Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Ya, I’ll take Preatorium over Cast for the xp bonus

Cybsled said:

I agree, and they've stated that the only real option is to completely rebuild it. But it currently works out for all parties: Noobs don't have forever queues that prevent them from advancing, seasoned players get an extremely easy way to earn a fat chunk of XP on alts and massive tome stacks. There is literally nothing else in the game that is going to give you that much XP in under an hour. It's tedious, but it is less tedious then trying to level all that XP the normal way.

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That the best XP while leveling is watching cat videos on youtube then that instance desperately requires rebuilding.

The only reason it is god XP is because of that. They kept boosting rewards until people felt it matched the time investment. Downside is leveling alts will be harder if they do away with that.

Cybsled said:

The only reason it is god XP is because of that. They kept boosting rewards until people felt it matched the time investment. Downside is leveling alts will be harder if they do away with that.

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This. Watching all those cutscenes wouldn't be worth it for vets unless they had the carrot of the exp/tomes. It's fine the way it is I guess, unless you're one of those who really gets triggered with the cutscenes.

I think it is just odd that they inflated the rewards to make not playing the game worth while. Most games if they tried this they would get railed on by every forum goer/youtuber. I think FF gets a pass only because ff7 trained people to sit through fights comprised of watching your materia chain summon knights of the round for 30 minutes during the weapon fights.

kaid said:

I think it is just odd that they inflated the rewards to make not playing the game worth while. Most games if they tried this they would get railed on by every forum goer/youtuber. I think FF gets a pass only because ff7 trained people to sit through fights comprised of watching your materia chain summon knights of the round for 30 minutes during the weapon fights.

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I don't understand the "not playing the game" part. It's not like you get the bonuses more than once per day, if people wanted they could run potd/HoH/Trusts for more exp in a day than their one bonus run of Prae (or especially Castrum) quite easily. It's merely a concession to those going through non current content to not have finding a group for those runs take forever while throwing a carrot to those that end up running it over again.

It's an incredibly heavily story based game, and the dungeon has a lot of story and cutscenes in it. It's required to complete the main storyline quest, so you want players at that point to not be in hour+ long queues this late in the game's life. The tomestones/etc are an incentive for people who have already done to revisit it, but because of how combat generally works (and how quickly bosses die with max geared characters for the level range) anyone new to the dungeon would basically not get to even see the place. So the options were: Remove all the story from the dungeon (literally not something they can do) or create a bunch of mini-dungeons where the cutscenes are instead placed in between the mini-dungeons. Either way it would make the story (the thing the game is known for) disjointed as hell trying to convey the storyline during those events. So they opted for a much smarter solution and just made it lucrative for people to sit through the cutscenes (like anyone who is new to the game would have to) so that it doesn't fuck up queues for the new folks.

The alternative is just to not do that roulette after you have beaten it, which most people do for exactly that reason; they've already done it and the tomestones aren't worth it to them from that source.

If there were no rewards for running the roulette, then new players would have long ass queues trying to get the group comps to complete it. Nobody would run the roulette if it didn't give you anything; capability of ruining a new player's first run or not.

Right, it works out for the noobs because they don't rot in queue forever.

I'll be honest, I queued for 50 minutes last night on Dancer to try and gain a level and when the invite came through and it was Cast (third day in a row) I just quit out.

Fuck that 40 minute run with less than a fifth of a level exp.

Grizzlebeard said:

I'll be honest, I queued for 50 minutes last night on Dancer to try and gain a level and when the invite came through and it was Cast (third day in a row) I just quit out.

Fuck that 40 minute run with less than a fifth of a level exp.

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pro tip, if someone else leaves Castrum, you can leave with no penalty. 50 min queue is pretty long, though, even for dps.

I did it again tonight. Castrum popped up, both tanks, one healer, and three deeps all "disconnected". Remaining healer runs off trying to solo shit and I just pulled the plug. Seems the tolerance for the shitty exp is rapidly vanishing.

Grizzlebeard said:

I did it again tonight. Castrum popped up, both tanks, one healer, and three deeps all "disconnected". Remaining healer runs off trying to solo shit and I just pulled the plug. Seems the tolerance for the shitty exp is rapidly vanishing.

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I've been playing off and on for a while now and I think I've done MSQ maybe less than 15 times total? No need to put yourself through it if it's that displeasing. Hell, my g/f is like 75 and just now reached Shadowlands content. She'll be 80 far before she's finished with this expansions story. (IE. You dont need to do it bro. Trial, Leveling, Expert, Normal Raid - all quick and easy.)

Just go out and do level appropriate FATEs with your yokai minion out. You'll burn through all that shit lickity split. Or queue up for msqlette and do some beast tribes while you wait. Or do POTD/HOH until your anus bleeds out.

I'm kind of juggling levelling with Tomestones as I'm at the Singing Cluster stage of my AST relic.

If Tomestones weren't a motivator then I'd never touch MSQ ever again. Far faster and less stress for me to Squadron it or just seek by dungeon.

How is this to start from nothing now that they've consolidated the story or whatever? Do I still have to run 100 fetch quests out to that desert oasis and eventually ragequit, or is that all gone now?

ronne said:

How is this to start from nothing now that they've consolidated the story or whatever? Do I still have to run 100 fetch quests out to that desert oasis and eventually ragequit, or is that all gone now?

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You get flying after beating the "ultimate weapon" - for ARR, which speeds up those 80 some odd quests between ARR and Heavensward quite a bit. The story is cleaned up some, and some locations are able to be ported to now. Dont get me wrong, there is still a lot that they could trim. But being able to do most of it a lot quicker now is nice.

It helped a lot this go round after revamp you can just stick to the msq and not just keep up but be ahead level wise without doing basically any side quests.

Daidraco said:

You can buy Shadowbringers by itself for 20 bucks, the entire game w/all expansions for 30 and that comes with a free month of live service. How much cheaper do you need the game to be? lol

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Was that a deal going on right there. I'm looking at this again and just ShB is $40? I'll do some Google searching to see if I can find a key somewhere.

moonarchia said:

Just go out and do level appropriate FATEs with your yokai minion out. You'll burn through all that shit lickity split. Or queue up for msqlette and do some beast tribes while you wait. Or do POTD/HOH until your anus bleeds out.

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PotD/HoH still a thing? I got a lot of jobs to 70 doing that, and yes, the anus bleed was real, but it was like the fastest leveling path there at the end of StormBlood.

It's very much still a thing, and if you aren't a tank/healer spamming dungeons, still likely the fastest way to level until 70.