Hi all, a friend convinced me to give FFXIV a try, and I’ve just made myself a Conjurer character. I’m barely 5-10 minutes in and damn this game’s pretty. Also pleasantly surprised by how solid the controller support is so far.
Curious if there are any pitfalls I should avoid, or if any of you seasoned players have advice for someone who’s just starting out.
- Currently on the free trial. Does the subscription ever go on sale? I don’t doubt its value, but ~$150 USD / year is steep for any game (imo).
- Are the classes/races decently balanced? I’ve played other MMOs where the game’s just not viable with certain classes.
- I saw a menu option for macros, and I’d assume that’s keyboard-only? Are there any other players using just a controller, or does that become a hinderance at some point?
ARR - the base game up to the level 50 “finale” quest plus the level 50 “patch” content before level 51 - took me 125h and 261h respectively on a new character, with a note that I spent quite a good bit of time in a recent seasonal farming event so the patch content might be closer to 150-160h. I will caveat this that that ~390h total was done as a player that knew the game (I’m at around probably 7000h total across all characters). The most important thing in the game is to take the quests at your speed. You won’t be punished for taking your time*, so sit back and enjoy the scenery. Do side quests. Learn crafting. Learn raiding. Have fun!
(* There are active time events in some trials and solo bosses. Please press the button :P)
It’s DEFINITELY gotten much less sloggy compared to when I cleared ARR on my first character several years ago. They’ve been taking steps ~2y ago to reduce the “chore” quests and improve or replace dungeons and trials that had aged very poorly. I don’t expect them to do that much if at all to the expansions: ARR and it’s subsequent patches had a lot of issues since they were learning how to make a game.