Okay, if you're wondering why this guide is so hand-holding, it's because from levels 1 though 10 you have no control over your stats anyways. Hey, it's a crappy explanation but it's what I found to be the quickest levelling.

Wow, this is like years old. I'm leaving most of it "as is", just cleaning up bad/outdated advice.

So you have your character ready to go. What to fight against? Good question!

First, from the nexus, go baron,e,e,s,s for the first-tier guilds. Get Fighter and Black Mage (or Red Mage), and newbiestuff as a Fighter, since mage newbiestuff is pathetically weak. Go back to the nexus stone and type recall, then go to coneria and s,s,s,w,w,n for a sphere. Primary Fighter and secondary Black Mage, then go out into the forests. Find and beat down Grey Imps. Make sure to use the loot command when you kill them. Congratulations, you're level 2! Sell the heads at s,s,s,e from coneria's recall for some gil.

Go to the port (six south from coneria's nexus stone) and type "buy passage to relidia". You should have enough gil. Go north until you find the asps, and kill them. Make sure to go in with full hp and sp, since at your level they'll hit you hard. Use Fire and you'll be okay. Kill merchants in Relidia, as a few drop 100+ gil each. At level 5 or so, do the Thief Imp quest (type quests thief_imp and go from there). A good clue is to ask the newbie-help people in Coneria (e.g. tepai) about list ("ask about ", in this case list), and a few will mention things worth hearing for a newbie. Once you're done with Thief Imp, you can do Conerian Star if you like, but it's not necessary. In fact, you can go through the entire game without doing it.

Go to the highlands and go n,n,n,e,e,e,s into the asp nest and start killing asps. If you need healing, just let your newbie-idle-regen take care of it. Asps might seem daunting at first but once you get the hang of them they really aren't all that bad. Alternatively, you can kill Green Ogres near Relidia like Cedus/Mortis will tell you to, if you enjoy excruciatingly slow battles for the most part. Asps are much faster.

At level 10 or so, do the Mount Taken quest ('quests taken', remember to listen to what the elder has to say). Then do the Vacant Skies quest. These are pretty much mandatory for advancement in the game. Go to Albrook and n,n,w,w,w,w,w,n,w,w,w to get to the gate. Go into the continent and kill Gilomantises first. They use Tackle, which wastes turns you can use to Ice them. Sell their heads for okay gil. At level 15 or so, switch to Wirey Dragons (use Bolt). Now, in theory you can kill a Wirey Dragon at level 8 or so (I've managed it, but I don't recommend you try it) if you have at least 400 HP, but that's horribly inefficient.

You can go to Baron and follow the areas to Mist, then go to Kaipo (trekking through the massive desert) for some good, decently-costed equipment for low-levels. I'll cover low-level equipment in another section though.