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There are many Fantasies; but this, like the last, was Final [FFXI]
Posts
Here is the guide from last year. Should be the same stuff this year.
Just FYI: Source
So if you still can't get your beret make sure you registered it properly and assigned it to that character; and if still no you probably should contact support.
Only counting wearable equipment that is not some kind of spell analogue, like the Warp Cudgels or Reraise hairpins, I have 500 bits of equipment spread across 5 different characters. Last night I went with an old Dynamis LS and took part in a run and ended up getting another 8 pieces of AF2 without even lotting on them. AF2 is apparently pretty much tossed away like bee wings or something now. Everything is so different now...
They also used their synergy skills and hooked me up with the new all-in-one staff, so there's that. Good times.
"No.. I was wrong. This must be what going mad feels like."
Unless, of course, you have to do something after receiving the first cutscene and i'm missing a step.
PM if you add me!
TP-based cure with a very low cooldown and the high evasion plus drain dance? Insanely powerful. As long as I can make contact with something, it's going down eventually and I'll end up with full HP ready to go for more...
I was killing a tough Damselfly at one point, got linked by another tough Damsel, then aggroed at the same time by a passing Goblin Gambler... took them all down no sweat at all. hehe I went from level 12 to 25 in one day, soloing and often only half paying attention. At one point I was pulling in 12.5k/hr xp.. solo. Maybe not much for anyone else, but to me it's a ton, and I haven't even gotten around to subbing BST. I suspect I'll be soloing Absolute Virtue by the end of the week.
Anyhow, happy to be playing again. I forgot how fun this game could be.
"No.. I was wrong. This must be what going mad feels like."
And I'm a BRD.
A moogle suit, a costume sword and a free item to get into the Heroine Holdfast thing when it goes live; whatever it is supposed to be.
EDIT: the sword costume is pretty awesome looking.
EDIT EDIT: I wonder if I can mail it to my mule. The mog costume. it'd be adorable on a taru.
EDIT3: yep, yay!
But not as awesome as the Exp you get in even a small Abyssea party. That stuff borders on a cheat compared to how difficult it used to be to level up.
Abyssea is damn confusing though. Are there any good sites out there that fully explain all the different things and how they work? FFXIcyclopedia seems a bit scattered with the explanations.
Congrats! What contest is this now? O.o
"No.. I was wrong. This must be what going mad feels like."
Well, they all got moogle suits, but yeah. it was like 1 first, 10 second, 100 3rd and 5k last.
Not a big deal, just a little thing they did for vanafest. I mean, a big deal for anyone who actually won useable equipment, but whatever.
Anyway, re: abyssea confusion, not really. the main guide for it on ffxiclopedia is generally the best one there is that I know if. Just skip right down to "how to get started".
Its honestly not nearly as confusing as it looks; you just have to go do it and it'll make sense.
Anyway, Harvest Festival is going on right now, ends Nov 1.
Here is this years guide.
The Harvest Festival actually has some of the best rewards (or at least most interesting) you can get from a FFXI holiday, so I'd highly recommend doing it if you're still active.
There are also a shit ton of rewards so prepare for some time investment if you want to get everything.
I don't care if it is technically pointless and a time waster. It feels good and it makes you feel like it's a real world.
The way they did the airship in particular, but also the boats to a lesser degree, feel right, and give the world a presence you don't get in most MMO's.
That is all.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
PM if you add me!
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
This change is biggie:
So...what should we say now, "use your 1 hour"? It's been referred to as a 2hr for a decade.
The PC version got: Which in typical FFXI patch note fashion doesn't tell you what it does at all. :lol: EDIT: looks like it fixes some crashing issues for more modern graphics cards, nvidia 6xx series cards are what I keep seeing referenced.
Plus a bunch of others stuff:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/29150
EDIT: Looks like people are saying that movement speed gear is borked atm, likely due to a fix for pet speed movement.
Also the Starlight Celebration is starting on the 18th.
Looks like quite a bit is changing from previous years, with old rewards just being buyable, and new rewards revolving around the new Orchestrion:
Which...is actually pretty damn awesome. Starlight quests will reward you with parts to craft the thing, then you can play minigames to win the song tracks to play in your mog house.
Here is last years guide even though its' changing; I suspect a lot of the mini games will be the same: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Celebration_2011/Guide
Oh.
So.
There's now a "proto-waypoint" system that lets you teleport pretty much anywhere, for a currency you get by trading crystals, which will probably jack up the price on crystals, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as they've been kinda useless outside of crafting for awhile now.
But yeah, teleports
Everywhere.
What do I mean by everywhere?
yeah
Requires a series of quests starting with Researchers from the West which mentions Adoulin, so I'm assuming it's part of stuff that will lead into the next xpack.
EDIT: Kinetic Unit info here; it's actually simple, but since it's FFXI it has to be something roundabout instead of a simple gil fee. :rotate:
But you can summon a chocobo in a lot of those zones, and for many of them, there are in zones that otherwise don't have a teleport to anyway. I'll reserve judgement till I start gathering them but I can't imagine them being completely useless; I'll take out of the way over nothing.
Of the outdoor locations, all of those are either right outside a city, have an Abyssea Maw, a crag, or an outpost you can already warp to instantly, sometimes more than one of the above. I'm blanking on Attohwa, but I think it fits one of the above.
I'm more interested in the Dungeon locations anyway, as those are typically the main ones that require footwork to get to these days if you need to get to them for anything. I'm curious if the teleports are just inside the zones, or if they're deeper in. Either way would be fine I suppose.
I'll get to check out the Abyssea Maw business, I think I only just got round to looking at those just before my internet access got cut off for months.
Otherwise it's random to me.
Every once in awhile I decide to try it, read a guide and that's about as far as I get. There's guides for all of the professions on ffxiclopedia.org that usually do the leveling in the most efficient manner, but yeah, I couldn't really tell you from personal experience.
Looking good!
It was getting pretty frustrating until I started digging into the macros and finally realized the game is closer to a MUD in many respects than it is to either the only other MMORPG I've dug into (WoW, of course) or another Final Fantasy game. Went all keyboard and it clicked pretty well. Only things grating on me now are travel time and the vagueness of direction. Run is just a bit too slow, and when it's unclear where I'm heading it discourages exploration to a certain degree.
Having adjusted though, I'm admiring a lot about it. World is ridiculously huge, if a little barren in my starting area. I hated how harsh the 'zoning' of areas by level was, but having conquered an entire map area I feel pretty awesome and accomplished now. The game feels dangerous, and while that's kind of annoying having fully morphed into a borderline casual gamer, it's also kind of exciting having to be constantly aware of what's going on around you.
I am having trouble trying to figure out what plot thread to follow though. The main reason I picked up the game was because I'd heard good things about its narrative and world, so it's hard to know if I should feel comfortable fucking off and exploring, or if I need to focus on certain things so I don't miss out on plot content.
Also, I have no fucking clue how to gear up in these early levels. I finally scoured the auction house, but that's got its own issues, and I can't shake the feeling there's a simple store or quest somewhere that would help me out.
Press Start Play - A Blog of Video Games and Pretension
From what I've seen the majority of quests require random enemy drop, which will drop even if you aren't on the quest. You can probably head back to town and turn in a lot. Missions are about the only plot I've seen so far, which you can start up near a gate. Which main town did you start in, sounds like Bastock?
No clue on gear. If you got the game through steam you get a destrier beret, which is incredibly good.
RoB ID errantronin
Long Poast!
The 360 controller is a little wonky with XI (with the triggers not working correctly that would otherwise be macro buttons), and require 3rd party drivers to make work correctly. I used to do that, but the drivers dorked with games that used the 360 controller natively so I just gave up and went back to my old playstation 2 controller with a USB adapter. I'd personally recommend figuring out a controller solution because IMO the game plays substantially better with one.
Macros don't have to be anything fancy early on; I'd just recommend setting them up for abilites as you learn them so that you don't have to access the menu every time you want to do something. Something as bare basic as /ja Boost <me> is all you really need. Yeah, if you're used to just dragging a button from a book onto a hotbar it's pretty jarring, but in general, once you get them set up you don't have to mess with them again unless you want to get fancy. You can actually do some pretty decent stuff via the macros but they're not something I'd recommend diving into out of the gate before you just figure out the game in general. As you get higher levels and get into more complex stuff, and more abilities etc, just take it a bit as a time as you're introduced to new mechanics or whatever instead of trying to learn it in and out right now. I'm not sure what job you chose initially, but for MNK for example, you don't get that many active abilities so combat is a bit more dull in that regard, compared to, say, a RDM or something managing buffs/debuffs. It's just a good way to ease into it because managing casting times with not interrupting your auto-attacks, and cooldowns etc, is a lot to take in as things aren't as straight forward as they are in newer MMO's in that regard.
Travel, out of the gate, is fairly obtuse. Luckily you don't really need to travel much in the beginning; if you're doing your missions actively as you level some, by the time you get your first major mission to visit the other nations, it is also incidentally at the same time you should be at a level you have your chocobo license, and other means of travel.
Travel itself is a huge topic, I'll try to touch on it a decent bit to see if I can help, but I'm really trying to avoid information overload for a new player. I just want to make it clear that it gets way better to the point that getting around the world becomes pretty straightforward and generally fast for virtually everywhere. It just requires an initial investment of time and energy on the players part to access these methods.
So..
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Chocobo's_Wounds is the quest that will get you this; most quests on ffxiclopedia have walkthroughs, it is an incredibly useful site. Once you have your license you can access chocobos at their full rate (30m without special gear) levels 20+ on any job. They made it some time ago that you can also ride chocobos as low as level 15, but at that level you'll only have it for 15m; which I should note is more than enough time to get anywhere you'll need to at that low of a level.
Outpost Teleportation. For me, this is far and away my most common means of travel. If you are diligent about watching what zones your city controls any given conquest (each week) and do the supply quests to unlock the teleport there, you'll quickly end up with means to teleport quickly to many zones and pretty much every region in the game.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Outpost_Teleportation
The long and short of it is that one of the gate guards in your capitol has "supply runs" you can go to (that are based on your level too, the site has a good list), that simply requires you to take a package to the outpost in that region; you'll only be able to access the supply run for a region that is in your kingdoms control that week. You can get there via whatever method you like, have the rest of the week to get there, and can only complete one per in-game day (54 minutes). You will virtually always control the region immediately outside your city gate, but even those outposts are useful to have; particularly the one in bastok because of the way north gustaberg is laid out. Do those as soon as they are avaliable. You only have to do them once, ever, and you will always have access to said teleport, even if your nation no longer controls it in the future. If any nation controls that outpost you can use the NPC there to warp back to your capitol too instantly. The only time you can't use it to teleport back is if a region is controlled by beastmen. So, for example, you will need to get to Valkurm Dunes a lot for various reasons (to find leveling parties, to get to Selbina, to get to the Abyssea Maw, to get to other nearby zones, etc). Even on a chocobo the journey from a capitol to valk takes minimum 10m. This lets you get there instantly. No drawbacks. Bam. I can't stress enough how important these are for quickly getting around the world.
Airships. There are two major airship passes. One is the Khazam pass, which is the first one you'll get; this will allow you to get to the Khazam regions (yhoator and Yhutunga jungles) where you'll level in parties (if you level that way) 25+. Incidentally you can solo the keys to get the pass at level 25, but it requires some work and a bit of farming.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Kazham_Airship_Pass is how you get that.
The other one is the 'main' one that will get you an airship from any capitol to jeuno. This one is part of the natural progression of nation missions and you'll get it just by following them, but you will need help. It is finishing the mission that gives you rank 5 in your nation. IIRC 30ish is about as low as you can really do it at.
You'll use Airships a lot but they actually aren't as convenient as they used to be and you can frequently find quicker ways to get around.
WHM crag teleports. As you travel around you'll notice massive white structures in a few zones. Namely Tahrongi, La'thiene and Konschtat (there's more but those are higher level and not terribly important to a low level player). Getting a crystal fragment from these allow you to get a white mage teleport directly to them. There are chocobo renters at each of these too so you can get the teleport and hop right on a chocobo. The best time to get these is doing the rank 3 mission to go to the other nations since you'll be travelling by them anyway.
Warp. Warp sends you back to your home point. This doesn't usually lend itself to a viable travel method (except to simply return) but you can actually use it in a way to do so. Warp either means the BLM spell Warp or 'blood warping' by getting yourself killed to instantly get back to your home point. You no longer lose xp when you level below level 30, so it's not a bad way to get back home ifyou're out in the world and done for the night. But Warp can be used cleverly in conjunction with...
Field/Grounds manuals.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Fields_of_Valor
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Grounds_of_Valor
As you level you'll be using these a lot; and over time you'll be earning a ton of 'tabs'. These let you buy buffs and also, more importantly here, teleports. Field Manuals have "repatriation" that will instantly teleport you to your capitol. Grounds tomes have repatriation and 'homing instinct' which functions the same as warp. You will find one of these by the zone borders in almost every single zone in the game. So you can, for example, set your 'home point' in Jeuno, and use the field manual to repatriate to your capitol. Jeuno is very central in the world and has airships and other quick means of travel. Being there is a good place to set out from for various reasons but it doesn't have your nations outpost teleporter. So you can quickly get back and forth between Jeuno and your capitol this way. I'd recommend leveling BLM, even if you don't want to play it, to 17 in order to get access to Warp so you can just hop in your mog house from any city to quickly warp back to your home point.
Abyssea Maws. Normally these would only be used to get to an Abyssea zone later in your life to level or other things. HOwever, you can instantly teleport to any maw you have previously visited from Jeuno or any city, sometimes these maws are in zones without other teleports and/or in more convenient locations than outposts in zones that have both. Once you reach level 30 I'd recommend spending some time to 'unlock' all the maws for even more quick teleports around the world. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Cavernous_Maw Not all maws are used for teleports in this way, some are for Wings of the Goddess and just take you back in time, which is another thing entirely.
I'll finish with this new method that I actually haven't used myself but its just even more teleports, you can read it in my post here
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/25177105/#Comment_25177105
So yeah, lots of stuff. It becomes very easy to get around, as I said, but all of those things just require the initial investment of unlocking them personally, which takes time and effort.
But yes, the world is vast, and well crafted. Sounds like you started in Bastok and yeah, Gustaberg, while having among my favorite music in the game, are pretty desolate and boring. I usually recommend people choose Sand'oria or even Windurst over Bastok because Ronfaure is a really cool region and so is Sarutabaruta. Plus, Sandy for life yo! One of the benefits, to me anyway, of having to earnthe means to travel, means that you have to get out there, see the world, experience it in its coolness and its danger. You likely will at some point, waste a lot of time trying to get somewhere only to die on the way there and have to home point back (if you're not fortunate enough to have a guide or a nice passerby to rez you). I'd recommend, when you doing major travelling to go prepaired with invisible/sneak potions, and some means of having a reraise, to save a lot of frustration. But those are money investments a new player won't really have access to out of the gate. Just be aware when this happens, it has happened to us all, and you haven't truly played FFXI until you've wasted an hour almost getting somewhere to be killed by a random mob you thought you had avoided. :lol:
As far as plot goes; gate guards in any capitol have the story missions (for the base game, each xpack has its on overarching story), as you do them you gain rank and gain access to more missions. Sometimes doing the missions don't give you enough rank to get new missions, so you can either repeat earlier missions or turn in crystals to a guard to increase your rank. Initial missions are pretty trivial, the stories give you a base introduction, and aren't very epic, but they pick up pretty quick around rank 4 or so, and just stay pretty epic for the duration, and for xpack arcs. The are something entirely unique to FFXI in how good the stories are if you take the time to do them.
It is just important to remember that unlike WoW or other modern MMO's missions (and quests) aren't intended to 'level' you; you won't find "!"s around to level. You have to go out and kill shit. They've added a lot of help to ease that grind though, namely through Fields of Valor and Grounds of Valor (that I linked in the transportation spoiler), and you should use them always always while you're out in the world. They give you a good bonus to xp, they allow buffs that keep you safer and allow you to solo easier and generally make life better. Grounds of Valor in particular are good because they give you buffs you can't otherwise get that makes you stronger as you do them; and now they auto repeat without you having to turn them in which just makes them even more convenient.
Quests are another beast entirely. Unless you just like talking to random NPC's the only real way to find quests is to use guides. It's not necessary, many quests rewards aren't very good, often having turnins that cost more than you're rewarded for doing them, and they don't reward XP themselves. They are there for story, for little quests, and not for progression. I'd absolutely recommend doing them time to time, but do them for a change of pace and to just have fun. Don't expect to just do fedex quests like in WoW and end up with 10 more levels. That's just not what they're there for in FFXI.
As far as what you should be doing...yes. The only way to answer that question is, as silly as it sounds, "am I having fun?". XI doesn't hold your hand or direct you to where you have to go like modern mmo's. What you 'should' be doing is simply a matter of what you 'want' to be doing. Do you want to be leveling today? Then pick a level appropriate zone, and go out and get some field/grounds pages to do. Or put your party flag up and do some pages while you're lfg and once you get an invite, go find your party. Don't be afraid to ask questions to other players; we've all been new once, and better someone ask a 'dumb' question than pretend they know what they're doing and punish everyone for it. XI players, in general (obviously not always) are super helpful and friendly. You get your elitist shitbag now and then, but most of us who have invested the time and energy to 'master' the game, know that its a mountain to climb and new players simply can't do it alone.
If you're not in the mood to grind levels, go do some quests, go do some missions, go explore. Failing in exploring can be punishing but it also can be really rewarding. With so many means of unlocking travel these days, I'd recommend always exploring with a goal in mind, but do so, definitely. There's a ton to do in XI, but more often than not you have to seek it out, it won't find you. I have spent hours over the course of days doing 'nothing' and having still feel incredibly rewarding. I have focused a week or two on just unlocking outpost teleports, not getting an ounce of XP (in fact more than likely losing some) and having that feel just as satisfying and rewarding as getting another dozen levels or whatever. I will periodically decide 'no leveling until I'm rank <whatever> or have gotten to mission <whatever> in this xpacks story. And those are some of the best times. In fact, my most favorite aspect of getting PLD to 99 wasn't even getting it to 99 thought that was an huge accomplishment in of itself. Its the freedom it then afforded me to go back and do story missions I could never do before because of levels or finding parties. Suddenly everything was wide open to me and I could just enjoy the stories and stuff without stressing about other things. It was incredibly freeing.
As you gain levels you'll notice that there is a lot of stuff people are doing that you don't understand. Abyssea for example, you could see people spamming for xp groups, no leechers, or not, etc. That stuff will come in time, don't feel like you have to understand it right now, it'll come in time.
And, let me just say, FFXI is chock full of weird words for everything, random 'currencies' and other things that initially appear far more complex that they actually are. If you read the guide to unlocking Abyssea right now it'd probably feel so incredibly overbearing that it could easily put you off from it. But as you play more and more you start to realize that more often than not, these are actually quite simple and straight forward things; they're just hidden behind obtuse and arcane naming schemes that make it all feel just hard. Just realize that more often than not, its far more simple in practice than it sounds on paper. Once you start to become accustomed to just how FFXI words and manages these things you start to just roll with it and that guide to unlock Abyssea suddenly makes sense and much more straight forward.
As far as gear goes...well, at low levels, its really not that important. It really just isn't. Having regen/refresh from a field manual is going to go further to keep you alive at low levels than having the 'best' gear. Just generally try to keep your gear updated as you level, but don't let it kill you. You won't have the gil at low levels to really get +1's or other 'best' gear for your level, and if you try to do so you'll just be hurting yourself. Generally the auction house is your best bet to get gear, but at low levels, you can often find a vendor with cheaper versions. You can get some gear from easy low level quests in town, or you can just rely on drops from mobs (usually only humanoid, i.e. beastmen, mobs will have actual gear).
But again, just don't sweat the gear so much at low levels. Make sure your weapon is pretty good for your level, and that you aren't just naked or at level 20 with level 1 gear. Once you get higher levels, more gear and are more comfortable with stats and the system, it'll follow naturally as to what you should do, for the most part.
From the AH though, gear you can equip for your job and for your level will be 'yellow' ish when you are browsing through lists (be sure to sort by level, always). This lets you see what you can even use. It just takes some getting used to, but the AH starts to make a lot more sense pretty quickly.
Anyway, I wrote a book and its probably incredibly overbearing and off-putting in a way I exactly intended to avoid. So sorry about that :lol:
What server are you on anyway?
Generally everything that drops from mobs is useful to sell to the AH (though sometimes vendoring it is more profitable.
FFXIAH.com is a wonderful resource to use along with ffxiclopedia.org. You can track your servers AH prices on good and compare them to vendor prices and generally know what you should prioritize selling.
But as you initially level, have signet on so you get crystals, and just hoard all the drops from random mobs. Worms outside of Bastok can drop Zinc that is used for a lot of things and valuable in the AH. It might feel like "oh, this shit only sells for 500 gil and this other thing costs 20000 gil, I'm not getting anywhere; but trust me, it all adds up. Keep it and sell it. Consider making a mule if you get too much crap, but initially it shouldn't be that big of a deal. money tends to work in XI in such a way that if an item isn't a consumable, you can usually make your money back. i.e. if you buy a set of gear for 100k total, generally you can sell that gear back when you're done for 100k, so you are typically just building your wealth and occasionally have to invest some for a bit to level, and can make it back when you're done with it.
But yeah, those stacks of bees wax? Worth something. Stacks of crystals? Worth something. Particularly as a new player, everything is valuable.
Running around Windurst randomly has gotten me quiet a few quests, completed a couple for some rewards. Messed one up when I "used" a two-leaf clover instead of trading it, won't make that mistake again.
Was excited to see Shantoto in town and I'm looking forward to seeing why she and Prishe are so well liked.
RoB ID errantronin
IIRC the quest that has you turn in the clovers is repeatable (many quests are) so don't sweat that. If anything you just helped yourself toward more windy rep, which is never bad. There are few, if any, items that drop that will never drop again, and as you mentioned earlier, the vast majority of quest drops can be gotten whether you have a quest active or not (or even if you complete it, often you'll get something you can't use and just destroy)
Minor nit-pick: Since you're in Bastok, the Shell Shield (http://www.ffxiah.com/item/12415/shell-shield) usually sells for more at the vendors (plus you'll sell it instantly instead of having to wait.) People buy it for the "Welcome to Bastok" quest, but it's not a very popular item otherwise.
Right now I'm just going with the flow and enjoying myself, although it looks like I skipped an intro quest on accident, so I'm heading back home to seek it out now that I've got a waypoint setup a few zones away.
I've brushed up against the Shantotto stuff, is that something I should move towards pretty quickly or wait until I've made my way up the ladder some?
Edit: Oh, and I'm on Carbuncle, as well.
Press Start Play - A Blog of Video Games and Pretension
Always always 'check' a mob before attacking. That Rarab that looks exactly the same as the ones you've been killing?
That is as true now as it was then.
There's usually not any time you want to be soloing anything higher than a Decent Challenge. You usually can solo Even Matches and sometimes even Tough's (depending on your job); but the time and effort to do so, for the xp awarded is usually always subpar from just going after Decent Challenges and even Easy Preys. This wasn't always the case, but a few years ago they hugely buffed XP on solo kills for Easy Prey and Decent Challenges. You can kill half a dozen Easy Preys in the time it takes to do one Even Match, and you'll end up with more XP. If you are playing a pet job, this rule changes, but you'll figure that out on your own by the time you unlock any pet jobs. And they increased the level range in which enemies still count as EP/DC's. This won't mean a lot to a new player, but for us old timers this was one of the key changes that made the game soloable from level 1-99. Before if you were level 70, enemies would become "Too Weak to be Worthwhile) at, say level 60, but those 60's would be far too tough for a 70 to solo given how scaling works in the game. (these numbers aren't accurate, just an example), however the change made it so mobs all the way down to level 50 were still Easy Preys so you could solo them easily and they'd still award decent XP. This also played into weapon skill leveling (in a good way) but I won't get into that right now.
If you're in a party you'll be focusing mainly on Very Toughs and Incredibly Toughs in order to chain, but solo you don't really want to. They even buffed XP awarded in smaller parties so it's perfectly viable to duo/trio now and the XP hit is pretty fair in making it a really fast way to grind through stuff (particularly if you're doing pages, since everyones kills count, you can burn through super fast and man does the XP flow).
If a mob is "Impossible to Gauge" that means it's a NM (named monster) of some sort; they tend to roam everywhere. It doesn't mean that they aren't killable by you, but you should just look them up really fast. A NM in an area might be your level, and it might be 50 levels above you, since they all check Impossible to Gauge even if they're 50 levels below you.
As far as the Shantoto stuff, that's booster pack content. You can do a few of the missions at low levels, but you have to be decently high to complete them (there are 3 boosters; as you travel around the world you'll just automatically get the intro videos/missions for them, and other xpacks). Feel free to do what you can as you play (true for all missions) but just be aware that a good majority of quests for all the main story lines are intended to be done much higher (or with help, you can do it lower). What I'd advise against is avoiding missions until you're higher level because you don't have to, many of them are very long questlines that can take entire days of playing to complete, and it's best to 'spice up' your leveling and other activities with them now and again.
EDIT: and @Bluecyan and @OneAngryPossum if you guys are both on carbuncle make sure you're hooking up at least from time to time. Playing with others is always more fun than soloing (though sometimes you just want to solo), and even having one more person to back you up enables you to do harder content and missions that you couldn't do alone.
All this talking about the game is really scratching that itch so I'll probably start hoping on more and more here shortly. And I want to get everything in order for the xpack coming in March.