A Lunkhead on Leves and Leveling

Greetings and thanks to everyone who read this,

For the following statement, I completely blame my still somewhat new player status about not knowing this.

As it stands, before I allow myself to finish Heavesward and start Stormblood, there are a few personal goals that I've set. Get all crafting professions to at least level 50 or higher, check. Deck out my Paladin and Red Mage main classes in 240-270 tomestone gear, check. Get all classes to 30 so I can finish my class Soul collection, work in progress.

As I didn't do them, in fact was barely aware of them, to level up my Red Mage and Paladin, I've found stomping out levequests between dungeons to be a decent way to grind class leveling. What I didn't know was that they have a cap on them with how many you can do. Google says they cap out at 100. I thought I had messed something up somewhere. Now find myself time gated with little to do between dungeons while I get back three leves per twelve hours. Well, if nothing else, at least I got the Tank section finished. Melee DPS will have to take a touch longer, same for Ranged DPS and I have to say I'm not looking forward to the White Mage grind.

Lienra

You are correct, they are time gated. You may also find as time goes on that you will have less and less use for them. In truth, the gains on combat classes aren't very good, certainly not compared to how much crafters and gatherers can gain from them.

But, you are also correct in that, below level 30, there are not a great many significant sources of experience. Still, be sure you're clearing out Challenge Log entries, as there are significant exp bonuses for clearing FATEs, running a few Guildhests, dungeons/roulettes and commendations.
There is also the Hunt Log you may be neglecting; all ARR classes have a set of enemies to kill for bonus exp, very little effort for some decent reward.

Additionally, since you've already got some jobs above level 50, you should investigate unlocking your Grand Company Squadron if you haven't already. These are NPCs you can run a selection of dungeons with, including low level dungeons, which would negate the need to do anything "between dungeons" as you will have no queue times. Once you've spent some time optimizing Squadron recruits, they can be incredibly powerful in these dungeons.

Finally, most will probably tell you Palace of the Dead makes for the easiest most efficient means of earning quick class levels.

As far as XP gain goes, it's not really all that worth using Leves for your combat classes. You should try to do your 5 per week with different plates Challenge log entry because that's basically free XP, and it only takes maybe 5 minutes if you just go back to Gridania and do 5 level 1 and 5 Leves. Other than that, they're really only worth doing if you're really close to a level and don't have anything else to do with your time. It's really the better idea to mostly save up your Level allowances for your crafting and gathering jobs since the Level XP remains very significant for those all the way through.

There are other things than leves that don't involve dungeons, such as the hunting log below level 50 and first-time guildhest bonuses for each class, beast tribe dailies and daily hunt bills, the challenge log and sidequests if you haven't done all of these.