7 Beginner Mistakes You Should Avoid in FFXIV 

DO NOT JUST QUEUE INTO PVP AS SOON AS YOU UNLOCK IT!!!! You will enter a match with no abilities on your skill bar and unable to do anything but move around. Instead, go to the Wolf's Den Pier in La Noscea (sort of a PvP lobby area) to set up your skills. PvP skills are completely different from PvE, so just because you know how to play your job in open world and dungeons, it doesn't mean you know anything about the PvP version of your job. This goes for EVERY JOB. Set up your skills and read what they do first, before you ever queue for PvP.

Minor note, some of those side quests unlock blue quests, or triad card players, so some are worth doin.

Some side quest are indeed worth to do. Some of the "regular side quests" will reward you with emotes and some regular side quests will unlock other side quest, like the questline for the moogles.

Not me doing side quests just so that i can clear the map of icons or anything..... not.... me...

I want to add one more tip: Get familiar with at least one tank and healer role. DPS is fun but a real hassle to queue for dungeons.

I just want to say that if you are playing this game for the story, then those yellow side quests are great! That's where a lot of the world building happens, and you get a much greater sense of things if you do them all.

the biggest thing for me was not trying other jobs, crafting, or gathering. i was lancer/dragoon from ARR to endwalker, absolutely refused to try anything else. it was only once i finished the msq that i finally branched out and did other shit (i leveled up all my crafters and gatherers to 90 just the other day!) so don't be afraid to try other classes or your hand at crafting/gathering! there's more to ffxiv than just fighting shit 💛

Saw something in Praetorium just the other day. Be aware of the different boss markers! If you get four yellow arrows pointing inward on you, DO NOT RUN AWAY FROM THE PARTY! That is a STACK marker! You have to share that damage, or it's gonna probably kill you. Oh, and don't try to melee the hands on the Nero fight if you're being targeted. Use ranged attacks and run away.

My biggest mistake while still being a sprout was trying to queue in extremes. And I managed to clear a couple of those with the Duty Finder, even! But please don't, save yourself the stress. Regarding quests, I stopped doing the normal quests once I realized I was constantly WAY overleveled for them, and doing them was both a waste of time and the exp they give (yes, yes, I know it's measly exp). SO after I finished Stormblood with the only combat job I cared to play (main Black Mage here that got to 70 without touching ANY other DoW/DoM class), I started playing Machinist and used that class to go back and do *every single normal quest* I left behind. And you know what? It was great. There are a lot of normal quests that are quite entertaining and give a lot to the lore of the land you're in. Also worth noting that some even give you emotes, minions and other unique fashion items. And there's that *yellow* questline in Foundation about Inspector Briardien, that one is a MUST.

My biggest mistake I made while being a sprout, was getting a stack marker on me for the first time. I kept running away and everyone was chasing me. Ooops. My advice, when you get the yellow arrows on you, run closer to where everyone can join you, or stay put! It shares the damage and sharing is caring!

If you have tank stance on and you enter a duty in your level range, it will stay on. But if you sync to a lower level, it removes your stance, so you'll have to turn it back on. This also applies to FATEs. Still trying to remember to check for my stance: Yes, many yellow sidequests lack good rewards, but they also let me give tea to Ala Mhigan refugees, which is its own reward.

Other tips worth mentioning (mostly role specific): - don't stand in narnia just because you're not melee. Don't be surprised if you find yourself low health and not getting heals if you do... (Also, as a rdm you could literally always stay at melee range to get out your occasional auto attacks and just backflip if aoe circle) - if you play tank, please try not to move the boss around too much and always face the boss away from the party. Especially for us melee dps that has positionals to land and it's very annoying when the tank constantly spin the boss

The sweaty answer to Resurrection is most of the time. Not taking the rez doesn't give you sickness. shortcuts reduce the trek back, and sometimes the place you died is where you spawn.

Biggest beginner mistake; I had just started playing and decided to take a short cut through the river, and instead got stuck in some rocks 😂

I actually somewhat disagree about the sidequests. I mean, I understand why you say that, but actually I think there are players who prefer to amble and get distracted by little stuff. Sidequests are perfect for these. The consequence is sure, you won't be completing the msq as swiftly, but then for that particular subset of players that really isn't important. Rather than say don't do them, it's more to understand they are optional. I say this has someone who does sidequests, tribal quests, and am levelling all my main jobs up together, and and been ambling through the game for nearly a year and am "only" approaching the half-way point in SB. Though I've found a cool FC who are very happy to let me go at my own pace. And I think that's the thing, there is no need to rush to the end, and sometimes prolonging the journey is its won victory :) . I do especially like your last point.

My biggest mistake : wanting to clear ALL content of the game. As a little ARR sprout, I stood in queue for the Coils for 3hrs. Until ultimately giving up. Feels bad.

The mistake I made when I was a sprout was not looking up a rotation tutorial. Look it up it'll help you

Just started and felt the need to do every yellow quest i saw. Will do some, but it's really nice to know i don't need to do ALL of them 😅 Thanks for the tips!

No longer a sprout 🌱 still clueless tho 😂😂😂

I do all the side quests, even though I am in Shadowbringers, because the writing for many of them is endearing. The writing in this game is just so good!

If you enjoy leveling multiple classes doing the yellow quests are worth it, but be aware that it does eat at your time as a lot of them are back and forth tedious stuff. Doing dailies and all yellow quests, I had almost 4 classes at level 80 by the end of shadowbringers, and one more at level 76. That's WITH dailies though, which are important :') do your dailies. Also this is optional, but highly recommended: Watch a video or more on the class(es) you wish to main! It will save your teammates a headache or two.

The side quests can be fun, and they can reward you with some good gear, emotes etc. Last I checked fun isn’t a mistake when it comes to games. Go at your own pace, don’t rush through final fantasy XIV that would be my advice. You’ll definitely enjoy your time with the game more so.

Alexander's time stop can be blocked by a well timed res. Well, blocked for the revived player. It was neat moving in stopped time.

oooh i really like how you're using the ffxvi chest piece. didn't recognize it at first.

I did almost every side quest in several of the Shadowbringers and Endwalker zones as I did the MSQ, and it really helped me feel like I was doing my best to save everyone.

the sprout fail i did was thinking i got a regular yellow side quest and it popped to be an 6 1/2 hour sideline story of yellow chain quests x)

Thanks for the video 😁 I just started Endwalker and lost my sprout but I still feel so clueless about pretty much everything lol

Only Real Gamers Never Skip Your Side Quests!

I love the Metian Vest glam together with the wizard hat!

Loving the Emet cutout in the back

‘actually, that cat girl looked at me weird. i want to eat that one instead” had me laugh so hard…

my biggest mistake was selling my first thavnairian onion to a vendor, because I thought it was a culinarian item, which I wasn't leveling at that time >_>

holy shit iv been playing since heavensward n nvr notice shop selling price...thats gonna save me a google tab

omg i love that he is on your wall 😭 yea..... LOVE YOUR VIDS! tysm for all the guides! i'm brand new to mmo :3

To add to the resurrection details, the invuln buff lasts about 5 seconds. Moving around is fine. Movement abilities such as Sprint or job-specific dashes/jumps will remove the buff. The invuln will not block ground-based mechanics such as puddles with a DoT or most knockbacks.

I will say, getting ARR extremes in mentor roulette has become a LOT more manageable with each expansion power creep. You'll likely still wipe a few times, but it shouldn't take more than 20-30 minutes if the people learn.

Been playing for 3 1/2years straight AND. I. STILL. learn stuff from various jobs by reading tool tips...and that was AFTER I was a Sprout. I also enjoy gathering/crafting ingredients than buying them from market board, to save money AND level DoL/DoH quests.

Thanks for the video! Started on Xbox as a first time player about 2 weeks ago. This definitely will help. The game is so fun! And there’s so much to do!! Ahh!! 😱

When you sell something on the market board the initial number is how much you can make by having your retainer sell the item. So, check the current prices and see if the item is selling for more on the MB. If it is lower then just have your retainer sell it. This gives you the Gil instantly, without waiting, and without taking up one of the 20 sale slots for something that is profitable

Fun story: my first synced extreme trial was Shiva by queueing Duty FInder after the quest - not noticing the difficulty.

Watched this while trying to queue for a few A(S) duties for Anima Relic light farming, thank you 🙏

The Side Quests are great if you enjoy exploring the world, as they take you to places you wouldn't normally go, otherwise. They also can reward you with gear, some with emotes, and there's even a few that are great for puzzle solvers as the quests don't always tell you exactly what to do. If you want to progress through story only, then yes, sticking to the MSQ, Class Quests, and roulettes are your best bet. But if you want to see the whole beautiful world and its lore, side quests are a must! Well, except maybe for the base game side quests up to level 50, those were... a let down in a generic MMORPG way.

when i was a sprout i for some reason didn't know you had to turn the boss around until people were yelling it at me XD

I'll add afew things to remember: using the dpad to cycle between enemies/allies is quite useful especially for healing/tank ranged aggro attacks, avoid orange/red floor markers, red arrows are usually single target, red circles show which way the enemy will attack, orange arrows need the damage shared or its a 1HKO, circles of smoke/glyphs etc on the floor are usually ally aoe attacks so tanks stop running out of them, tanks can unsurprisingly tank most orange floor aoe with minimal damage but some have knockback effects so learn which attacks are which. Also when fighting chimera ram is close range ice attack so run away, and dragon is long range lightning so run near. In aurum vale? The first boss has a poison aoe so please use the fruit in the arena. Any debuff stack will most likely instant kill you if it reaches level 5, such as vulnerability/poison. *If I'm wrong on any of this then please feel free to correct me.

as someone who starting over, this time im really buying the game(including sub) and some experiences similar on Phantasy Star Universe and slightly on NGS, im ready to back to eorzia to properly play the game lol and this video really giving me some confidences

I used to queue in Fr only. Didn't know you had to set it up to all the languages. It took hours and hours to do the ARR MSQ with all the trials.

Another tip. Don't duty finder binding coil unless you want to sit there for hours in queue. If you have a friend thats finished, best way is just to unsync it with them so you can at least experience the story.

Very small note, when you die and get resurrected by the healer you get a "weakened" debuff. So in some scenarios when you die right before a boss dies and you're off to the next area or during a pull before the boss room it can be beneficial to just respawn since you can usually teleport to a pretty close spot. But this is situational, wouldn't do this if it's going to hurt your party or you're in the middle of the boss.

Wait do you have a cardboard Emet in the back? I need one too!

Buying items from the market board, sometimes I don't want to gather xD Also not waiting for the healer to revive me. And the one on extremes. I was a stickler for doing roulette for them. And then I discovered Party Finder.

Im saving the side quests for when all my classes reach maximum level & after I finish this games msq (im in the semi-beginning of stormblood after weeks of leveling up my crafting/gathering classes) which will take even longer with the added extra 10 levels

What is the song in your intro?

Please play more than DPS. I wanna play Red Mage!

Doing every single side quest is 100% worth it, for me. I love reading them all, and I've come to care about/gotten sadder for some of these sidequest npcs more than the scions lol. If you ever hear someone complain about there not being anough death in the game, they don't do the sidequests. And I found it funny some people will tell me not to do all these sidequests when this game is lauded so much for its story. Yes, a lot are simple fetch quests without much meat in them. Several, especially in Thanalan, just have you go from one end of the map to the other and back again LMAO. Like some other people say, indeed sidequests besides blue can give you emotes, some even give titles, and Ithink ive gotten a minion or two as well but I could be trippin on that one idk. There are A LOT. One in Ishgard even gives you an outfit and title (a favorite long SQ chain of mine). But my main motives are 1: story 2: completionist. I also wanna say some of my favorites are the longer chains. Almost every single zone you visit has 1 long sidequest chain. I've enjoyed all of them but some are better than others. I know one of my favorite SQ zones was Il Mheg (one npc calls your WoL Ul Tyr/Sigun Tyr, which a later SQ gives translation too, and it's a cool little thing so look for it if you're interested! Or just look it up lol). There are also some sidequests you do, that then get revisitied and have a great emotional payoff later since you did the ones earlier. Like some ones in the Wineport area which connect to a SQ in the Stormblood alliance raid ship area WHICH is one that gives a title I'll add. (The way I do SQ is I complete everything that pops up before continuing the next MSQ. Aka, when doing Wineport SQ the first time, it was a long while before Stormblood had me revisiting it again. Felt like seeing old friends). I've been playing about 7/8 months now. Done every single SQ except crafting ones (gonna do those later). I'm halfway through La Hee land (the name is escaping me). No, if you choose to do all the SQ it won't take you forever to beat the MSQ 😂. I also go very slow. I like to uncover as much of a zone as I possibly can and unlock aether currents as well before even starting to quest (in sone cases, you won't be able to get all of a zone until WAY later after progressing MSQ just fyi), even though the quests will take me all over then map eventually anyways. I've maxed out my Squadron (which is VERY useful and underrated imo). I wanna max jobs and crafting too (which I was GONNA do before even starting ShB originally, but then Dawntrail decided to happen sooo, I wanna be with the crowd this time, rip my plans). I even have an alt, who I'm forcing myself to just do blue quests/MSQ only with. I never needed to grind a little for exp so I could continue the MSQ before until this lol. That's not even a big deal I suppose, but the other point is the game felt like it had a lot less... soul, when I played this way. I also love doing every SQ because then I actually feel like a true hero of the people. I feel like my renown is earned. Like it made sense for my character to get where he has. Like I just went from a small no one to someone who not just does big world saving hero stuff, but also just gets a child back their favorite lost toy, which is perhaps the world to them. These SQ subtley feed into MSQ and even Hildribrand stuff sometimes. They can add world building and context to characters. Add lore. Make the world feel even bigger and more complex. Even the ambient dialogue gives stuff! There are two Thamaturges in the Thamaturge's Guild in the back left alcove corner who just casually allude to a huge end of ARR spoiler, and since I played Thamaturge as my first ever class, I had already predicited lots of stuff simply from paying attention to random npcs dialogue and doing sideqests. It's AMAZING. This comment is longer than I planned it to be, but basically I'm very passionate about defending these sidequests 😅. If you enjoy the little things, love the fact that zone music changes depending on night or day, love clicking on npcs between every quest accept just to see what little extra thing they say and how it changes (these are great, the effort put in, I've laughed a lot), then don't mind what other people tell you. Do all the sidequests to your heart's content!

Getting gear from Market board since as a tank i was above my expansions max lvl already due to roulette spam and i wanted to have BIS in most battled, so i was pretty broke till the end of the whole MSQ

An additional note on resurrection invulnerability being broken by using an action; this includes your sprint ability! I've done savage raids with people that didn't realize this and thought moving at all would make you lose the invulnerability

Hi, one thing I keep seeing is people spam clicking buttons and it keeps saying that it's not ready, what do these cooldowns even mean? 😅 Sorry if this is a dumb sprout question or something misunderstood by me. I just commonly hear about cooldowns and others that I think I understand now like area of effect (A.O.E.) yes?

I did not know abilities are not tied to the global cooldown until well into shb. I was sandbagging my dps hard

I didn’t know that Limit Break was a thing for the longest time when I first started

I already do the quest thing, specially if I'm already over leveled for the area I'm playing (and I'm leaving them to help level other jobs in the future), but from Heavensward and beyond (at least up to Stormblood where I am currently), you're kinda obligated to do some of them to unlock the blue ones needed to increase your mount speed and allow you to fly, which is kinda annoying to be honest.

So it looks like ive been up to a good start as a sprout on xbox. I was already doing most of the stuff mentioned here. Best thing was realizing that grey quest dont really unlock anything

Mistakes I made as a Paladin main is not running Provoke and trying to figure what my load out should be at level 83 cause I'm pretty new to true MMO stuff cause destiny/Destiny2 doesn't have any big MMO mechanics but I'm willing to keep trying my best

What's the (caster?) glam set with the black and shiny blue with the big hat?

I queued a party for ramuh EX, we won after half an hour of tries and echo buff, and it got me confident to do unreals, but poor poor mentor souls that I got involved there. It was a pretty fun experience but please just use party finder for those xD

Tip, the mechanics are more important than DPS. Focus more in where to (not) stand from the beginning, than what to click. You may notice that the boss' aoe does not kill you and healer can keep up on leveling content... If you make it your habit to overexert healer it's a wipe probably on higher/end content, so if everyone lives, cause you cancelled the cast, and moved out of danger puddle, it will be 5second longer fight but ending with a kill. I just returned after some time to play, and first thing is I do is to how I should position myself as a tank and that are the mechanics (when and where there is AOE, soak, tankbuster and how big, can I soak it on 30% reduction or should I go for a bubble) cause at the end game dungeones tank busters hits harder xD I can account to that (they are not only "slightly" stronger, but on 85% reductor I am receiving 3 hits that leaving me with 30% HP, it would have been insta overkill kill with no mitigation on :) While some low-level roulettes the hardest hit I received was maybe 50%hp without any mitigation, so with some shield/reducton on, it was easy to just not move and nothing bad will happen (unles your healer will fall asleep) same goes for the. It's easy to get the wrong habbits, when on low level content you can ignore many mechanics and survive.

my cringy sprout mistake was not understanding how thundercloud procs worked as a black mage. I read the tooltip and thought that the thundercloud spent the remaining time on the current dot instantly and placed a new one. So I'd just throw out the thundercloud whenever it proc'd.

yo whats that monk glam chest at 1:37? is that from the Steppe dungeon?

I have to do all the sidequests though. My map must be CLEAN. (This is entirely a me being a massive completionist problem 😅)

Haha I've actually never ordered food while by myself before, in a group sure, but alone I'd feel way too lazy 🤣

6:22 i feel called out… i feel asleep at like 5 am and woke up at like 7:30

Not all side quests are bad, just most of them. For example in Heavensward there's there's the Scholasticate Questline. It's not a terrible quest line to play through, and by the end of it you get a the scholasticate chest piece, the inspector glasses, the 'spectacles' emote, and the titles 'Special Advisor' and 'of the holy body'. So quite a few rewards that most players will just never get since they follow this advice of ignoring all yellow quests.

when i first started playing i got effed over by not understanding the mechanics in praetorium i knew that you had to group up for the attack with the arrows.....but i ALSO thought you were supposed to group up for the mechanic where you're supposed to spread out.... (i figured it out not too long after but it did take me embarrassingly long lol) then later in shadowbringers there was a solo duty where like alphinaud or someone was like "ok now spread out!" when the seperate mechanic came and i was like....where was this before praetorium...

Agree with tooltips... Well, tips. Made it to 80 (in ShB) on BLM without knowing I didn't need to use Transpose to swap back & forth

The algorithm stop showing your vids on my main page and I missed two of them!

Some of those NPC vendors are a trick and a half to even FIND sometimes. Like, I get it. Unlocking and leveling the ARR Tribes just for their vendors is time-consuming as heck and you have to unlock them to even get the BASE vendor offerings. But yeah, generally speaking the vendors are much easier to go to, even taking in transportation costs. Especially the different Crafting Guild vendors. You would be surprised how much you can get from them if you know where they all are and what they offer.

Starting as a Thaumaturge. It was so slow, and with basically zero survivability that I just couldn't be bothered continuing the game and I was near the end of ARR. I bought a story skip and then unlocked Gunbreaker (couldn't be bothered levelling another class up) and I've not looked back since.

2:38 Avy stop giving away my secrets 😤

In the proverbial words of JoCat, "ALWAYS. BE. CASTING!"

something new player wont ever have to worry about, when I started in FFXIv in 2.0, I main a healer. couple mistake i made, put points into the wrong stat, instead of putting into piety , accidently put into int, was costly mistake as to reset your starts you would need to buy a book from your GC store. Love hate with stats for snm/sch either went full in one and reset it each spec change or you did hybrid build. second mistake was not knowing how to unlock whm, back then you need to level paladin aswell to unlock whm, it was quite a grind, top of that you need to level black mage for swift cast. As for side quest, some worth doing as they give emotes, pets and have effect on the main story on how npc talk to you. before hand you would need to do as main quest never enough get you to 50 alone, you would have to grind fates from 40 -45 to 50. best way of leveling then was with fates, you would join a fate xp farm. only side of ffxiv I miss the most, leveling in fates and making new friends.

My biggest tip. Don’t shoehorn yourself into one class. Try everything! You might missing out a job you would really enjoy by sticking to one job. The beauty of FFXIV is that you can be every job in the game with no downside. I’ve pinballed my main job around ever since I started playing during Heavenward and that’s part of what makes FFXIV a wholly unique game. The fact that if you find out you don’t mesh well with a class you don’t have to replay the entire game to fix that mistake. Just go pick up the new job’s quest and level them up.

I didn't realize you could stand in bad until the cast was done, aka greed. I know now that most of the time, I can stand in them until the cast bar is about 3/4 full.

In the "don't panic" section, this is why when I play as tank, I aoe the pack twice before start running again and then I spam ranged attacks as I run towards the next pack just to be sure the agro stays on me and my dps/heals can spam their ranged/aoe damage confidently.

Not backing up hotbar/ui settings and that you can sell TT Cards to npc for MGP

Side quests are great, fast XP for alt jobs.

Don't queue for Ultimates either. Learn the fight with guides, so you don't mess up too often. That's a very good lesson. Also, thanks for the video. ^^

I remember the day in FFXI where they amalgamated all the auction houses into 1 auction house. It LITERALLY killed the gil making method of tons of players. Who spent their entire time buying up stuff from an NPC in one town, traveling to another town, and selling the item for more on the auction house there. This point is basically connected to the NPC items part of the video. Items were available from an NPC in one town, but not the others. And loads of players took weeks if not months to ever leave the starting areas in FFXI because it was that much of a grind back then. (AND you had to pay a sub fee for EVERY spare character you made. So if you wanted 'mules' in other towns to act as auction house jockeys for you, you had to stump up a monthly fee.)

PC player, I clicked(left clicked on mouse) whenever Active Time Maneuver popped up, until early Endwalker when someone said you can use movement bindings on keyboard for it

Tooltips, yeah... Typically when a new job is released and I pick it up, it's read the tooltips. A lot of the time many of them are analogous to skills from other jobs, thus they go on similar positions on my hotbars. Also, that tooltips changing upon leveling really blindsided some with Samurai. People didn't think Samurai had any positionals if they didn't check after the traits that add them to give more kenki gauge.

As a sprout maining whm I didn't know the concept of job stone until someone called me out for it in a dungeon! I happily advanced in msq leveling and unlocking dungeons and around 45-50 someone asked why I didn't equip my jobstone... My what???

But you can get some good things from those gold quests. I’ve got some great glam items :3

I've been playing white mage for a few weeks now, still constantly forget I'm the healer sometimes and just DPS.

i did all the arr ex trials in duty finder cause i didnt know any other way XD but ex shiva was the point where i actually decided im buying the game XD

As a healer main using any skill with a 45+ second cooldown as an "emergency button" for bosses. (Not pulls) As a healer you WILL run out of mp.

What If you have blue quest that requires you to do extreme duties?

my biggest mistake as a sprout was using my freshly obtained Khloe Gold Certificate on the Ixion mount because it said "unique untradable" and I thought it meant I can't get it anywhere else... I wlll never forgive my old self for that mistake

I'd been bouncing around MMOs for a decade by the time I joined FFXIV, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing. BUT! When I first started playing MMOs ages ago, I remember joining a dungeon party as a tank class/spec without knowing that the MMO Holy Trinity was a thing. The only reason I "successfully" tanked the dungeon was because I was impatiently pulling when no one else would. (I also used taunts because I figured the enemies should hit armored me rather than the people in dresses) At some point I D/Ced on a boss and the party had wiped by the time I got back...because of course they did. I was like, "Huh. My class must be pretty important". Ha! Fun times.

With regards to the savage/extreme queue thing, this is purely squeenix's fault. Normal content and hard content are about as difficult as each other and have roughly the same queue time. It isn't just that a new player has no reason to think that extreme isn't much different to hard, it is that they have literally been taught that the difficulty listed doesn't matter much.

What shorts are these, I must have them!

Honestly when my guild leader from GW2 came to FF14, he INSISTED on doing every yellow quest in a zone before moving onto the next area not because he felt he needed to, but because his OCD demanded it. His character is still in early HW btw.

The dps job is to engage the floor while the tank is busy with the boss since they cant tank both at the same time.