FFXIV Newbie Guildleve Guide

Alright, I’ve covered the 3 currently available gathering classes for FFXIV, links for them at the bottom. The only one left that has been mentioned is the shepherd class however it hasn’t been released and there hasn’t been any work on it from the developers… We will see. First this is first for FFXIV, fixing current problems (as usual with launches) and ensuring the rest of the launch goes smoothly. Some people are having issues logging in or connecting or graphics card issues. For those, check out community sites like FFXIVCore for more information.

Today we are going to cover the bread and butter of an ordinary day on FFXIV; Guildleves. Guildleves In a nutshell, are Quests. You get an objective from the Guildleve dude/chick and you go do it. Even though you cannot pick it, you start off already having the “My Very First Adventure” guildleve registered (no worries, you may have max of 8 guildleves registered at once). This is not a bad thing, especially since you get a very decent 1000 gold just for completing it the first time around. Upon completion of any Battleleve or Fieldleve quest, an Aetherite node will pop up. You may dismiss it, leave it for later (it goes away after a while I think), or you can use it to go back to the Aetherite Crystal that you used to start your guildleve. Upon usage of the node, your HP and MP will be regenerated to full! Yay~

Another thing we need to talk about is the Guardian Aspect. You start off with 200 points, and it costs 10 or more points each time you want to use it per guildleve. Guardian Aspect simply increases your ->CLASS<- skill gain during a guildleve. Very useful in my opinion (personally I care more about my class level than my physical level… lol), and the fact that it take a while to bring it back to 200 means you can’t abuse the crud out of it. I believe you can slowly bring it back by asking about it at an Aetherite Crystal after certain intervals of time.

There are 4 types of Guildleves, they are Battleleves, fieldleves, local leves and factionleves.

BattleLeves: These are your general get out there and kill stuff Quests for Disciple of War/Magic classes. Either you go out and kill X amount of a type of monster or Kill x amount of monster till you receive y amount of vague unusable item z. you know, the usual quests you get from other games. Nothing new here… HOWEVER; before you start a battleleve, you are able to choose a difficulty and you can gain difficulty bonuses. Higher difficulty means you fight higher level monsters than the normal ones. On some of the earlier guildleves, you can do 5 star difficulty(max) and get away with it easily… On some of the other ones… You might need to stick to 2 or 3 stars. MOLES MOLES MOLES MOLES MOLES AAAAAGHHHH MOLES WJSFKDSAHFH IDGSHGD HIDGH MOLES!... MOLES! FFFFFFFFFFFFF. And Dodos… But moles get the special mention for reasons players whom have encountered them would know.

Fieldleves: There are levequests dedicated to the gathering classes (Disciple of the Land). These generally encompass the “go to 3 or more instanced spots and exhaust them “quests. The other one of these types of quests is the Mine/Chop/Fish till you acquire “x amount of vague useless item y”. From personal experience I find the second one of these much better and faster. The first type of these quests requires you to go to 3 or more randomly located spots, and exhaust them… Which is an average of 6 swings/jigs per area and they are sometimes INCREDIBLY far apart. The “x amount of vague item y”

Local leves: These are your Disciple of the Hand class leves(Crafting). I believe you can still take these even if you have exhausted your 8 guildleve cards before cooldown… )Unsure if that’s fixed from beta or it’s meant to be that way… Will update when I figure it out.) But essentially, this is Square Enix’s answer for giving you hints on crafting recipes… They have also thrown recipes onto their Lodestone player page for all to see. Unlike other levequests, these do not activate at an Aetherite Crystal. These activate by going to the person mentioned on the card. When you go to the person, the quest “activates” and you are given all of your ingredients. Then you craft… I’ll cover crafting on my next and possibly final newbie hub…Maybe the market too. It depends on how badly the internet needs it.

Factionleves: Now things get a little complicated. Each city has 3 main “Factions”. The normal guildleves (above) are “sponsored” by these factions and reward you with some factionpoints upon completion. By accumulating a certain amount of Factionpoints (100 minimum) from the normal guildleves you can “buy” a Factionleve. Usually these Factionleves have a Notorious Monster(NM) at the end of them so they will be difficult… bring a buddy. Usually better equipment/loot and fun stuff after it so it’s worth it. From what I’ve seen so far, there are usually cutscenes or story dialogue that goes with these types of levequests. An interesting touch, perhaps a sign of epic things to come?

DISCLAIMER: There are other types of all these levequests…Since this is a newbie guide I’m only giving you the basic ones.

For all of you TL;DR people out there. It goes like this.

1. Get guildleve cards.

2. Go to correct crystal/NPC

3. Activate it. And select difficulty <-(only for leves that involve battle.)

4. Do it. No really. Effort! D:

5. Node pops up(not local), Return to camp(full HP/MP), Dissipate, or think about it. aaaaand your done.

One last thing of note. Upon getting your next set of Guildleve cards, you will have the option to turn in differing cards for bonuses on your next guildleves. Each Guildleve has a different type and card on them. I have some of them posted here on this hub…. BASICALLY… you may trade in up to 4 different COMPLETED cards for a new guildleve card and get better completion bonuses on it. It’s a very nicely done system that rewards those that don’t do the same things over and over for grinding…. On top of the daily limits…and reset times… lol. I love you SE and your confusing ways too.

Next, I think I’ll cover crafting/armory and maybe the market/bazaar as well if I feel like it. That should end my newbie guides for FFXIV. Covering all of the classes would be ridiculously redundant and all of the later level stuff I would prefer if you found them out yourself.

My inspiration for these guides was the initial lack of guidance on the mechanics of how it worked. The game told you if you were doing right and what to click, but fishing in beta was a PAIN, you failed to hook half of the time and it usually got away from you the other half. (At the time, failing only netted you physical exp, not class exp so you would never level up unless you got lucky…repetitively) That feeling of anger mixed with confusion was the Inspiration.

EDIT: Updated hub to reflect current balance changes as of 9/27/10.