FF XI Initial Guide

By Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin AKA "Armano"

Starting Out

Your first step in FF XI is to create a character. There are no race / job restrictions (any race can be any job), though some races are much better at some jobs. Don't worry about the job too much, as you can switch jobs at any time in your MOG house (more on this later). In general though:

• Humes (Humans) are good at everything
• Galka are good at melee jobs (Warrior and Monk)
• Mithra (Cat people) are good at Dex / Agility jobs (Thief)
• Elvaan (Elves) are good at melee jobs (Warrior and Monk)
• Tarutaru are good at magic jobs (White and Black Mage)

See the race and job guides for more information on specific races and jobs.

There are three starting cities. Each race has a starting city. If you choose to start in your races starting city, you begin play with a signet ring. Each cities signet ring is different (they are not tradable), and they are nice (you won't replace it with a better ring for a long time). This being said, they aren't essential.

You begin play with a map of your starting city. You can move from starting city to starting city fairly easily (by airship) – you just need to be able to pay for your passage. I also recommend buying a map of the city you are going to before you go there.

Initial Play

Once you select a race, job, face, hair color, job, name and starting city, you will begin play. You will see a nice introductorily cut-scene of your character arriving in the city, and meet a few interesting NPCs (Non Player Characters). Once the cut-scene ends, you are on your own.

Movement is based on your hardware – you could be using a PS2, a PC or a PC with a compact keyboard. For this reason, I am not going to talk about specific controls, as they will be different for different players. There are, however, a few things that you should master right away.

You can toggle between different NPCs, selecting the one you want quite easily. Select them to chat with (in a city) or to fight (outside a city).

My initial advice is to talk to everyone you see. You will be assigned a variety of quests (which get logged in your quest journal) that you can complete at your leisure. As you move around, check your map. Your map will show you all of the important places in each area of the city.

Each starting city is broken down into 3 zones. Most zones have an exit leading outside of the city and connection points to other areas of the city. All areas of the city have shops. You can buy and sell goods in shops. Most shops will buy anything (they all pay the same price), but only sell a specific grouping of goods.

Most areas of the city have access to an auction house. The auction house allows a player to put a good up for auction (say, a sword they found). The person who puts the item up for auction names a price (say, 500 gil). Other players can then bid on the sword (they can't see the price). If they name a price under (say 400 gil) they are told their bid was too low. If they name a price equal / greater (say 600 gil), they pay that price for the sword (so if you say you will pay 600 gil, you pay 600 gil, even though it was put up for 500 gil). Auction houses are great places for finding gear at cheaper prices (usually) then you would find in a store.

Most areas of the city have direct access to your MOG house. Your MOG (short for mogle) house is a private room that you own. The MOG house is used for:

Storing Extra Items

Receiving Money for items you sold at the Auction House

Changing your Job

Gardening

Rearranging your furniture

Reading the newspaper

As you head over to your MOG house, don't forget to turn in your adventurers coupon that you got during the opening cut-scene.

Changing your job is really, really simple. You go to the MOG house and ask to switch jobs. Until you hit level 18 (and do a quest), you can only have one job at a time. So if you are a level 10 Monk, you could switch jobs to Red Mage (or any other job). You then become a level 1 Red Mage. You could switch back to Monk (level 10) at any point. If you gain a few levels in Red Mage (say, to level 5), you could switch to Monk (level 10), and then back to Red Mage (level 5), or even over to Thief (level 1). There is no penalty for switching jobs.

So why switch jobs? Well, sometimes it is fun to play as another job. Your skills also carry over. For example, if your raised your shield skill as a White Mage, when you change jobs to Warrior, you will still have your improved shield skill (each Job does cap skills by level – so if the max shield skill of a level 1 Warrior was 5, your shield skill would temporarily lower to 5 as a first level warrior, even if it was normally 10). Also, at a certain point you will be able to have 2 active jobs (c.f. the jobs pages). It can be nice to have a variety of secondary jobs to pick from.

Killing Things

So you want to level up. Well, quests give favor with the local inhabitants (the more quests you do, the more they like you), but they don't give experience. So how do you get experience? In the time honored RPG way – you go and kill things.

Every job starts you out with some basic armor and a weapon (unless you are a Monk, in which case you use your hands). Make sure that you equip all of your items, then head out of the city. All city exits lead to newbie killing grounds (areas where you kill and get killed).

On your way, look for a large, glowing blue crystal. That is a home point. You can set your respawn point (where you reappear when you die) to any blue crystal you see. Some guards will also allow you to set your home point at them (these guards are not in the city though, so don't worry about it).

At the city gates (inside of the city, before you zone), talk to the guard on the far left. He will cast Signet on you if you ask him to. Signet is a magic spell (a small, which disc will appear on your screen when the spell is cast on you) that does a few cool things:

All monsters you kill have a chance of dropping a crystal. Crystals can be sold for money, used for quests, used for crafting items, fed to planets, etc. Sell the initial crystals you find for starting cash. Crystals drop in addition to the normal monster treasure.

All monsters you kill give you conquest points. The more you kill, the more influence your city gains over the area you are killing in. Conquest points are tallied by the gate guard. Get enough, and you can trade them in for cool, free items.

OK, so you now have equipped all of your gear, bound yourself to a crystal and have signet cast on you. Time to go kill.

Monsters right outside of the city are easy enough for beginning players to kill. As you kill things, you will:

Gain experience

Increase your weapon and evasion skills (and possibly your parry, shield, guard, etc.)

Gain treasure

Make sure to CHECK monsters before you attack them. Some monsters are tougher than others. Even if they look exactly the same, some are tougher then others. Monster difficulty goes from:

Too Weak to be Worthwhile

Easy

Decent Challenge

Even Match

Tough

Very Tough

Incredibly Tough

If you are fighting solo, you want to be fighting Easy or Decent Challenge monsters. The tougher the monster, the more experience.

Attack a monster by using the attack command. If you are a Red Mage, begin combat by casting Dia on the monster and than attack. If you are a Black Mage, begin combat by casting Stone on the monster and than attack.

If you are a White Mage and getting hurt in a fight, cast Cure on yourself (just cast it – you don't need to target yourself).

After killing a few monsters, you will notice that your HP (and MP, if you are a spellcaster) are getting low. Rest (using the rest command) until you are fully healed, then go kill some more.

While resting, check your inventory. You can hold a total of 30 things (or groups of things). Use the auto-sort to group identical items (for example, if you have a "wild onion" in your inventory twice, it is taking up two spaces. If you auto-sort, you will instead see one space taken up by a wild onion, with a (2) next to it to show that you have two of them). If your inventory fills up, you will see a small treasure chest icon appear. This means that you have two many items, and that some of them (the last ones found) will disappear soon. Clean up your inventory, or drop some of the less valuable items, to make room for the new ones.

When your inventory is full, head back in to town to sell off your stuff.

At a certain point you will want to upgrade your weapon and armor. I also recommend (for Warrior, Red Mage, White Mage and Thief) picking up a shield as soon as you can.

As a Mage (White, Black and Red) you will be able to buy new spells as you level up.

In general, the further out you go from the city gates, the tougher the monsters. Most monsters are not aggressive (they will not attack you unless you attack them). The exceptions to this are the humanoids (goblins, quadovs, etc.). Also, some monsters are not aggressive but they will link (come to the aid of their fellow creatures). Sheep, for example, will link with other sheep.

Each class has a starting job ability that can be used every two real hours. In addition, most jobs gain a new job ability at level 5.

Weapons give you a weapon ability when they reach skill level 10 (and again at 40, 70, etc.). When your TP meter has filled up to be greater then 100%, you can use the weapon ability to do a special attack. The more TP you have, the more damage the special attack does.

At a certain point you will want to join a party. To show that you want to join a party, go to the party menu and toggle your party flag (this will put an ! next to your name). To invite others into your party, use the party menu search, or select them and then use the invite command.

Parties split experience equally between members, with a slight bonus for each member in the party (the more members in the party, the higher the bonus but also the more ways the experience is split). For each level you are below the highest level member of the party, you will get less experience (so if you are level 5, and there is a level 8 in the party, you will get a lot less experience then if you were with a group of level 5s).

This should get your going with your initial FF XI experience. Be sure to check the more detailed Race and Job information found on this site for more information on Races and Jobs.