Mostly based on quotes from other topics, there are things mentioned in passing by players of the beta that haven't been mentioned on the FF14 website. Basic system/gameplay things that I want to know more about.


Is that job levels or skill levels? How are weapon skill levels determined in this game as compared to FFXI? A few screenshots have shown skills shooting up by 50-80 in a swing.


Besides the nerf that was implemented, do Guildleves basically work like the outpost books they added in FFXI? (Kill list of monsters/get exp bonus)


What is stat point distro? When you level up do you add points to certain stats like in Dragon Age type games?


Can weapons and armor break? Does durability in this game work basically the same as in WoW? What is the basic attack (engage and autoswing?) and why would you not have to use it?


How so?


Active mode and passive mode. Does this basically mean weapon drawn/weapon sheathed? It's mentioned in an earlier quote about HP regen.


Skills are equipped? Is there a limit to how many you can equip and do you have to equip your current class' skills or are they always available?



Are there exp/durability penalties for dying? Are there homepoints, a death timer? Weakness?

How is MP regained?

Is TP gained in the same way as FFXI?

How long does it take job fatigue to kick in/wear off?

You literally change jobs just by changing weapons?

Does the battle range diagram on the website actually mean anything?

How is the shield blocking?

Is lancer going to be lolLNC?

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

* There's physical level which only influences your stats (STR, DEX, etc) and then there's skill points which influence your job level (which spells or weapon skills you can use or if you can perform a synth). It's the skill points that are very random. Let's say youre 5000sp til next level. You kill a monster and get 100 skill points. Then you kill the same monster that is 1 level higher and you get 5 skill points. It's that random. And with synths sometimes you get 800 skill points, and sometimes you get zero.

* Guildleves are, so far, mostly just like the field manuals in FF11 where you have to go kill x number of mobs. You can only do like 4 every 48 hours, and from my experience the reward is barely anything (a few gil, maybe an item, no exp), so they seem incredibly pointless.

* Stat point distribution: you get 8 more stat points every level. And you can pump STR, DEX, VIT, INT, MND, and Piety (magic accuracy?). About every half hour you can un-pump a few (like 12) and re-pump them elsewhere. So if you want to exp as a mage for a few hours then switch to a tank (like SE intends (due to this whole fatigue system)) you can't because all your stat points are still in INT. It takes like a whole day worth of checking if re-assign is up every half hour to switch from INT-based char to VIT-based char.

* Weapons don't "break" but there is durability which falls to 0 pretty quickly. Soloing for 2 hours will just about ruin your weapon's durability, and the damage is directly proportional. Basic attack is hitting the "1" key and you have to do it over and over, no auto attack.

* Are classes unbalanced? I haven't noticed. So far the classes Thaumaturge and Conjurer seem VERY SIMILAR and don't really need one or the other in particular, either one is fine. Same for the melee classes. They all do the same thing, attack, attack, attack, weapon skill, attack, attack, attack, weapon skill. You can even use weapon skill from another class. Archer can use the lancer's lance weapon skill but it still uses the bow&arrow animation. I haven't seen a tank in action, but I have noticed that melee can't hold hate over a curer. And hate is kinda random. Really random. Anyway all jobs seem the same. There's mage, and there's melee.

* No penalty for dying other than having to respawn at the latest-touched crystal, and waiting for raise sickness which is like 3min.

* MP is a bitch, big time. You can only regain it by touching a crystal, which means you won't regain it. There are level 10 skills which will give back like 5MP out of your 300MP total, but this isn't a worthwhile source of MP. Best bet: don't use MP. As a mage, I just attack attack attack weapon skill, attack attack attack weapon skill. No point using enfeebles or magic attacks. Save your MP for emergency cures only. Use Monk's chakra for curing yourself so you don't waste MP, and disengage after battle to regen. MP is not a factor in this game. Thus I'm considering not being a mage.

* TP is gained much faster in this game. You only need 3 attacks to use a weapon skill. You can save TP to full (3000) and use 3 weapon skills back to back to back.

* I've heard at level 14 you start getting fatigue and surplus exp which are supposed to encourage you to log off or stop leveling.

* Change weapon = change job. BUT then you gotta go set your spells and abilities which takes like 3min with the slow menus

* The only real use of the battle range diagram is that if youre playing thaumaturge, you have to be FACING the people you want the spell to land on. If you cure, you gotta get behind your party and face them to cure (or disengage and turn around).

* Shields are incredibly rare right now, so no one knows. Shields can't be bought, no one has them on their bazaar. The only way to make a shield is to 1) Go logging for a week, 2) Collect enough logs to level carpenter to seven, 3) Level goldsmith and blacksmith too I think, 4) Collect items, 5) Craft the shield. Some people have shields from beta1/2 when they were sold by vendors.

* Lancer seems okay, and they supposedly get a game-breaking ability at level 10 (Haste + Drain + Damage attack, can be used over and over). All the melee seem the same in terms of damage, but I haven't tried Gladiator (due to no shields in game).

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

When both Yarr and myself went to the hollow to explore we decided to solo some squids. i was 2 lvls higher than yarr at the time and i struggled to get one down past 50% while yarr could chain 2 in a row. Yarr's spells do 100-400 dmg if i remeber correctly while my hits were hitting for 10-20, but that wasnt my main concern, the problem is yarr evades more than i do. yet my class is specialized on evasion. its like comparing blm and nin, and the blm has better evasion. 2 of my main ws ( which debuff the mob) depend on me evading. if i cant evade i cant use em.

shields are easier to come by now, but since their gonna wipe all the characters again for open beta, it might be just as hard again to get em. unless they let the npc sell em once more. but at first it took ket with my help 4 days to get a shield and thats paying 7k for it.

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A few quick additions.

Active Battle Mode is when your weapon is drawn. When this is the case, your TP reduces slower, but you do not gain HP. you also run a bit slower. Passive Battle Mode is when your weapon is put away. You run faster and gain HP back (Even faster if you stand still), but your TP diminishes rapidly. As whisp pointed out, no real use for cure other than emergencies, as you heal yourself back to full just by standing still. You toggle between the two modes with a button in the bottom right, or by hitting the F key. (Took me awhile to figure this out, running around with a staff out like a retard)

The amount of skills you can "equip" is determined by your Class rank. a Rank 1 Conjurer can't equip much of anything. As Rank goes up, their "Action Points" go up. Fire costs 3 action points, Cure costs 2 action points (This is different than MP, remember) So say you have 8 action points. You could equip Cure, Fire and Blizzard, but you couldn't equip anything else until you gained another Rank or 2.

I never played the job, myself, but I think this set up is similar to how BLU worked in FF11 when it came to equipping spells.

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yea it's just like BLU

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

So you have a character level and job levels within that? Do you get EXP and SP in battle or just one type of point determines everything?


So you get a physical/character level up and choose points to boost, but when you change jobs these don't autochange to reflect your new role. The thing that lets you reconfigure your stats can be available every half hour but sometimes isn't?


Are there attack speed differences between classes/weapon styles?


Are there crystals in field zones or just in towns? Are these the same crystals used for teleports? Mages can actually fight well?


Yeah that's about the same, and now it makes sense.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

* The battles give you both physical experience points and discipline skill points.

* When you change jobs the stats do not automatically fit your new role. Partial stat realignment is regularly available at a period that I haven't timed yet but could be anywhere from 30min to 1hr.

* (This is what I've found, may differ for others). In order of high-damage-slow-attack to low-damage-fast-attack, it's Marauder > Lancer / Archer > Pugilist. Haven't tried Gladiator. But damage over time seems relatively steady between those disciplines. Pugilst hits so fast it's almost like using Monk's Hundred Fists at all times. Around levels 4-6, Maurader was doing 70-85 damage per hit and swinging about every 1.75 seconds, Lancer and Archer were doing about 50-70 damage per hit and attacking every 1.5 seconds, and Pugilist was doing 20-25 per punch, with each punch-punch occurring every 1.25 seconds. Also Thaumaturge does about 50 damage per physical attack every 1.75 seconds, and Conjurer does about the same. All jobs seem to have a TP-move that does 100-200 damage but melee get them sooner than mages. Meanwhile mages get MP-guzzling spells that can do 200 damage but can't refill MP in any realistic manner. If I were to pick a job I *felt* like I was doing the most damage on, it's Pugilist (faster TP gain).

* Crystals are out in the field (and in town), but it can be a good 15 minute walk round-trip to a crystal if you're out there exping. They are also used for teleports. And yes during beta, mages mostly just do their physical attack. Unless you are right next to a crystal. (Yarr has leveled up Conjurer fast by only exping right next to crystals).

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

You have both a Physical Level and your Job Rank, one requires EXP and the other requires Skill points. Physical Level gives you your base stat points for you to allocate around, and your skill rank determines what abilities you have and what gear you can equip properly.

You can get some of your stat points back every half hour or so. This is mostly stupid because it means if you wanted to do a complete re-spec (changing from melee to mage, for example) it would basically take you days to do it. Goes completely against the idea of switching jobs at any time unless you be really general with your stat distribution, which makes you a jack of all trades but master of none.

Attack speed is basically locked on fast. The difference between classes is how much stamina each type of attack or ability uses. As long as you have enough stored stamina you can basically fire off a bunch of attacks, even strong two-handed ones, rapid fire. Your stamina goes up at a fixed pace while your weapon is drawn. So far, Lancer has an ability that gives itself Haste which makes your stamina bar go up faster.

There are crystals in town but also around zones. Think of the outposts in FFXI but put one in every single zone instead of only one per region. From these crystals you can choose to start a levequest.

Setting up your action bar (setting abilities for you to use in combat) works exactly like BLU does, except (with a few exceptions) you have access to every single abilitiy you've learned on every single job so far, regardless of level. There's no half-level subjob type restriction here, although using abilities outside of it's main profession does incur a penalty (e.g. AoE spells are no longer AoE, some abilities have longer recast timers, or dont heal for as much, etc).

If i level Pugilist to Rank 6, I learn Second Wind. If I then play Gladiator at Rank 1, I can use Second Wind despite being lower than 6. I could also equip Second Wind on my level 20 Conjurer if I wanted. The limit here is that you have a pool of action points that you must use to set abilities/spells (like BLU).

Right now mages are a lot stronger than melee, but it's possibly because every single melee person is stuck using a level 1 weapon because SE removed all non-level 1 weapons from the game from Phase 3 beta. They expect crafters to make all weapons above level 1, but with the ludicrous no-AH system it's basically impossible to find one, so 99% of people are all using level 1 weapons.

Another piece of info. My Thaumaturge is level 13, and I'm able to solo monsters that I'm guessing most jobs can't. Thaum gets 3 stackable DOTs: Poison, Dia, Bio. After casting Slow (which insanely reduces monsters attack speed to about 1/6th of what it should be), I spam the DOTs, and then just toe-to-toe & spam Sacrifice (a cure). The monster will hit me for like 300, which reduces my HP to critical, and then I cure to full. Rarely have to attack. DOTs alone will kill the monster fairly quickly. Combined the DOTs do like 60HP/tick for like 15 ticks (guessing). Poison wears off faster than Dia & Bio so I reapply.

This can only be done next to an MP-refilling crystal.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

What are guildmarks and how does one obtain them?

When you start the game, your character's initial armor is determined by the job you choose? Does this change whenever you change jobs like in FF5?

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

Going to use Gladiator as an example here, since it's what i played.

Guildmarks randomly come up as rewards for guildleves, they work like a currency and are specific to each job. So for example, before you accept a Guildleve, it might tell you you'll get "200 Gladiator Guildmarks" as a reward for completing (as well as some gil, etc). You can increase the reward by exchanging in some completed guildleves (This works for any leve).

500 Guildmarks for a class allows you to buy new abilities. These come in a few flavours:

- Attacks:
Add a brand new type of attack to your repertoire. These aren't the same as abilities because they have no cooldown or limit (such as MP or TP) on their usage. Each class tends to get a "normal" attack and a slightly weaker attack (that uses less stamina) by default. You can buy extra kinds of attacks that do different things. For example, I bought Heavy Slash which uses more stamina, but does more damage and adds emnity to the attack.

- Traits:
So far this is the only way to get job traits. This could be a normal trait like thing, such as "Self Preservation", which increases the amount of time you can have your shield raised by 50%. This can also be a stat swap. Each class seems to learn traits that allow you to convert stats that job would have into stats it probably wouldn't. For example, Gladiator can get a trait that converts 10 STR into 10 INT. There are lots of these.

- Affinity:
You can also buy affinity traits. Using an ability that does not belong to your class means using it with 0 affinity, which is why they do less damage, longer cooldown, lose AoE, etc. If you buy an affinity trait, you can use that trait on another job to increase your affinity with this one. For example, i could buy 3 Conjurer Affinity traits, bringing my affinity to 30. Now, the Cure spell will suddenly heal for a lot more while cast on my Gladiator. It's assumed if you have 10 of these traits (bringing your Affinity to 100) that job's abilities will have 100% potency on any other job.

Right now, there's no level restriction on these. You can buy and equip them at any level as long as you have the Guildmarks to get them. They do of course have an Action Point cost for setting them on your action bar though.

EDIT: Don't forget that once learned, you can use these abilties on any other job, which is what a lot of them seem to be more useful for. Especially the affinity and stat swap traits. However, when doing Guildleves, you only earn Guildmarks for your current job. This is more of SE trying to encourage multi-class play here.

Great Info Ket! Thanks

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How much inventory do they give you? And how many gear slots are there? Will Gear swapping be similar to FFXI so you can min max for specific actions?

80 Inventory slots at the start.

Gear slots...

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No, there's a 30 second penalty (I believe) for changing gear while in active (battle) mode. The gear you equip will have reduced (half?) stats for the first 30 seconds it's equipped if you do so during battle.

I can't remember exactly where I heard this so I don't have the source, but I'm pretty sure that's correct except for maybe the length of the penalty.