Final Fantasy XIV Tips for Beginners

Although Final Fantasy XIV has been around for years, many MMORPG fans still haven’t tried Square Enix’s latest foray into the genre. The failure of its original 2010 version and the 2013 reboot’s slow pace may have hindered the game’s growth. However, that seems to be changing, as more and more gamers are drawn in by its story, varied activities, constantly expanding content, and friendly community. The launch of the Endwalker expansion has resulted in the latest player boom, securing this game’s status as a serious contender in a field once wholly dominated by World of Warcraft. If you wish to see it for yourself, the tips below should make your journey smoother.

Level Up Smart

As is often the case with such titles, Final Fantasy XIV is more fun at higher levels. You can find lots of ways to occupy yourself even with a brand-new Warrior of Light, but wide swathes of content are gated behind progression. Leveling up your primary job will also make combat much more dynamic and fun by granting you access to extra abilities (called actions). The same goes for acquiring more classes and advanced jobs, which also have strict level requirements. All other things being equal, you should attempt to level up as fast as possible. Luckily, there are many tricks that would help you do just that:

• Focus on Main Storyline Quests. They are likely to be your primary source of experience, and they unlock important content and provide the best rewards. Class or job quests are second most important, being necessary to access class gear and further actions. Side quests can be fun in their own right, but they are not so critical for leveling up. However, those of them with blue icons unlock important or useful features. Completing those should be a pretty high priority too;
• Hunt Down Monsters. Each basic class in FFXIV has its own unique Hunting Log. When you kill several similar monsters, it will give you a task to hunt down other monsters of that type. Those tasks are straightforward and offer lots of experience, making them optimal for leveling up quickly if you are low-level and playing solo;
• Remember to Eat. Food offers buffs to both stats and experience gain. It can also be bought cheap from many vendors in the major cities. There is no reason not to use it, and while the benefits may seem small, they add up impressively over time. If you eat something before embarking on any quests or raids, your hero will advance this much faster;
• Log Out in Rest Areas. Like many MMORPGs, FFXIV offers a 50% rested bonus to experience gain. To obtain this buff, make sure to log out in Sanctuaries. Those places include Inn Rooms in major cities and adventuring hubs within zones. You will know you are in a Sanctuary if you see a crescent moon symbol next to the experience bar;
• Use the Duty Roulette. This feature lets willing players participate in random instances and other activities throughout the game. You can access it through the Duty Finder. In addition to the basic benefits from those duties, using the roulette makes you eligible for additional rewards, including large amounts of experience;
• Run Deep Dungeons. Those roguelike instances have their own progression system when you are inside them, but they provide plenty of experience for the outside world. Their replayable nature also helps alleviate the grind. You can start running one of them, the Palace of the Dead, when you are at Level 17. Others will become available later;
• Hold on to Crafting Items. Crafting classes can be developed side by side with your main class and offer a wealth of content, from item recipes to storylines. You will need specialized equipment to level them up. While the primary and secondary tool for each crafting class is unique, the other equipment may be used across classes. Holding on to gear would save you time and money if you ever decide to take up additional classes.

Be Social

While much of the game’s content can be engaged solo, sooner or later you will want to team up with other players. Instanced content – which consists of dungeons, raids, and extra challenging boss encounters called trials – is the main reason to work with others. In addition to offering high-level loot, many instances are necessary to progress through the story. They all require teams with set numbers of tanks, healers, and DPS characters of any classes, which can be difficult to put together. The biggest instances may require up to 24 participants.

It is possible to team up with strangers through the Duty Finder or Party Finder. Nonetheless, having friends you can play with will make the experience much more enjoyable. In addition to freeing you from long queues and coordination problems involved in random groups, joining a Free Company (guild) offers many other benefits. You can embark on special activities to acquire exclusive items and level up the Free Company, unlocking perks such as stat bonuses and experience gain buffs. If you have enough gil and at least three game friends, you may even start a Free Company of your own.

Acquire Mobility

The game world, Eorzea, is very large. Getting from one end of a zone to another on foot will get old sooner or later. Fortunately, there are several features that can alleviate this problem and that you may wish to start using as early as possible:

• Teleportation. You can fast travel by teleporting to huge glowing crystals called Aetherytes. To unlock a fast travel node, you will first have to find and attune to its Aetheryte. If you want to save time, that should be your first priority when entering any new zone. You can teleport for free between Aetherytes within the same city and to return to your home location (which you can change). Otherwise, teleportation requires you to pay a fee determined by its distance for every use. Those costs may be a major consideration early on, but become negligible later in the game;
• Mounts. The first mount in the game is the Chocobo, a fan-favorite flightless bird seen throughout the Final Fantasy series. It becomes available remarkably early. You just need to reach level 20 and join one of the three Grand Companies. Then, you will receive the quest that simply requires you to turn in 200 of your Grand Company’s seals. Hoarding this currency to get the mount will be a good investment, as your Chocobo will greatly cut down travel times. It may also be used in races and trained as a battle companion. More ground mounts show up later, but they all have the same base speed;
• Flight. Completing the original main storyline of A Realm Reborn will grant your mounts (including the Company Chocobo) an ability to fly at twice their ground speed. You will need to attune to Aether Currents to fly in the expansion zones. That will require you to complete various quests and travel to specific locations. While time-consuming, it will be worth the effort if you ever revisit those zones later. In addition to raising your speed, flight allows you to escape ground enemies.

Learn to Fight

Combat in FFXIV is relatively forgiving (at least outside of dedicated challenge modes). Nonetheless, it can be somewhat tricky to figure out and frustrating if you do not get it. The following tips should help:

• You can adjust the user interface through the Customize HUD option in the menu. Doing so may be a good idea if you find yourself struggling with the information you receive and the actions at your disposal. In particular, endgame characters may require three hotbars to keep up with all the items and abilities that may be relevant in raids;
• The visual effects in FFXIV are very impressive, but can make it difficult to see what is going on in a fight. That is an especially major problem for melee players, who often fail to notice the danger they are in until it is too late. Fortunately, you can configure the effects you see through character configuration. Turning off everyone else’s effects would make high-level boss fights easier to follow;
• Hall of the Novice quests in Skull Valley become available at level 15 in any combat class and provide challenges tailored to your hero’s role. They serve as a sort of tutorial for party-based combat and can be very useful, especially for beginners;
• Read up on your actions as you acquire them. Actions in this game can be rather complex and unintuitive, so finding out how they work in the middle of combat would be a bad idea. Many of them have special requirements connected to positioning or other actions. Keeping track of such interactions becomes particularly important when you start leveling up your secondary job;
• Positioning is a key part of combat. In addition to many abilities depending on you being in the right place to execute them, avoiding area of effect damage is a vital player skill. Bosses tend to telegraph such attacks clearly, so it is largely a matter of paying attention and reacting quickly.​​​​​​​

Conclusion

The most important tip for enjoying this title is to keep playing. The game is full of rich content and fun activities, but getting to many of them can require a lot of time and patience. Millions of players would vouch for the later parts of the game being worth the early slog, though. By following the above tips, you should be able to progress through it briskly. Additionally, CakeBoost can help you get the most out of this game with our boosting services. Simply order any of our boosts or hire a booster for hourly character driving to cut out the grind and allow you to focus on the parts you enjoy!