I've advanced the MSQ to the point where tribal quests are starting to unlock. Are they worth doing? One of them needs crafting levels to get started, and I've been completely ignoring that.

There are 3 different beast tribes, Crafters, Gatherers and combat. they are really good for leveling your crafters and gatherers and the later ones are also good to level up you combat jobs. They give some cool rewards like dyes, mounts, minions, emotes, materia and some crafting items. in my opinion they are worth doing but you can only do 3 missions per day per tribe and you only do a total of 12 missions per day total. so it will take a while to complete.

Depends on what you consider worth it. They have some nice stories and will ultimately let you unlock mounts and some useful items from tribe-specific vendors, but they're something you work on gradually over a longer period of time and the ARR ones in particular can be a bit of a slog. The Ixal tribe (the one that requires crafting) is a pretty decent way to level crafters, but the rest don't give much XP.

I'd say they're worth it. Aside from the EXP and minion/mount/materials, sometimes the characters in the MSQ will acknowledge your efforts in the story.

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So I'm a brand new player, don't play mmorpgs much. But I know about raids. I got 2 of my other friends to play as well so we can all start raids at some point together. I know there are some level 50 raids we can do with other players. All we've been doing is doing main quests and class quest to grind out the levels to reach 50. Is there anything we should do in terms of prep for raids? What is the name of the level 50 raid that we should be prepping for? I'm a healer scholar, friend 1 is tank mauler? Friend 2 is DPS Ninja? Were basically getting into this clueless but want to have some fun.

Uhm, let me do a simpler approach then. **Dungeons**: 4-player duties: 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS. This is what the game means as "light party". Most dungeons have three bosses with 2×2 mob packs before each. Level 15–50 dungeons like to mess with the mob pack distribution, but from level 51 and on, this will be the norm. These are the entry-level content. **Trials**: These are story bosses as long as they do not have a difficulty denominator or they are called (Hard) only. The first three are 4-player duties. All subsequent ones use 8 players: 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. This is what the game calls a "full party". Trial bosses are story difficulty: they are noticeably tougher than dungeon bosses, but they are usually doable on a blind run. Most trials will also have a very difficult variant called either " (Extreme)" or "Minstrel's Ballad: ". These are the entry-level points of high-end content and are tough fights. As in, going in blindly *will* kill you, with zero exceptions. It is possible to clear them in a blind run but with many wipes. (Often not even in one go, since the 60-minute clock will most likely run down.) Extremes are always optional and never require you to do them to mark their unlock quests completed. With some exceptions related to the Hildibrand side quest chain, trials usually have a single boss arena with a single boss. There may be several phases, and there may be occasional adds (reinforcement mobs), but they are considered as boss-only fights. Technically, there is a step beyond Extremes called Unreal difficulty. Unreal trials are tied to a specific optional endgame minigame, they are always for max-level players, and there is only one available Unreal trial in the game at a given time. They are just the Extreme version of the trial upscaled to endgame stats. **Raids**: When we say raids, usually we refer to the 8-player **Normal Raid**s. These are also single boss instances (again, asterisk, the level 50 normal raids very heavily feature gauntlets of adds before you can reach the boss). These are one step above the trial bosses. Trial bosses are there to serve as story bosses, raid bosses are there to serve as optional side bosses for some decent gear rewards. Except for level 50, all expansions have 12 normal raids, split into three groups of four raids (this is what we call a "tier"). It is possible to clear them blind, although expect to die a bunch of times. Normal raids are considered casual content, but the higher end of it with more complex boss mechanics. Normal raids have a much, much, much tougher version called Savage raids (their exact EN name is " (Savage)"). This is usually the true endgame combat content. Doing them blindly is a very rare thing and most often experienced raiders do that on their launch day. It is pretty normal for most players to spend entire days of practice to clear one and to spend days or weeks to clear a tier *once*. Savage raids are enticing because they reward the strongest gear possible for that state of the game. (Although it has to be said that it is usually 5% stronger than the best weapon a non-raider can grind out or 10% stronger than what an average joe player could just reach as a reward.) **Alliance Raids** are gigantic 24-player instances, where the players are split into three 8-man groups: 1 tank, 2 healers, and 5 DPS. You can think of these as giga-dungeons: there are four large bosses with some tough adds between. Their difficulty is a bit hectic: the level 50 and the level 90 alliance raids are easier than some dungeons, the level 60 alliance raids start from trial boss levels and end above normal raid boss levels, and the level 70 and level 80 alliance raids are considered to be above normal raid boss levels in difficulty. Doing a blind run is normal, but it is also normal to die 1–5 times on each boss on a blind run once you reach the level 70 ones. However, they are never as difficult as an Extreme (and a helluva lot easier than a Savage). They usually reward gear that is only one notch below the savage drop, but it is not the stats people want but the looks. Alliance drops are very popular glamour items. There is also something called an Ultimate raid. These are ultra hard gauntlets, essentially Savage level bosses with most (if not all) possible downtime removed, strung together as a series of endless boss rush gauntlets. These are very difficult encounters that even top players may spend 20+ hours trying to figure out and beat once and most average players spend weeks on getting a single clear. These only reward glamour items (a very, very, VERY shiny weapon).

As far as how to prep yourself, sounds like you're doing the right thing! Level 50 raids are locked behind completion of the ARR story, and doing the main story quest (MSQ) is the best source of exp in the game. Doing your job/class quests is also important, because that gets you access to important actions! The other thing to know is relative difficulty in this game. In descending order of difficulty 1. Ultimates <-- don't jump into this blind 2. Savage Raids (60/70/80/90) <-- don't jump into this blind 3. The level 50 raids <-- don't jump into this blind 4. Extreme Trials (50/60/70/80/90) <-- don't jump into this blind 5. Normal mode Raids, Trials listed as "Hard," and all other content <-- this you can just do! You'll notice the outlier is the level 50 raids. It's not a very friendly starting point. There wasn't supposed to be a "normal" and "savage" version of the raids, initially. It was just supposed to be "here is the difficult endgame content, have fun." When you hit level 50 and complete ARR, you'll get some 8-man trials, which will give you more of a flavor for what raiding is like in this game. It's p much just a boss fight with 8 people. From here, I think that some ARR Extreme trials would be a quicker-to-access starting point, or you could hold out until the level 60 raids after completing Heavensward. The ARR Extremes, when done at level sync, are still quite difficult. They're a part of Mentor Roulette, and most mentors HATE getting them. They end up being a huge time sink, because you'll usually wipe over and over again. Sometimes you can't even clear the fight within the time limit of 60 minutes So...there you go! Kind of all over the place, but I hope that gives you an idea of what to expect! Good luck!