Levels 1-5: Getting Started

First Steps Forward

After the opening cutscene, you will find yourself in a random spot somewhere in your chosen city.
Move with WASD / the left Analog stick. Hit R on the keyboard or L1 on controller when running to turn on autorun and continue running in the same direction.

The default button to open the main menu is “-“ (the minus key. Either the one next to 0 or the top-right one on the numpad works) or the Square button. There’s a second page in the main menu if you use the left/right arrow keys to change pages.

This menu lets you do all kinds of stuff, including:

• trade with NPCs and other players
• show a map (typing “/map'” in the chat box and hitting enter also works)
• open your inventory (Ctrl-I also works)
• view and change your equipment (Ctrl-E also works)
• mess with your settings (the option for this is “Config”)
• see random information that you need once every ten hours (like “Profile” and “Conquest”)

The “Config” settings are mostly self-explanatory, aside from the two-chat-window text splits and the subsequent chat filters added in 2023, which often require trial and error to get just right.
Some early recommendations for configuration settings:

Automatically stacking items in your inventory as you acquire them

• Config → Gameplay
  • Autosort ON

Splitting the chat log into two windows and turning off its awful, slow, animation effect

• Windows → Shared
  • Effect OFF
  • Multiwindow Horizontal or Vertical as preferred
  • Window 1/2 Adjust Width to fit your screen

Segregating messages by window

• Log → Window 1/2
  • Select ON to display in the associated window, and OFF to filter from it

Font color adjustment

• Font colors

Fast Travel – Home Points and Survival Guides

Once you’re good with movement and you’ve messed with settings to your heart’s content, open your map (“/map” in chat, or “Map” in the – menu) and find the nearest blinking blue crystal, which is a Home Point:

These blue beauties allow you to set your character’s home point (where you return to when you die or use Warp) and also let you teleport to any other HP that you’ve previously touched.

• This currently costs you 500 gil, so there’s no shame in going places on foot instead. NOTE: Homepoint crystal travel fee is reduced by 80% once you achieve Rank 3 and obtain the Adventurers’ Certificate Key Item.
• Teleporting to another HP in the same city is free, so teleport around your home city at will.
• Now that you’ve used that Home Point, it won’t blink on the map anymore. That’s how you can tell whether you’ve already touched one!

Always make it your first priority to hit a Home Point when you arrive somewhere new, because you don’t want to leave and have to make that trip all over again.

Similarly, and equally visible on the map, there are floating books called Survival Guides:

These have the same ability to teleport you to each other, so you want to interact with them the instant you find them.

Going Outside

Finally, it’s time to leave town! Obtain Signet. Near each town exit you should see a Conquest Overseer NPC, identified by having “W.W”, “T.K”, or “I.M” in their name. You should always be sure you have this buff active when leveling in Conquest areas.

Signet gives you a currency called Conquest Points when you kill monsters. It’s not super important anymore, because the best Conquest Points item is the Warp Ring. To use the Warp Ring, equip it, wait for its 8-second cooldown to tick down to zero, then either go into your Inventory, select it, and select “Use” or just type /item “Warp Ring” <me> in chat and hit Enter.

Now, go outside of town for real and get ready to rumble! If you haven’t already, make sure you equip your weapon and armor.

FFXI is an old game. Combat is slow at the best of times, and level 1 is nowhere near the best of times. You just auto-attack until you get your combat skill level high enough to learn a weaponskill. And then you auto-attack enough to fill your TP bar to 1000 to spend it all on a single use of that weaponskill… and then repeat.

If you picked a job with spells, combat is different… but only because you can also cast your single starting spell, until you run out of MP and have to sit down for half a minute to regenerate it. Leveling up, however, restores you to full HP and MP.

Introduction to Combat

Selecting a monster and typing /check, or hitting Enter and selecting Check from the menu that pops up, will tell you its level. “Even Match” is the same level as you, and “Tough” is only a few levels above. Higher-level “Very/Incredibly Tough” enemies will be difficult for now. (Later, you’ll deliberately aim for higher level targets to get more experience per kill.) The output of /check only tells you two things:

• the target’s level and a comparison to yours
• a relative comparison of the monster’s evasion and defense to your accuracy and attack.

As you hit enemies, you will gain combat skill levels, which display in your log with a message like “Dagger skill rises 0.1 points”. When you get enough, you will automatically unlock weaponskills. A weaponskill spends 1,000 or more TP (up to a maximum of 3,000) to do damage. Some also do other things like restore MP, heal you, or inflict status ailments. Spend your TP as you get it once you have a weapon skill unlocked, since they deal more damage than autoattacks.

Selling Stuff

With Signet on, you also get Crystals as drops from defeating enemies. These are consumables used for crafting, so they’re always in demand. You can sell full stacks of 12 at the Auction House for some walking-around money.

You should be able to fund your Home Point teleportation habit until it becomes 80% cheaper pretty soon.

To sell something on the Auction House (or “AH”), interact with any of the points named “Auction House” located on the windows of the physical AH building in town.
AHs are labeled on your map, and can be found in Bastok Markets/Bastok Mines, Southern San d’Oria/Port San d’Oria, and Windurst Woods/Windurst Walls.
Once you open the little menu, go to “Sell” and select your (single or full stack of 12, nothing in between) item to set a price – you’ll see the history of the last ten sale prices for that item to give you an idea of what to set your price to.
Once the item sells, go back to the “Sale Status” menu and select the item (which will “helpfully” have turned yellow rather than green) to remove it from your “items for sale” so that you can sell more items. (Yes, this is obtuse as hell.)

• You only have 30 Auction House slots, so you can only sell 30 stacks of Crystals at once.

The money from sales, or any returned item that didn’t sell, goes to your Delivery Box, which you can access from your Mog House.

Finding Other Players

Linkshells are the colored pearl icons you see next to other players’ names. A linkshell, or LS, is FFXI’s equivalent to a guild or free company, but is essentially only a dedicated chat channel. Finding a linkshell is typically how you should go about meeting other players in game. You can equip up to two linkpearl items at once for two chat channels.

To equip a Linkpearl, go to Menu → Linkshell. You must hold the Linkpearl in a universally available inventory bag (Inventory, Satchel, Sack, or Case) in order to equip it, but it doesn’t have to be in specifically your Inventory. Once equipped, you can chat with other players with the commands /l or /l2 (that’s lowercase L, for linkshell), depending on which slot you equipped it to.

Players looking to create new Linkshells may buy a New Linkshell item from one of the 3 NPCs in their home nation (see link). With the Linkshell, you are able to create Linkpearls and distribute them among members as you choose.

To create Linkpearls from the New Linkshell:

• First, go to your Menu and select Linkshell.
• Select your shell, name it and choose its color. Assuming you have room in your inventory, an option for Create Pearl can then be highlighted.
• After choosing this option, a new linkpearl appears in your inventory.
• A maximum of 63 linkpearls can be in use at any one time; That means that linkshells have a limit of 64 members. The Linkshell Holder (leader), takes up 1 of those 64 slots, leaving exactly 63 available seats for Linkpearl and Pearlsack holders.

Once you’ve created the new Linkshell and would like to recruit new members, visit the Recruiting section of the forum. Players looking to join a linkshell can check the same link.

Levels 5-18: Making Progress

Macros: A User’s Guide

Hold Ctrl or Alt to see your macro bars, or L2/R2 for controllers. Now let go of that button and go edit them under “Macros” in the – menu.

Macros have their own “fun” syntax. If you’re a Black Mage and you want a macro to cast Stone on the currently targeted enemy, the macro would read:
/ma “Stone” <t>

That’s:

• /ma for “use Magic”
• “Stone”, the full name of what you’re casting (the quotes are not necessary for single words, but will be for “Stone II” and onwards)
• <t>, your current target, who you’re casting it on

Other categories for the first option include:

• /ja (job abilities like Berserk or Steal)
• /item (items like Potion or Antidote)
• /ra (a Ranged Attack with your equipped ranged weapon)
• /ws (weapon skills like Fast Blade or Wasp Sting).

The second part in quotes can be any spell, ability, or item in the game.

Other categories for the third option include:

• <me> (you, the player)
• <pet> (a Beastmaster, Dragoon, Puppetmaster, or Summoner‘s pet)
• <st> (brings up a subtarget selection arrow to pick a target)
• <p2> (the person in the second slot in the party).

While you’re making a macro, you might also want to make a Warp Ring macro:
/equip ring1 “Warp Ring” <wait 9>
/item “Warp Ring” <me>

Warp Ring has an eight second cooldown, so the <wait 9> makes sure you wait long enough before you try to use it. Ring1 is the left ring slot and ring2 is the right ring. (If you look at your character’s equipment window, you’ll see why – they’re in that left-to-right order and labelled.)

Another useful macro is the basic one to use a weapon skill, which looks like:
/ws “Fast Blade” <t>

Actually Leveling Up

Go back outside, form a party of other players (up to 6 total) and kill stuff with your new party!

There’s a small red dot labeled “Outpost” on the map of one of the two areas immediately outside your city. (Specifically, North Gustaberg, West Ronfaure, or West Sarutabaruta) Try going there and interacting with the Survival Guide. When you’re done, you can use it to warp back to the Guide in town. Poke your nose into the next area for more levels if you want, but don’t go too far, because you’ve got a main plot to progress.

Starting a Story

Now it’s time to start the actual storyline. Near the Conquest Overseer you receive Signet from will be another NPC known as a Gate Guard. These NPCs will be your purveyor of most story Missions.
Specifically, accept the only one you have available, Mission 1-1, and then complete it.

Bastok Mission 1-1

San d’Oria Mission 1-1

Windurst Mission 1-1

Then do Mission 1-2. Mission 1-3 takes you to a dungeon-esque area full of beastmen near your city.

Bastok Mission 1-3 is inside Palborough Mines.

San d’Oria Mission 1-3 is inside Ghelsba Outpost.

Windurst Mission 1-3 is inside Giddeus.

Completing Mission 1-3 will raise your Rank to 2, and then you can trade Crystals to the mission guard to fill your Rank bar again. If you have any extra crystals at this point, you might as well sell them – you’ll need more once you’re Rank 3, but you’ll also have killed a bunch of stuff to level along the way, and gil is likely tighter than crystals for you right now.

Leaving Home

The main goal for this band of levels is to unlock your subjob at 18. Subjobs are a second job, capped at half the level of your main job, that grants its abilities and stats to your main job. However, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – you’ll have to spend time leveling up another job to have those levels when the job is set as your subjob. Otherwise you’ll find yourself a THF75/WAR1 without any sweet benefits. The bright side is that you only need to level them – no other forms of horizontal progression impact your subjob’s performance.

To that end, this section will have you leveling to 18 in zones further out from your starting city. Your exact path varies by starting city, but your goal is one of the twin cities of Selbina and Mhaura. (There’s a ferry that runs from one city to the other three times every Vana’diel day, or once every 19 minutes and 12 seconds real time, and takes about the same time to make the trip. The correct phrase is actually “sister cities”, because they’re similar and far apart, not geographically neighboring.)

Get Signet before you go, because you will also be leveling up along the way and it has a really long duration.

Each Nation’s 2-1 Mission will ask you to travel through one of the following areas, so go ahead and accept the associated Mission. Don’t bother heading back to turn it in right away, our destination of Selbina or Mhaura is more pressing. Once you do make it back to turn in, you will be left with a choice. All Nation 2-2 Missions can be skipped, so it’s up to you if you want to do so. None are particularly difficult, nor do any of them have much actual story involved. Either way, we are going to put off Mission 2-3 until a bit later.

Bastok players:

You’re going northwest from North Gustaberg…

north through the Konschtat Highlands (which has a Survival Guide)…

south through the Valkurm Dunes (which has another Survival Guide)…

…to Selbina.

San d’Oria players: You’re going south from West Ronfaure…

south through the La Theine Plateau (which has a Survival Guide)…

south through the Valkurm Dunes (which has another Survival Guide)…

…to Selbina.

Windurst players: You’re going northeast from East Sarutabaruta…

east through the Tahrongi Canyon (which has a Survival Guide)…

southeast through the Buburimu Peninsula (which has a Survival Guide)…

to Mhaura

You will begin to find level 10+ monsters once you hit the second zone on your journey, so you can continue to kill appropriate targets appropriately and gain more levels.

• If you’re going to Selbina, you need three Bee Pollen, dropped from Huge Wasps in either Konschtat (near the Crag, the better spot to farm these) or La Theine (in many of the valleys, though they mostly require going through Ordelle’s Caves to get down there).
• If you’re going to Mhaura, you need three Mandragora Dewdrops, dropped from Pygmaioi in Tahrongi. (By “going to”, I mean “setting foot in first”. That locks you into needing this item, rather than the other one.)

To find these enemies near you even when they’re not close enough to be immediately visible, open your Map and select the “Wide Scan” option. This shows all monsters within about a map square radius of you, sorted by internal ID rather than anything sensible like “name” or “monster type”, and lets you select a specific monster to “track” on the small in-game compass on your HUD. This is super convenient and used to be exclusive to Rangers and Beastmasters (who still get an expanded radius on their Wide Scan, because this is FFXI) for the first decade of the game’s life.

Once you arrive in Selbina or Mhaura, open your map and beeline for the Home Point. Be sure to use it so you don’t have to take another walk back. Now you can teleport back to your home city if you need to do some shopping! (If you’d like to change jobs or need to access anything in your Mog House other than Storage, you can do so by talking to the nearby Nomad Moogle, so you don’t have to travel just for that.)

Subbing In

If you’re not level 18 yet, head back outside and grind until you are. Now talk to Naillina in Selbina or Numi Adaligo in Mhaura and finish their Mission to receive “Gilgamesh’s Introductory Letter”, which you then give to another NPC – either Isacio in Selbina or Vera in Mhaura by talking to them twice. Now you have your subjob! (Wide Scan also works on NPCs, in case you’re having any trouble finding them.)

Levels 18-30: To Jeuno and Other Jobs

Moving Out

Head back into whichever of Selbina/Mhaura you were at and grind up to level 20 in Valkurm Dunes or Buburimu Peninsula. Now you’re good to move on to brighter pastures – the Grand Duchy of Jeuno awaits!

It’s a bit of a hike. It can be a dangerous walk if you don’t pay attention, it’s but mostly just long.

If you’re walking, teleport back to a Survival Guide you touched earlier and continue onwards via one of these routes:

Bastok: Konschtat Highlands, and northeast to

Pashhow Marshlands, and northeast to

Rolanberry Fields, which connects to Lower Jeuno

San d’Oria: La Theine Plateau, and east to

Jugner Forest, and northeast to

Batallia Downs, which connects to Upper Jeuno

Windurst: Tahrongi Canyon, and northwest to

Meriphataud Mountains, and northwest to

Sauromugue Champaign, which connects to Port Jeuno

Welcome to Jeuno

Welcome to Jeuno! Near where you entered, there’s a Home Point. The other end of the zone has another Home Point, a Mog House entrance, and sets of stairs connecting all four of Jeuno’s zones and Qufim Island, where you will shortly be leveling. Along with two Home Points in the Upper/Lower/Port Jeuno, there’s also four and a Survival Guide in Ru’Lude Gardens.

Settle in, hit the Mog House, sell some stuff on the Auction House, whatever you want. Before you do anything else, get a rideable mount! Mounts are faster than running and prevent you from being aggroed by monsters, which is great. This quest is why the recommendation is to specifically hit level 20 before coming to Jeuno, as that’s a prerequisite.

Catch a Ride

Go to Upper Jeuno and talk to Brutus at G-7 (down the stairs) to start the quest Chocobo’s Wounds. This quest requires you to acquire 4 Gausebit Grass, which are either about 10k gil each on the Auction House or drop from Wadi Hares in Dangruf Wadi (a Bastok area, past South Gustaberg) or Crane Flies in Meriphataud Mountains (on the Windurst path to get to Jeuno, connected to Tahrongi Canyon).
Once you get them, trade them to the sick chocobo and receive the Chocobo license key item. This license… lets you buy Chocobo rides from vendors, FF6-style. One ride per purchase, and the instant you dismount (or after 20 minutes) it’s gone. It’s useless, but it’s a prerequisite to the real deal!

Talk to the nearby Taru in a chocobo suit, Mapitoto, to start the quest Full Speed Ahead!. After a (frankly awful) raptor riding tutorial mission, you will unlock Mounts.

• Don’t worry about failing the quest the first time, you can repeat it as many times as you like until completion, and even get offered a lower difficulty after the first failure.

Now you can ride the raptor any time by either selecting Abilities → Mount or using the text command “/mount Raptor”. I’d just make a macro for the latter.
Other mounts are available from login campaigns and quests. (Personally, I’m fond of Omega and the cute lil’ Xzomit.)

Reaching Level 30 and Doing Stuff

Once you’re ready to continue leveling, grab Signet from one of the guards near the Jeuno exit gates. Head to Port Jeuno and go down the stairs near the Mog House (not the ones leading up to Lower Jeuno.) Go through the doorway to zone into Qufim Island. Sneak through the tunnel here (figuratively or literally) and head for the lake at H-7 to kill Land Worms, then move on to Clippers, Land Pugils, and Gigases of various types. Grab the Home Point nearby and the Survival Guide outside Lower Delkfutt’s Tower to the northeast while you’re here, because you’ll be coming back for Missions fairly soon.

When it’s feeling like the experience gain is slowing down, pop inside Lower Delkfutt’s Tower – getting a cutscene to start the Chains of Promathia Missions – and hit the Survival Guide here while continuing to kill everything in sight until level 30. 

Early Advanced Jobs

Also at 30, the Job Quests for Paladin, Dark Knight, Beastmaster, Bard, Ranger, Samurai, Ninja, Dragoon, and Summoner open up. Later on you’ll have access to a few more Advanced Jobs, but we’ll go over those as they come up. If you’re interested in one of these, feel free to take some time off and get that to 30 and hey look, your new main job. Have fun!