Beginner's Guide to F2P Gaming in Archeage

Benefits of F2P Gaming:

• Life is simple and the game is free.
• No need to worry about land and farming.
• Can focus completely on quests, dungeons, and PVP.

"How do I make money as a F2P player?"

Good:

• Do all your quests! You get weapons, armors, and gilda stars from quests. You'll also have lots of money by the time you hit level 50.
• Do dungeons as many times as you can. The drops sell for quite a lot. However, you'll need a Patron friend to help you sell the drops so make lots of Patron friends! Or you can purchase an Auction License fromother people, the AH, or the Cash Shop. You'll need to purchase APEX from the AH for credits which you can then use to buy the license in the Cash Shop OR save up 2 APEX to become a Patron and gain access to selling in the AH. You'll have enough gold by the time you hit 50 to buy at least 2 APEX as long as you did the majority of the quests.
• Offer protection to people doing trade runs. Lots of Patrons are horrible at PVP and need protection when travelling with their expensive trade packs. Trade packs can get pretty expensive and time consuming to make so people are always looking for protection.
• Explore the sea and find valuable treasures in ship wrecks and treasure chests underwater!

Evil:

• Explore! Look for players' secret tree farms and steal their resources. Use the resources to craft valuable goods. Sell the goods.
• Kill people doing trade runs and steal their trade packs. Turn in trade packs to get either gold, resources, or gilda stars.
• Scamming is allowed in this game (not exploitation) so if you're very clever and manipulative you can definitely take advantage of less knowledgeable players!

"How do I gear up as a F2P player?"

• Do quests! Quests will gear you up all the way to level 50. Here's a list of quests that will give you end game gear: http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/comments/2d9x6g/starter_gear_for_a_level_50/[1]
• Do dungeons! Dungeons can give you weapon, armor, and accessories!
• Craft weapons, armors, and accessories! As a F2P player, you'll have to be sneaky with where you plant your plants for the materials. I would definitely suggest joining a guild that can help you out with this.

General Tips:

• Don't join the heavily populated servers like Kyrios and Ollo unless you're okay with 1-2 hour queues for the next couple of days/weeks.
• Queues were really bad during launch week but it's been improved a lot lately!
• Join a guild!
• Get really good at PVP.

Feel free to ask questions about anything and I'll do my best to answer them!

[Edit]

More tips:

• In order to sell in the Auction House as a F2P player, you'll need to buy an Auction License from other players, from the AH, or from the Cash Shop. You only need to buy it once and it's fairly cheap so it's not a big problem at all!
• Auction Licenses aren't tradable anymore! However, F2P players can still acquire this by buying APEX from the Auction House (which gives 1200 I believe) and either using the credits to buy an Auction License (150 credits) OR save up 2 APEX to become a Patron (which enables you to use the AH). By the time you hit 50 as long as you did the majority of your quests you'll have more than enough gold to buy at least 2 APEX (and become a Patron) so it's still nothing to worry about!
• Patrons who didn't get land as well as F2P players will have to do secret farming in order to get resources on their own which means there will always be secret farms to discover and steal!
• Just because you don't own land doesn't mean you can't farm! If you can find a spot that's very hidden you can start your own secret farm by simply planting your plants in the ground. Other people can steal it though so make sure it's very hidden! I would suggest planting crops that have a short harvest time so it's not out in the open for very long.
• Always use Evenstones (from General Merchant) on gear that you don't need anymore! It'll save you in cost once you start crafting your gear!
• F2P user have access to public farms and ranches, which can be used to grow limited amounts of either crops, trees and livestock. I think the limit is 10 crops, 5 trees, 5 livestock and you have to find the appropriate public farm. There is also limited space on them, but generally you will be able to fit your maximum quantity.

IGN: Solar; If you're ever in Kyrios, don't hesitate to pm me questions! Hope to see you guys in game! :)

A huge thanks to Solar (reddit username IAmScrewedAMA) for creating this great ArcheAge Free to Play guide. If you want to check out the original post on /r/ArcheAge head here.