"Experience point Penalty"??

I am obviously new and leveling up a lancer in Gridania and the surroundings. Anywho, I accepted several "leve" quests from Mother Minounne's Inn...and when i began them, it gave me the "you will suffer an experience point penalty if you continue" message....

I am currently lvl 19.....the quests are rated 10.....

I assume i am out of the range for "levelsync"....but, will i actually lose XP if I complete the mission? Or, like other MMO's....are the XP rewards nothing or 1 point since they are so far below me?

i.e.: Should i still do the missions for loot, accolades, etc.... and, what is the "window" +/- my level of missions I can take without penalty....or to maximize XP gain?

Thanks....

You will never actually *lose* experience by doing a levequest that is too far below your current level, so worry not on that point.
What that message means is, you will possibly get less experience for doing the leve than is listed in the quest description when you accept the leve. (I say "possibly" because there are also bonuses you can get for quick completion, etc.)

Leves don't have any sort of syncing, so if you greatly overlevel them, they give less exp., and it might even drop to zero in extreme cases, I don't recall. You will still get a decent chunk at level 19 though from that level 10 leve, and you can bump its difficulty up by +4 to level 14 to lessen the gap.

Just some general notes on leves: battlecraft levequests are one activity you can do when leveling a battle job from 1-60, and as you have seen you get the most benefit from doing the ones that are closest to your level. They give pretty good experience relative to the time spent at low levels, but drop off after you can start to run dungeons. The ones where you have to escort a target (the ones with the chocobo leveplate) are mechanically clunky and annoying IMO but the others are fine when you are close to leveling up and need a break from other stuff. Just to be a completionist I've done every battlecraft levequest at least once (gotta love that green checkmark!), but with how quickly you gain exp. now in the 1-60 range, you could easily get by without doing any of them. In addition, I'd save them for alt jobs if you are still doing the story because there is little point to leveling past the level of your current MSQ.

Other than experience, you might want to do levequests to get some of the item or gil rewards, but if they are not close to your level you won't find any equipment they give to be very useful. Venture coins are nice to have, and HW leves can spawn chests with pieces of amber, which you can trade for an orchestrion roll and some other gear (again, useful only if in your level range).

Levequests really shine with crafters and gatherers, though. You get ridiculous amounts of exp. for turning in leves close to your level on those classes, even without the "Road to 80" buff, and crafter/gatherer leves are available from 1-90.

As for the "window" for full rewards, I believe it is any level that is not going into the next tier: leves are at level 1, 5, 10, 15, etc. in ARR and every 2 levels in HW. You might be able to get full rewards for the last tier, while being the first level of the next tier (say, you are level 20 and you are doing a level 15 leve), but I haven't tested it recently.

That's basically just telling you that you over level the quest and will get less exp because of it. You're better off finding level 20 leves (Lower La Noscea, etc) and doing those instead.