Thread of Not Obvious Useful Things to Know

[warlockiii]

I have recently come back to the game after only playing it for 30 levels at launch. I am having a great time. I thought it would be helpful to share some of the things I found not obvious. Please feel free to correct me and/or to add to this list.


1) Starting at 16 you can begin doing the "Duty Roulette: Low Level", which gives a significant amount of XP the first time you complete it each day. You will want to use it everyday for whatever main spec you are leveling. Also, at 10 you can do "Duty Roulette: Guildhest" once per day for about 2 FATEs worth of XP.

2) A lot of the dungeons in this game are opened by doing the main story quest (blue !), but not all of them. Some require doing a side quest. Below is a list of dungeons with the quest you need to unlock them.

http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Dungeons

3) If you can't progress main story because the next step is a higher level--and then you forget where that quest was once you level up, you can look in the book next to your bed in the inn to see what was the last step you completed, then google it to find out the next quest (and quest giver). If there is a better way to do this, I'd like to know.

4) After you complete this level 17 quest, you can "hire" (first one is free) a retainer at the Retainer Vocate in any of the 3 major cities market area. These act as a bank, and they can sell items for you on the market. You can summon your retainer at a bell (in the market and in your inn room).

5) Items with a little dot in the top right can be dyed---but only after you do this quest.

[turboether]

6) The Hildibrand sidequest line is the best part of the entire game.

[LaughingMan]

If you have your Chocobo summoned, you cannot queue for anything in the duty finder, and cannot do grand company levequests.

[warlockiii]

8. For quests where you have to "hand over" items, you can right click the item and then left click--which is faster than finding the item in your bag and clicking it from there.

9. Under character configuration you can change your inventory to expanded mode to show all items in one large bag space instead of multiple bags.

10. Also under character configuration under the "General Tab", you have the option to turn off certain cutscenes like when you use the airship or ferry or also for dungeon encounters you have already completed.

[D3athsting]

11. You can't die by fall damage while mounted

[Ilir]

11. You can't die by fall damage while mounted

You can't die by fall damage at all.

[D3athsting]

You can't die by fall damage at all.

I for sure died several times at low lvls by fall dmg

[Veluren]

I for sure died several times at low lvls by fall dmg

Fall damage kills you in combat, otherwise it just takes you to 1 hp

12. Damage effects snapshot when the ability's cast bar goes off, not when the effect itself hits you. This is before factoring in lag.

[Kazgrel]

I am new to the game (just got it this weekend), but here's a couple items I touched on in the thread I created here that may be of interest. They are thaumaturge-specific, so I dunno how these would apply to other classes.

- You can sleep multiple targets, unlike, for example, polymorph or hex from WoW
- CC effects on pve mobs have a DR (so no spam polymorph on a mob like WoW)
- You can sleep a mob that's already affected by dots and the dot damage won't break the CC. The dot has to be present on the target already, though. Reapplying the dot (thunder, in my case) will break the sleep

From having played WoW for years, those particular bits came as a (pleasant) surprise.

[Seraphus]

In PVP, if you make a hotkey for /lockon, and keep running forward, it makes it much easier for your attacks to connect since you're constantly adjusting your angle to correct for your opponents movement.


In Frontlines (BGs), don't get discouraged if youre a melee class or a tank, and the top DPS is nothing but Mage/Summoner. Mage/Summoner have a limit break called Cometeor, which easily makes up about 60% of their total damage.

[Arkenaw]

If someone is trolling your teleport by interrupting with trade, set to /busy.

Hide the emote messages by adding motion at the end (/dance motion) for example.

Teleport to an aetheryte by clicking it on the map.

Dragoons can avoid fall damage by using elusive jump off the edge

You can create quick switch buttons by dragging gear sets to hotbars

Always carry a phoenix down for emergencies, they are very cheap

Petrification can only be cured by using a Gold Needle on the victim.

Lots of materials can be bought from vendors, check XIVDB to see if a material you need is available from a vendor before buying it off the market board

You can leave instances from the duty finder menu in addition to the exit portal

You still get credit for a fate if you leave it but stay in the same zone

If a monster is casting a spell at you, often you can run through him and the cast will fail

More to come maybe

[Senka]

A few gameplay ones:

- Periodics all snapshot just like old WoW, and you can always overwrite stronger periodics.

- Player area attacks' locations are also decided when the cast completes. I know this is always mentioned about enemy attacks, but I've seen Caster Limit Breaks wasted this way.

- Speaking of Caster Limit Break, if the Limit Break gauge increases in level while the area selector for the previous level spell is active, you will still cast the previous one and consume the entire gauge. For example: The gauge is at Level 1 and almost at Level 2. You press Limit Break but do not cast it. The gauge reaches Level 2. What you cast now will be Skyshard (Level 1) and not Starstorm (Level 2), but you will consume all of the gauge just to cast Skyshard. Cancel the current area selector and use Limit Break again to cast Starstorm. This is kind of obvious because each level of Caster Limit Break has dramatically increased area, but some people still don't get it. Even melee can technically do this if they're retarded and start casting Bladedance and the gauge reaches Level 3 mid-cast (unless you or the enemy was going to die if you waited anyway).

- For melee: Positional bonuses are determined when the ability starts, not when it hits. This means you should always try to be at the correct position before you use an ability, and you don't need to stay at that position if you need to move once you start performing an ability.

- Anything and only things with the FATE icon next to its name gets you contribution credit towards the FATE, not just the obvious or intended targets.

- Only using Ring of Thorns is NOT how Dragoons AoE. Good god, this should be obvious, but lately I've seen so many people doing this, and I don't get it. It is never worth using Ring of Thorns by itself unless it's something different like bombs at Brayflox's Longstop Hard. Except for things like that, Ring of Thorns is only used as a combo move after Heavy Thrust. If you need to conserve TP but still AoE, the combo is a better way usually.

- For Monk: Arm of the Destroyer is not for AoE damage except against something silly like 8 enemies, and even then don't chain-use it. Yes, Monks have next to no AoE damage. It's a shame, but that's how the game is.

- Everything, even targeting, has a natural delay of some kind compared to WoW. That means don't play this game like WoW, especially as a tank or healer. As a tank at 1HP, don't think you can use Hallowed Ground/Holmgang less than a second before you're going to take damage. You will die, and your ability will be on cooldown. As a healer in that same situation, same thing with Benediction/Lustrate, and also, if the tank isn't already your target and you try to cast a spell too fast (~.2 secs) after changing targets, you could end up casting it on whoever else had been targeted.

- FATEs scale based on how many people participated in that FATE last time it happened regardless of Completion or Failure. This means lower/higher HP, damage, and number of monsters than normal. For gathering FATEs, the number of turn-ins needed is lower/higher than normal. Although what participation is considered "normal" is unknown, my best guess is 6-8 people. The scaling is tuned so that they're reasonably completable by the same number of people that participated last time. However, the base tuning for some FATEs is completely out of whack for their intended audience, and the scaling is based off of that.

- Do not rush levelling your first time playing. The goal is not max level but instead to experience the story. Certainly do some FATEs as you come across them and some levequests, but you should never need to repeatedly seek out FATEs, repeatedly do dungeons, or just sit there in a queue.

[Spell Book]

Here are a few that I know about.

For the crafters out there there is a great site called crafting as a service......(ffxivcrafting.com) that you can put in the amount of the item you want to craft and it breaks it down into the components, raw materials. It will also notify you if you can buy said raw materials from a vendor and the location as well as the price of the vendor.

To level up crafting, leves are the best way to do them. If you google how to power level a crafting profession there is a great list of what leve to do for what level, where the levequest giver is and how many of the item you need to get the maximum amount of xp for those series of levels.

*Note* always strive to turn in HQ items for the leves as they will give you 200% of the xp and extra gil.

Also do the daily provision quests for your Grand Company each crafting profession and gathering profession will have one, and if there is a gold star next to the name you get bonus xp (a metric ton of xp for HQ items) as well as a decent amount of seals

If your running out of inventory space and you have not spiritbonded those items, or cannot convert those items into materia take them to your Grand Company and do the provisions. You can turn in your unwanted gear for seals.

For combat if your in an alliance and are having a hard time seeing the telegraphs on the ground to avoid them, or your PC starts to do a slide show due to all the weapon skill/magic effects there is an option to turn of other parties animations.

For those that are new or coming back to the game after a long break and have gear that is under ilvl 90, if you look in the Party Finder there are usually hunting parties (farming the NMs around Erozea) that give allied seals that in turn you can trade to the Hunt Master (not sure if that is the name of the person) He/She is located by the Grand Company headquarters or your city and has the ilvl 90 job specific Artifact Armour for your job

[Sorrior]

The hunts also award soldiery which can be used to buy gear too

[Ghostile]

Don't waste your gil on gear while leveling, you get the gear from quests.

Pick your grand company carefully, sucks to grind another if you pick the "wrong" one early on.

[Sorrior]

Don't waste your gil on gear while leveling, you get the gear from quests.

Pick your grand company carefully, sucks to grind another if you pick the "wrong" one early on.

Outside of glamor gear not sure there is a wrong choice gc wise

[warlockiii]

- XIVDB.com was mentioned earlier about items for sale on vendors--it's also a great resource for minding precise mob locations for hunting logs (one or two seem wrong, but in those cases people give location in the comments)

- Aggro -- small white bar will pop up to the left of everyone's health bars, inside the job icon (aggro meter); when you have aggro the bar will be full and there will be an "A" next to your name

- List of things you can unlock by level - link

[Ghostile]

Outside of glamor gear not sure there is a wrong choice gc wise

Found it quite a shame that there was nothing to spend my seals on, besides a weapon, as I picked Immortal Flames as a warrior.

[Sorrior]

Found it quite a shame that there was nothing to spend my seals on, besides a weapon, as I picked Immortal Flames as a warrior.

Ummm they still have gear just not best stAts.

[Lathais]

- List of things you can unlock by level - link

This is an awesome link. I need something like that. I really like the way it breaks down all the level 50 stuff by iLvl. Probably not gonna get throigh most of it at this point as I am still 45, but gonna try to get through as much of it as I can before Heavensward.