Hello and thanksFollow

Nice to have you aboard friend!

I'll keep my eyes open for you :-)


{Peace}

Welcome Hamsters ~

Things you'll want to know as a new player =P.

* Fame is important (i.e. if you wanted to pursue the Ninja job you need to have fame in Norg if you don't have enough fame you won't even be given the quest to acquire this job... If you wanted to become a Summoner you will need fairly high fame in all of the cities even Mhaura to allow you to get the quests to fight the avatars). You build fame by working on quests in ALL towns. It's very time consuming and tedious sometimes so try to do the ones you can on your own that are easy and don't put them off too long lol (it'll bite ya in the a$$ later)...

* It caught my eye that you are working on leveling numerous characters ~ which I commend you on. But I want to relay one important thing ~ missions (Rank, Zilart, CoP, and our new Expansion Aht Urgan) are sometimes a pain in the behind to get done... The subjob quest can be a chore in itself ~ to get 3-4 characters all the missions and quests done would be overwhelming to me. Or even more challenging to have to do Genkai (limit breaking quests) for all your characters >.<... Eeep! One character alone is very challenging and takes time to level any job to 75.

* I would recomend you pick one of your characters (the one you like the most) and focus on leveling that up, doing quests on it and making it your "Main" character ~ have your other characters as your "Mules" as they will be needed with the overwhelming inventory crises we all have at higher levels. Granted since this is the game ~ if you enjoy playing all your characters then keep that up! =)

* I've been playing the game for awhile (as you may see below on my job levels) and trust me... Having one main character is plenty =P

Good Luck Hamsters! =^.^=

Welcome to Cerberus.

One small thing that a few new players don't realise (I didn't either for a while) is that you can change your job in your Mog House, so rather than have one character for each job, you have one character (or two, or three) for however many jobs you want.
When I first started, I chose WAR. I got to level 8, realised I didn't think much to the job and deleted the character to make a MNK... however, I could have gone in to my Mog House and changed jobs to get the same effect.

Some people may find that amazingly obvious, but as I've seen it happen before, I thought I'd let you know.

Enough of that. Welcome - and enjoy your travels.

Thanks for those useful tips.

I wanted to be a Dragoon in the future with one of my characters.

My highest level characters are monks (level 10).

I also have a warrior who is just starting at level 6.

Should I scrap the monks and concentrate on the warrior- give him a polarm etc?

I will try and get in touch in the game.

Thanks

Hamsters

1st of all Welcome to the game and Cerberus Hamsters



Your best bet here is to lvl you subjobs that will be for these Advance jobs which situate in your future plans. eg. lvl WAR to lvl 30 in order to activate the Dragoon Job quest or WHM to lvl 30 for your summoner. Research on the site to see possible subjob combos for each future job you would more likely on becoming, and lvl them too. I would suggest as someone has stated in one of the above posts, is to only have one main character, to think of having to go through all the quest/missions/levelling all over again on a different character scares me, then again its your choice.

Have fun and give me a shout if you have any problems.

Hello Hamster, and welcome to FFXI.

If you're considering SMN or DRG, I really recommend using only one character. These are very different jobs but it's so much easier to do all the quest, missions, limit breaks once. ^-^

SMN's pretty much always sub WHM in xp parties, which is also a great sub for DRGs soloing. If you do those on the same character, you only have to level WHM once.

If you need any help or advice, feel free to send me a PM on here or a tell in-game.

Hello

Thanks for the useful information. I am levelling a WHM now.

Where can I get a polarm from. I looked in the weapons shop but they don't have one.

Thanks

Hamsters

I didn't realise that you could have multiple jobs with one character.

That has saved me hours of levelling up different characters.

Personally, my two favourite jobs happen to be DRG and SMN, but I've levelled so many jobs and only actually got one (DRG) past 40 so far.
Anyway, if you want to play as a DRG and SMN too at one point you will be best off levelling both WAR and WHM, not necessarily at the same time.

Personally, the route I would take would be:

MNK to 18. It's a popular job for parties and in the lower levels, lack of subjob doesn't affect it *too* much. It's a great sub for WAR too if you don't have NIN at your disposal.

At 18 switch to WAR once you got your subjob quest finished. A WAR/MNK is a lot more effective than a WAR without a sub. Take WAR to 30 (to unlock the subjobs) or 37 so it'll never be a gimped sub.

Then you're set until level 60-75 with DRG. Your subs are there, ready at your disposal.

Reason I chose the melee jobs first of all is that a WHM without a sub will find it a little more difficult without the extra MP you'd get from subbing BLM.

For your SMN, the route I took from 10 onwards was BLM/WHM to 20, WHM/BLM to 34 (I got bored. I'll get the last few levels soon. And I got delevelled, so it's now 33) and then SMN for however far you want.

You've picked two fantastic jobs to play. DRG does have it's fair share of people who don't like the job, but just remind yourself that you have a dragon and they don't. DRG is a hefty damage dealer and has some traditional and fun abilities.
SMN is now my main job (but far from my highest). I read through countless forums and websites and became more and more passionate about levelling it more and more. So far I'm at level 27 and I'm yet to find a job more versatile than the SMN. It suits me perfect.

But, hey, this is all *my* advice. Feel free to follow that route if you wish. Remember that ultimately it's your decision, but you must live with the consiquences of them. By that, I mean that you could always be a BLM/WAR if you wanted to. Noone could stop you, but you'd receive very few party invites (if any) and quite a bit of stick for it.

Edit: I forgot that someone mentioned about which race to pick, so I'll garble on a bit more about that too.

First thing's first: Any race can do any job - it's the player's ability that makes them good or not.
A Taru would have a natural advantage over the other races in SMN because of their naturally high MP pool, but a Galka with MP+ equipment could do the job just as efficiently.
On the flipside, if you picked a Taru, you'd have to probably concentrate stats into STR for your DRG because Tarus are naturally "weaker" than the other races.
I chose a Mithra because they look good and I wanted to become the best Thief in Vanadiel. Mithra's naturally high DEX and AGI make them great thieves and that ultimately sealed my decision. But generally, they're all rounders.

A small round up of the races, then?

Galka: Massive vitality and health pool. Little magic points.
Elvaan: Massive strength and high mind. Little magic points (but more than Galka). They also have very high health pools.
Humes: All-rounders.
Mithra: All-rounders that have higher DEX and AGI than the other jobs, but also slightly less in... err... I forget, but it balances up with Humes >.<
Tarutaru: Stupidly high amounts of magic points and very high INT, but the smallest health pool, strength and I believe vitality too.

Edit 2 (sigh): I was reading through some of the above posts and saw that if you're going to level DRG, use a polearm for WAR.
I strongly disagree with this and would recommend you use the best weapons for your current job. WAR, I'd recommend Great Axe (and try to keep your Axe capped too), WHM I'd say use a club. When you unlock DRG, you'll be capping your polearm skill at every level anyway from personal experience.
On every job in my signature the "best" weapon for that job is capped with the exception of WHM and SMN due to the fact that I don't melee with them.
I've never been in a "skill-up" party except to level my regular axes for WAR/NIN.
To use a polearm with a WAR will mean that if you wanted to take WAR post-30/37 then you'd have your best weapons (G.Axe and Axe) uncapped and in need of levelling for weapon skills and better damage.

Edited, Wed May 17 22:00:26 2006 by Unohana

I strongly agree with this also. You shouldn't have that hard of a time skilling up your polearm while you're on DRG anyways. With all DD (Damage Delaler) jobs you should always have your best weapon skilled up.

There's pleanty of reasons to keep your subs well skilled in the future also. Level cap areas/fights (PT might want/need a WAR for a fight) or perhaps you might have friends lower level than your DRG that want to PT with you. Good to have them ready to use in future situations. The versatility of having various other jobs to use in cases like this will help alot.

Thanks very much for the step by step guide.

I have started with a monk, following your advice, in Bastock.

Hopefully I will see you and everyone else who has been posting useful information around and about.

I will be the one getting killed by goblins.

Thanks

Hamsters