Hrm..
<-- NA who started at release.
Hrm..
Granted this wasn't my first mmo, as for many it was, though this was only my second. So I was techincally still semi new to the mmorpg things, I guess.
I started out on warrior, I knew before the game was released that I wanted to be a Dark Knight. (Man ive said this many times.) I also bought the Brady Game's Strategy Guide, and read/looked through a great deal of it. To this day it is still somewhat helpful, but mostly for quests I havent finished/done yet, and aids in me wanting to unlock any new jobs. Yes.. it is far outdated and down right incorrect on a lot of things. I know of those things now, and nobody really knew what was incorrect or misleading at the time.
But come on.. common sense people. I wanted to play Warrior to sub onto Dark Knight out of all the possible starting jobs to have it seemed to be the best sub. (And so far has been, granted /Thf is a lot of fun and ill have more use for it 60+, but untill then /War has never let me down) So being a warrior I knew I was going to be a tank (think about it, there were no NA pld's or Nin's at the time) so I had to have the armor with the best defense for each level I could wear it. I even bought bronze armor (subligar) when I first started just to have better defense. (I know now that at those levels.. 1-7 it really doesn't mean jack) At level 7 I had enough gil to buy most of my leather gear, and by level 8 I had all my gear.
OMG how did I do it? I sold all the crystals I had gotten, in stacks, since I saw those sold for more. And since I started in San d'Oria I also did the repeatable rabbit hide quest for a constant 120 gil. Not much, but when your starting out man it kicks ass. I still do it whenever im leveling a new job.. its miniscule but it adds fame and a bit of gil while im leveling in W. Ronfaure.
I also did missions.. wow.. what a concept. I loved and still love the story they bring to the game.
I kept getting money by selling my drops, if not in the AH than to a npc shopkeeper, rather than tossing them out.. atleast you get something back, and as I already stated, when starting out.. man that kicked ass for money.
I didnt take any hand outs.. pfft.. no one even spoke my language.. trying to figure out what to do on the first halloween event was insane.. I still missed out on those goodies because I never knew what I was suppose to do. I did /shouts asking for help, but no help that I could understand ever came through. Ah.. the fun of being a noob.
Anywho, I knew that I wanted to use greatsword as a Drk (as well as scythe ofcourse) so I used G. Swd as my weapon. Granted.. how was I to know G. Axe was a better choice. I know that now.. and if I ever want to take Warrior beyond 40 im lvling up my G. Axe skill first, as well as leveling my normal Axe skill farther than where it is atm. (skilled up axe and sword to do Prom, which.. i havent done yet. But will get there)
I'll tell you what though, leveling G. Swd has in the long run saved me a lot of pain of having to keep it leveled while leveling Dark Knight and let me focus on capping my scythe skill up untill the point of around lvl 38 ish on Drk, now sadly my G Swd skill is behind my scythe, but thankfully not too far behind less than 10 pts.
Anyway, being a G. Swd War tank.. I still managed to do a great job of keeping hate. I noticed early on that when I lost hate, it was generally from being healed or a blm nuking too fast, so I made sure my mages were always far from the battle, ofcourse not far enough that they couldnt use thier magic. This way if I did lose hate, I could atleast be spared a few seconds to use provoke if provoke wasnt quite ready to use instantly before the mages started to get hit. This worked generally 95% of the time, and trust me.. a lot of mages loved me for it. ^^
Maybe its just me, maybe I just have good reaction timing.. but I could tell the moment I lost hate, and saw the mob turn a different direction, that I needed to provoke. So most of the time I provoked before the mob could even start walking off, which is something any good tank does. I have never played a tanking job before in any game, and it was kind of fun, cept for the many times I died. Yet I quickly learned to shrug that off, it was part of being a tank, I expected to die if my party couldnt keep me alive, but even so I was gonna do everything in my ablity to keep my other party members alive. If that ment our WHM died and we were starting to face the inevitable.. I told everyone else to bail and stayed fighting and then died.. knowing they had been able to get away safely before I died was enough to know I did my job. Ofcourse I still felt sorry for whoever died first, and we'd lay there dead.. looking for a raise.. in the dunes.. heh, something ill never do anymore. Going to a HP is quite a simple solution, unless theres a willing whm-pld-rdm-whatever can raise handy ofcourse.
Ew.. long paragraph.. time for a break and moving to next subject.. subs.
I could easily tell, since I was going to be a tank.. Mnk was the best sub for me.. so once I got my subjob quest finished you bet your ass I switched straight to monk and didnt stop leveling till I hit 20. I didnt go lame-o on equiptment either, I re-used all the gear I had, and for the eq I couldnt wear (lvl 10 eq) I bought new lvl 10 gear that a monk could use. I bought the best H2H weapons I could see, and made sure I had the appropriate ones for my level on me before I leveled, same with EQ, if it was wearable by my monk, I wore it again. And I think this helped me save money in the long run as I didnt constantly have to sell back/rebuy my eq.. I think that's silly, if its usuable by multiple jobs (and there isn't anything better to wear) re-use and recycle biotch
When I came to the point my Mog Safe was getting close to full, I decided it was time for a mule to store all my "old eq". So I set up a new character.. heck even bothered to level him to 5 monk for no apparent reason ^^. Just wanted to see what it was like to be a Galka monk.
How'd did I ever get the money you ask? Quested and sold junk I didn't need.
Now I still consider myself a newb(ie) back then, but come on.. a little thinking/planning made my start so much easier, and it makes me a tad bit angry when someone asks me for gil... I say, get it yourself, because you have the ability to do so. However, it seems many lack the capacity or know-how to look up a little help. (im talking about written help, published or internet)
I will admit I didn't learn about food untill I entered Kahzam on my Warrior, and even then it was about lvl 30 before I heard about meat mithkabobs.. I never even heard of fish ones untill later -.-; oh well. Atleast i know about them now, before I start working on Pld.
I also figured, why stop warrior at lvl 30 and do my Drk quest there, I knew id just have to eventually stop leveling Drk and level War again and I didn't want to do that. So I decided I'd level warrior to 40, instead of 37, as 40 is a nice even number.. and its higher than 37. Figured it would make the Drk quest go by easier too, and boy was I right.
Anywho.. sure its true, we were all noobs once, we didnt have "teh pimp gears", but you can bet your ass I made sure I had good gear on me and at the appropriate levels. Some people wondered why I "wasted my money on the Bone Harness" (lvl 16 gear) when Lizard gear was just a level away. I will say the same thing now I said then and still say. It gives me more defense than scale mail, it may only be for one level, but It makes that one level that much more easier to tank. Which you rather have at lvl 16, a tank with lvl 10 armor, or a tank with lvl 16 armor who took the time to make sure he had more defense to do his job better?
8)
That's my 2 gil. (looks up, okay.. so thats more like a couple hundred)
To sum it up, all it takes to not look like a newb is common sense and a little thought.
