My character has been REBORN! (Ahaha. Do you see what I did there?)
I have no real idea what I’m doing. The first thing I really liked was character customization, which allowed me to make a deliciously handsome elven young man, and then I made him an archer because duh.
There was a lot of running around, a lot of “wow this is a huge world”, a lot of throwbacks and references that my inner child who has been playing Final Fantasy for two decades appreciated, and finally I got to kill some things when I was level 4 or 5 or so. I think the game auto-loots things for you? That’s pretty neat.
Eventually I got an eyepatch, so alt-universe Althalor can channel his inner Lor’themar.
I’m still not entirely 100% sure what I’m doing. I got some sort of Serpent Sting type move (remember when Serpent Sting was a thing?) and I’m doing a lot of kiting. It’s kind of fun. You have a sprint button and that saves a lot of time.
Before you ask, I am playing on the “Coerul” server. I had a LOT of different people from various places begging and wheedling me to play on their server, and because I felt bad turning anyone down in specific in favor of another group of friends, I finally opted to go the neutral route and turn EVERYONE down and roll on some server where I know no one! Whoo! I mean, I can always make alts on other servers later, right?
Best thing about archer is that you can keep moving and attacking as an archer.
a warning about the Sprint button: it uses up your entire TP bar, which leaves you unable to use any abilities that require TP. Sort of like if you had to burn your whole Focus bar to activate Aspect of the Pack. (Come to think of it, that might be a REALLY GOOD IDEA to convince hunters not to use it during fights)
and yeah, you will want to roll with friends someday, because you cannot skip dungeon content and DPS queues are always a Thing.
@ Dan – I like that part a lot too.
@ Keryn – Yeah, I was using Sprint as an in-town, out-of-combat thing really! The idea that dungeons cannot be skipped worries me somewhat; I burned out on group content hard with WoW and now all I want to do is solo everything – no matter how nice the community may be!
I know what you mean about burning out and I think this game does things differently enough that you will enjoy the group stuff anyway 🙂 But yeah, you will get your first real dungeons after level 15 (after finishing the Gridania story.) At level 10-ish (after a certain point in the story that happens at about level 10) you will get access to smaller group content… the content is smaller, that is. Basically an extremely short instance with a single objective and no loot (not unlike scenarios) that’s intended to teach people how to play in groups. These are called Guildhests. I originally ignored them and then found that I needed to have done them up to a certain point in order to progress a level 50+ storyline. Now I start doing them as soon as a character has access and they are a great way to farm commendations if you are playing as a healer or (especially!) as a tank!
The dungeon content is thoroughly integrated in the Story, so you will go through almost everything. There are a handful of dungeons you can skip for Story purposes, but which contain mobs you will want to kill for your Hunt log completion. Which, by the way, is a really good idea to do… killing the requisite number of mobs on your Hunt log will give you nice chunks of XP and at level 50 and completion of the entire log, a nice ring for your class.
As for rolling alts, use the servers your friends tried to wheedle you onto to try out other races and starting classes 😀
I wouldn’t worry about dungeons so much. I was concerned at first as well, but seriously, people are very very nice, they’re not very hard (at least in the beginning) and did I mention people are nice?
I am sad you are not on Cactuar, and really think you should totally roll alts there…
Just started an archer myself 🙂 Having a blast. I love your header, haha so adorable!! <3
Dungeons so far has been treating me nicely. People seem very cool.
Thank you for your kind comment 🙂