Returning to Final Fantasy Online

[Joneser]

I was just wondering if any of you had any good advice. I haven't played since launch. I'd like to play a hume warrior and I'm interested to hear what has changed in the game and how the "hero" classes work. Can I try them all or do I have to pick one?

All information will be helpful, the more detailed the better. Thanks!

[junior]

Hero classes...?

Uh... I've never even heard a suggestion of such a thing...

In any event, there's more information than you can shake a stick at here:

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Main_Page

The core of the game is still the same (lots of exp grind and farming for cash for gear), but there have been various things modified and/or added since.

If you're going to play a warrior, monk is still the optimum initial starting sub-job for it. But sooner or later you're going to want to switch your sub-job to ninja. And unfortunately leveling that job up tends to be a bit expensive. Other than that, warrior is a great job to level to 75 as it's a very good melee dps job. It's also a good job to have since it can be used as a solid sub-job option for pretty much every melee job in the game.

The most recent addition to the game is chocobo raising. That went live only a few weeks ago, and many of us are in the process of raising our very own chocobos. There's a lot of guesswork involved still in figuring out how each choice affects the chocobo. But it's still fun. Starting it involves getting hold of a chocobo egg. They can be purchased in Jeuno for around 1,000 gil.

Of particular interest in the new expansion is the new Assault feature. This plays somewhat like the LDoN expansion in Everquest, except that there's no random mission choice element, and not all of the missions involve mass slaughter. One, for instance, involves slipping past wandering dragons in a tunnel system in order to find semi-randomly located switches and throw all three switches at around the same time. There are other differences as well, but that's the big one. Unfortunately, Assault doesn't become available until level 50.

There's a lot of other new stuff, as a lot of time has passed since the NA release. But the link above should give you some good starting locations to look for information.

[KaiTenSatsuma]

oh uh.. yeah... i dont suggest reading my review if youre interested in actually playing the game.

i only wish you luck in reattaining your account ID if you choose to, i just reformatted and forgot to shut the account off, it was a hell of a process to get back access...even though everything was backed up -_-.

patching will take a good while, heads up.

uh.... good luck, still dont know how anyone can enjoy that game.

personally im having more fun with SilkRoad.

[Joneser]

Thanks so much junior. I guess what I meant were the extra jobs. When I played before I was leveling a bunch of the jobs together to try them out etc and liked the feature of being able to level up different "Classes" (jobs) on one character. I'm just wondering if the extra jobs are the same as the initial ones in that I can level up them each on one toon or do I have to choose one specifically?

[junior]

The jobs in the game are -

Warrior - low and mid-level tank, high level melee dps
Monk - melee dps with high hp
Thief - melee dps with agro control abilities
White Mage - premier healing job
Black Mage - premier magic dps job
Red Mage - a little of white and black mage, with some extra spells and melee ability thrown in for good measure

Those are the six jobs available when you start playing. When you reach level 30 in any job, you can complete various quests to unlock other jobs.

Paladin - heavy armor tank with a number of light spells (cure, flash, etc...)
Dark Knight - high damage melee and magic dps class capable of converting health into damage
Dragoon - melee dps class with good accuracy and a wyvern pet (can't be commanded, but can be influenced by the player)
Ranger - ranged dps class, highest dps in the game
Bard - support class capable of a wide variety of party buffs and mob debuffs
Beastmaster - melee job that uses charmed or summoned pets; designed for soloing, but usuable in a party

Those are the original quested jobs. Rise of the Zilart (which came with the original NA release) added -

Ninja - evasion and blink tank (not intended by Square-Enix as such, but it ended up that way)
Samurai - melee dps with enhanced ability to earn TP for weapon skills
Summoner - summons pets to provide various support, healing, and offensive abilities (usually used as a healer while subbing white mage)

The recent Treasures of Aht Urgan expansion added the following

Blue Mage - melee mage class that learns spells by watching mobs perform them in combat
Corsair - similar to a bard, but with a heavier emphasis on ranged damage
Puppetmaster - melee and pet dps class with multiple pets to choose from; unlike most pet jobs, pet actions are influenced via various maneuvers (the whole thing's a bit complicated to explain, though there are some good write-ups of what is known so far)

As you're already aware, each job must be leveled up individually. But you can level up any and all jobs in the game provided that you've unlocked them through doing the appropriate quests. In fact, there's a special item in the game called the Maat Hat which is given as a reward to anyone who has managed to defeat a particular NPC with all of the pre-ToAU jobs (the NPC in question can only be fought with jobs that are at least level 66, and you have to beat him at least once with any job to unlock level 71+ on all jobs).

[Joneser]

Thank you Junior. You rock. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me a rundown on this =)