I've never played on Ragnarok and I've mained WHM BRD THF since 2004 playing Zart on Aasura. The best tips i can give you is,
1.] Limited time quests (from
records of eminence) are extremely useful the first time completion you get a copper voucher (which is basically 1k of any type of "currency" points like, conquest points, allied notes, Imperial standing ect.)
These limited time quest rewards sparks which is currency that can be used for lots of armor between 1-117.. but really you should use it to obtain chapters 1 through 10,
On Monday at 8pm, Wednesday at 12pm and Sunday at 4am (PST) is a limited time
(gained exp) window for 4 hours. This is the
best time to farm sparks to buy chapters. At some point you will probably use sparks to buy etched memories to upgrade Empyrean armors to 119.
2.] I highly recommend trying to get into a Vagary LS as a returning/new player basically there is a total of 5 bosses in Vagary that you need to defeat to unlock the ability to upgrade empyrean armors feet, legs, hand, head and body to iLv119. Theres also nifty jewelry and things you can obtain in vagary, and it has a reward system that you can choose through things that would drop from bosses and receive it directly
(with the key items you obtain through defeating the bosses)
3.] Ambuscade, now especially on Asura theres a lot of players with an
elitist attitude. I've gotten laughed at for running vol 1 easy runs and honestly just ignore the players, do what you need to do to get ahead and have fun.
Basically ambuscade is a monthly rotating instance, so every month you have 2 different instances you can try to fight a Notorious boss monster in a setting with a party of 6.
(formely knowned as volume 1 and 2)
Volume 2, is "generally" easier then volume 1, but overall there will be times you will benefit from having a different diverse job setups, sometimes a magic burst setup will work best, sometimes you need a lot of jobs with stun, sometimes you will need a lot of Marksmanship/Archery jobs, sometimes you will just need to zerg it down with melee and a job that can dispel..
Whats great about ambuscade is its content that pretty much anyone can enjoy! it can soloed, as vol2 scales all the way down to Very easy which is ilvl 109, but you will also benefit from grouping with more players the amount of gallantry points you earn scales with the amount of players you play with. You also earn Hallmark points while doing ambuscade which is used to buy various currency used to build relic empyrean mythic ergon weapons and is generally valuable to sell for gil.
anyways doing either volume 2 Very difficult (ilvl129) or volume 1 easy (ilvl124) is a good goal to set yourself towards, however you shouldn't feel discouraged though if you have to do volume 2 Normals starting out, thats what I did about 1 year ago..
Ultimately,
have fun Relic Empyrean Mythic Ergon
(RUN GEO version of mythic) and Aeonic weapons are very relevant. Getting experience points is generally easiest in the Rhapsodies of Vanadiel zones
(Escha Zi'tah, Escha Ru-Aun and Reisijima, as players need the currency "Silt" in these zones )
Also the Rhapsodys of vanadiel storyline rewards you with key items letting you summon up to five trusts, (at first you can only summoner three) and theres various other benefits of completing the storyline like permanent exp and cp boosts and random things that can be purchased from the curio moogle..
sorry for the wall of text :p
edit:minor error with limited time quest
sunday is 4am