You can use New Game+ to play through all quests, you just obviously won't get the exp from them - since skipping MSQ is much the same as skipping your job quests.
Printable View
That's good to know, thanks.
Although I can't stomach leveling a character to 80 that way (especially since my highest toon is 74 or something ;).
I'll just continue to pay my subscription while playing another game (or posting here) until my husband catches up.
Edited note: Just to be clear, my opening post is not about subscription costs. It's really trivial to us.
Buying a max level toon is a different matter that crosses a gaming moral line I will not do in an MMO. I'm fine with cheats in a single player game, or an MO using mods, i.e., everyone is playing by the same rules, although the benefits from subscriptions to an MMO and allowing people to play for free with less privilege is fine.
I'm curious what you define as essential.
I ran through ARR for the first time the day patch 5.3 dropped, and there were dozens of main story quests in A Realm Reborn alone that felt entirely gratuitous. Like watching a half-naked Roegadyn grovel at my feet for something he did some 40 quests prior. Or the many quests where I am a glorified courier, taking items to people who I never speak to again in MSQ nor Side Quests.
Or how about Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, Cutters' Cry, Aurum Vale, and Dzemael Darkhold? Four dungeons that are required for character progression in some way or another during A Realm Reborn, and are among the most reviled duties in this entire game. Oh, and those four duties were also pulled forward from the abject failure that was 1.0.
Nope, just someone who has played through all 4 dozens of times each, and has never once heard anyone say a single positive thing about any of them.
Thousand Maws is a MSQ dungeon. Aurum Vale and Dzemael Darkhold were both required for Grand Company progression. I will admit to being slightly mistaken about Cutter's Cry, since it's a side quest dungeon, however. They all just fade together because ARR sucked so hard for me as a new player.
Or are you referring to me calling 1.0 a failure? Because it was. Even the developers thought it was bad enough that it wasn't worth saving. There's a reason you cannot play 1.0 anymore.
Out of those, only Toto-Rak is actually required for the MSQ. The other three (and Halatali, Sunken Temple of Qarn, and Wanderer's Palace, for that matter) have hunt marks in them for Grand Company logs, but the Grand Company membership is never required beyond the first couple of quests to meet Biggs and Wedge and to get your mount license. They're side content.
I mean, they're the same difficulty now that they were when I went through them the first time; remember, as I said in my first comment, I went through the game for the first time after 5.3, the patch that changed ARR and adjusted AV, among other things.
They're really not hard, you're right, but they felt really shoe-horned into modern FF14, compared to the dungeons that were created from whole cloth for ARR.