Currently lvl54, advice for levelling?

I've returned to the game after a 2 year or so break. Working through the story (which has actually become quite engaging, for an mmo at least), running my daily dungeon roulette, gearing using Poetic tomes, and running into the odd FATE here and there.

Is there anything I should be working toward specifically at this point? I'm pretty lost with all the new end game content, airships, diadem, savage, etc...

Should I be running Coil at all? Is Poetic gear the best I can get currently?

Thanks for any advice. Game feels huge again, enjoying that while it lasts. :3

New Heavensward Dungeons give really good XP, if you're far enough in story i'd recommence them. Also drops gear to progress while lvling, no need to buy from market.
Fates? No really. Boring and slow. Coil is really nice but not for lvling.

I run the dugengeon that is for my level on the Heavensward tab in the Duty Finder. I try to get the complete set of gear from each dungeon for my job before the next one unlocks so you stay current on your ilvl.

The real grind starts when you hit 60 with Law and Eso tomes for top gear to get into the end game raids.

You're going to get plenty of gear upgrades from the main questline with the odd sidequest so if you're enjoying that, stick with it; it will take good care of you. The Vanu Vanu beast quests are a good supplement for levelling once you have access to them, and you will also find that doing the daily Heavensward clan hunts (from the board outside the Forgotten Knight in Ishgard once they unlock) will get you some extra experience as well as starting you off with the Centurio marks you'll need to buy things later on. Coil isn't run very often with PUGs since it doesn't offer much besides lore, a challenge and some glamour goodies.

If you have a FC, it's good to start working on your workshop and airship fleet as soon as you can; it's a pain but it will put you in a good position to start Diadem hard when the time comes. Exploring to unlock hard mode takes a long time so you'll want to get your airships launched and working on discovering new areas as quickly as you can. If this is already underway (or complete) then you can wait until later to dip your toe in Diadem.

Thank you both.

How about Relic weapons? Is there something I can be doing toward upgrading my set or does that come later?

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Originally Posted by zakalw3

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Don't know all the details as my memory fails me alot, but poetic gear is really good up to like 55. By then you should have a dungeon that drops 57 gear and you should be good by the time you get to the other dungeons. The coils won't do much really but it'd be nice for that little extra story if you get bored from the lvling. Also sidequests help. Ummm..... I think thats it. Oh right, if you get to ilvl 180 try out explorotory missions (normal) as they have 210 gear you can get. Good luck dude, welcome back :)

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Originally Posted by zakalw3

Thank you both.

How about Relic weapons? Is there something I can be doing toward upgrading my set or does that come later?

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Oh relic weapons? Their kinda useless after lvl 58, but they're adding a new relic quest soon so it'll help if you have the old one (You don't need the previous version to stat the new though they said).

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Originally Posted by zakalw3

Thank you both.

How about Relic weapons? Is there something I can be doing toward upgrading my set or does that come later?

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They're not updating the Relic weapons until the next patch so you don't need to worry about that yet. They have advised that having a fully completed weapon will give you a head start on the new ones, but it's not worth the time to start doing that from scratch if you don't have one prepared already. It will be faster to start the new kind of Relic from the beginning and catch up when the time comes.

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Originally Posted by Kurogaea

Oh relic weapons? Their kinda useless after lvl 58, but they're adding a new relic quest soon so it'll help if you have the old one (You don't need the previous version to stat the new though they said).

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58? I replaced my Zeta at 54... Augmented Ironworks is good to 55, non-Augmented is replaced by 53.

So I only do 2 things every day to level my battle classes (only have 3 left to cap at this point): 1. Do my hunt bills, including the older bills since those FATEs give EXP plus the challenge log. 2. Do all my roulettes (Guildhest, Trial, Leveling, Main Story and lvl 50 dungeons).

That will get me a level every 1-1.5 days on average, you're millage may vary if you haven't gotten the third tier Centurio bills.

You don't need to do any old content to level, just continue with the story and do any side quests. If you want run the dungeons a few times but you don't need to do them more than once. Quests will give you enough gear. If you did the 2.x MSQ 2.1-2.55 then you should have gained some extra xp too for mroe than enough for 60.

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Originally Posted by Kurogaea

Oh relic weapons? Their kinda useless after lvl 58, but they're adding a new relic quest soon so it'll help if you have the old one (You don't need the previous version to stat the new though they said).

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My nirvana lasted until level 58 too. The HQ white was just marginally better!

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Originally Posted by zakalw3

Thank you both.

How about Relic weapons? Is there something I can be doing toward upgrading my set or does that come later?

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They're not updating the Relic weapons until the next patch so you don't need to worry about that yet. They have advised that having a fully completed weapon will give you a head start on the new ones, but it's not worth the time to start doing that from scratch if you don't have one prepared already. It will be faster to start the new kind of Relic from the beginning and catch up when the time comes.

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The new relic will have no connection to the HW one so you can leave your current one as it is. It will stay as Zeta.

There will be a single stage skip for those that have any zeta, one per zeta, but Yoshi-P said that there's very little effort in doing it so upgrading your 2.x relic just for the stage skip is simply not worth it.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

There will be a single stage skip for those that have any zeta, one per zeta...

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You skip a step on all of your new Relics if you have a Zeta (note, a Zeta, doesn't matter which) and it will only be that one step even if you have all the Zetas. It's not, 'have 10 Zetas, skip 10 steps', it's 'have at least one Zeta, skip one step on all of the new Relics'.

patch notes said HW dungeons give increased xp. Anyone confirm how much of an increase?

Thanks all.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They're not updating the Relic weapons until the next patch so you don't need to worry about that yet. They have advised that having a fully completed weapon will give you a head start on the new ones, but it's not worth the time to start doing that from scratch if you don't have one prepared already. It will be faster to start the new kind of Relic from the beginning and catch up when the time comes.

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I have Zenith Sword and Shield.

A little confused with the above talk of skips, should I be leaving my relic for now or levelling to Zeta?

MSQ is mandatory for unlocking pretty much everything. 98% of the game is gated behind it at some stage or another, directly or secondary. MSQ and all it entails is also enough to get one class to 60 with more to spare, though unfortunately not enough to bring two classes up at once and keep speed.

I just leveled a character from 1 to 53 with only the MSQ and just made it to HW. Gear to 50 I crafted but at 50, did so knowing I would have duplicates. Once in HW you are going to get 2 full sets of HQ 50 and 2 full sets of HQ 52 handed to you in MSQ rewards. (left side, some right but not all) Strangely you don't get weapons from MSQ but I crafted those as well.

short answer, run MSQ and take rewards you can use. Right side stuff at the end of 2.55 are 110 level jewelry. Left side will be fed to you in rewards at HW. At 54 the crafted is iLevel 133 complete and you will have no trouble with level content.

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Originally Posted by zakalw3

Thanks all.



I have Zenith Sword and Shield.

A little confused with the above talk of skips, should I be leaving my relic for now or levelling to Zeta?

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Unless you have tons of gil and time and you just want a zeta. No, leave it as it is.

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Originally Posted by Malzian

You skip a step on all of your new Relics if you have a Zeta (note, a Zeta, doesn't matter which) and it will only be that one step even if you have all the Zetas. It's not, 'have 10 Zetas, skip 10 steps', it's 'have at least one Zeta, skip one step on all of the new Relics'.

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I should have made it more clear but that's wrong too.

If you have five zetas then you can skip the first stage on any five new relics. You can't skip the first stage on all new relics with one zeta.

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Originally Posted by madolyn

patch notes said HW dungeons give increased xp. Anyone confirm how much of an increase?

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Yes its a good buff, im lvling a SCH so was running the same HW dungeons pre and after patch
Pre-patch about 300k
after pach over 700k+

Yesterday roulette Lvling (the one lvl16+) i got into that nidhogg dungeon and total xp received 1.2mil.... (with roulette bonus)

I am leveling my AST right now and she just dinged level 55. My advice is to do the :
- Level 50, Main Scenario, Leveling, Guildhest Roulettes.
- Complete the FATE/Dungeons/Guildhest and Levequest section of the challenge logs.
- Do the Clan Bills 1 and 2 (3 has some mobs that you can kill, but most of them are level 57+)
- Beast Tribe quests (they provide decent exp and will give you rep)

Always have a food buff on, ask fc leaders to activate the combat exp buff and on whenever you can, use chocobo for combat so you kill mobs fast.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

If you have five zetas then you can skip the first stage on any five new relics. You can't skip the first stage on all new relics with one zeta.

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Having gone back and reading the Live Letter digest, this is correct according to the official translation. I was going off of what I'd heard from other translations. It's really a pain how different all of these translations can be especially when you realize that even in official translations the system we get in the end often doesn't end up being what they told us it would be beforehand. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it really turns out once 3.15 hits.

Aside from MSQ on your first character just grind dungeons. FATE zones in HW are pretty dead most of the time in my experience and the dungeons are decently fun and not too long.

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Originally Posted by Rikku1987

Yes its a good buff, im lvling a SCH so was running the same HW dungeons pre and after patch
Pre-patch about 300k
after pach over 700k+

Yesterday roulette Lvling (the one lvl16+) i got into that nidhogg dungeon and total xp received 1.2mil.... (with roulette bonus)

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I think there must be some confusion with this patch regarding the dungeons. The only dungeons they modified exp, is the older Lv 50 dungeons. They didn't touch 3.0 dungeons, as far as the patch notes are concerned.
http://i.imgur.com/a46l02E.png?1

Although now that I look at this more closely. It shows [3.0] at the start of that update note. That is very confusing, because all of those dungeons are pre 3.0. I wonder if there is some kind of typo there.

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Originally Posted by Drako

I think there must be some confusion with this patch regarding the dungeons. The only dungeons they modified exp, is the older Lv 50 dungeons. They didn't touch 3.0 dungeons, as far as the patch notes are concerned.
http://i.imgur.com/a46l02E.png?1

Although now that I look at this more closely. It shows [3.0] at the start of that update note. That is very confusing, because all of those dungeons are pre 3.0. I wonder if there is some kind of typo there.

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If you have 2.0 only XP does not matter since 50 is the level cap.

But anyway it does say it in the 3.0 section:

[3.0] Experience points earned in the following dungeons has been increased:
The Dusk Vigil / Sohm Al / The Aery / The Vault / The Great Gubal Library

Ah I'm not sure how I missed that. It's right above the part I cut out too. smh. Well nvm, that's really nice.

Dungeons, leves, quests, fates, and hunt bills while queuing. God are Hunt Bills so nice @.@

So this makes me wonder, is it now faster to spam the 50+ dungeon that is at your level, as opposed to doing fates? Because the fate grind honestly only felt like it made leveling about 1.5x faster. Judging by the results posted, it looks like spamming lv 50+ dungeon is 2.5x+ faster.

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Originally Posted by Drako

So this makes me wonder, is it now faster to spam the 50+ dungeon that is at your level, as opposed to doing fates? Because the fate grind honestly only felt like it made leveling about 1.5x faster. Judging by the results posted, it looks like spamming lv 50+ dungeon is 2.5x+ faster.

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It was a known issue that at 3.0 launch the FATEs in HW zones were far far lower in exp return for time invested compared to dungeons. I seem to recall that the 3.0 FATEs had this boosted at some point but I'm having a hard time locating a post mentioning it. Regardless, with this boost to dungeons it would put them above FATEs in the HW zones again, anyway.