I’ve made so many mistakes here in FFXIV. Things could have saved me time, but no, I like to do things the hard way. I want to go in blind. But if you’re not like me and you’d love to dodge some of these common mistakes, sit back, relax and enjoy as I rifle through 10 different things you can do to not be like me.
Mistake # 1: Not Playing on Preferred Server
Don’t bother with a regular server. Pick a preferred server. These things are fantastic. They have a global buff called the Road to 70, where it gives you 100 more XP.
We’re talking about doubling your leveling speed. I didn’t do this to start. I went on a regular server, and I found myself going kind of slowly. Things were kind of slow, and then a quick little bit of research showed me the preferred servers with buffs. So please pick a preferred server, get the Road to 70 buff, and enjoy your much smoother leveling experience.
Mistake # 2: Not Following MSQ
This mistake was not following the MSQ. I come from many other MMOs, and in those MMOs, you’d like to complete all the quests in an area
. An exclamation mark means you should do it, however, I soon learned that side missions in this game offer very little XP. Completing Main Story Quests (MSQ) with a meteor outline with exclamation marks is the sole objective required to progress through the game. To progress to the point where you can catch up with everyone else because all of the game’s main features are hidden behind these quests.
Mistake # 3: Not Doing Job Quest
Do your job quests every five levels. I went about 15 or 20 levels without doing my job quests, and I was kind of commenting to myself, like, man, I don’t have a lot of abilities.
I didn’t use my class much until I started my job quest, and then I received three new skills that made fighting much more fun. Return to the same guy for additional missions, powers, XP, and even class-specific gear.
Mistake # 4: Walking every time to the Waking Sands
Don’t simply walk to the waking sands. I walked there every time, every time down the long tunnel. During your quest in the MSQ, you’re given this gift, a stack of envelopes. The stack of envelopes pretty much says use me and teleport to the waking sands. I didn’t read it. I have a reading comprehension issue sometimes. I’m so busy going through stuff and just glancing over things. I could have been teleporting to the waking sands this whole time, but I spent 50 levels walking.
Mistake # 5: Avoiding the Hunting Log
If you ever want to level a second class because you want to change classes during the MSQ, during the process of reborn, and you had a dragoon you want to try, a bard, as an example, for the first bunch of levels before you can start doing dungeons and stuff, you need to kind of grind out some mobs and things.
Do your hunting log. Don’t do what I did: avoid the hunting log and just grind on mobs nonstop. Do the hunting log. It’s fantastic. The XP bonus for killing three of those is phenomenal and will save you time, so please do the hunting log whenever you do new classes to get them to the level where they can do dungeons. You can go from there and level in different ways.
Mistake # 6: Not Utilizing MSQ Shortcut
It is less of a mistake but more of a shortcut. So whenever I do the MSQ, my typical thing would be to get to the next step. I would go over to the right-hand side where my quest was. I would click it, open up the map, find where I needed to go, and teleport if I needed to. But there’s a faster way. In the top left-hand corner, if you just click that icon, which is the MSQ icon, it takes you straight to the map.
Saving you a few clicks. It’s nothing game-breaking, nothing insane, but just enough where when you’re doing that over hundreds of quests, it could save a fair amount of time.
Mistake # 7: Not Getting the Chocobo Fighter
Everybody knows you get your Chocobo mount at level 20. Everyone rejoices, jumping on their Chocobo for the first time and going off adventuring. I didn’t realize that at level 30, there’s a follow-up quest called My Feisty Little Chocobo.
If you complete that quest, not only is your Chocobo your mount, it can also fight with you. Usually, animal companions in MMOs aren’t that great when you’re not a hunter type class, but this Chocobo can deal some crazy damage, or it can tank for you, or it can heal for you. Yes, I didn’t know that until level 50 plus. Don’t make my mistake; get your Chocobo fighter!
Mistake # 8: Avoiding the Blue Quest
The blue stuff unlocks stuff. If you see a blue quest, it will unlock something. Some sort of feature in the game, whether it’s glamour to change the look of your gear, whether it’s a dungeon, whether it’s a trial, will unlock something. So if you want to be specific, punch into Google about the blue quests and find a list of all the requests. You can pick and choose which ones are the most important to you, or you can just do what I did and avoid almost all of them. So do your blue quests. Blue stuff unlocks stuff.
Mistake # 9: Not Utilizing the one Big Bag!
It brings me back to my World of Warcraft days when I was playing that game. One of my favorite add-ons was a bag add-on that took all your bags and made them into one big user interface so you could see everything in all your bags and organize them beautifully. I missed that add-on, and for the longest time, I wished it was in FFXIV, but sadly, FFXIV doesn’t have many add-ons. It’s not until you find out down the road that it’s built into the User Interface!
If you go into your settings, character settings, you can find your inventory, and in there, you can change how it’s laid out and make it one big bag! Do that early because it just makes life easier. It makes finding items easy.
Mistake # 10: Not Using the Aether Crystals
The Aethernet, those beautiful crystals in town. You can’t use your mount in town. You have to walk and sprint on a short cooldown, but you can’t sprint all the time.
All of those Aether crystals, the little tiny ones spread around town, click all of them, access all of them, attune to all of them because they help you to navigate around town so much faster. Nothing drove me more insane until I realized later down the road in my 30s and 40s that I could do that. Once I figured out how wonderful it was, I was kicking myself over and over for making that mistake. So don’t make my mistake and use the Aethernet.
These are the top ten mistakes I made that I wish I hadn’t made. I created this guide, so you don’t have to experience them.
