MMOs tend to be somwhat complex games with tons of features, mechanics, and systems to learn. FFXIV is no exception, and many players go a long time before discovering certain features they never noticed or used while progressing through the story.
This list is going to highlight a handful of these useful features that you might not have known about as a new player.
1 – Identify Cleansable Debuffs
I’m starting off with combat tips since new Healers should definitely learn this one early. There are some debuffs you can cleanse with Esuna or consumable items. If a debuff can be cleansed then it will have a white bar over top of it. Many of the common cleansable debuffs you’ll see throughout the game include poison, paralysis, silence, heavy, slow, and blind.
There are lots of debuffs with no white bar on them that either cannot be removed or are removed some other way that involves a mechanic in the fight.
Sometimes you’ll even see uncleansable versions of those common status effects like poison or paralysis. Always look for the white bar to know for sure.
Sometimes this can be really important! For example, the doom status effect in duties like The Sunken Temple of Qarn or World of Darkness must be removed through fight mechanics, but the doom that’s applied in Dun Scaith needs to be cleansed with Esuna.
In many duties failing specific mechanics may give players a stack of vulnerability, increasing their damage taken. These are not cleansable and will fall off after 2 minutes, provided you don’t gain another stack and reset the duration.
2 – Enlarge Target’s Cast Bar
Not everyone loves fiddling with with their UI to customize every little detail. I’m sure some people find that to be a headache that takes a lot of time, especially if they’re new and just want to enjoy playing the game they’re excited about.
However, if I were to suggest just one thing that makes the biggest impact it’s the Target Bar settings. Go to HUD Layout and choose the Target Bar element. Tick the box that says ‘Display Target Info Independently’.
Target Info (Progress Bar) refers to the enemy’s cast bar, which is super important to pay attention to and now you can move and resize it on its own.
I always recommend blowing this up in size and sticking it somewhere near the middle of the screen. Poor situational awareness causes a lot of deaths in new or unfamiliar content and this makes it a lot easier to stay aware of what the enemy is casting.
3 – See Aetherytes Hidden by Quest Markers
While you’re still acquainting yourself with Eorzea there’s a little trick you can use to make the map a little more user-friendly. The zone maps are often covered in side quest markers so you might not immediately see the Aetheryte you’re looking for.
Holding the Ctrl key will bring Aetherytes to the foreground of the map above all those clusters of quest markers, making it easy to get to where you want to go.
4 – Target Nearest NPC or Object
If you’ve ever struggled to click on a summoning bell in busy Limsa Lominsa you’ll probably want to know about this keybind. It can be found in the Targeting tab of the Keybind menu and will save you some frustration every now and then. It’s particularly useful when a new piece of content comes out as you can expect important quest NPCs to be lost in a sea of other players.
Don’t forget the Confirm keybind as well, so you can then speak to or interact with the NPC or object you have targeted. This is under the System tab of the Keybind menu and is numpad 0 by default.
5 – Drag Shortcuts Onto Your Hotbar
MMOs have a lot of stuff going on, so there’s a ton of systems and menus to navigate through. If you find yourself repeatedly reaching for something, you may want to create a shortcut so it’s just a simple click.
In this picture you can see I have mounts, macros, items, limit break, chocobo stances, materia extraction, dig, and menu shortcuts easily accessible by click or keybind.
Most of these actions can be found in the Actions & Traits menu. Items are dragged from the inventory, macros from the User Macros window, and mounts and minions from the Mount Guide or Minion Guide pages.
Menu shortcut icons can also be dragged straight from their text in the drop down menu.
You can drag gearsets directly to a hotbar to switch between jobs with one click. If you’re frequently crafting a specific item, you can drag the recipe from the Crafting Log to your crafter’s hotbar so you don’t have to search for it every time.
6 – Use the Timers Menu to Check Dailies/Weeklies
A lot of people have their minds blown when they discover this menu since they previously thought they had to teleport across Eorzea just to check the status of various dailies, weeklies, or NPCs. It can be found under Duty > Timers Menu. The default shortcut is Ctrl+U.
In this menu you can check the status of your weekly tasks such as: Custom Deliveries, the Fashion Report, the Doman Enclave Reconstruction Effort, and the Masked Carnivale.
You can also quickly see the status of dailies including: Grand Company Supply and Provisioning Missions, your Adventurer Squadron, Ventures, Treasure Map availability, and Beast Tribe and Leve allowances.
7 – Mount up to Pause the Chocobo Companion Timer
When you summon your chocobo companion with Gysahl Greens it lasts for 30 minutes (or up to 60 minutes if you use a second one).
This timer only ticks down when the companion is actually on the field though, so you aren’t burning through Gysahl Green time by running an instanced duty or standing around in cities or player housing. The timer also pauses while you’re on a mount, whether it’s your chocobo companion or not. It’s a good habit to mount up after combat if you’re going to idle in an overworld zone for whatever reason.
8- Viewing a Glamoured Item’s Original Appearance
One of the most fun parts of the game for a lot of players is the glamour system, so most of the equipment in your armoury chest is probably glamoured to look like something else. When it comes time to clean out your old items, you may want to double check that you’re not interested in that piece’s original appearance before getting rid of it.
So how do you do that if trying it on only shows you the glamour you applied to it?
If you want to see the original item there’s a quick way to do that without spending a glamour dispeller. The chat log will display the name of the base item, so simply click on the item name in chat and try it on from there. This will be the original, unglamoured appearance.
9 – Quickly Disengage Striking Dummies
Have you ever been practicing your rotation on a striking dummy and then needed to switch jobs because a queue popped? You probably noticed that you had to run an absurd distance away to disengage from combat. Well you can actually right click on the dummy’s target info (the health bar) and quickly reset its aggro.
This wasn’t always in the game, but I’m glad they added it as a little quality of life feature. It immediately disengages you from combat and also removes any DoTs you’ve applied to the dummy.
10 – Custom Emote Messages
Have you ever seen a really strange or specific emote message in chat and you wondered which emote that was? It actually may have been a custom emote that a player just made up for a laugh.
This is a fun chat feature that’s present in a lot of MMOs. In FFXIV using /emote or simply /em sends a chat message about your character performing whatever action you can think of.
Flex your creative muscles to entertain yourself and your friends, just keep it clean in public spaces. You can also turn off custom emotes (or even standard emotes) in your chat filter if you don’t want to see other players’ shenanigans.
You can set these up in a macro or just type them on the fly. Incorporating the usual macro terms for targets (<t>) and mouseovers (<mo>) works as well, so for example if you wanted to challenge someone to a duel you could write something like “/em challenges <t> to a duel!” and it would display your target’s name in the chat log.
I hope some of these features were pleasant discoveries for you! Let me know in the comments if there’s anything else you discovered late in your FFXIV experience that you wish you knew when you were just a sprout.
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