New and Confused....?

[Omnivus]

I recently bought a copy of Final Fantasy XI Online after hearing both bad and good things about it. I was big into playing WoW over the past couple years, but have recently stopped playing and wanted to try something else. So here I am in FFXI and I am thoroughly confused. The game mechanics are so different then anything I've played before, I'm totally lost. I don't know what to do or where to go. Would anyone have some links to some online guides for newbies?

I'm trying my best to stick it through and learn, but theres nothing and no one to teach me. I was considering the strategy guide by Brady Games, but it has been out of print for a couple years now. When you create a new character it sort of just drops you in the city, some NPCs talk but really tell you nothing of any use, then you are free to roam. No one points you in the direction of a quest giver to get started, or any sort of training, or game play understanding.

Forgive my ignorance, but can anyone tell me what you need to do to get started? I made a Red Mage, managed to make it out into the forest, fought a worm, and died. Hoooray, I got pwnd. I didn't even have any spells that I could see, not even a starter spell. I ended up deleting that character because then I find out Elvaan's dont make good red mages, so I started a Galkan monk. I guess what I am really looking for is some beginning quest walk throughs if such a thing exists. Can anyone help a newb out? Thanks!

[Skoal]

Re: New and Confused....?

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/fre...ease-read.html

This is the link for the beginner's guide for this website. Hopefully this will help you get started.

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: New and Confused....?

The reason you're not started off in any particular direction when you begin FFXI is there are so MANY directions you can go. Granted, you can't just run out and do missions for your country, or charge into PvP, or sit down and turn into a level 50 cook overnight when you just got 'born' into the game.

I remember the total confusion very well, although I started in windurst. I got lost between my mog house and the auction house for three months straight, which is kinda lol to a lot of players now.

Every job gets four armor pieces, a weapon, and an adventurer cupon. Monk gets a white belt, whitemage gets a scroll of Cure, for level 1. I think Redmage gets a scroll of dia. You use the scroll to learn the spell, from the items menu (the scroll will vanish). The first 5 levels there is no penalties for dying, but you DO get kicked back into the city (called homepointing)

You will get job abilities and weapon skills depending on your job. One of your job abilties is "sorta" powerful and can only be used once every 2 RL hours.

I think one of the residential guards, depending on what city you go to, will take your adventurer cupon and give you 500 gil. Your other gil you will probably have to earn yourself from items you get while fighting monsters.

FFXI is honestly too big to fit in a nutshell. Look for people with a blue-green dot superimposed with a white M beside their name. Those are Mentors. Find one, ask every question you can think of, pay attention to their answers. Mentors are not obligated to help you, but since it's a volunteer service, usually only helpful people sign up. Other people with red and white question marks beside their names are as new as you are. Share knowledge with them, because, honestly...

If you ask ME, at level 75, been playing for three years, how to get to the AH, you'll get a response like "It's in the middle of south sandy."

If you as a fellow new person, they'll probably say "Go about that way until you see big tent things and it's against the wall by the tent things," which, when you have no idea where the middle of an area is, you can still identify a tent.

If you can get yourself into a linkshell, you have it made. Any linkshell you see shouting for members, go ahead and ask if you can join. It may or may not be a good or helpful linkshell, but you WILL learn something.

And most importantly, which server are you on? If it's Midgardsormer, type in /sea all Irisjir. If I'm online, I'll come give you a crash course in whatever you can think to ask me.

[Jarre]

Re: New and Confused....?

You could try watching SE's own videos on playonline.com they do a beginners guide.

also use FFXIwiki for all the info you need, quests, jobs, mob levels etc.

[Omni]

Re: New and Confused....?

i thought youre supposed to get dia as your first spell as rdm. there should be a scroll in your inventory for it.

anyhow, just a friendly reminder, any race can play any job well. so dont let race totally affect your choices.

galka mnk are fun. u really get a huge boost in hp and etc. mnk might be one of the most friendly first jobs out there since you can just punch your way out of west ronafure (you said forrest).

you're right, there are no nice arrows and high lighted quest menus that tell you where and what to do. there are no tutorials in-game either. the best thing to do is to go through your manual when it comes to controls. for quests and advice, go to the many online sites that have info.

ffxi.somepage.com (database for almost everything, if not it'll link you to something that has it)

im not going to lie to you, you'll have a lot harder time trying to get going in this game than wow. however, i think the rewards and storyline of ffxi are many times greater than anything in wow.

[Omnivus]

Re: New and Confused....?

Wow, I just posted this like 10 minutes ago and already got a bunch of helpful responses. Thanks guys! I'm thoroughly shocked that no one bashed, flamed, or insulted me for being new and clueless like the WoW forums. Good riddance to WoW! Yeah!

Also, when I asked for directions out of the city, this one guy who's name I can't remember (sorry man!) was kind of enough to walk me out. He also told me to get a signet cast on me, which I don't know what that does but thats extra useful information that he was kind enough to tell me. Right now I am on Asura, but I think I may change to Midgarsormer and look up Irisjir for that crash course lesson. I'll look for you online! Thanks again!

So again, thank you all for your kind words and helpful advice. With a community like this, I think I'm willing to take the time struggling to learn how to play.

[Necropolis]

Re: New and Confused....?

There really is a lack of ingame tutorial for the game I must agree. Some of the most basic things in the game (such as opening the menu) confounded me for a day. The concept of zones too (I spend my first day in windy thinking it was the whole world).

However there are a number of tools available to you.

www.playonline.com has a new newbie tutorial link from the main page
www.ffxiclopedia.com has just about all the info you could dream. Learn how to search this site.

Those are the two main resources I use, there is also allakazham, somepage, mysterytour and bluegartr LS site that have a plethora of information if you know how to search for it.

In game, don't be afraid to ask questions from people. You'll meet some pricks, but for the most part many people will be more than happy to give you some info if they arn't too busy.

What server are you on? I'm on Ifrit, so if you're there feel free to /tell me ^^v

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: New and Confused....?

Asura has TONS of helpful people on it. I know this for a fact because FFXI goes down for mantinence every month, and stays down and inacessible for several hours, supposedly only two or three but in actuality more like 5 or 6 (or so it seems to me)

Play Online has a chat function, I forget how to get to the chat rooms off the top of my head, but I know I figured it out on my own so it can't be that difficult. Look for a room named !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Asura or something like that, go in, talk to peoples there. All the rooms are available to everyone, I went into the asura room randomly after I decided the Midgardsormer room was full of assholes and idiots. All the Asurans I met there were very nice. Shiva has a lot of nice people on it too, but I hear they also have uncontrolled inflation atm so starting out in a bad economy = broke and hopeless newbie


The chat rooms are there all the time, but people only really go into them when FFXI is inacessible, so...ja.

But if you want a worldpass, send me a private message and I'll log in and get you one. If you seriously do move to midgard, I suggest starting out in Windurst, because that was the city I started in, and that's the city I more or less remember the quests and missions for. I believe it's also the easiest to navigate, but pretty much everyone disagrees with me on that point.



I will say this much, if you can get a higher-level mobile friend in the game, you don't have to worry as much about what items you can find in what auction houses or from what stores in what cities, because you can mail them gil and they mail back the item.




P.S. Alla is a good site to look at for IDEAS. But at least 45% of the information posted on alla is wrong. My suggestion is, if you use alla for researching something, verify any and all critical information with at least one other site before trusting it.

[Minimee]

Re: New and Confused....?

glad you got some quick replies. yes ffxi is about community and you wont get anywhere ingame without help of some kind. the brady guide of misinformation can be helpful, even though some on here dont like it, i found it useful. too many threads on this site to weed threw to learn the things you need to know. one thing you will find out about this game is you are not guided along in certain directions. everything you do is by choice. i highly recommend spending your first day or two in town talking to every npc. getting quests and hints about things. learning your way around your starting city is valuable. learning what npcs sell is golden. low level weapons and armor are usually cheaper from npcs than auction house. you can also make gil buying low level items from npcs and reselling them to others that dont know where to buy them other than ah. once you start outside stay close to town and kill things that you can kill quickly and dont do much damage to you. when the exp drops move farther away from town. when you get drops take them to ah and sell them. some items stack so they take up less space. sort inventory items/ auto/ yes. crystals stack to 12 as do most things some stack to 99. good luck have fun and do what makes you happy its just a game

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: New and Confused....?

I suppose I might as well post my little pile of resources here:
With no further ado and less particular order!

http://www.swapsonian.com/pikko/
PikkoPots Depending on what area you are, you might start getting items like "Vegetable seeds" "Grain seeds" that can be used for planting. I beleieve this guide has all the basics of how to turn these seeds into fully-grown produce. This can be a nice little moneymaker to have going in the mog house while you're out playing the rest of the game. I know I to this day use gardening to make gil (And lose it too! I forgot to check some very expensive plants a week ago and lost a crapton when they all died)

http://www.ffxiah.com/?sid=
Final Fantasy Auction House.
Period.
You can't buy from it, or put anything up for sale, but this IS the FFXI AH, all servers, all items, up-to-the-minute. When you're deciding what to grow with the pikkopots recepie, this site will save you a lot of logging in and out to see how much items are worth.

http://www.pyogenes.com/ffxi/timer/v2.html
FFXI clock. There are better clocks out there, I'm pretty sure. Use it to tell the time :lol:

http://www.clanwind.com/ffxi/zonemap.asp
NEVER GET LOST AGAIN! Well, not really. But at least with this, you can plan routes for major overland treks, like the one to valkrum dunes, and from valkrum dunes to jeuno. I beleive this has every map in the game?

http://www.speakeasy.org/~sticks/ffx...ure/title.html
It'll be awhile before you need to find a treasure chest, but this page has a link to Notorious Monster spawn maps. You can try researching a few of these. The drops from NM's you'll be able to solo won't net you a 'fortune' but you might get lucky, and if you can get a nice drop it might keep you in armor clear up to level 10, or even better be something you can use yourself.

http://www.titanictus.com/viewtopic.php?t=752
I use this guide for fishing, a pretty cheap and easy money maker, especially for new peeples. It's also slow and boring to level fishing.
Titanicus has a LOT of awesome guides on their site though. Explore a bit. You might not need this link now, but you'll probably love it later in game.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11eu/index.shtml
Official website for FFXI.

http://fanzone.playonline.com/lscom/index.do
Official LS forums for FFXI. Nobody goes here, but it's nice to know where it is anyway.

http://ffo.warcry.com/
...I forget why I have this bookmarked. But alot of people will refrence 'Warcry' well this is it.

I won't post the FFXI Wikipedia again, because it's already been linked, but I have that and use it ALL the time.

http://www.ffxidats.com/
The legality of this within the ToS is a little questionable. That much said, I questioned and found I didn't see how it hurt other players if I changed the way armor looked to ME. If you ever want to tweak the game appearance, check it out.

http://www.ffximc.com/list.php?c=tools
This is for tools if you decide to build your own custom .dats. Dat rendering is completely independent of FFXI gameplay, and to me, I may cancel my content ID's someday but I will never uninstall FFXI, because I love dat rendering. It's almost like a whole new game for me.

Everything else I have in my FFXI folder is private non-official forums for linkshells, or websites owned by people I met while playing ffxi.
Alot of these links I expect you not to use or even be remotely interested in, but if one or two of the map-type ones helps you out, then I'm glad.



Also, regarding the .dat swap site, I think anyone who .dat swaps the treasure chests into something more 'visible' or god forbids uses the .dat swap that lets you hear it through walls, is a bad person and should be plagued by guilt.

[Legal Fish]

Re: New and Confused....?

Before all else:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11newpla...x.html?lang=en

[Evion]

Re: New and Confused....?

Omnivus: Don't be misled. There are plenty on flamers here... I don't see any in particular that posted though. Most people on this site are higher level and will often get snooty with you. But, I won't, probably because I'm not. One thing you probably want to know first is, the job/sub job mechanic. You will need to know how to level through differents jobs/s jobs to get the end result you want. So, look into it so you don't waste time.

[Omni]

Re: New and Confused....?

Omnivus: Don't be misled. There are plenty on flamers here... I don't see any in particular that posted though. Most people on this site are higher level and will often get snooty with you. But, I won't, probably because I'm not. One thing you probably want to know first is, the job/sub job mechanic. You will need to know how to level through differents jobs/s jobs to get the end result you want. So, look into it so you don't waste time.

The difference between you and omnivus is that, he doesnt flip out and start yelling at people when someone doesnt read his mind.

If you're courteous here, people will reciprocate.

[Evion]

Re: New and Confused....?

That's totally wrong. I am very courteous and apologized the one time I wasn't. And the only reason I get mad is when people tell me that if I can't go to another site to get info I shouldn't get it here either. Which is bull. So I'm blocked from other sites at work, whatever. Why can't anyone ever just answer a question? Providing a link only to the answer is not always helpful. I was blown away when I seen all of these great responses to his request. GL Omnivus... See what I'm saying?

[Omni]

Re: New and Confused....?

If you're taking my post as a flame, then you really are just too sensitive. It was merely the truth. Yea you apologized but you still have this chip on your shoulder about it.
It has nothing to do with my level or being snooty.

People have explained to you that it's not our job to post nice text only break downs of whatever you want. If someone does it, great. If someone doesnt, well then that's that.

We're all posters on this site just like you however, for some reason you're just being bitter and a brat about not getting detailed work friendly posts all the time. We have jobs, school etc too you know.

Like I said, if you're courteous, people will reciprocate. Having a chip on your shoulder certainly doesnt help.