Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn
- When you're making a character, go with whatever you want. There's (currently) nothing special attached to signs, or birthdates. Race has so little bearing on your stats that it really doesn't matter.
- Your starting city is determined by your class choice when making your character. If you like a city, but don't like their classes, don't worry about it. The main story branches out to all the starting cities early on and never goes back beyond a few dialogue bits.
- If you're wondering when you get access to something or when certain functions unlock, the answer is almost always "complete more story missions".
- Every city has a system of fast-travel points to every important building called the Aethernet. By unlocking all these points (just run to them and activate), you'll gain access to fast-travel out all the main exits for that city.
- Every city also has their own low level quests. It's good to save those for when you're leveling a second class, especially if it's unlocked in that city.
- Combat classes can basically get all their gear from questing. Your only purchases will probably be cheap accessory upgrades. You should be able to save up a big chunk of change by the time you finish the story, and then start a crafting or gathering class.
- You unlock a Job at level 30 as part of your class quests. This is basically just access to a few new abilities as it still plays almost exactly the same as your class did. However you will have to level a certain class to 15 as a prerequisite to the job quest. Which leads me to...
- The Armory Bonus. Every combat class in the game receives an xp bonus if you have a higher level class already. If you take one class to 50 first, every other class will have a permanent 50% xp bonus.
- Certain cities and inns function as a "sanctuary". When you spend time in these cities, online or off, you accumulate an xp boost up to the point where you will receive an xp bonus for a whole level's worth of xp. This bonus also applies to crafting and gathering classes.
- Gathering classes (Mining/Botany/Fishing) are amazingly not terrible. The easiest way to level these, and the crafting classes, are through "Leves". Leves are basically quests you do repeatedly, but you only have a certain amount of allowances that you get each day to do them. However you can just let these allowances accumulate to the max (I think 99 or 100) and punch them out over and over again.
- Gathering leves are basically "Gather from special points with certain circumstances", Craft leves are "Turn in a certain item"
- For crafting leves, you get triple xp when you turn in the High Quality version of the item. There are also certain leves that require you to turn in 3 items, so if you turn in 3 HQ items you get triple xp for each one.
- The best gathering leves are evaluations. You receive a certain amount of points for harvesting items from 8 points, and you recieve a bonus depending on how many points you got. The best bonus can give you nearly double xp, so these are the ones you want to do as good as possible on.
- When you reach the point in the game where it asks you to join one of the city's Grand Companies, you'll be locked in until you get enough promotions to reach the point where you're allowed to switch. GC gear is also really good for their level (except 50), so pick some up as you go.
- Always make sure you do your class/job quests as they become available every 5 levels. You usually get a new weapon, a new ability, or more. At level 45 you'll get 4 pieces your job's artifact armor, and at 50 you'll get a new skill and the final piece of your AF.