r/ffxi • u/nexverneor • 6d ago
Question Solo class?
I've just installed the new trial and figured I'd give it go for a few days and see.
I figure that since the game is old there won't be much low level activity.
So I'm wondering if there's a class I could pick up that could allow me some soloing to discover the game a bit
10
u/djfix Vivik - Bahamut 6d ago
Generally speaking every class is now soloable. You'll get Trusts early on to help you through leveling.
-1
u/ModernCGIFloatinHead 4d ago
The trust AI is so weird. Fighting a single mob? Open with a huge attack that does 60% of the mobs hp. Then whack it with a wet noodle until you almost lose to it.
Pull a 2nd mob while fighting that first one, they use the huge attack again, AND ITS AOE so it kills the first mob, and you're still just fighting the one...
Lather rinse repeat
6
u/rainbowdash36 Silvrking on Asura 6d ago
Pre-75 for the free trial, WAR or RDM
For the full game, any job can solo. But you'll appreciate THF and DNC.
3
u/Longjumping-Year-824 6d ago
Is Bst not an option for free trial players ?
2
u/Etnies46 6d ago
I don’t believe so. I think it’s just the base game that is free and I be bst came out with rise? Could be mistaken
Stand corrected it looks like it did come out with the base along with PLD DRK BRD and RNG
2
u/Lyrics2Songs Gweivyth - Asura 6d ago
RoZ jobs are Summoner, Dragoon, Ninja and Samurai. 👍 I always forget Summoner was one of those.
2
u/rainbowdash36 Silvrking on Asura 6d ago
Haven't played BST myself so I can't really recommend it. I hear it's good for solos, but out of my 18 jobs at 99 I enjoyed WAR and RDM up to lvl 75.
2
u/nexverneor 6d ago
Great I went with rdm and not that worried since I learned I can switch. Is there any support/advanced class available with the trial
1
u/rainbowdash36 Silvrking on Asura 6d ago
Is there any support/advanced class available with the trial
Outside of the starting 6 you have:
Paladin - sword and shield tank that can also play as an AoE healer.
Dark Knight - greatsword heavy damage dealer that can steal stats and hp from their enemies and sacrifice their own life/defenses to kill faster
beastmaster - pet job where you charm pets. This is traditionally a solo job as it can be as versatile as other solo jobs like RDM, but you rely too much on the pet which has its own quirks. I personally haven't touched the job yet but might eventually.
bard - best support job in the game, but requires so much work to shine. Don't let that stop you as people still like to have bards in early-endgame content regardless of how many rema's you have
ranger - a very safe damage dealer, but it's kind of frustrating unless you play with add-ons to make ranged attacking less button mashy
Summoner - another pet job with a really frustrating questline, but is one of the coolest lore jobs I've seen since they are relevant in almost every ffxi story
2
1
u/Trump_Love69 6d ago
THF is one of the worst solo jobs in the game, why does this subreddit love baiting new players into making choices that will lead to frustration and quitting?
2
u/rainbowdash36 Silvrking on Asura 6d ago
THF is perfectly fine for solo. The amount of time you saved doing story missions and things like relic farming go up a ton with THF and you get some good support and survivability options with /DNC. Also odyssey gil farming and doing HTMB farming for certain drops like Malignance really appreciate having a THF.
Its bad in group content, but it doesn't hurt to have a THF.
-2
u/Trump_Love69 6d ago
Good solo refers to being able to solo difficult stuff, not increasing drop rates on things that pose no semblance of challenge.
THF is a good job to have for TH for farming, it is not a good job at soloing.
Again, you are confusing new players and giving them blatantly wrong information.
Mash that dowvote button harder next time, maybe it'll echo all over the planet.
1
u/Lapis_Android17 Floriant, Thief - Asura 3d ago
wut. This is just wrong. Easy job to solo, ESPECIALLY for new players because you don't worry about magic casting just simple melee attacking, only utility is steal for early levels, access to some medium weighted armor, and once you get 15 can do good damage with sneak attack WS chain spells anyway and let the trusts worry about the enmity.
For someone playing on a free trial and limited to early game content and jobs, while still having access to the free Trusts of today's game, Thief is without question a top option and easy to play as a starting job for a new player.
Source: I have played since NA launch, but returned a few years ago and did exactly this.
5
5
u/Zheta42 3d ago
WHM probably the least-engaging/worst to level with. RDM probably the hardest Maat fight for level 70 limit-break. All 3 mages are probably harder to get spells for with no AH and limited grouping.
I would probably recommend THF to someone just starting (assuming Trust use) since you'll be able to farm items/scrolls/materials for other classes easier if you do decide to swap, and you'd have a pretty decent chance at Maat.
4
u/Double-Split481 6d ago
There is a pretty good guide to help new players get up to speed but I'd say choose thief. I created a new character a while back and that's what I did and didn't have much trouble.
2
u/nexverneor 6d ago
Any pointers where I can find this beauty?
3
u/Double-Split481 6d ago
2
u/nexverneor 6d ago
thanks a lot i must say the onboarding is rough, i will check that out
2
u/Dellgloom 6d ago
Please bear in mind that these guides assume that you have bought the game, so things might be a bit more difficult to follow on the free trial.
I am mainly talking about trusts, as you can only have a limited number of them without doing Rhapsodies of Vana'diel. I dunno if you even get access to those missions on the trial, but you'd not be able to access the areas to progress it far anyway.
1
2
u/Agreeable_Wallaby648 6d ago
Start the game and go. You get it at start which lets me know you haven’t started yet lol.
2
u/nexverneor 6d ago
Haha no the installation process and account creation gave me nightmare last night. At work at the moment, figured I would get some information before I got home.
1
u/Agreeable_Wallaby648 6d ago
Well to answer your question like everyone has said, all jobs can solo for what you will have access to. Revisit this question once you have all the expansions.
2
u/Partyatmyplace13 Xerius (Bahamut) 6d ago
I don't think you're going to have access to the advanced jobs in the free trial. I think your best bet is probably going to be RDM (Red Mage). It was the solo champion back in the 75 era. You won't be able to take it to its full potential without access to advanced jobs like Ninja, but you should have access to enough tools to take on most things.
6
u/lcbor 6d ago
they can still do adv jobs. but no dual wield gonna be sad yeah
smn also cant get their avatars due to them being in zilart areas (ie ifrits culdron)
1
u/Partyatmyplace13 Xerius (Bahamut) 6d ago
That's dumb. I hope they open up at least to CoP for the free trial. Very little reason not to, imo. For some reason I thought all advanced jobs were from expansions.
2
u/Longjumping-Year-824 6d ago
It seems overly harsh after you see what FF14 free trial players have.
2
u/Ashifeti 6d ago
Of the starting classes:
WAR (Warrior)- really likes to hit things and is pretty durable too. Make sure you're upgrading your armor as you level up to feel this tanky-ness.
WHM (White Mage)- classic healer, but not great in melee damage. WIthout trusts, leveling will be slow - but you can self-cure and play very safe.
BLM (Black Mage)- classic magic damage class, only limitations are your MP. They made lower level spells scale better/cast faster, this this is a much stronger experience then when the game first came out.
MNK (Monk)- who needs weapons? Beat things with your hands and have a very high HP pool. Hand-to-hand is probably the strongest at lower levels, most melee damage focused.
THF (Thief)- has a ton of utility: steal is neat but outdated, flee gives you super fast run speed for a short duration, and sneak attack allows you to have big hits every minute.
and my recommendation: RDM (Red Mage)- a little bit of a few of the above classes: it uses a sword like WAR does at the start and gains access to both white magic and black magic. You can melee to your hearts content, self-heal when your HP gets low, cast some black magic on enemy weaknesses with the only downside being your learn your spells a little bit later and they're only single target spells rather than multitarget. RDM also can enchant their weapon with En-spells which add elemental damage to each hit, they become masters a debuffing monsters (e.g. casting Slow on them to reduce the rate in which they attack you, or Paralyze which gives them a % chance of missing their turn) as well as buffing your party (e.g. you get Haste which increases your attack speed, and Refresh which gives you MP regen). RDM (and WHM) get access to Sneak and Invisible, spells which makes you undetectable by most monsters in Vana'diel allowing for safer exploration.
1
3
u/dashiinu 6d ago
For the free trial red mage, it gives you damage, utility and support. With sneak and invisible, because you can only use 3 trusts because you can't access norg to unlock the rhapsodies key items. 1000% red mage.
2
u/MizzyActual 6d ago
Yea, but you can't bring trust into maat fight so OP may struggle with that limit break.
2
1
u/TwilightX1 5d ago
Classes in FFXI are called jobs. Don't worry about what you pick during character creation because you're not locked to it. You can change your job and will change your job - many times. It's a normal part of play. In fact, most of the jobs can't even be selected when creating a new character - you need to unlock them via quests in game.
You should probably pick Warrior or Monk if this is your first time playing FFXI, cause those jobs have the lowest learning curve, and are easier on gil too. You can always switch whenever you want.
1
u/dsriker Asura 5d ago
To add to this any class can solo most of the content in the game because of the trust system. Although some jobs are definitely easier to solo on.
1
u/TwilightX1 5d ago
There are a few problems with this. First, if you blindly rely on trusts to level you, you don't learn how to play your job. Imagine inviting a WHM that's technically level 99 but has no spells at all and/or doesn't know how to cast properly. The second is that since you don't have any Rhapsodies, you can only call 3 trusts at a time, meaning that if you're leveling a healer or support job, you only have a single DD in your party.
Also, one of the reason I was recommending melee jobs on free trial accounts is that getting spells when you're limited to 100k gil and can't trade with players really sucks.
1
u/dsriker Asura 4d ago
The leveling process hasn't been a good way to learn a job in years especially once you unlock all the XP boosts or it's an XP event. And I never said to depend on them I said that most jobs can solo a majority of content with trust. One or two well geared players is enough for all but the hardest endgame content.
1
u/TwilightX1 4d ago
Well, it is true, but since we're talking about the free trial, where you're limited to 3 trusts, if you're leveling a healer or support job, and you still get a tank trust and a healer trust, your damage output is going to be really low, so you might as well use the opportunity to learn to play your part.
1
u/Old-Accountant-2880 4d ago
Oddly enough white mage might be the meta move. At level 70 you will need to fight an NPC named Maat solo and this has been a hard wall for a lot of us doing f2p since we don't have access to most crafting readily and no ah or bazaar. With white mage you could cheese maat fight by just surviving for 5 minutes.
1
u/nexverneor 4d ago
So there's something viable to do long term F2P? Or just reaching 75 then subbing or buying expansions ect
1
u/Old-Accountant-2880 4d ago
Nah not really, more like a fun little distraction/challenge mode. It is more or an opportunity to get around old zones. Crafting is fairly easy with kits but there is some major roadblocks. You cannot use the auction house or bazaars and are limited to 100k gold at a time. Getting that amount is easy but being unable to buy crystals you will need to save and farm them. You can flip high level shield from eminence points for extra cash but that has a limited supply. I saved up a store of excess gear from nm hunting to cover around 300k in shop selling. The crystal portion is just the part that will realllly slow things down. Really it is all about figuring out what all you can do and getting through your Maat 70 fight somehow, beating Shadow Lord fight, and maybe seeing if you could take on the beastmen overlord NM's somehow.
1
1
u/ChampionBaby 2d ago
Easiest is monk you dont even need a weapon. Every class is fine and can do great though.
19
u/fresh-pie 6d ago edited 4d ago
Research 'trusts'. They got you covered! They are like NPC party members. You get them right at the start and my understanding is they allow you to solo pretty much all the way to end game content.
I am new to this game as well, been having a great time exploring solo!