Help with duty finder.

Hello, my guild seems to be useless on this matter and I can't find a higher level in an area willing to help me with this. I have tried googling it and have not found much other than "Take the ferry" But anyway, here it goes. I started in Uldah as a Gladiator, got to 15, did the eight role missions with the Smith and opened my duty finder to queue up for an instance but nothing is showing up other than the last Smith quest. Google says that you need to do a certain quest to unlock the first instance but the quest is in the Luma(Something or other) I am currently level 17 and if I continue questing I am sure I will outlevel the instance. This is frustrating because I really want to do them all and I can't seem to find out how to unlock the bloody thing.

The first dungeon/instance is Sastasha which is unlocked by following the main story quests. Those quests have an extra flame around them to show they are special. If you have been doing those, there is one around level 15 which will give you an airship pass and tell you to visit the other city states. After completing that tour you will be told to go back to Limsa and be given a quest to go unlock Sastasha.
So basically make sure you are doing the main story quests. A list can be found here - http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...=0&category3=1. There are really 3 different quest lines that converge at Sastasha depending on which city you started in. You'll want to look at the quests in Uldah or one of the Thanalan areas.

Pretty much all the unlocks in the game happen via quest. The most important ones will come from the main scenario quests. These have a special icon. Instead of an exclamation mark in a plain circle, the circle is surrounded by flame to look more like a meteor. The specific one that unlocks the first dungeon, Sastasha, is this and the story will take you there around level 15 regardless of the city you started in. You dont have to worry about outleveling the instance though. Each one in the game has a level/item synch attached to it, and if you go in above a certain level it sets you to something appropriate for the content. For Sastasha, you cant go in at level 14 or under, and if you try to go at level 19 or higher it sets you to 18 - thus its a 15-18 dungeon. If you dont have any quests in your journal with that icon(you can see it on the link i provided), then open your journal and look at your "completed" quests by clicking the button at the top of the journal. You should be able to find the 7th Umbral Era quests that youve done so far, and once you know what youve finished you can figure out where to go next to get back on track. Keep up with the story as best you can, since this is so important to getting into a lot of content.

But since i said that the most important content was unlocked by following the story that means there is other optional content that is unlocked separately. You want to also keep an eye out for quests with a plus sign attached to the exclamation circle. Those are the quests that unlock other content. Whether its an optional dungeon, a new class to try out, a new special combat move for your class, a new batch of levequests to help you level, the ability to dye your clothes, or any number of other things you can optionally do in the game. As an example, this quest here unlocks the Manderville Golden Saucer. You can play mini-games there to earn special fun rewards(new mounts, fancy clothes, etc). Its completely optional, doesnt intersect with the story in any way, and doesnt really improve your ability to fight at all. But you might have fun, and isnt that why we play games?

tl;dr Look for quests with special icons to unlock things, keep doing the storyline to get to most of them, enjoy the game!

The first three dungeons (Sastasha, Tam-Tara Deepcroft, Copperbell Mines) are all unlocked via the main scenario quests (MSQ). The first is Sastasha, and unlocking it will require 1. That you are at that point in the MSQ and have talked with the appropriate NPC to give you the quest. And 2. You have to travel to the location of the dungeon and talk to the NPC there. This finishes the current quest and unlocks the dungeon in your duty finder. At this point, you can enter Sastasha from anywhere in Eorzea by using the duty finder.

This instance is a level 15 dungeon and it is synced. This means if you are above level 17, your level will be temporarily reduced to level 17. So you don't have to worry about being too high for the dungeon, but you also don't want to leave the MSQ in the dust while you are leveling.

In short, you need to do the MSQ. Everything you likely have your eyes on right now such as duty finder, traveling via airships, joining a Grand Company, and getting your very own chocobo are all accessed by the MSQ.

The previous answers already covered the main issue (and it looks like the OP is now past this point anyway), so I'll just add that it's quite common for players to out-level their progression in the main scenario during this early part of the game. I think I was almost to level 20 when I got to that level 15 quest to unlock Sastasha, and there have been quite a few adjustments to the game since then which speed up leveling even more.

If you don't like over-leveling content, you can pick up a second class and alternate quests between two of them to spread out the XP enough to stay on track with the main scenario levels. Or you can just wait it out, because later in the game, as it takes more and more XP to gain successive levels, your quest levels will tend to catch up with you. Plus, in the meantime, instanced dungeons are level-synced anyway, so being over-leveled is really only an issue for the open world portion of the content.

Oh, if you're the type who likes to keep re-running dungeons until you get all their good loot, that pattern can definitely make you out-level your quests quickly, even in the later portions of the game where leveling takes longer. So I'd definitely recommend this sort of loot farming be done on alternate classes.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

If you don't like over-leveling content, you can pick up a second class and alternate quests between two of them to spread out the XP enough to stay on track with the main scenario levels. Or you can just wait it out, because later in the game, as it takes more and more XP to gain successive levels, your quest levels will tend to catch up with you. Plus, in the meantime, instanced dungeons are level-synced anyway, so being over-leveled is really only an issue for the open world portion of the content.

Oh, if you're the type who likes to keep re-running dungeons until you get all their good loot, that pattern can definitely make you out-level your quests quickly, even in the later portions of the game where leveling takes longer. So I'd definitely recommend this sort of loot farming be done on alternate classes.

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Not anymore. Having tried it on an alt a couple days ago, the way SE boosted the exp, you could get for example CONJ 15, THM 15 and then your ARC/SCH/SMN is already 35 while you are still on the level 25 story quest. So unless you level all classes to 15 before continuing your story line, you from now on, sadly out level the content by a lot. Especially if you play every aspect of the game, some fates here and there, challenge log, duty roulettes, dungeons, hunting log, grand company log etc.

SE should really think about their boosts before adding more. I do understand they want to get people into HW as quick as possible but by now it's just ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by LunaFaye

SE should really think about their boosts before adding more. I do understand they want to get people into HW as quick as possible but by now it's just ridiculous.

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Part of the issue here is that they tend to focus speed boosts on low-level content, which had always been fast to level even from the very start. For instance, consider the Brand New Ring that boosts XP by 30% for levels 1-30 (or 15-30 for your first class, since you have to be 15 to get it). That's just speeding up the part that's already too fast. If they'd instead created something that leaves leveling alone during that early content, but then speeds up XP from 40-50 or 50-60, it might have been more useful.

I agree with everything said about the ridiculous levelling speed. It was almost too much before, and now it's insane and unenjoyable if you're a new player. Though on the other hand, some new players don't care one bit about roleplay or immersion and just want to join their friends at max level, so the increased EXP gain was designed for them. A shame all around, but oh well.

At least your level will be temporarily reduced to 18 in Sastasha, so you won't just be 2-shotting EVERYTHING. Don't worry.