Castrum Fluminis and item level

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Originally Posted by 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.

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Most of those require you to do a fair bit of gear grinding first, before you can even enter the dungeons you name.

Without doing gear grind, the best one will have is the i310 Ala Mhigo gear that can be bought with Centurio Seals. That alone won't get you far.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Acquiring gear is one of the biggest carrots to keep people repeating content until the next patch is released.

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Not carrot. Stick. It forces you to repeat content when all you want to do is continue the story. Which is Not Fun.

It's not a problem in Core/HW because they give you gear boxes now which were added once they became legacy content. ilvl307 is really low though, I'm not sure you would even want to be in there being that low. (Fresh 70 dungeons drop around that ilvl) Kinda bad if you just want to see the story I suppose, but if it was any lower the gear progression wouldn't matter for people actually playing the patches when it is current. (The ilvl cap is 370 right now, if they tuned it to 305 or whatever it would just be a complete faceroll.)

You can bypass it though if you can find some people to fill a group and queue into it.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

It's not a problem in Core/HW because they give you gear boxes now which were added once they became legacy content. ilvl307 is really low though

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ilvl 307 is about where one should be after following the MSQ and doing the compulsory dungeons, but not running all the optional duties

That is what makes the ilvl requirement of Castrum Fluminis so annoying, because it is such a huge increase in required item level compared to what the MSQ has required before.
The last required duty before Castrum Fluminis was Drowned City of Skalla with a minimum ilvl of 300.

The jump from 300 to 335 is pretty steep, and comes with no warning.
You are following the MSQ, enjoying the story and then - POOF - you have to break off from the story for a couple of weeks just to grind gear before you can continue.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

ilvl 307 is about where one should be after following the MSQ and doing the compulsory dungeons, but not running all the optional duties

That is what makes the ilvl requirement of Castrum Fluminis so annoying, because it is such a huge increase in required item level compared to what the MSQ has required before.
The last required duty before Castrum Fluminis was Drowned City of Skalla with a minimum ilvl of 300.

The jump from 300 to 335 is pretty steep, and comes with no warning.
You are following the MSQ, enjoying the story and then - POOF - you have to break off from the story for a couple of weeks just to grind gear before you can continue.

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Well, when Skalla was out the ilvl cap is 340. 340-40 = 300. And it was a catch up patch where content was dropping up to 330.

The ilvl went up by 10 for the 2 dungeons when the ilvl cap was increased by 40 to 370, this is a gear reset. Not everyone is geared up at that point and to ease returning players the jump isn't that high for the dungeons.

Now it's a catchup patch where content is dropping up to 360. Swallow's is 330. 370-40 = 330. Seems normal to me.

It's disjointed because the other stuff is "optional" but I'm pretty sure they want you to do it. Byakko/Sigma N is i325 and the 2 dungeons after Skalla are 310.

MSQ Final/Kugane/Temple of Fist: 280
Delta N: 295
Skalla: 300
Rabanastre: 305

Hells' Lid/Fractal (Hard): 310
Sigma N: 325
Swallow's 330
Ridorana 335

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

ilvl 307 is about where one should be after following the MSQ and doing the compulsory dungeons, but not running all the optional duties

That is what makes the ilvl requirement of Castrum Fluminis so annoying, because it is such a huge increase in required item level compared to what the MSQ has required before.
The last required duty before Castrum Fluminis was Drowned City of Skalla with a minimum ilvl of 300.

The jump from 300 to 335 is pretty steep, and comes with no warning.
You are following the MSQ, enjoying the story and then - POOF - you have to break off from the story for a couple of weeks just to grind gear before you can continue.

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Because it's content that dropped 6 months after the first set of ilvls were implemented. It makes sense. What warning do you want? "Hey, you should go gear yourself up before keep going". A couple of weeks to get that ilvl? Not really. It's fairly quick, specially with Sigma NM being out, Rabanastre and Ridorana. Even both Fractal and Hell's lid drop 325 that helps to pump your average up in par with other gear you can get throughout the week. The tomestones you get from doing that let you buy Lost Allagan gear which is ilvl 330.

The Final Steps of Faith was the same, it was the previous ilvl's cap -5 (240 at the time, 210 before that, so 205). Right now the cap is 370, being 340 the previous cap, -5 is 335.

EDIT: Regarding the gear grinding. It's an MMO, that thing kind of happen. I personally find it fun to make my character stronger, so it's all subjective.

Sure, there have been steady increases and “catchups” and time to gear up between story chapters for people who’ve been at Lv70 for a while already. But for someone who just got through Stormblood this week? You’re level 70, and so is every single quest from 4.1 to 4.3. There’s nothing to stop people from doing all that MSQ at a run, and nothing to encourage you to update your ilevel from Skalla until you hit Castrum. The dungeons are optional, and the MSQ isn’t giving you gear upgrades. It’s easy for a new player to be caught out.

In future when they can just buy their i400 (or whatever) gear with poetics the instant they hit Lv70, it won’t be a problem any more. But for now, it is.

Are you one of those people that just runs things once and never does any roulettes at all? there's your problem right there if that's the case.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Sure, there have been steady increases and “catchups” and time to gear up between story chapters for people who’ve been at Lv70 for a while already. But for someone who just got through Stormblood this week? You’re level 70, and so is every single quest from 4.1 to 4.3. There’s nothing to stop people from doing all that MSQ at a run, and nothing to encourage you to update your ilevel from Skalla until you hit Castrum. The dungeons are optional, and the MSQ isn’t giving you gear upgrades. It’s easy for a new player to be caught out.

In future when they can just buy their i400 (or whatever) gear with poetics the instant they hit Lv70, it won’t be a problem any more. But for now, it is.

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It really isn't a problem, though. This game throws tomestones at you. Even with Mendacity being capped, there is still Creation and Rabanastre Coins to give you instant i340 for very little effort. Heck, you can get a few pieces to up your item level to i325, and then hop into Swallow's Compass for i345 gear - the most non-demanding dungeon this game has probably ever seen.


I started this game back at the tail end of 3.0, beginning of 3.1. By the time I made it to endgame (within 1 month of starting), it only took me a couple days to grind out enough old Law tomestones to up my item level enough to progress with the 60 content, and, by then, I'd capped for the first time on Esoterics, and bought an i200 piece with it. I had not been keeping up with roulettes, only doing MSQ up to this point. I was not "months" away from the casual endgame.

It's only a problem for people who don't put in the effort to do it. This game doesn't ask much of its playerbase; item level requirements for story or "casual" level-capped content more than 30 ilvls below the current cap is really not that high of a demand.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

It's only a problem for people who don't put in the effort to do it. This game doesn't ask much of its playerbase; item level requirements for story or "casual" level-capped content more than 30 ilvls below the current cap is really not that high of a demand.

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It is completely irrelevant what the current ilvl cap is. It could be 340 or 12000 - it doesn't matter.
The point is the sudden big jump in ilvl requirement in the MSQ. Not the first time that has happened, but that does not make it any better.

It is not a big problem for those who are doing content as it is released. It will not be a problem when the next expansion comes out and current gear becomes much easier to get.
It is a problem for those who are just now reaching level 70 and who have yet to do any of the optional level 70 dungeons.