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I've seen it mentioned once or twice since last week, but has anyone recently played or is actively playing the game?
Kind of just hammering out what I want to do here. Will probably change things up a bunch as I go.
Is FFXIV for me?
Good question! XIV is a WoW-inspired, themepark MMO. It works on a 2.5 second Global Cooldown (GCD), which means it's kind of slower paced. As classes level, however, they obtain skills and abilities not beholden to this 2.5 second window, thus allowing for the down time to be utilized and fill in gaps. Combined with static, highly choreographed fight design there's usually a button to press or somewhere you need to move in more strenuous content types.
XIV incorporates a lot of easter eggs and references to past entries in the Final Fantasy series, as well as other Square IPs such as NieR and Tactics Ogre, however no prior experience with any of this is required. The game is also notoriously newbie-friendly, some may say excessively so, and there are a variety of options for approaching most of the game solo if you prefer. Priority #1 for this game has been its story, with the MMO portion being a distant second. The quality of said story is subjective, of course, but the Heavensward (HW) and Shadowbringers (ShB) expansions are both well-regarded by the playerbase.
Free Trial or Full Game?
If the above description didn't really help, no worries! XIV offers a very generous Free Trial, available for both PlayStation and PC. This Free Trial will allow you to play all content released for A Realm Reborn (ARR) and Heavensward (HW), which is to say everything from lv1 to lv60, without paying. There is no time limit so if you are so inclined you can level every job available. Please note that once you register any paid subscription the Free Trial is no longer available, this cannot be reverted, and you will have to pay the monthly fee to play again on that account. Please also note that once you register a Windows or Steam key the other type can never be used (and all purchased expansions must match), and the Square Enix ID cannot easily, if ever, be unlinked from your PSN ID or Steam account.
It is strongly advised, despite some of the harsh limitations placed on Free Trial accounts, to play through the entirety of ARR and HW before making any purchases and/or registering any codes. It is generally accepted that if you do not enjoy the story by the end of HW, nothing that comes after will change this opinion. With the various changes and reworks over the years, lv60 gameplay is not particularly indicative of what a job will look like at lv90 (Ver 6.0) or lv100 (Ver 7.0). However, the basic ideas are present and should be enough to form an opinion with.
Free Trial website (For Windows)
Free Trial on Steam
Free Trial on PlayStation
Choosing a Data Center and Home World
If you're intent on joining up, your next step is to figure out where you're heading. There are several considerations at play here, and they will significantly impact your enjoyment and ability to play.
First up are the Data Centers. These are the top layer hubs, each assigned to one of four regions of the real world. All Data Centers in each region are located in the same physical location, so unfortunately there is no method for playing with people residing in North America as an Australian and not getting horrible, potentially game-breaking latency. Because all four NA Data Centers are located in California. The four regions are:
North America is split into 4 Data Centers: Aether, Crystal, Dynamis and Primal
Europe is split into 2 Data Centers: Chaos and Light
Japan is split into 4 Data Centers: Elemental, Gaia, Mana and Meteor
Oceania has only 1 Data Center: Materia
Each Data Center is then further split into Worlds. As an example, Aether in North America has 8 worlds: Adamantoise, Cactuar, Faerie, Gilgamesh, Jenova, Midgardsormr, Sargatanas and Siren. Any character on any of those 8 Worlds can move quickly and easily, in most scenarios, between any of the other 7 Worlds.. Characters on Aether, with a little more of a time commitment, can also travel to any world on Crystal, Dynamis or Primal. They can not, at present, travel to the European, Japanese or Oceanian Data Centers.
The World a character is created on is considered their Home World. Characters can only join Free Companies (Guilds) that are on their Home World, can only speak in LinkShells (private group chat channel) while on Home World that LinkShell is designated for, and can only use Cross-World LinkShells assigned to the Data Center for their Home World. Other restrictions apply, such as only being able to attend in-game weddings on the Home World or only being able to purchase and share plots of land for housing on their Home World.
Changing your Home World is possible, but outside of very specific and unique circumstances will cost real money. For this reason, before starting, figure out where your friends are and do your best to get onto the same Home World as them if possible. Due to balancing concerns the developers often have periods of time wherein the creation of new characters on certain worlds is not possible. This tends to ebb and flow throughout the day and unless a hard moratorium has been put in place you can usually snag a spot very late at night or very early in the morning. The link below can assist you in this endeavor.
Links
World (Server) Status
Server Classifications
Content Skip options
Now that you're ready to start a brand new, shiny character we have to address this. Content Skips for XIV are available in two forms:
Level Skips automatically boost the desired job to lv80. It does not skip any of the main story, but does mark Class and Job quests as completed.
Story Skips automatically put you at the end of Shadowbringers/start of Endwalker. It does not bestow any Experience Points, nor does it remove a lot of the locks that are placed on content.
If this is your first character, it is strongly encouraged that you do not use these. Even if you don't care about the story it's still recommended that you simply skip cutscenes while being taught how the game works instead of paying to bypass it all.
Choosing a Race
XIV has 8 Races in total, with 2 of them (Viera and Hrothgar) not being selectable options while on the Free Trial. If you would like to create a Viera or a Hrothgar, I would encourage you to finish Heavensward (HW) first and then purchase a Fantasia for $10. You will spend much less money that way.
Races technically have pros and cons in terms of stats, however, they're so insignificant that they never have and never will matter. Feel free to choose whichever one best suits your tastes, and allow me to warn you up front that XIV expects you to only use one character for every job. Doing multiple characters is a nightmare of working through the mandatory story quests multiple times and staying on top of any number of daily and weekly tasks on each character. You will burn out.
Choosing a Role/Class
XIV strictly adheres to the Holy Trinity concept. There are tank jobs, there a healer jobs and there are strictly damage dealing jobs. There is little if any crossover between roles at any period of time, and concepts such as Buffing, Debuffing, Crowd Control, Stunning and Kiting are virtually nonexistent. There is no such thing as a "support" job; even if you're a healer, your job is designed first and foremost to deal damage, you just happen to have spammable buttons that restore HP. All jobs within a role play fairly similarly and, particularly at endgame, are designed with a 2-minute cooldown rotation in mind. With that out of the way,
Tank classes available at the start are Gladiator (Paladin) and Marauder (Warrior). Gladiators use swords and shields, Marauders use two-handed battleaxes. All tank-centric actions are shared. Paladins have a lot of great defensive options, Warriors literally heal themselves by bathing in the blood of their enemies. Once you're lv50 and have reached the Heavensward expansion you can acquire the Dark Knight job, which is a bit of a glass cannon until much higher levels. At lv60 you can unlock Gunbreaker, which is a highly offensive-oriented tank loosely based on characters from FF8 and FF13.
Healer doesn't get variety to start with. If you wish to start as a healer, you have to roll Conjurer (White Mage). The second healer is available once you get Arcanist, a DPS job, to lv30. Doing so unlocks Summoner (DPS) and Scholar (Healer). White Mage leans more towards being a Regen/Heal-over-Time job, Scholar leans more towards preventing damage through the use of shields. At lv50 and after arriving in Heavensward content you can unlock Astrologian, the second Regen/HoT-leaning healer. Reaching lv70 allows you to unlock the last and newest healer, Sage, which is the second shield-leaning job.
DPS jobs come in a variety of flavors. There are 4 melee jobs, 3 ranged jobs and 3 caster jobs.
Control options
This is a game that involves simultaneously dodging and hitting buttons for attacks, so it's of utmost importance that you feel extremely comfortable with your input method. You functionally have 3 options: A controller, a keyboard, or mouse and keyboard combo. They all have unique pros and cons, and you may wish to give them each a whirl to see what works best for you. With your device chosen, you'll then want to choose between "Standard" and "Legacy" options. I personally use Legacy Type. Here are some screencaps of my settings to give you an idea of where to start.
Introduction
Before You Start
Is FFXIV for me?
Good question! XIV is a WoW-inspired, themepark MMO. It works on a 2.5 second Global Cooldown (GCD), which means it's kind of slower paced. As classes level, however, they obtain skills and abilities not beholden to this 2.5 second window, thus allowing for the down time to be utilized and fill in gaps. Combined with static, highly choreographed fight design there's usually a button to press or somewhere you need to move in more strenuous content types.
XIV incorporates a lot of easter eggs and references to past entries in the Final Fantasy series, as well as other Square IPs such as NieR and Tactics Ogre, however no prior experience with any of this is required. The game is also notoriously newbie-friendly, some may say excessively so, and there are a variety of options for approaching most of the game solo if you prefer. Priority #1 for this game has been its story, with the MMO portion being a distant second. The quality of said story is subjective, of course, but the Heavensward (HW) and Shadowbringers (ShB) expansions are both well-regarded by the playerbase.
Free Trial or Full Game?
If the above description didn't really help, no worries! XIV offers a very generous Free Trial, available for both PlayStation and PC. This Free Trial will allow you to play all content released for A Realm Reborn (ARR) and Heavensward (HW), which is to say everything from lv1 to lv60, without paying. There is no time limit so if you are so inclined you can level every job available. Please note that once you register any paid subscription the Free Trial is no longer available, this cannot be reverted, and you will have to pay the monthly fee to play again on that account. Please also note that once you register a Windows or Steam key the other type can never be used (and all purchased expansions must match), and the Square Enix ID cannot easily, if ever, be unlinked from your PSN ID or Steam account.
It is strongly advised, despite some of the harsh limitations placed on Free Trial accounts, to play through the entirety of ARR and HW before making any purchases and/or registering any codes. It is generally accepted that if you do not enjoy the story by the end of HW, nothing that comes after will change this opinion. With the various changes and reworks over the years, lv60 gameplay is not particularly indicative of what a job will look like at lv90 (Ver 6.0) or lv100 (Ver 7.0). However, the basic ideas are present and should be enough to form an opinion with.
Links
Free Trial website (For Windows)
Free Trial on Steam
Free Trial on PlayStation
Choosing a Data Center and Home World
If you're intent on joining up, your next step is to figure out where you're heading. There are several considerations at play here, and they will significantly impact your enjoyment and ability to play.
First up are the Data Centers. These are the top layer hubs, each assigned to one of four regions of the real world. All Data Centers in each region are located in the same physical location, so unfortunately there is no method for playing with people residing in North America as an Australian and not getting horrible, potentially game-breaking latency. Because all four NA Data Centers are located in California. The four regions are:
North America is split into 4 Data Centers: Aether, Crystal, Dynamis and Primal
Europe is split into 2 Data Centers: Chaos and Light
Japan is split into 4 Data Centers: Elemental, Gaia, Mana and Meteor
Oceania has only 1 Data Center: Materia
Each Data Center is then further split into Worlds. As an example, Aether in North America has 8 worlds: Adamantoise, Cactuar, Faerie, Gilgamesh, Jenova, Midgardsormr, Sargatanas and Siren. Any character on any of those 8 Worlds can move quickly and easily, in most scenarios, between any of the other 7 Worlds.. Characters on Aether, with a little more of a time commitment, can also travel to any world on Crystal, Dynamis or Primal. They can not, at present, travel to the European, Japanese or Oceanian Data Centers.
The World a character is created on is considered their Home World. Characters can only join Free Companies (Guilds) that are on their Home World, can only speak in LinkShells (private group chat channel) while on Home World that LinkShell is designated for, and can only use Cross-World LinkShells assigned to the Data Center for their Home World. Other restrictions apply, such as only being able to attend in-game weddings on the Home World or only being able to purchase and share plots of land for housing on their Home World.
Changing your Home World is possible, but outside of very specific and unique circumstances will cost real money. For this reason, before starting, figure out where your friends are and do your best to get onto the same Home World as them if possible. Due to balancing concerns the developers often have periods of time wherein the creation of new characters on certain worlds is not possible. This tends to ebb and flow throughout the day and unless a hard moratorium has been put in place you can usually snag a spot very late at night or very early in the morning. The link below can assist you in this endeavor.
Links
World (Server) Status
Server Classifications
Content Skip options
Now that you're ready to start a brand new, shiny character we have to address this. Content Skips for XIV are available in two forms:
Level Skips automatically boost the desired job to lv80. It does not skip any of the main story, but does mark Class and Job quests as completed.
Story Skips automatically put you at the end of Shadowbringers/start of Endwalker. It does not bestow any Experience Points, nor does it remove a lot of the locks that are placed on content.
If this is your first character, it is strongly encouraged that you do not use these. Even if you don't care about the story it's still recommended that you simply skip cutscenes while being taught how the game works instead of paying to bypass it all.
Getting Started
Choosing a Race
XIV has 8 Races in total, with 2 of them (Viera and Hrothgar) not being selectable options while on the Free Trial. If you would like to create a Viera or a Hrothgar, I would encourage you to finish Heavensward (HW) first and then purchase a Fantasia for $10. You will spend much less money that way.
Races technically have pros and cons in terms of stats, however, they're so insignificant that they never have and never will matter. Feel free to choose whichever one best suits your tastes, and allow me to warn you up front that XIV expects you to only use one character for every job. Doing multiple characters is a nightmare of working through the mandatory story quests multiple times and staying on top of any number of daily and weekly tasks on each character. You will burn out.
Choosing a Role/Class
XIV strictly adheres to the Holy Trinity concept. There are tank jobs, there a healer jobs and there are strictly damage dealing jobs. There is little if any crossover between roles at any period of time, and concepts such as Buffing, Debuffing, Crowd Control, Stunning and Kiting are virtually nonexistent. There is no such thing as a "support" job; even if you're a healer, your job is designed first and foremost to deal damage, you just happen to have spammable buttons that restore HP. All jobs within a role play fairly similarly and, particularly at endgame, are designed with a 2-minute cooldown rotation in mind. With that out of the way,
Tank classes available at the start are Gladiator (Paladin) and Marauder (Warrior). Gladiators use swords and shields, Marauders use two-handed battleaxes. All tank-centric actions are shared. Paladins have a lot of great defensive options, Warriors literally heal themselves by bathing in the blood of their enemies. Once you're lv50 and have reached the Heavensward expansion you can acquire the Dark Knight job, which is a bit of a glass cannon until much higher levels. At lv60 you can unlock Gunbreaker, which is a highly offensive-oriented tank loosely based on characters from FF8 and FF13.
Healer doesn't get variety to start with. If you wish to start as a healer, you have to roll Conjurer (White Mage). The second healer is available once you get Arcanist, a DPS job, to lv30. Doing so unlocks Summoner (DPS) and Scholar (Healer). White Mage leans more towards being a Regen/Heal-over-Time job, Scholar leans more towards preventing damage through the use of shields. At lv50 and after arriving in Heavensward content you can unlock Astrologian, the second Regen/HoT-leaning healer. Reaching lv70 allows you to unlock the last and newest healer, Sage, which is the second shield-leaning job.
DPS jobs come in a variety of flavors. There are 4 melee jobs, 3 ranged jobs and 3 caster jobs.
- Melee starting options are Pugilist (Monk) and Lancer (Dragoon). Both are fairly straightforward, though at present Monk has more positional requirements to maximize damage. At lv10 and with access to the Nation-State of Limsa Lominsa you can unlock Rogue (Ninja). At lv50, after clearing the base story for A Realm Reborn, you can unlock Samurai. Ninja is a very fast job similar to Monk, but it sort of tries to juggle two rotations simultaneously. Samurai is known as a "selfish" DPS, in that it offers very little in the way of party synergy and instead focuses on very powerful hits.
- Ranged has only a single starting option in the form of Archer (Bard). Bard may give you the illusion that this is a support job; it is not. It's functionally just an Archer/Ranger from beginning to end. It has almost complete freedom to move where it wants, has a very straightforward rotation and is generally a decent choice for completely new players. At lv50 with access to Heavensward areas you can unlock Machinist, which is the "selfish" ranged DPS. At lv60 you can unlock the final ranged job, Dancer. Dancers use an ability to partner with another party member, giving them various personal boosts to increase their damage. The Dancer itself is more complicated than the other two, similar to Ninja, but when not playing at a high level is pretty easy to grasp.
- Caster has two starting options: Thaumaturge (Black Mage) and Arcanist (Summoner). Black Mage is the selfish caster; the only one that does not get access to a reviving spell, and is in many ways a turret. Its singular desire is to sit still as long as possible lobbing out Fire spells (XIV does not have elemental weaknesses), which means it's easier to use after you're already familiar with the fight. Summoner is a very easy job in its current iteration, summoning smaller versions of some of the, well, iconic Summon (/Primal/Esper) monsters such as Ifrit and Titan. At lv50 with completion of the base A Realm Reborn story you can unlock Red Mage, which serves as one of the only jobs that keeps a consistent and coherent (and easy) rotation in all content at all levels. Blue Mage exists, but it's not a "real" job and is functionally an expansive minigame.
Control options
This is a game that involves simultaneously dodging and hitting buttons for attacks, so it's of utmost importance that you feel extremely comfortable with your input method. You functionally have 3 options: A controller, a keyboard, or mouse and keyboard combo. They all have unique pros and cons, and you may wish to give them each a whirl to see what works best for you. With your device chosen, you'll then want to choose between "Standard" and "Legacy" options. I personally use Legacy Type. Here are some screencaps of my settings to give you an idea of where to start.
- Setting up your HUD
- Setting up your (Cross) Hotbars
- Miscellaneous settings
Introduction
Introduction
- Gameplay progression
- Mechanic types
- Things to pick up ASAP
- Types of instanced content
Advanced
- Leveling extra jobs, crafters and gatherers
- Maximizing EXP
- Gearing efficiently
- The gulf between normal content and EX Primals
- The gulf between EX Primals and Savage Raids
- Ultimates, the end of the line
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