Beginners are often told there’s no point in making them due to the game’s job system, but alts can be useful for playing as different races, re-playing certain high-end content, or for increasing your storage space across two accounts (among other reasons).
Alts are essentially alternative characters you play alongside your “main” character in Final Fantasy XIV.
And on its own, Final Fantasy XIV’s job system is awesome.
Your character isn’t confined to one combat role throughout their entire journey – no, they can level up basically whatever they like and swap between them on a whim. Even if you’ve spent hours and hours leveling up one job, you can pick up another one and level it up whenever you feel like it.
As such, the practice of making alternative characters (alts) can seem kind of pointless.
If one character can do literally everything, why bother making another one? XIV’s story is good, but it is huge, and even if you skip all the cutscenes your alt will have a ton of catching up to do.
What Are The Best Reasons To Make An Alt?
So, no you don’t need to make an alt to play every single combat, crafting, or gathering job in the game. But there’s plenty of features that will be restricted to a single character.
If you’re really into raiding, for example, you may find yourself locked out of rewards for certain high-end content once you’ve already cleared it that week. By leveling an alt, you can tackle it again.
By making another character you’ll also effectively double your available storage space.
You can get two more free retainers, more Chocobo saddlebags, and, of course, the extra personal inventory space.
You can send money and items between the two via the in-game Moogle Mail system, and in theory you can keep going for as long as you have more character creation slots.
It’s also a good way to test out playing another race without committing to the use of a Vial of Fantasia.
Sure, you get one of those appearance-shifting potions for free at the end of A Realm Reborn.
But a lot of the time you won’t really know if you enjoy playing a race until you’ve seen them in action for a bit, checked out their animations, how good they look in your favorite glamours, and so on.
Maybe you just wanna play two different races – it’s your account, do what you like!
My personal reason for creating an alt is that I wanted to experience the story at a more relaxed pace than I did the first time around.
When my group first started playing, we were kinda racing to the end, despite the advice of most of the more experienced players around us. We wanted to see everything, to have max-level characters, and there was probably a competitive element to it too.
That group aspect to the game died off a little while ago for me. And it gave me the chance to stroll back through the world I’d flown through.
I made a new character with a class I’d never experimented with before, and resolved never to skip a single cutscene. Well, except those dungeon introduction cutscenes. I’m not a monster.
Using Alts To Replay The Story vs. New Game Plus
You can replay the MSQ with the New Game Plus feature. This allows you to experience the story all over again without making a new character.
However, this kinda seems like a waste of time to me.
You don’t earn experience or gil for replaying these quests – it’s purely for the story. And while the story is very good, if you had the choice between doing something for free or getting paid for it, you’d probably want to get paid for it, right?
Replaying the story on a new character could help you amass a decent bit of gil to pass along to your main character.
You may notice things about the world you’d never seen before, or discover entertaining side quests you previously walked straight past.
You could level up a whole new job you’d never expected to play before.
Ultimately, playing a new character will provide you with a ton of additional benefits beyond New Game Plus.
With the knowledge you’ve already gained about the world, you’ll have a whole new approach to leveling, and to your interactions with other players, and many other aspects of XIV.
What Are The Drawbacks Of Creating An Alt?
Well, this is all gonna be pretty subjective. But what might be the biggest perk to some is going to be the biggest drawback for just as many players.
Unless you pay for a story skip, you’re going to have to play through all of that story content all over again.
This means that a lot of the features you’ve grown used to are just going to disappear completely until you reach the point in the story where you can unlock them again.
It means you’ll have to replay a lot of the same old dungeons all over again just to get to the same level you’ve already reached.
After all, it’s ridiculously easy to clear some of the earlier dungeons. But when you’re queuing for things like Castrum and The Crystal Tower raid series, you might end up dying of boredom.
Other than that, you’re probably looking at a pretty simple equation.
Story skips and level boosts aren’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and they can save you a lot of time if you’re determined to have another alt to raid with.
But there’s also quite a few benefits around replaying the story at your own pace.
It’s worth bearing in mind that there isn’t an awful lot of content shared between all of your characters.
So if you’ve spent a ton of money on MogStation outfits, you won’t be able to redeem those items again on a new character. Tread carefully!
And one last thing to bear in mind on this subject: XIV has two tiers of subscription.
You’ve got your standard plan, which allows you the full amount of characters created on any given server. And then the discounted entry-level plan, which only allows one character per world.
You can make an alt on this plan, but they won’t be on the same server, which may negate some of the benefits of having an alt in the first place.
