Job unlocks, class starting locations, spiritbonds, and more discussed as Ragar goes through what you'll need to know for Open Beta and Early Access

He's In Gridania and I'm In Ul'Dah - Help!

Since this is Open Beta and all of our efforts carry over into launch, many of you probably plan to run around questing with your friends. Sure it's not necessary for low-level content, but it's more fun and you get used to everyone's abilities that way. There's just one problem with that idea: the guild locations.

Remember when you were picking your class at the beginning of the game? Your class choice determines which city you start out questing in since there's only one guild office for each class and they're all spread out among the three starting cities. If, for example, I picked Gladiator and my friend went Thaumaturge, we'd be good to go over in Ul'Dah. However, if he chose Conjurer for that healer/tank team up, he'd be stuck off by himself in Gridania. Now this problem isn't a long term one - you could run to their starting city or, once you knock out your story quest around level 15 or so, you can fly to their part of the world using the airship system. However, this still isn't ideal since running involves going through zones with hostile monsters that likely out level you that early on and unlocking the airship means that's 15 levels of questing you were supposed to do with your friend but couldn't.

To help alleviate this problem, below is a list of the three starting cities and the class guilds that reside there:

This list should also help any would-be gatherer/crafters who might be wondering where to pick up a way to find their materials as well as use them. As a quick note: from the 20ish levels of Miner I played in Beta Phase 3 and the dabbling in Botanist, it appears that low-level materials for those professions are only in the zones surrounding their guild's office. This means if you want to level Mining or to gather materials for Armorsmith, Goldsmith, etc., you'll need to go off to the zones around Ul'Dah to do so. There are veins to hit by Gridania and Limsa Lominsa, but not low-level veins so I'd suggest stockpiling copper and all of that before heading over to become a Blacksmith.

Story Quests, the Duty Finder, and You

In addition to knocking out those job requirements while questing with your friends, you'll probably also want to work on your main storyline quests. The quests are good on their own merits, but they're especially important as they unlock various features of the game, from your room at the inn, with storage and retainer access, to use of the airship to travel between cities. Some of the features you can get without doing the story (I unlocked Materia creation by running around and trying to complete my map one day), but the breadcrumbs from the story quests certainly make finding that stuff easier.

Once you get to around level 15 or 16 in your story, you'll unlock the first dungeon, Sastasha. Note the use of the word "unlock" - this dungeon, as well as the other two I ran in my old post plus the one I found out in the world all have quest requirements to get in. There's no rushing in and running Duty Finder from start to level cap with BiS gear here; if you want to see those dungeons, you'll need to keep up with your story quests. Of course this also means that anyone who just wants to see story will have to go and run these dungeons at least once to get each step. There's no getting high enough level to just solo it either; each dungeon has a level range, so you'll be scaled down to an applicable level before entering. Luckily all of the dungeons so far appear to be doable for the pickup groups I ran with. There were a few hang-ups with Ifrit, but that's just a matter of letting everyone know to DPS the pillars... that or just burning them down yourself in-between heals because no one listens.