Castrum Fluminis and item level

[Nabril]

I finally made it to the end of the MSQ. I have completed every requirement and done every dungeon or trial thrown my way. Then Castrum Fluminis comes along and has an item level requirement of 335 which trumps my 307.

Why put such a huge roadblock in MSQ? It's going to either take me weeks of grinding for Mendacity or millions of gil to buy crafted gear to get an item level of 335. Weeks to be allowed to do the second to last MSQ. Neither Heavensward or the Core game had a huge roadblock like this. I haven't been grinding dungeons. I didn't know that I would need to.

This is quite disheartening. I'm weeks away from being able to do other things because I have to first do enough dungeons to make me sick of them.

[HyoMinPark]

You can farm Creation tomes for easy i330 gear; just do roulettes on level 70 jobs for Creation tomes. After that, you should be able to queue into either Sigmascape NM raids or Swallow’s Compass. Sigmascape drops tokens for i350 gear; Swallow’s Compass drops i345 gear.

You can also just farm Creation gear, and then do Rabanastre a few times for the Rabanastre Coin to upgrade them to i340. There is no weekly limit on the coin, so you can do it enough times to boost yourself from i330 to i335. Rabanastre also drops i330 gear that you can use if you want to buy some with Creation, but not grind as much.

HW did have a similar trial to this: Final Steps of Faith, which required i205. Highest item level at that time was i240 (Midan gear/Augmented Lore gear). Castrum Fluminis is i335, and the current highest item level is i370, so this is actually on par with it.

[Rufalus]

There are roadblocks like that every patch basically, if you're doing them at the time of release. Gearing for a current patch always takes much longer than the breeze of catching up on old patches. Whenever you are caught up to the latest stuff, you have to engage in the endgame currency grind or farming instances for loot. Acquiring gear is one of the biggest carrots to keep people repeating content until the next patch is released.

[Deceptus]

You have to understand that this content has been out for over a year. You're not going to go from content that is a year old to current content in an MMO in the same day.

[Iscah]

I just wish they put an actual roadblock prior to the trial itself. You get no warning that you’re undergeared until you’ve just watched that dramatic scene that leads immediately into the battle, and instead you have to break that experience to go shopping, or possibly even grind elsewhere.

It would make a lot of sense to have a gear check before you get on the boat. Perhaps one of your companions says something like “this could be dangerous, make sure you’re well-prepared” and then you get a system message saying you need to be at i335 before you can continue.

[Reinfeld]

I just wish they put an actual roadblock prior to the trial itself. You get no warning that you’re undergeared until you’ve just watched that dramatic scene that leads immediately into the battle, and instead you have to break that experience to go shopping, or possibly even grind elsewhere.

It would make a lot of sense to have a gear check before you get on the boat. Perhaps one of your companions says something like “this could be dangerous, make sure you’re well-prepared” and then you get a system message saying you need to be at i335 before you can continue.

That's the same thing they pulled with Final Steps of Faith. I'm surprised they didn't learn from last time.

[Lilseph]

It's super easy to get gear nowdays. I made an alt in another server and got to a decent ilvl in almost no time. You can spam Compass, it's a fast and nice dungeon for easy ilvl 345. You can save up and buy a crafted ilvl 350 weapon and upgrade it to 360 by just spending 700 creation. Easy way to get creation, is to run level 70 content for the first time: Sigma, Delta, dungeons, 24-man if you haven't done any of these. Get your Wondrous Tails, they reward you with tomestones too.

[HyoMinPark]

That's the same thing they pulled with Final Steps of Faith. I'm surprised they didn't learn from last time.

Technically, they did: Sohr Khai had an i200 requirement; Final Steps was i205. Swallow’s Compass is i330; Castrum Fluminis is i335. But they’ve removed dungeons from the post-70 MSQ so.

I just wish they put an actual roadblock prior to the trial itself. You get no warning that you’re undergeared until you’ve just watched that dramatic scene that leads immediately into the battle, and instead you have to break that experience to go shopping, or possibly even grind elsewhere.

It would make a lot of sense to have a gear check before you get on the boat. Perhaps one of your companions says something like “this could be dangerous, make sure you’re well-prepared” and then you get a system message saying you need to be at i335 before you can continue.

Sohr Khai functioned as the pseudo-gear check to Final Steps. But, as I said above, they’ve more or less removed dungeons from post-70 MSQ; most are Sidequests now.

[Iscah]

That's the same thing they pulled with Final Steps of Faith. I'm surprised they didn't learn from last time.

Oh goodness. That would have been terrible. That was an amazing piece of story and having to break it off there would be awful.

[MistakeNot]

I finally made it to the end of the MSQ. I have completed every requirement and done every dungeon or trial thrown my way. Then Castrum Fluminis comes along and has an item level requirement of 335 which trumps my 307.

Why put such a huge roadblock in MSQ? It's going to either take me weeks of grinding for Mendacity or millions of gil to buy crafted gear to get an item level of 335. Weeks to be allowed to do the second to last MSQ. Neither Heavensward or the Core game had a huge roadblock like this. I haven't been grinding dungeons. I didn't know that I would need to.

This is quite disheartening. I'm weeks away from being able to do other things because I have to first do enough dungeons to make me sick of them.

Heavensward did have a roadblock back when it was current. Perhaps several depending on when you reached them.
I know I ran into one with Baelsar's Wall - that required i230 gear, but all I had at that point was the i200 gear you could buy with Centurio Seals. That required some gear grinding before I could proceed.
Today, that block is of little consequence - i270 Shire gear can now be bought with Poetic tomestones that you pick up along the way, but that wasn't the case before SB was released.

And I agree, it is annoying. Gear grinding is not only tedious, but incredibly boring - which is why I still have not been able to do Castrum Fluminis despite unlocking it several months ago