Looking for resources and I have a question

[AcidicSyn]

Hello!

So after playing Shadowlands and deciding meh- I decided to give FF14 another run. I had some questions I am hoping you folks might answer.

I am looking for resources, lodestone has some great insight so far, but I'm looking for icy-veins/wowhead types of sites (efficient ways to level alts, stuff I might not want to miss, rotation help and practice, etc) as well as an mmo-c style forum, but for FF. Any of these such sites exist? Most of my googling takes me to lodestone, which is great so far, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something.

EDIT: I Missed the freakin sticky that already answers this bit, sorry. Though that one appears dated, will check those out too.

As for my questions:

Q1 - I played WHM in the original game (Well CNJ technically as I never left Black Shroud back then), and then again when ARR released. I quit around the time Heavensward released and have not really played seriously since save for a few weeks here and there. I'm reading some poor comments about how reliable WHM is now in Endwalker, particularly with regard to MP recovery. What are your experiences with WHMs or as a WHM? Do you consider them solid healers?

Q2 - Commendations in group content. Is there a point? Or just fun little feature? I pretty much auto-toss mine to the tank, but I'm only lv 21 atm and only doing guildhests so far, think I'll be unlocking the first dungeon soon though, just got to Aleport.

Q3 - I ended up on Crystal - Lamia this time for a fresh start. Anyone with experience/comments on Crystal or Lamia?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

No, there are no easy "all in one" websites for FFXIV like WoW has with WoWhead and IcyVeins.

• Gamerescape is it for items.

• ffxiv consolegameswiki is your go to place for looking up quests and how features work and how to unlock them, etc.

• Garland Tools to see what items/dyes NPCs are using if you want to replicate their appearances, and to find out if a rare gathering mat spawns in the Dravanian Forelands at 3 AM or something.

• Eorzea Collection for looking for transmogs/glamours.

• FFXIV web browser model viewer as your wowhead wardrobe where you can mix and match different pieces to come up with a glamour (the lighting isn't right, though).

• FFXIV Nexus and FFXIV Mod Archive for mods.

• ff14housing, housing snap, and xivliving to browse for housing ideas.

• Akhmorning for written boss guides.

• The Balance Discord for endgame job rotation and gearing guides. Is a tremendous pain in the ass compared to Icy Veins guides: you basically go to one of the channels for the job you want to research, and then spend hours browsing through the two dozen+ different google doc guides that are way too long, just to find the little pieces of relevant information you actually wanted in the first place. Also the people there aren't very helpful. No there is no alternative.

• Universalis for checking out market board prices across all servers without having to spend time hopping around each one.

• Icy Veins has started covering FFXIV but they only have guides for some of the jobs and only cover the mechanics of the latest raid tier.

an mmo-c style forum, but for FF

There is none. The best you're going to get is either the official forums or this subforum. Otherwise, you're going to have to trawl through discords, 4chan, or reddit.

I'm reading some poor comments about how reliable WHM is now in Endwalker, particularly with regard to MP recovery. What are your experiences with WHMs or as a WHM? Do you consider them solid healers?

Are you planning on doing savage raiding? Because if not then your choice of job doesn't matter at all. And even if you do plan to raid, again your choice of matter doesn't really matter. Jobs have become interchangeable and homogenous. The only job with any notable difference is Red Mage as they can fast rez people, but Red Mages aren't mandatory.

Commendations in group content. Is there a point?

Nope. If you want a mount from having a lot of commendations on a certain job, then stick around for a few seconds after a duty ends rather than just immediately leaving and you'll get some comms. After several months of play you might eventually accumulate enough comms to get the mount you want.

[AcidicSyn]

~snip~

Sweet thanks for all the links Val! much appreciated. I'm not planning to jump in savage out of the gate, but if I get hooked and find an FC or static or whatever the heck they're called here, I'll eventually want to, just not thinking quite that far out just yet, great to know I can stick with WHM for now at least though.

You mentioned housing. Honestly I resubbed entirely accepting the idea that I would never even have an apartment as reality; keep hearing getting a house now is next to impossible. Is that true? If I'm really honest, while I love healing, the crating in FF is what I enjoy most, and working toward owning a house could easily become my "end game".

[xmirrors]

It is currently not possible to buy a house, but the new lottery system will be introduced in an upcoming patch and sales will re-open then. It's an improvement over the old system but is still RNG whether you will be able to get a house or not. With that said, if you earn the gil, and keep trying, you will get one eventually. I would recommend staying out of Isghard and trying to get a house in one of the main cities first, as the competition will be less fierce.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You mentioned housing. Honestly I resubbed entirely accepting the idea that I would never even have an apartment as reality; keep hearing getting a house now is next to impossible. Is that true? If I'm really honest, while I love healing, the crating in FF is what I enjoy most, and working toward owning a house could easily become my "end game".

A housing plot is extremely difficult to obtain. Housing plots were already scarce as of when Shadowbringers started, and since then the playerbase has almost doubled in size. A few extra wards were added during ShB but they were not nearly enough. There is fierce competition of the remaining plots and there is an invisible timer for when a plot becomes available to purchase, so it boils down to people either taking time off work to sit at their computers for hours and hours just clicking on the plot, or people using an automated clicker bot. Neither is ideal.

A new housing district in Ishgard called the Empyrean is slated to come in an upcoming patch. That might help alleviate things... if you're content with getting a housing plot in an extremely grey looking area. The Goblet in Ul'dah is currently the least popular housing district but at least it has some color compared to the Empyrean.

There is also the problem that housing plots are a subscriber trap. After all of the exhausting effort that goes into obtaining one, you really aren't going to want to relinquish that plot, which means you need to stay subbed to the game or you will lose it.

Your best bet is to get an apartment. There are far, far more apartments than housing plots, and your apartment is yours to keep forever. You can walk away from the game and come back and your apartment will still be there. That being said, apartments have a very low barrier to entry in that they only cost 500,000 gil to buy, and again the playerbase has ballooned in size, so apartments have been bought up left and right. You may need to spend a couple hours jumping through all of the wards on your server just to find an empty apartment.

If you are truly desperate to buy a housing plot, then there is the newly added Oceania dataserver. Housing plots will go on sale later.

[AcidicSyn]

I'd probably be content with an apartment, at least for now. Besides I won't be able to afford a house plot even if they were available for quite some time, and I do take sub-breaks....so I suppose an apartment would indeed be better for me. Though if they are permanent, how would I get one? I got the quest to run around lavender beds last night, jumped around different wards just to look around and I don't recall there being any apartments open.

Do they add more apartments periodically? Or am I pretty much going to just have to try and find someone selling theirs? (I suspect the latter)

I left Leviathan to try and get away from the crowds, but even Lamias got a queue lol Don't think I'm desperate enough to want to play oceania yet (I think my connection would suffer playing there)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Keep searching. There are more residential areas than just Lavendar Beds (there is also Mist, Goblet, and Shirogane). It may take some time but you can probably find a vacant apartment somehow.

New apartments are added when new wards are added. No new wards have been added since ShB.

[AcidicSyn]

Keep searching. There are more residential areas than just Lavendar Beds (there is also Mist, Goblet, and Shirogane). It may take some time but you can probably find a vacant apartment somehow.

New apartments are added when new wards are added. No new wards have been added since ShB.

Gotcha, once I save up 500k I'll start looking. I wanted my home in Gridania (I have that silly citizenship certificate thing from the original games CE so I wanted to match that). But I suppose apartments don't really have windows into the wards they're in and I can just customize the inside to look however.

I'll revisit that goal once I have the funds, thanks again!

[selrah]

As for my questions:

Q1 - I played WHM in the original game (Well CNJ technically as I never left Black Shroud back then), and then again when ARR released. I quit around the time Heavensward released and have not really played seriously since save for a few weeks here and there. I'm reading some poor comments about how reliable WHM is now in Endwalker, particularly with regard to MP recovery. What are your experiences with WHMs or as a WHM? Do you consider them solid healers?

Q2 - Commendations in group content. Is there a point? Or just fun little feature? I pretty much auto-toss mine to the tank, but I'm only lv 21 atm and only doing guildhests so far, think I'll be unlocking the first dungeon soon though, just got to Aleport.

Q3 - I ended up on Crystal - Lamia this time for a fresh start. Anyone with experience/comments on Crystal or Lamia?

Q1 -All Classes/Jobs are viable in any content, but WHM definitely has MP issues from what I've seen. Overall in current content I would say Scholar is most likely the best over all.

Q2 - Commendations can be slightly worth it if you want to get mentor items. Also there is daily/weekly challenges for giving commendations that gives a small amount of gil.

Q3 - I can't say much about Lamia in particular , but Crystal (I'm on Malboro-Crystal) has traditionally been more of the RP Data Center. That's not to say that raiding isn't popular, but you're more likely to see RP party finder results then Savage. Party Finder doesn't matter much if you get into a Static, or a nice active Free Company for raids.

There is a slightly dated server guide - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._server_guide/

[xmirrors]

"Clicking for hours on end" and using clickbots aren't a thing anymore, as a heads up, so don't worry about that. You'll just be going to empty plots, investing the gil, and waiting to see if you win the lottery.

Players can't directly sell plots/apartments to you. If a player does not actively enter their home for more than 45 days they lose it, so the natural cycle of players joining/quitting the game means that there will, eventually, always be an open plot. Plots also open up if a player moves their housing from one area to another. So it's really just going to be a matter of time until you win a lottery, assuming you are actively on the lookout.

[AcidicSyn]

"Clicking for hours on end" and using clickbots aren't a thing anymore, as a heads up, so don't worry about that. You'll just be going to empty plots, investing the gil, and waiting to see if you win the lottery.

Players can't directly sell plots/apartments to you. If a player does not actively enter their home for more than 30 days they lose it, so the natural cycle of players joining/quitting the game means that there will, eventually, always be an open plot. Plots also open up if a player moves their housing from one area to another. So it's really just going to be a matter of time until you win a lottery, assuming you are actively on the lookout.

The decay applies to houses though. It's my understanding that an apartment is not subject to this decay. If that is the case, then I would assume the only way to get an apartment (assuming there are none available on my server) would be to wait for either new wards to be added (does not seem to be frequent or regular), or from another player. (or I suppose migrating to a server with an apartment available would technically count, but I'm trying to avoid stuff like that)

Is that correct?



EDIT: Ty Selrah

[xmirrors]

It's stupidly hard to find good info on housing/apartments online, isn't it? Sheesh!

Apartments indeed don't have an inactivity timer so if there are none open your only recourse is for someone to relinquish it themselves or for new ones to open up. If you have time to get the gil and other requirements before 6.1, you have a good shot with Ishgard to get an apartment. I can't find any confirmation but I assume that they would also use the lottery system, so players selling apartments won't really be a thing and you will rely on a bit of luck to snag one. Apartments I would assume have much lower competition.

[AcidicSyn]

Righto, thanks to everyone for the help. Cheers!

[Usernameforforums]

Someone mentioned Balance above. Stay away from it, very nasty place.

I haven’t had a problem there. Why?

[FFXIVuseryo]

I haven’t had a problem there. Why?

your experience was very different than mine and my freinds'.

[The Casualty]

your experience was very different than mine and my freinds'.

I'm genuinely curious what your experience is, as the <class> encounter and <class> questions, along with the pinned guides for each job are generally pretty helpful.

Aside from the beginning of an expansion where the questions chat is a lot of discussion back and forth about ideal rotation and stat weights, or if you have questions about trying to optimize a specific mechanic or cooldown alignment for a fight, you can pretty much safely just stick to the pinned guides.

[Lane]

Keep searching. There are more residential areas than just Lavendar Beds (there is also Mist, Goblet, and Shirogane). It may take some time but you can probably find a vacant apartment somehow.

New apartments are added when new wards are added. No new wards have been added since ShB.

When new wards are added do you have a choice of which apartment number you want to buy or are you just assigned the next available one?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

When new wards are added do you have a choice of which apartment number you want to buy or are you just assigned the next available one?

You have a choice of which empty apartment to buy but they're all the same.

[Calfredd]

Someone mentioned Balance above. Stay away from it, very nasty place.

Albertacanady? Is that you?

[Lane]

You have a choice of which empty apartment to buy but they're all the same.

Great, thanks! I just don't want an odd numbered apartment. :P I want to get something in Ishgard when it's available, so I should have a choice (in theory).