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just bought ffxi..
fulmanfu
Member Posts: 1,523
anyone with any advice, i dont know the first thing about this game. tried every mmorpg out there but never this one for some reason. i remeber going out to buy it when it first game no NA and i came home with SWG instead 
. anyway was xmass shopping today and saw the vana'diel collection for 25 bucks so i figured it was worth it to try for a month and see how it is.
just a few questions from you more knowledgable players.
i have not even read the manual. whats the most fun classes/jobs to play? easiest to find groups with?
is there any particular server i should join? or does it place me on one? whatever is the newest one, if there is one, would be the best probably.
and if anyone plays this game seriously and wouldnt mind another person to play with 
let me know
Comments
Well, remember, starting out you only have six of the fifteen jobs available. You have to get to 30 before you can unlock the others. Also remember that you can switch freely between jobs, so you can look around a bit. "Most fun"? That really does tend to depend on the player. Personally, i've had a blast with Red Mage. It's kinda neat being able to do a little bit of everything. Out of the six basic jobs, White Mage is probably the easiest to find groups with. If you're an MMORPG veteran, you should know how it is; every party needs a healer and there's always a shortage of people willing to be one. FFXI makes having a healer particularly vital since healing items are too expensive and too limited to be able to replace having a healer. You do get placed on a server; if you want to choose a server, somebody already on that server has to buy (in game with game money) a WorldPass for you. The newest servers are Remora and Hades; I'm on Remora myself, and it's not bad IMHO, but I should say that 1) I don't have much basis for comparison, as I've never been on any other server and 2) Remora (and Hades) have had server migrations where lots of players (including high-levels) were allowed to move from their old servers to here, so it's not like we're empty or all newbies.
White mage and bard is the most easiest jobs to get groups with for the most part but you have to unlock bard at lvl 30 anyways so you'll have to lvl white mage or warrior etc..
White mage is easy to get groups with but its a pain in the ass for a new player to lvl it from 1-10 because it can barely melee and has no strong damage spells. Unless you have a friend that you can get money from somehow so you can get some +1staff and armor. Spells are pritty expensive , hell everything is expensive regardless of what class your playing because of the gil sellers so you'll find yourself having to take breaks from lvling etc to farm and you'll be taking quite a few breaks to farm.
Warrior isnt a bad job for ur first time since its simple to play as and is somewhat easier to get a party for the most part then thf , rdm etc at the lower lvls.
Also remember to research all the macros for your class because it is vital to properly playing your class.
well im playing a monk right now. only lvl 6 or so.
not having tons of fun, noone will talk to me even when im around a group of people in town. only interaction i can get is getting 'examined' by people which makes me feel cheap and used lol
don't really understand the AH, i put 7 earth crystals up for 200 each and when i logged on and checked 2 sold for 200 but the other 5 sold for 1000?
and yes stuff is expensive and the weapon NPC merchant in town only sells a lvl 1 hand to hand weaon so i somehow have to save 30k by lvl 7 for the next weaopn
i use a weapon skill or a job ability and sometimes it will go off in the next round or 2 and sometimes it will not go off at all, even if the fight lasts 10 more rounds. yeah i know about the 0-300% thing (sp? i forget the name) but it seems odd, i dont think i could manage being a healer in this system of 'sometimes it go's off sometimes it doesn't'
don't think i quite get it yet
0-300% Is ur TP. Once you get it to atleast 100% You're able to do a weapon skill.(that is if you have learned one yet , by lvl 4-6 you will probaly have learned one if you have been using the same weapon)
Ur TP raises everytime you melee attack something.
Then you have Job Abilites every class has them. Some of them have set timers , you're most powerful ones have a 2hour recast time before you can use them again. Since ur monk ur first one his hundred fists only use it when you really need to. At lvl 5 I belive monk gets boost which is an atk buff with a 15 sec recast timer on it. Macro it and learn to use it all the time.
Look up on the net macros for monks etc.
In terms of equipment monks get off pritty easy until lvl 30-40.
There's a good FAQ in the monk forum on this site for macros , equipment etc. http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17
thx for the info. i did understand about needing over 100% tp but sometimes the skill just won't go off. if i don't have enough tp it will tell me, but this isn't the case.
anyway im going to delete it and make a white mage for the long haul, give it a shot anyway. im a glutton for punishment.
and thx for the link, alot of info i can use there.
I'm sorry to hear it;; I must say I had better luck with the community than that.
OK, here's how the AH works. You put something up and set a minimum price. You get charged a fee based on the price you named. The buyer sees the items put up for sale but never gets to know the minimum prices that were set. He makes a bid, and if it's above the minimum price of the lowest priced item on auction, he buys it for the price he bid. Things never sell for the price you set, they sell for the price the buyer bids. Your price setting is the just the price below which the buyer's bid won't succeed. BTW, you sold five earth crystals for 1k each? Lucky, lucky, lucky...that's usually what a stack of 12 sells for.
Check "Region info". Move the cursor off your current region and it will show you the current Conquest ranking of your nation. This ranking influences what's available in the nation's shops. Your nation must be in last. When it gets itself off the floor :-) you should find lvl 7 equipment in the shops. BTW, what are you looking at that costs 30K? Even on the AH, lvl 7 equipment doesn't generally cost that much.
No, there's no "sometimes it goes off sometimes it doesn't". If you have at least 100% TP and activate a Weapon Skill, it *will* go off. If you don't have at least 100% TP you can't activate the WS. Job Abilities are on a timer; you can't reuse it until the timer runs out. At level 6 you have two Job Abilities: Hundred Fists and Boost. 100 Fists is your two-hour--very powerful, but you can only use it once every two hours. Use it to get out of emergency situations. Boost is on a 15-second timer (very fast, as JAs go). When you have a JA selected in the menus, the timer will display in the lower right hand corner of the screen.
Finally, doing a little reading up can help. There are some very informative websites; I'd recommend ffxi.allakhazam.com and ffxi.somepage.com.
Hope this helps!
Chris Mattern
Well, the only thing I can think of is maybe you're not close enough, or facing the mob. Your weaponskill is still an attack; if you're positioned so that a normal attack cannot be made, the WS will "go off" and drain your TPs, but not actually be performed, since you can't attack the mob.
Chris Mattern
yeah i hear ya man. i was trying to do it without going to a website, cuz i truly believe the quickest way to ruin a game for yourself is to start reading the forums.
but oh well, and the 'skill not going off' think i think might be a targeting issue, i didn't realize i have to click the mob again after i select the skill. and i am starting to think the community issue is that noone around me speaks english.
its possible that you might be on a server that is not mainly english speaking, as a quick note, there are around 650k ffxi players, less than half of these are in america. probably around the region of 200-250k players that will speak english anyway to get onto another server i think you might have to redo your character i dont know..
From what Ive heard, about 60% of the FFXI players are North Americans or Europeans. I think the major factor here is what time you play...usually its night time in japan when I play and I dont really encounter many japanese players. OR maybe its just my server (I play on Fairy).
Yes, if you delete your character and makes a new one, it will end up on a random server.
the figure of 200-250k is an estimate, but, indications are that less than 50 percent of the player base is in america/western europe, having said that, english is a language that japanese are often taught in school, to be honest, if you compare them to the l33t speakers etc, that probably makes them easier to understand
I loved playing with the Japanese, they are very polite by their culture. Though some can be very rude.
You have an auto-translator, write the start of a word and press tab or just press tab and browse through the categories, it's very easy to Party with the japanese, and you should try doing so mostly, since the chance is if you play with NA you end up getting bad players in your pt, and skill/money is a big issue when it comes to getting fast XP.
Though many play for the fun of it
But it's a lot of grinding, and make sure you have a exp comment when you seek pt, so players can read you to new lvl, and what items and what food you use, so they can balance you to others to make the optimal PT. You can go to lv75 in a month or less with good PTs, especially Black Mage or Ranger or Bard, white mage is pretty hard to get PT with after lvl 6x, Red Mage can do their job, whm get pt easy at lower lvls or safe xp pts at higher lvls. Bard are good for Monk Pts, Blm Pts etc at high lvls when u go for merits, and well bards get pt at any lvl easy.
Anyway you need to read a lot, since its a lot about skill and timing, and using the right items, you dont have to be rich to do so, certain weapons give bonus to certain monster types, making sure your skill is capped, using the right food, if youre using magic, making sure you take advantage of weather , day of the week and most of the time try to align you character to the stars of shiva/ifrit etc..
Well it's a lot
If you wanna get Lv75 asap, lvl Whm to 18, then get subjob quest, lvl blm to 18 with whm as sub, then lvl whm to 30 get bard and lvl bard to 61, whm to 37, then bard to 75,..... or do whm to 37 after blm to 18 and go blm to 75 after, blm and brd easy to get to 75 if you write good comments and specife J/E so jp pts will pick you, and you have to do your job good so they pick you other times.
Well, I wouldnt say that Ranger is a good choice if you want to reach 75 asap. First, you want to lvl ninja and use it as sub for those long pulls and beeing safe in general. Secondly, ranger is a very expensive job. Unless you buy gil from some gilseller (no, I dont like RMT, I despise it and everyone involved in it) you'll either spend much time working on your crafts or farming to be able to make/buy your ammo. Oh yeah, nin is an expensive job as well
.
But I guess rangers got it fairly easy getting parties...at least thats been the case for me but Im only lvl 29 ranger so far. And ranger is worth the hard work, its a kick ass job!