Beginner story-focused hermit guide

To whom it may concern

This (initial) set of thoughts was brought together by someone who just wanted to experience the stories of Vana'diel. This is based on experience of a single character with no prior knowledge of the game, who made better or worse decisions at critical moments of a beautiful journey called "The First Experience of a Game".
It seems most of materials available for the new players focus on efficiency, they tend to assume you are here mostly for endgame and not to simply experience some classic Final Fantasy writing.
Sure, expansions of FF11 might be (mostly) independent of each other and can be done simultaneously, but ask yourself a couple of questions. How much attention can you pay at once? How many plot points can you follow in parallel? How good is your memory? In three months time, will you remember that lengthy introduction sequence that you've done just to access some good levelling spots or unlock that job? There's also Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, the overarching plot, which is the best and the worst thing that a fresh Vana'diel explorer can get into. You only experience something for the first time once, will you make it a good one or will you succumb to the temptation?

To be clear, you should totally follow the New Player Leveling Guide, just be careful, there are lots of traps scattered around that may impact your first impressions. This game is almost 25 years old. There are lots of systems, which despite still being present in the game, are obsoleted by more recent quality of life features. However, why not give some of them a try? Just once, just to see what the daily life looked like back in 200X. Hop on that boat. Play those silly minigames. Beat those low level notorious monsters. The world is your oyster and there is a lot of world here.

This guide consists of many tips and explanations that I would've found useful back when I started my journey.
Oh and the hermit bit comes from the fact that I only play single player games. Community here is very helpful, but there are social barriers that are sometimes too difficult to overcome. And despite the fact that some battles are called "challenging", trust me, you'll be fine.

I'm still playing the game, so this is a work in progress guide.
All opinions are mine and when I say "you should" I mean that "me from 60 hours before should" or "my twin brother should". You are you and nobody can force you to do anything. Always think about your own experience.

Random info dump

I don't know where to put it and you might want to know some of these as early as day one, so here you go:

• Windower is great and addons add a lot of quality life features you won't be able to live without
  • Using it is also against Terms of Service, you should be aware of that. Square Enix doesn't seem to care, but in case they randomly decide they don't like it anymore, you may face consequences.
• Windower addons do not scale well with UI scaling setting, some addons might be customized to scale them down or move the around, but not all
• The game was designed for PS2 controller, it's comfortable to play on controller
• Triangle button switches between open menus - I've spent way too many hours switching window focus using mouse
• L2/R2+Directional down/up switch macro pages - I did use 20 macro slots for over 70 hours because I never figured out how to switch pages
• You can sometimes engage with running monsters faster by disabling focus on them (L2 click), running in front of them, turning their way and praying to hit them
• You can access Mog Sack, Mog Satchel and Mog Case from any point in the world - just navigate in menus to "View House"
• You can equip items from either your main inventory or one of wardrobes (yes, they are also accessible everywhere)
• Your pet will not engage into fight unless you tell it to
• Usable accessories need to actually be used for their usable effect to be applied
  • I still don't know how to use them by just clicking around, '/item "item name" <me>' does the job though
• Ephemeral Moogle is not mentioned in the leveling guide, it's a stash for all your crystals
• When guide mentions that you can start some timers, do it today, maybe you won't ever access that content, maybe you'll leave your Mog Garden rotting, but maybe you won't.
• Hoarding drops is probably just a waste of space - I usually check two things: are they used for future missions? do they move in any volume on AH? When the answer is no, it goes straight to NPC or trash bin. I might've lost means of summoning some notorious monsters that could possibly have some gear upgrades, but do I really need that if I don't want to invest in endgame? That's my reasoning, yours might be different!
• This is about inventory expansion, nice quality of life thing: Goblin Stew 880 might be expensive, but if you are selling those Acheron Shields and are getting close to million gils, do you really want to hunt that one missing item on AH daily until it appears, or even worse, farm it just to save a couple of gils you might not spend? You get most of "decent enough" endgame equipment using other currencies, I noticed money is not such a big issue as some articles make it seem. At least it hasn't been yet without getting deep into endgame.
• If you happen to begin Wings of the Goddess storyline early (because you wanted to, or to unlock a subjob), consider finishing one of faction's initiation quests (part of Mission 2) as soon as possible to get Sprinter's Shoes, it gives you +10% movement speed until you engage in combat. If you are not "cheating" using Unity Warps, that 10% really makes a difference, as majority of gameplay consists of running around.

Rhapsodies of Vana'diel

Let's begin with addressing the elephant in the room. Quite a big one, too. Your "guide" through all the stories, which at the beginning might be a bit too much to swallow. Pace of the vanilla storyline is actually really nice for a newcomer. You are introduced to some characters, areas around your nation, you are expected to explore and solve some easy puzzles, figure out hidden passages. You get to experience the core gameplay which is quite deep for 2001. Windurst Missions 1-1 to 2-3 culminating in trip around Vana'diel were genuinely very engaging and fun to tackle, despite being the most aged content in the game. Although I have to admit, experiencing "the soul" present in Windurstian characters was a major-wajor factor in all that fun.

And then, at some point, you are given a choice. Should you start Rhapsodies and get some really powerful upgrades right off the bat or should you wait? Wait for what? When is the good time story-wise? Why would I even want to wait?
In the first batch of Rhapsodies missions, available to you as soon as you reach level 5, you can:

• reach a zone which should be accessible in around 40-60 hours of playtime
• meet a character who will reintroduce themself in around 40-60 hours of playtime
• get a rather big plot dump compared to what was dosed to you so far
• unlock clashing triggers - you can't choose which mission you progress, if you zone into a place or talk to character which advances story in RoV, well, enjoy meeting another character you haven't heard of yet

However, you can rewatch the cutscenes on youtube later on and the discount on warps along with another trust slot are so damn useful early on. Though keep in mind, once you get Warp Ring and use it well, you shouldn't warp around using money too much. I enjoyed the benefits of beginning RoV, yet still, I wish I didn't. (I did wait with it for a moment as I've done it during Mission 2-3). Putting that one feet in power gaming swamp did something to my mindset. I missed something precious, I didn't get to fully embrace the 200X Vana'diel. ... ... Wait, but you are using trusts, so this has nothing to do with authentic 200X experience - yes, but ;)
As for experience bonuses, this is early game, you are gonna be above what's expected of you if you just follow your nation's missions and don't sneak around unless absolutely necessary. Especially with Empress Band, Chariot Band, or if you are lucky enough to have means of obtaining it - Echad Ring. This item will essentially make you skip some real grind. For the final 60-99 push I actually got the ring from one of ongoing campaigns and decided to just grind it and get over with levelling. At higher levels when you exp on tough/very tough/incredibly tough enemies, this ring wears out in like 10 minutes, but then you can take break for missions/quests/gardening/not playing the game, come back after 2 hours and continue.

So, how to progress through RoV to not be overwhelmed by it? The safest way is to hold back with progress until you fully finish expansion on current roadblock. Take a look at Rhapsodies of Vanadiel Missions - there is a roadblock every couple of missions, it unlocks after you complete just a bit of expansion, giving it an intuitive flow and strongly suggesting that you should play expansions in release order if you want to follow along.
If you decide to do that and already went for the first key item "Rhapsody in White", an honest bit of advice, do not progress Rhapsodies of Vanadiel Mission 1-7 until you beat your nation's Mission 5-2. That is unless you don't mind another bit of plot dumping with characters you don't know yet. If I had another chance at giving it a go for the first time, I wouldn't touch that RoV mission until halfway through Rise of the Zilart Missions, specifically not before completing Zilart Mission 8 (or Zilart Mission 4, more on it later). Please be aware that you can accidentally slightly progress RoV while trying to just do Zilart missions. I'd assume after that it actually flows well (if you wait until the end of current expansion). First Zilart missions also expand some lore, which makes first bits of RoV lore dump a bit easier to swallow.

Recommended mission order

This may or may not be accurate, I'm arranging this after I completed them in what I believe was not an optimal way. Especially the "early days" of FF11 seemed to be very intertwined with each other. However, keep in mind, everyone else says that these stories are independent of each other.

Hey what's going on, you said that following multiple storylines at once are no no.
Yep, however, Nation missions 3-1 to 5-2, Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia are pretty much a single story. Rhapsodies though, well, these grant you quality of life gameplay enhancement, do as you will. Personally, I don't remember anything from Rhapsodies couple of hours after finishing each segment and have to constantly rewatch "the story so far" before attempting the other one. I am considering not progressing it at all until I'm done with other content and I encourage you to do so, too. However, I'll fill in the table with what seems to be safe (from continuity perspective) order.

This order might seem brutal from perspective of lack of RoV bonuses, but this is low level (<75) content, so you will most likely be able to keep up naturally (and using XP bonuses from rings). Just don't ignore those limit breaks. If you get to level 99 (iLvl 119 through for example Ambuscade), you and your trusts will actually feel as if they posses Divine Might in this content. Honestly being that powerful feels actually lore friendly. After all, you've defeated THE Nation mission 5-2 boss, everyone and everything should fear you.

If you are Windurstian (might also apply to other nations, don't know) and plan to finish your nation's missions, whenever you need to wait an ingame day, you might want to wokr on figuring out your way through Three Mage Gate (and grab either Survival Guide or Home Point in Toraimarai Canal). Personally, I did it by completing Rhinostery quest chain (begins with Say It with Flowers), I soloed it without Auction House usage, decided to cook things for the second quest on my own - it was beginner friendly, no grind needed.

Mission order safe from plot holes and other ugly situations

Story segment	Requirements	Notes/Reasoning
Nation mission Ranks 1-5	None, go with the flow	Slow pacing and small story expositions may be offputting at first, but it also gives you room to enjoy exploring the game.
Rise of the Zilart Mission 4 (Mission 7)	Finish Nation mission 5-2	It is the instant follow-up to the mission you've just finished. This sections (M4) contains an important lore exposition. M7 slightly expands it, but it also contains a lengthy gameplay/running-through-various-dungeons segment, if you feel like zoning out, might as well do it now.
Rise of the Zilart Mission 15	Finish previous Zilart segment	Things get serious and take up speed until the end, whether you do it now a bit later will impact your thoeries during Chains of Promathia. I recommend waiting with final battle (Mission 17) until later and specifically, do not do it before finishing Rhapsodies chapter 1-2 due to a risk of continuity error. I don't know if there is an alternate variant (I've read somewhere that Rhapsodies can play in a slightly different way, depending on what other mission you have finished, I didn't find any examples though). This is a seperate segment, because you can do it at any later point. Though it gets you accustomed to some characters which are present in first missions of RoV.
Chains of Promathia	None, Zilart Mission 4 (or 7) recommended for extra lore setup	While Rise of the Zilart doesn't contain much story content on its own, CoP is a massive adventure. It wants your attention and it wants all of it. But then, while doing it, you don't really want to ever take a break. Most if it should be soloable without trusts for you. If you are level 99, encounters from chapter 4 onwards hit that lowest level difference floor to reward you with any limit points (and benefit from having a party of trusts, since you no longer one-three shot everything).
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel chapter 1-1 (up to mission 1-6)	None, BUT mission 1-5 will melt your brain if you do it right at the beginning	Arguably, it may still be quite early, as mission 1-5 refers to premise of Chaing of Promathia, so if you actually want to understand what's going on, you might want to wait until a break in CoP.
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel chapter 1-2 (up to mission 1-11)	Unlocked by completing Nation mission 2-3; Zilart Mission 10 recommended; Zilart Mission 17 not completed or Apocalypse Night completed	As I mentioned before, I don't know if there is alternate variant of those if player beat Zilart expansion (and didn't finish Apocalypse Nigh), but if there is not, this is a guaranteed continuity error. There is an extra cutscene if you are on Nation mission 3-2 and RoV mission 1-12, but it's just a "see ya later" thing, the progression might feel odd without it, don't know, maybe it still plays (for me, Windurstian, it was in Windurst embassy in San d'Oria). There is a fight, which (if you are following this) should be trivially easy, however, the monster actually packs some HP, more than any boss on its level. Zilart Mission 10 is recommended, because it should familiarize you with "variant" of the area Rov 1-10 takes place in.
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel chapter 1-3 (up to mission 1-17)	Unlocked by completing Nation mission 5-2; level 80 or higher recommended	There is a fight a similar fight as in previous chapter. Boss once again packs more HP than you would expect from its level. There is also a time limit, while you might be able to survive it, you might just not kill it in 10 minutes. This boss absorbs (it heals with) wind damage. This fight took over a minute even with a party of iLvl 119 Trusts (and myself obviously).
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel chapter 2-1 (up to mission 2-6)	Unlocked by completing CoP mission 3-2; 1-18 and 2-1 can be started before that, so Zilart Mission 15 is recommended to avoid clashing stories while trying to progress Zilart	Doing this gives you a "priority queue ticket" to Aht Urhgan if you can find "the third way" (or just, like, read wiki)
Rise of the Zilart Mission 17	Finish previous Zilart segment	Come on, end this farce
Apocalypse Nigh	Chains of Promathia done; Rise of the Zilart done	It has a quality of an afterthought filler, but it does one important thing, so yeah, don't skip it
Nation mission Ranks 6-9	Nation mission 5-2	This is the last set of missions present in original areas, some fights (still intended for lvl 75 cap) might be rough so it's better to do it after initial expansions, however, you don't have to do them at all (to be honest, Windurstian missions were meh, especially when compared to qulity of CoP and upcoming expansions, I wouldn't mind having skipped them)
Treasures of Aht Urhgan Missions 1-7	Level 50'ish to survive, at least 75 to feel comfortable	If you are doing Rhapsodies in parallel, read up on how to get here without wasting a lot of time or money. I don't recommend doing anything else once you start this expansion, there is a lot of stuff happening very quickly and a lot of characters with "foreign" names, which makes them easy to mix up or completely forget about early on. If you care about immersion, you should take a break to do some Assault assignments here. It feels like during expansion development, ranking up among Mercenaries was supposed to be one of requirements to push the story, but then they ditched it, because Assault Missions were supposed to be done in party (now you can enter solo, but you can't summon Trusts) and that might've been a massive roadblock for some people.
Trasures of Aht Urhgan Missions 8-48	Get yourself known among Immortals ;) I recommend doing at least one Assault Mission at each Staging Point	In following missions you are not a nobody anymore, enjoy the story, it's quite good
Imperial Wards Quests (Treasures of Aht Urhgan Epilogue)	Finish ToAU story	These are infinitely repeatable (with daily limit) boss challenges, I suppose it's worth doing each of these once to know what's going on
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel chapter 2-2 (up to mission 2-13)	Finish at least ToAU Mission 32 to avoid spoilers	Chances are you cleared 2-9 by just trying to play ToAU, unfortunate design :( This is worth doing if you've been doing RoV alongside main stories, because you get fifth Trust slot from this Rhapsody item. Good news is the next section is close to impossible to trigger by mistake, as it requires interaction with specific object that is not used by anything else.

Nation mission Ranks 1-5

There is almost nothing noteworthy about these. The original set of missions introduces you to world of Vana'diel at a rather leisurely pace. This should be your main focus until you encounter areas that are too slow to get through even with trusts - if Valaineral is dying or close to dying at constant life support from himself and your healer of choice, it might be a strong suggestion that you should level up a bit. Although, personally I didn't encounter such moments. I did focus on some essential extra activities from the New Player Leveling Guide, like pushing level to unlock the mount questline as soon as possible. You might consider doing the same before or in the middle of Mission 2-3.

Use wiki, both leveling guide and mission guides. I want to believe some design choices were made, because developers wanted to encourage players to communicate. Figure out what to do or where that cryptic place is together. You can of course ask around and sometimes NPCs will help just enough to push you in good direction, but maybe it's not worth the hassle. Especially with limit breaks tasks. Wiki doesn't have any spoilers (other than gameplay ones), so go ahead. It's your trustworthy friend.

Guide mentions that you can pair Mission 4-1 and Limit Break 3 together, because you are visiting the same locations. That's true, but you are going into seperate directions. And that fork in the road is usually not a very long run from survival guide in these locations. You aren't saving hours of gameplay like you might imagine on first glance. I'd argue you don't save any actual time by doing this. The only real benefit that comes from it is... being just at the right level to simply run to the boss room in those final missions. Uhhh. Congratulations, the climactic push of vanilla storyline just lost its punch. You can also emulate the same shallow victory feeling by putting up Invisible and Sneak if you are still agroing some monsters in those areas.

Although if you still aggro the monsters and want to actually fight your way to the boss rooms, you might want to keep an eye out on those limit breaks before you begin your final trips (like if you are 51-54 and haven't done LB2, which is a super fast one). It would be a shame if all that precious exp was lost.

Regarding boss fights themselves - have you noticed that your trusts carry you through any fight you attempt? It ain't gonna be any different with these, chill out and enjoy. Just remember to summon them AFTER you enter burning circle instance, otherwise they will despawn. Don't be afraid that in the cutscene you are standing right in front of the boss and he's making his first move - you won't be aggroed on spawn.

For me, beating the vanilla storyline was a moment when I decided that it's enough retro Vana'diel experience, I had my fun, but I'm here for the plot, not challenge. Seeing that I would have to deal with Tonberries, which have very nasty mechanic in this game also made me "pass" on the original experience. So began my rush to 99 along with exploration of things that are not really talked about a lot in those beginner guides.

Oh and Rank 6 onwards has supposedly high level fights, so this should probably wait until you are geared up for endgame, I don't know, I already am so can't verify that. Rise of the Zilart picks up right at the final cutscene of Mission 5-2, so you should do that now while you still remember what happened. This is also where things start to get interesting.

Skillchains

If you're here for the story, you probably also want things to be easy. Your trusts can probably carry you through all of story content, but you can secure that and even speed that up by understanding this core mechanic that gets mentioned every now and then.

You hit stuff and that does damage, eventually you accumulate enough TP to do something that does even more damage, cool, but you might've noticed that sometimes in the quickly scrolling battle log a line referencing "Skillchain" appears. Especially when one of your Trusts does something fancy shortly after you, or after another Trust. You might've also noticed that this is usually tied to some big damage numbers and sometimes fancy animation. And if you are lucky enough to have, for example, Shantotto II, you might've noticed anomalies such as sudden enemy's health bar depletion.

You can use this knowledge for your own convenience, what you usually see is described in Skillchain article. You won't understand it, I still don't fully do, however, there is an addon, which is a godsend. I've seen it in a YouTube video and was shocked that it's not part of Windower repository. Yes, it's not available directly in Windower, but if you search the web for FF11 Skillchains addon, you'll surely find it. You'll also have to look up info about manual addon installation, having some programming background really helps with it. It tracks used abilities and shows current skillchain step along with your (and your pet's!) abilities that can resonate with it. Just messing around with it in a couple of fights might give you a much better idea of how skillchains work than if you spent hours reading written guides. And it makes the rest of the article much easier to understand.
By the way, yes, you can move that window elsewhere, read addon's readme ;)

With this knowledge you might understand why there is simply not a single good Trust party composition. Your job and your preferences will resonate better with some Trusts than others. Personally I don't like opening skill chains myself, I don't know when my Trusts are ready to follow up and I also have a pet who can do work after me, hence, I might look through all damage dealing Trusts for one who can open skill chain for my weapon skills and "prefire" my skill (Skillchains addon has a built-in timer telling you when the window for next step is open) to make sure no other Trust interrupts, then let them finish it off - frequently leading to Shantotto doing Magic Burst and finishing the fight. That's destroying "incredibly tough" enemy in a breeze when the entire party has enough TPs accumulated. And I'm not even thinking about tweaking the outcome for specific enemy - other than trying to get ecosystem bonuses from my pet.

There is still a lot I can learn to maximize my skill chain efficiency, I'm probably at the tip of the iceberg and Trusts probably won't ever let me go very deep into it, but even basic understanding is enough to turn final limit break, which is supposed to be actually difficult fight (you can't outsmart limit break trials by being overleveled, because, well, you are capped) into a 1.5 minute joke. Besides that, I don't really want to maximize my efficiency. I just want to be able to clear the story fights without a hassle.

Playing your job

This wiki is full of job specific guides (or links to some older, but still valid ones). These might look scary on first glance, because these are usually recipes for late end-game, but you can still find plenty of valuable info for beginning players. Subjob descriptions, job ability and trait descriptions, recommended weapon types, these are all useful info even when you are still leveling up.

TODO: elaborate further with examples

Then for your first steps into level 99, in wiki guides, you can find suggestions for what to do with merit points, job capacity points and of course, the gear. The gear you won't ever see, but the gear you should take a look at. There are plenty of gear sets, because you are meant to juggle them based on what you are playing at given point in time. Unfortunately the two/three-letter acronyms, present in each set "name", are something you'll have to figure out on your own, search engines and this wiki should be sufficient to explain everything. For story content it doesn't matter much (at least not until you hit level 99 content), but taking a look at something like gear for TP gain or maximizing your preferred weapon skill damage, and analyzing why each piece is in that slot and what benefit that brings in current context, will help you evaluate what you want to keep/buy and what you want to instantly sell/dispose of. You don't need to spend millions of gil at auction house to be well geared. You don't have to rush to Adoulin content to be well geared. You just need to know what you need and look for slightly worse (but many times cheaper, like 5 millions vs 50 thousands gil) alternatives.
You probably also want some iLvl 119 gear for summoning purposes, it might be anything, as long as you wear a full iLvl 119 set, your trusts will also be on iLvl 119 power level. However, for my needs I found out that Ambuscade rewards (which you can, at least currently, get in literally two successful Normal difficulty Standard Ambuscade attempts) actually suit my gear requirements. So I have a iLvl 119 gear, which I don't even need to switch out. And it is basically free. All guides will tell you to start Seekers of Adoulin and get "free" armor from it (you have to pay in Copper Vouchers or do actual Adoulin content), but that's really not necessary when you can get easily get good stuff elsewhere. Keep in mind, though, you won't be able to progress Intermediate RoE quests until you get to Adoulin content.