help picking a starting town..

[ArcticZero]

Ok.. Sever is: Midgardsormr
Race is: tarutaru
Class is: of course black mage

I hear starting in the home city gets you a decent ring.. problem is everyone I know and that will be in my linkshell will be in bastok.

Does the city really matter.. I mean I want to take advantage of things like more gil and better access to spells... and cheaper spells and what not and I just can't make up my mind where to start..

[Khaelyn]

Trust me, the advantage of having friends handy trumps it all.

You could start in Windy and get someone to escort you to Bastok. But then you could start in Bastok, party with friends all the time, have people to talk to and /sit with, and then wander over to Windy when you can afford it later on (like, in a few weeks of fun play with your friends).

[Yuanlung]

Personally, I'd pick Windurst.

The beginner ring is nice, but not all that important. What matters more is that you get better CP items for mages later on. Also so since you will be doing different missions then your friends, you will see a different side of the FFXI story, which can be interesting.

In fact, my group started all over the place. It was frustrating at first, but now that I look back, we didn't really need to start at the same place anyways. The first 10 level or so you don't even need group. I started in Windurst with our WHM and we leveled in Duo all the way into the teens.

Later on, when you start needing big groups, you can either sneak through buburimu\valkrum to meet up with your friends, or just ask some higher level people that you have gotten to know to give you a hand. Either way, it's not that hard.

We actually did something really funny to bring our Bastokan friend over to Windurst. We started second characters and ran with him through Valkrum. Whenever we see something dangerous that might aggro him, one of us decoys would engage it and drag it out of his way. He got all the way to Selbina without a problem. It was actually quite fun. :D

[almighty_boof]

I agree with Yuanlung, but I'd personally choose Windurst. All of the mobs outside are so easy to level with (especially for a mage). As soon as you destroy that kind of mob and level, you can move onto a different mob. Windurst also has some really good frming things and they have the cooking and fishing guilds there. Plus if you're a Taru, it's only natural to be born in your Home Country. ^_^

[Arguile]

Starting city doesn't matter that much. Sure you get a starting ring, that you'll ditch for better rings at lvl 10 anyway.

The CP items? You can buy pretty much all of them on AH (Rare/EX rank 6+ items, some anyway, you can't). But again, no big deal because you'll use better equipment none CP anyway.

[ArcticZero]

Went with bastok just to much of an advantage having friends to help me out.. since ive never played it was much easier to have them show me around the town.. help out with a little gil ect. Ring wold of been nice but i'll make it to Wind one of these days..