want to see. If you had joined before Abyssea, it would've been a different story.

[cidbahamut]

Re: New player saying hi

We'll have to practice the skill chains and magic bursts. Right now he's just getting used to combat as a Red Mage and gaining some levels to catch up with me. So far so good!

I'm going to go ahead and offer some advice now: start saving up gil for Phalanx. It's become very expensive lately, but if he's enjoying Red Mage by the time he gets to the level he can learn it, it will just make his day. It turns Red Mage into a bit of a monster at low levels and I was thrilled with the results back when I was leveling Red Mage as a new player. Alternatively, you guys can do the Burning Circle Notorious Monster(BCNM) fights for it using beastmen seals.


Since no one else seems to have mentioned it, doing this line of quests is probably the single greatest thing you can do to improve your quality of life in FFXI: The Gobbiebag Part I - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more

[Squiggs]

Re: New player saying hi

Part of me feels intimidated by the amount of content in front of me (Will I ever get to see it all?),

Probably not, but it's a good goal to have. One of the things I did while levelling was to take a day (or more) off from the grind and explore. I went to places (and died) that I had never been before. I learned the hard way that having snk and inv as a whm does me no good in Ro'Maeve (the magic aggro on arcana that was mentioned above).

[pxch]

Re: New player saying hi

by the way what server are you on. I ddidn't see it listed. If your on cerberus send me your ingame name I will send you some axes tonight.

[Jessamy]

Re: New player saying hi

Thanks again for all of the advice. I feel like our start in the game has gone very smoothly thanks to everything I've learned on these forums.

We decided to play on Valefor. I had been browsing the forums before starting to play and saw that server name pop up frequently along with Cerberus. I opted for Valefor. So far it's been okay. My husband and I have been playing together, or I've been off killing things solo, so the population on the server hasn't made an impact so far. I do see people running around Bastok so at least it doesn't feel like I'm playing in a ghost town. Running into people in the zones around Bastok is a different story, but at least it means I'm not competing for mobs!

I have noticed that prices can vary considerably between servers. If I had known more, I would have browsed auction house prices to help make my decision. For example, Phalanx costs 600,000+ on my server, but on Bahamut it's going for about 350,000. Ouch! Starting to save now is good advice! At least we have the option of earning it from BCNM as well. I know nothing about those now, but I'll be sure to read up on them.

Right now I'm focusing on leveling and just learning the game. I do feel a lot more confident exploring the world and fighting than when I first started. So far I've got Warrior to 18 and Monk to 12 or 13. I think my damage dealing is better with Monk so I might make that my main for duoing with Umberto. At some point I will need to read up on the subjob quest. I read about how difficult it is/was to acquire all the items (a skull in particular if I remember correctly). I'm not sure what it's like these days, but we'll find out soon enough.

I have to say, it has been strange playing this game and going back to FFXIV. There are so many features in FFXI that I feel like should be in FFXIV already. I don't know how touchy people are about discussing the two games so I'll leave it at that. I do appreciate the pretty graphics in FFXIV. I was admiring the reflection of the sky as I ran through some puddles today in Thanalan.

I do have one question that I can't seem to find the answer to: Are most missions in FFXI doable in a party? One thing that has been annoying on FFXIV is that when my husband and I take part in missions we have to keep breaking party to essentially do the same content. Is the same thing going to happen in FFXI? So far we've only taken on 1-1 in Bastok, and there didn't seem to be any problems with us being in a party. If we can continue to party throughout the rest of the missions, that would be great.

[Squiggs]

Re: New player saying hi

Yes, you can do them all in a party.

[Armando]

Re: New player saying hi

Good to know you're doing well, and that your husband is playing too. Leveling up with friends is always much more fun.

I know nothing about those now, but I'll be sure to read up on them.

BCNMs are a simple concept. All those Beastmen's Seals that you've been collecting? They can drop off of any enemy below level 70, as long as the enemy gives you EXP. You can trade them in for one-time-use items that you enter special battlefields. If you win the fight, you get rewards based on which fight you did. Most of the BCNMs that can drop Phalanx are capped at level 40 and require 40 Beatsmen's Seals.

That's another reason to fight Easy Prey mobs - you can kill them faster, giving you more profits.

One thing that has been annoying on FFXIV is that when my husband and I take part in missions we have to keep breaking party to essentially do the same content. Is the same thing going to happen in FFXI? So far we've only taken on 1-1 in Bastok, and there didn't seem to be any problems with us being in a party. If we can continue to party throughout the rest of the missions, that would be great.

You can do them in parties (up to 6 players) but not alliances (groups of 2-3 parties.) In the old days a full party was practically mandatory for most missions that capped your level. Soon enough you'll have to look up the missions to know at what level it's safe to try them.