FFXIV Beginner Guide: Everything New Players Need to Know

FFXIV dumps a lot on you in the first couple hours. There's a character creator, eight races, nine starting classes, three starting cities, and a main story that's going to eat the next hundred-plus hours of your free time (in a good way). The relief here is that almost nothing you pick at the start is locked in. You can switch classes on the same character whenever you feel like it, change how your character looks down the road, and rebuild your screen layout any time you want.

So here's what's actually worth knowing early on, and what you can safely put off until later.

Choosing Your Race and Starting City

Pick the race you like looking at

There are eight playable races, and each one comes with two sub-groups called clans. Hyur split into Midlander and Highlander. Miqo'te are the cat people, and they come in Seekers of the Sun and Keepers of the Moon. The full list is Hyur, Elezen, Lalafell, Miqo'te, Roegadyn, Au Ra, Viera, and Hrothgar, and every one of them has that two-clan split for slightly different faces and coloring.

Here's the part a lot of guides bury. Race has basically zero effect on how strong your character is. A Roegadyn and a Lalafell of the same class start maybe six stat points apart, and by the time you reach the level cap your main stats are running into the thousands. That gap evaporates. So pick whatever looks good to you and don't stress over the numbers screen.

Your class picks your city, not your race

The three city-states you can start in are Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, and Ul'dah, and which one you wake up in depends entirely on your starting class. Race doesn't enter into it. Any race can begin in any city, you just have to pick a class that starts there.

The mapping looks like this:

• Gridania, the forest nation: Lancer, Archer, Conjurer
• Limsa Lominsa, the pirate port: Marauder, Arcanist
• Ul'dah, the desert merchant city: Gladiator, Pugilist, Thaumaturge

The cities all feed into the same main story eventually, so you're not really missing anything permanent no matter where you land.

One small catch worth knowing. Rogue, the class that becomes Ninja, is not a starting class at all. You unlock it later at level 10 by visiting the Rogue's Guild in Limsa Lominsa. If sneaky Ninja is your end goal, start as Marauder or Arcanist so you're already in the right city when that unlocks.

You can redo your look later

Say you get forty hours in and decide your Au Ra's horns are bugging you. You're not stuck. The game hands out a free Fantasia, which is the item that lets you rebuild your character's race and appearance from scratch. The classic one drops when you finish the base game's level 50 story finale. There's also an earlier free one now, available right after a level 17 main story quest, if you want a do-over well before then. Fantasias normally cost real money on the store, so getting them free is kind of a big deal.

Picking Your First Class

This is the one early choice that actually shapes your first dozen hours, so it's worth a minute of thought. Every starting class falls into one of three combat roles, and your role decides what you'll be doing in group content.

The three roles

Every party needs the same three jobs. A tank grabs the enemies' attention and takes the hits. A healer keeps everyone alive and brings people back up if they fall. DPS, which stands for damage per second, is where most of the killing happens, and it splits into melee, physical ranged, and magic.

Group sizes are fixed by role. A standard four-person dungeon runs one tank, one healer, and two DPS. The bigger eight-person fights bump that up to two tanks, two healers, and four DPS. So tanks and healers are always the minority in any group, which matters for your queue times (more on that down in the dungeon section).

The nine starting classes

Here's the full spread, with the job each one grows into and the role it plays.

| Class | Role | Becomes | |---|---|---| | Gladiator | Tank | Paladin | | Marauder | Tank | Warrior | | Conjurer | Healer | White Mage | | Arcanist | Healer or magic DPS | Scholar or Summoner | | Lancer | Melee DPS | Dragoon | | Pugilist | Melee DPS | Monk | | Rogue | Melee DPS | Ninja | | Archer | Physical ranged DPS | Bard | | Thaumaturge | Magic DPS | Black Mage |

Arcanist is the odd one out, and it's worth pointing at. It's the only class that branches into two jobs, and those two jobs even level together because they share the same base class experience. Play Arcanist and you get a healer and a damage dealer for the price of one, and you can switch between them freely.

When your class turns into a job

Every starting class grows into its full job at level 30. To make the jump you need three things. Hit level 30, finish your class's level 30 class quest, and get far enough in the main story to clear the quest called Sylph-management. Once that's done you pick up a job stone, equip it, and you're a Paladin or a Warrior or whatever the case may be.

The jobs hit harder and get cooler abilities, so hitting 30 feels like a real upgrade. There's no reason to skip it.

Picks that make the start smooth

If you've got no preference and just want an easy start, a few classes get recommended over and over by the community.

For tanks, Marauder into Warrior and Gladiator into Paladin are both forgiving and good for learning the role. Warrior in particular gets called the friendliest job in the game for new players because it hits hard and heals itself, which makes it pretty hard to mess up.

For healing, Conjurer into White Mage is the simplest healer. It's a lot of straightforward "cast a heal, cast a bigger heal" with a giant chunky damage spell on the side, so it's easy to wrap your head around.

For damage, Archer into Bard is a relaxed physical ranged class that lets you move while you shoot, and Arcanist is great if you can't decide between healing and DPS since it does both. The one a lot of new players bounce off is Thaumaturge into Black Mage, because it has long spell cast times and punishes you hard for moving at the wrong moment. Not impossible, just less forgiving out of the gate.

You're not stuck with it

Here's the best part. One character can be every single class and job in the game. Once you finish your first class's level 10 class quest, you unlock something called the Armory Chest, and after that you can walk into any class guild and sign up. Want to try tanking after forty hours of healing? Just equip a sword and you're a Gladiator now. Switching your weapon is all it takes, and you can save full sets of gear so you swap between jobs in one click.

So don't agonize. Your first class is a starting point, not a life sentence.

How the Main Scenario Quest Works

The Main Scenario Quest, usually just called the MSQ, is the spine of the whole game. It's the big story questline, full of cutscenes, and it's also the gate in front of almost everything else. Want to ride a chocobo? MSQ. Want to fly between cities? MSQ. Want into the next expansion's zones, dungeons, and jobs? All behind the MSQ.

Spotting the quest icons

There are three quest icons worth telling apart right away.

• The MSQ icon looks like a fiery meteor, kind of like a spiky sun. This is the main story. Chase it constantly.
• Standard side quests are just a plain bubble with an exclamation mark. These give a little extra lore and some experience, but they're optional.
• The blue quests have a blue background with a plus sign next to the exclamation. These unlock stuff. New dungeons, new systems, new features, sometimes whole new classes. Do these whenever you see them, because skipping one can mean a feature you want later is sitting there locked.

The stretch where levels matter

Here's the thing people warn new players about. In the base game, which is the A Realm Reborn story from levels 1 to 50, the main quest sometimes asks for a higher level than the previous step gave you. So you hit a wall where the next story quest needs you to be, say, level 21, but you just dinged 19. The fix is to go top up your experience with side quests, FATEs (those public events popping up around the map), or a dungeon run.

Square Enix actually trimmed this down a while back, cutting roughly an eighth of the old ARR quests to tighten things up. It's smoother than it used to be, way smoother, but you may still feel a couple of those little bumps in the base game. The expansions after A Realm Reborn were built differently, and in those the story hands out enough experience that you'll often end up overleveled without even trying.

How far it goes

The story is long, and it only keeps growing. The level bands go like this:

| Expansion | Levels | |---|---| | A Realm Reborn (base game) | 1 to 50 | | Heavensward | 50 to 60 | | Stormblood | 60 to 70 | | Shadowbringers | 70 to 80 | | Endwalker | 80 to 90 | | Dawntrail | 90 to 100 |

Each one adds ten levels and a full new chunk of story. Toward the end of the base game you'll also run into a couple of big set-piece duties, including one called Castrum Meridianum and another called The Praetorium, that wrap up the first arc with a lot of unskippable cutscenes. They're long. Grab a snack.

Your First Dungeon and Duty Finder Basics

You'll hit your first dungeon around level 15, and it's called Sastasha. The main story unlocks it for you, so you can't really miss it, but there's some useful context to know before you queue up.

Sastasha basics

Sastasha, sometimes called the Sastasha Seagrot, is a four-player pirate cave dungeon that opens up through the level 15 main story quest called It's Probably Pirates. Because it's a story step, every player unlocks it naturally. The party makeup is one tank, one healer, and two DPS, and the whole thing runs on a 90-minute timer, which is way more than you'll need.

The dungeon has three bosses in order. First is Chopper, then a pirate captain named Captain Madison who runs off partway through and comes back, and finally Denn the Orcatoothed, a big sea beast that's the actual finale. None of them are rough for a fresh group, so don't sweat it.

How the Duty Finder works

The Duty Finder is the game's automatic matchmaking. You register for a dungeon as whatever role your current class is, and the game pulls in three other players from across your whole data center to fill the party. You don't have to know anyone or form a group yourself.

The clever part is the Roulette system. Veteran players queue into random low-level dungeons for a daily experience bonus, and the game shrinks their level down to match the dungeon. That's the whole reason low-level dungeons stay populated years after launch. There's almost always a high-level player or two happy to get scaled down and carry some newcomers through.

Queue times depend on your role

This is where the tank-healer-DPS split from earlier comes back around. Tanks and healers are the minority in every group, so the Duty Finder is usually hungry for them. Queue as a tank or a healer and your wait is often just a minute or two, sometimes basically instant. Queue as a DPS and you're standing around longer, because there's a longer line of DPS players all waiting for the same two slots in each group.

The waits aren't official numbers and they bounce around with time of day, but the pattern holds. If you're rolling a DPS and the queue is dragging, that's normal and not a bug.

Do the Hall of the Novice first

Before your first real dungeon, track down a tutorial chain called the Hall of the Novice. It unlocks at level 15, and a helpful NPC called the Smith points you toward it during the main story. It's a set of short, role-specific exercises that teach you the actual mechanics of tanking, healing, or dealing damage in a group.

The reason to bother is the loot. Finishing it hands you a full set of level 15 gear called the Brand-new set, which is good equipment that'll carry you through the early dungeons. You also get a ring that bumps up the experience you earn from kills by 30 percent all the way up to level 30. Free gear and faster leveling for maybe twenty minutes of easy practice is a trade anyone should take.

A few tips for the dungeon itself

If you're tanking, walk ahead and pull the groups of enemies, then keep them facing away from the party. If you're healing, keep people above half health and toss in some damage when nobody's in trouble. If you're a DPS, focus on whatever the tank is hitting and step out of the orange patches on the ground.

The orange ground markers are telegraphs, meaning an attack is about to land there. Step out before it snaps. And watch the cast bar under the enemy's name, because the damage lines up with that bar filling and resolving, not the flashy animation. That's the reliable cue.

Settings and HUD Tweaks That Help

FFXIV's default settings are okay, but a handful of tweaks make the game feel a lot better, and most of them take thirty seconds. None of these are required, but they're the ones new players tend to wish they'd known about sooner.

Switch to Legacy movement

Head into Character Configuration, then Control Settings, then General, and look for the movement type. The default is Standard, which ties your running direction to the way your character faces. The problem is that pressing back makes your character slowly backpedal, and backpedaling is rough when you need to dodge in a hurry.

Legacy movement ties your direction to the camera instead, so pressing back spins you around and runs you toward the camera at full speed. That makes dodging way easier, because you can scoot in any direction without re-aiming. Most experienced players run Legacy for exactly this reason.

Zoom the camera out

In the same Controls menu there's a camera distance setting. Crank it toward the maximum. A wider view lets you see more of the fight around you, so you spot those orange telegraph markers and incoming adds before they're already on top of you. The default sits tighter than most people want once combat gets busy.

Make the enemy cast bar huge

This is the single best dodging tip in the game. Go into HUD Layout, select the target bar, hit its settings gear, and turn on the option to display target info independently. That splits the enemy's health, status, and cast bar into separate pieces you can resize on their own.

Make the cast bar big and drag it somewhere central, like right under your character. Now you can read every enemy attack as it charges up, and since the damage lands when that bar finishes resolving, watching it is how you time your dodges correctly.

Clean up your targeting

By default, Tab cycles through nearby targets, which can grab the wrong thing in a crowd. There's a filter system under the targeting settings that lets you restrict what Tab and the cycle keys will grab, like limiting them to enemies only. There's also an X-key hold that temporarily filters your selection, handy for clicking a specific NPC when players are swarming all over them.

Getting your targeting set so it reliably snaps to the next enemy instead of some random critter will save you a ton of misclicks once dungeons get busy.

Turn other players' spell effects down

In the Control Settings, under the Character tab near the bottom, there's a battle effects setting. By default you see every spell from every party member at full intensity, which turns an eight-player fight into a screen full of flashing light.

Dial party and other players' effects down to Limited or Off. You'll still see your own abilities clearly, but the screen calms way down and you can actually read what the boss is doing. People swear by this one.

Set up gear sets for class swapping

Since you can be every class on one character, you'll want a fast way to switch between them. Open your Character menu and there's a Recommended Gear button that auto-equips your best available stuff for your current class, which is great right after you level up.

Better yet, save what you're wearing as a gear set. Then you can drag that gear set onto a hotbar slot, and clicking it swaps your entire loadout, weapon and armor and all, in one go. So you can park a tank set on one key and a healer set on another, and flip between jobs in a second flat.

Ten minutes in HUD Layout now, moving the chat box and hotbars to where your hand actually sits, saves you from fighting the interface for the next fifty hours.