Stop Gating The MSQ By A GOd-Aweful Dungeon Grind :(

So having come back to the game last November I finally got a character through the 5.0 MSQ and proceeded to hit a brick wall: the first 5.1 dungeon with it's asinine iLevel gate of 430!

The last 5.0 dungeon's gate was 410 and wasn't a problem since the MSQ chain had gradually provided gear sufficient to be able to enter Amaurot.

But even after getting the 430 gear from the Role quest completion the bling levels are still terrible, meaning my Bard's iLevel was less than 420. The only way to unlock the 430 gate for the Grand Cosmos was to grind umpteen Amaurots, etc. to get enough bling or else buy 450 crafted gear; I did this, it cost me nigh on 1m gil simply for the bling and a waist item to reach 430.

What the hell is a new player supposed to do here? I have a few million gil from playing since 2010, without that I'd have packed in the game as I have zero intention of spending weeks in dungeons grinding gear or tokens to unlock STORY CONTENT!

Of course, 5.2 no doubt will increase the gate to 440, or God forbid 450, putting the MSQ even more out of reach for those who don't want to spend all their time in dungeons!

Run some roulettes at max level, get tomes, buy gear with tomes. Gearing in this game is incredibly easy.

It may be an issue with running through the whole MSQ in one run. For players who started from the beginning, you'd get a new expansion or patch with a new set of dungeons and raid, then nothing for many months. Everyone just geared up running the existing content until the next patch, and by that time you were geared enough to run the 430 dungeon.

If you just blow through the whole MSQ, you don't have the gearing up mid-patch phases. The gear you get from the MSQ just equips you for that patch's content, and not the next one.

I don't remember ever being locked out of a dungeon in ShadowBringers. Odd.

Oh wait, you are rushing through the story for the patch right? A new player needs to get the gear like everyone else did. By doing the dungeons, expert, and everything in-between.

Level 80 job gear is at 430 (and completing a role quest and meeting the vendor is required as part of the main story, so you have no excuse at all to skip it), as are the accessories dropped in Amaurot, Akademia Annyder, and the Twinning. Between that and the Goetia tomes earned from those three dungeons (which can be traded in Eulmore for Ronkan gear at 440), you should be easily be able to pass a 430 item level.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

What the hell is a new player supposed to do here?

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For 5.1? Ronkan gear. You buy it in Eulmore with tomestones of Goetia, and those are thick on the ground and lack a weekly cap. Buy a full set and you're at i440. Buy just the right-side accessories—which is considerably less than the 2000 tomestone cap on Goetia—and combine them with the left-side i430 role gear and you'll still beat the i430 level requirement.

When 5.2 lands, Phantasmagoria will have the weekly cap removed (like Goetia is now), and the Deepshadow gear will presumably become as easily attained as Ronkan is now. Even with i450 as an ilevel requirement, just plain unaugmented Deepshadow gear will get you to a more-than-sufficient i460. Augmenting it would get you to i470, which is on-par with the current Edengrace savage raid gear in terms of ilevel.

I mean, I do get that the ilevel requirements can feel obnoxious when you slam into them unexpectedly. But even if you need to replace everything and only do your daily roulettes (once each) and general whatever-you-do-in-game, I feel like you could have the necessary Goetia for Ronkan gear in 5.1 (and presumably Phantasmagoria for Deepshadow in 5.2) within two days, three at most, even as just a casual player and without any grind whatsoever.

Now, if you wanted to skip Ronkan entirely and go right to Deepshadow in 5.1... yeah, that would be a multi-week process and involve at least a little grind. But the plain i460 Deepshadow gear—much less the i470 Augmented Deepshadow—is way more than was needed for the Grand Cosmos' i430 requirement; if you don't raid, i470 is just massive overkill in 5.1.

Or unlock the Eden raids. Take a belt or accessory from each of the first two floors. The last two floors you can try to get both halves of the hat gloves or boots. Thats running 4 new pieces of content once each, getting potentially 3 pieces of gear upgraded, and also having the prerequisite done to start the new raid tier when the new patch happens. Then when you finish those plus cosmos, unlock and run the alliance raid once. If you get lucky a piece for your class will drop(each run drops 10 random pieces, there are 7 gear sets to pick between - so the odds arent horrible but no guarantees) and you can have a straight i460 upgrade to help in the process of getting ready for the new 5.2 dungeon. Plus the first time bonuses for all these runs should have given you enough Goatia to upgrade at least one more piece of jewelry to 440.

Please try this perspective: Gear is the main progression after reaching max-level and people want to see their progress - so dungeons cant synch your gear down to much or else it would invalidate our gear-progression. That means that dungeons need to be balanced around an ilvl that isnt max-ilvl but always a bit higher than that of the previous patch. At least I'd feel "betrayed" if I went into the 5.2 to be synched down back to an 5.0 ilvl - why the hell did I grind better gear then, if it doesnt even matter in the end? So the minimum ilvl for dungeons need to increase along side the overall maximum ilvl.
However I wouldnt want to slug through the next storydungeon with someone who barely has an ilvl of 430 - which is gonna be about 60 ilvls below the max ilvl of 5.2, I assume

That doesnt mean that you have to spend "weeks" grinding or millions of gil, though.

Here are a few easy ways to get better gear:
1) Tomestones - yes, they are an option that doesnt require weeks of grinding. Ilvl440 accessories are currently 180 goetia-tomes; one run of Amarout will give you 80, an expert roulette 60 - so 4 expert roulettes will get you 3 accessories, which should be all you need to push your ilvl.
2) Gear drops from the dungeons themself - you gotta be very unlucky to NOT collect a few pieces here and there to help you catch up
3) Eden NM - the ilvl for the NM-raid might actually be lower than the one for the storydungeon, as is currently the case (425 vs. 430). Accessories and belt only need one drop for turning in, other pieces need a few more - either way: quick and easy 450 gear, provided you dont have bad luck with your rolls. The raid also provides a story, so if its mainly the stroy experience you seek, you're not wasting your time by unlocking it.
4) 24-man-raid: Currently needs an ilvl of 435, but drops 460 gear. Following some of the 1-3 steps should provide you with the needed ilvl.
5) Join a newbie/retuner friendly FC with crafters who are willing to craft the odd piece for free for you - personally I do that all the time for people in our FC who dont have much time to play or are returning from a longer break. Alternativly you can find a crafter whos willing to craft some gear for you as long as you provide the mats, which might be cheaper than buying the piece itself.

Also: at least on my server the crafted gear is dirt cheap by now - if its rather expensive on your server, server-hoping within your datacenter might help to find you some better deals.

The only thing more obnoxious would be to run a dungeon with an undergeared tank or healer that can't perform their role due to being severely undergeared for the content. The ilvl requirement is there for a reason.

Gear up through Eden, then Nier, snd all the while you are gaining tomestones for gear.

You'll be caught up before you know it

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

The only way to unlock the 430 gate for the Grand Cosmos was to grind umpteen Amaurots, etc. to get enough bling or else buy 450 crafted gear

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If nothing else, you seem to have missed that there are two more optional dungeons unlocked as soon as you clear the game. Akademia and the Twinning (unlocked via sidequests that start in the main cities) both drop the same i430 accessories as Amaurot, and you'd earn tomes for completing them that you could then spend on getting those few critical pieces you needed.

50/60/70 roulette also gives a generous amount of currently-Goetia tomes, if I remember correctly.

Echoing what everyone else said: goetia 440 and phantasmagoria 460/470 tome gear, eden 450 gear, copied factory 460 gear, crafted 450/460 gear. There are a lot of gearing options so use them!!

Crafted is fastest and 1m gil is not hard to come by doing maps and other things.

Also in general you will want to get ready for the tome grind where you want to cap the newest tomestone every week for gear upgrades, usually by doing roulettes.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

Also in general you will want to get ready for the tome grind where you want to cap the newest tomestone every week for gear upgrades, usually by doing roulettes.

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I feel like the weekly tome grind, while important to folks who are raiding, is probably less so to folks who don't care about the raid content at all.

That said, even without aiming for the weekly cap, I think it'd be possible to buy most of a full set of the new gear ahead of 5.3 this summer, and thus stay a good chunk ahead of any upcoming ilevel bump.

I get that you're annoyed but I don't really see the reason why.

I mean when you're playing current content, the MSQ does not hand out gear when you're doing the post expansion missions (the gear that was handed out after being ARR, HW and SB were originally gear that you got while earning end game tomes at that time when the content was relevant). It's only after the content is "irrelevant" to end game that they assign where you're going to get the gear that people got during other stages of end game to catch people up once the new expansion is out (to get those people to the next expansion if they haven't).

Or in otherwords if you quit the game now and didn't play until the next expansion release (and started playing after the release) SE again would be handing out gear to help get you through post end game of ShB but they aren't going to be doing it til than.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

What the hell is a new player supposed to do here?

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Nothing. New players shouldn't be qualified for expert dungeons anyway.

Even if somebody buys a skip potion, they need to be good enough to not get kicked out of every pug they join to complete the story. Once you get good enough for that, you're not new. Maybe semi-new, but not new.

If people aren't willing to meet the ilvl requirements for the dungeons, then I really am uncomfortable with them being in them. Especially when it's so trivial to get the gear necessary to enter those dungeons.

Yeah, I can see where a new player's confusion would come from - I see this with new 80s in my FC and it happened to me at the end of the SB msq when I returned to the game a couple years back.

What SE does is each time a new expansion is released, they add gear rewards to the previous expansion's patch quests so that players can easily gear up to meet the ilvl requirements of its patch dungeons (usually it will be the stuff you were buying for tomes if you played when that expansion was endgame). So if you're starting from scratch, you can easily catch up to the current expansion without stopping to consider where to get better gear. But everything after the latest expansion's main content is considered 'endgame', so they no longer hand you that gear - they expect you to do endgame content in order to earn it. It can be very jarring when you suddenly encounter that after everything else had flowed so smoothly, but the point is to keep players occupied in between patches. So yeah, they do actually want you to stop progressing the msq for a bit and catch up in ilvl first.

There are some really good suggestions in this thread on how to do that. :) I think the game could do a better job of pointing players in the right direction, but once you find your feet, you'll get a feel for the flow of patch content and gearing.

Good luck, and welcome back to the game!

There is little to no grinding for casuals in this game.
Just get equipment from the normal quests if they give any, a lot of them actually do.

Eden, Nier alliance raid, crafted, Geotia, phantasmagoria. Even 1 piece from each of them would probably have you sorted in 2 weeks.
Log in Tuesday run Eden, nier, expert. Buy crafted set, exchange times for 1 piece each. Log off.
Repeat. Done on your second Tuesday. Only a few hrs work both days.

Wasn't there like a month between 5.0 and 5.1? People who were playing from launch had plenty of time to get their 440 gear without needing to rush.

If you really don't want to spend the same amount of time that everyone else had to spend (which isn't much, really), just wait until 5.2 next week. You'll be able to get 460 gear for the same effort you'd be getting 440 gear now.

You basically caught up at the wrong time. But this patch is almost over so just wait another week if it bugs you that much.

We literally pushed SE to put higher minimum ilvl requirements on things because people were running content while be so severely under geared for it.

So, yes it is there for a reason, and the reason is not because SE wanted to just lock people out of content. It's because we don't want to carry people who can't be bothered to get even the lowest hanging fruit of the gear tree and SE actually listened to us.

There are so many options people already mentioned, you could get this gear in a matter of hours. At least put the minimum amount of effort in if you expect us to just get your thru everything so you can just unsub again.

Or if you hate that so much and dont wanna upgrade your gear or grind for it, you might be in the wrong game.

I just helped 3 fc mates catching up, the literally bought 1-2 pieces of gear which they also could have just gotten more ronkan stuff... its not that much and if you can take a break for what? a half year? you can very well take the time and grind a few days, worst case.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Level 80 job gear is at 430 (and completing a role quest and meeting the vendor is required as part of the main story, so you have no excuse at all to skip it), as are the accessories dropped in Amaurot, Akademia Annyder, and the Twinning. Between that and the Goetia tomes earned from those three dungeons (which can be traded in Eulmore for Ronkan gear at 440), you should be easily be able to pass a 430 item level.

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This is the fastest way. Just do Amaurot/Akademia/Twinning for the accessories (or use the tomes you get from there to get them). It's pretty quick to get past i420 right now. For i440, get your tomestones now and farm Eden Normal, you'll have what you need to bypass that really quickly.

Just watch the story on youtube.

To get an average of 430, assuming you're wearing level 78 gear-box accessories and weathered gear, you need:

3 uncapped tome accessories
1 capped tome and 2 uncapped tome accessory
1 capped tome, 1 uncapped tome and any 1 dropped accessory from level 70 content.


Mandatory level 80 content will get you, at a minimum, 90 tomestones.

You can do the optional 2 dungeons and 2 roulettes and have the tomestones to get the right ilvl. In 5.2, you'll just need the optional dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

I feel like the weekly tome grind, while important to folks who are raiding, is probably less so to folks who don't care about the raid content at all.

That said, even without aiming for the weekly cap, I think it'd be possible to buy most of a full set of the new gear ahead of 5.3 this summer, and thus stay a good chunk ahead of any upcoming ilevel bump.

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True, you won't nearly need to cap every week in order to max out tome gear on one job before the next ilvl bump, and even then there is usually "catch-up" gear (e.g. crafted or uncapped tomes.)

I guess my comment was a bit "if grinding a to hit the msq ilvl or level requirements is bad... wait until you reach 'MMO endgame' which by its nature is designed to keep people playing until the next patch: grind for tomes/scrip/mgp/wolf marks, grind for relic(s), grind shared FATEs and crystals, grind for mounts/minions/glamours/cards/orchestrion rolls, grind for achievements...." :D

Fortunately the game is pretty fun and if you get tired of one thing there's nearly always something else to do unless the servers are in maintenance.

Just pray that they don't bring back the Yo-kai event, which required nearly 800 FATEs to get the glowing mount.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Run some roulettes at max level, get tomes, buy gear with tomes. Gearing in this game is incredibly easy.

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You describe the problem perfectly: gear grinds may or may not be 'easy', they're tedious for many with limited time to play and many other things they find FUN to do, and have no place in the main story progression which is where many of us prefer to spend our time rather than endlessly running the same dungeons simply in order to progress that story!

Either remove this God-aweful gating in the MSQ or stop the MSQ gating so much other stuff .. you know, like the ability to actually play the next expansion!

The other aspect this affects is the ability to play multiple jobs, you need to grind for each JOB you want to play (there's absolutely NO REASON story content in 5.1 should be 20+ iLevels above 5.0) which makes the game's core concept 'one character, all classes' a joke when it actively prevents you doing this unless you're prepared to run the gear grinds multiple times.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

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I'm curious why your main class is Arcanist at level 70? Did you not take the time to get a job stone?

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

You describe the problem perfectly: gear grinds may or may not be 'easy', they're tedious for many with limited time to play and many other things they find FUN to do, and have no place in the main story progression which is where many of us prefer to spend our time rather than endlessly running the same dungeons simply in order to progress that story!

Either remove this God-aweful gating in the MSQ or stop the MSQ gating so much other stuff .. you know, like the ability to actually play the next expansion!

The other aspect this affects is the ability to play multiple jobs, you need to grind for each JOB you want to play (there's absolutely NO REASON story content in 5.1 should be 20+ iLevels above 5.0) which makes the game's core concept 'one character, all classes' a joke when it actively prevents you doing this unless you're prepared to run the gear grinds multiple times.

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You're exaggerating greatly here - its not "endless dungeon running" - the game makes it very easy to gear up with roulettes giving you a neat bonus on both kind of tomestones when done at max-level. Seeing how a lot of things are also aimed to be done once a day (roulettes) or once a week (loot-lockouts on various raids) you're not entering into an endless grind but rather into playing 20 minutes a day to do your expert roulette at minimum. And even that is probably only needed for about a week, specially if paired with some other ways to get gear.

And as I explained: Many of us also prefer to play through dungeons with people who are appropriatly geared. Considering how easy and not really time consuming it is to do that, its not even to much to ask.
You also sound like you'd want to skip the current MSQ to play the next one, with finishing the story beforehand...? I'm confused now - do you care about the story or not?

And in regards to playing multiple jobs... you have the time to enter the endless grind of leveling up more than one job through quests and dungeon-runs (mainly dungeon runs, lets be honest here), but you dont have the time to get some gear by doing some dungeon-runs once you reach max-level...?

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

You describe the problem perfectly: gear grinds may or may not be 'easy', they're tedious for many with limited time to play and many other things they find FUN to do, and have no place in the main story progression which is where many of us prefer to spend our time rather than endlessly running the same dungeons simply in order to progress that story!

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You still don't get it: You don't need to grind for ilevel430. Just doing the Eden Raids ONCE and picking the accessories will gear you up with ilevel 450 gear on the right side and/or a belt. And you can farm tomestones just by hunting or other daily things

Eden is ilevel 425 and is a great way to gear up a role.

Personally I main heals and there is no way I'm entering an end game dungeon without some good gear with melds given the mega pulls tanks like to do in them. I also run all my story dungeons using trusts the first time through and if I'm not mistaken there is no ilevel cap for those with story clears.

It honestly sounds like you're throwing a tantrum without even trying. Perhaps a hint of buyers remorse for splurging on crafted gear when you could have just played for a week or so and got to the same place through tomes.

There are various avenues to easily obtain appropriate ilvl for casual content such as dungeons and normal trials. Which have been detailed in this topic. Nobody has any excuse to be less than i440 at this point, even if they only play for three hours a week. (providing they were up to level 80 by the previous patch or so)

You could easily obtain a couple hundred Goetia and some Phantasmagoria in a couple of hours. Which would give you enough to significantly boost your ilvl in two or three weeks. And not even by spamming the same content, but via roulettes which randomises your content. Providing you've unlocked enough potential dungeons and trials to run.

Simply running Amaurot, Twinning and Anyder ONCE will get you 240 Goetia and 150 Phanta.
Running 50/60/70, Leveling, Alliance and Normal Raid roulettes would give you an additional 380 Goetia and 90 Phanta.
All of that would take probably three hours, with the total of 620 Goetia (240 Phanta isn't enough yet) you can get three ilevel 440 Accessories.
Repeat that for week two (or again in the same week, have't hit a cap yet) and you've got 1240 Goetia and 480 Phanta (450 if in the same week due to cap)
You've now got three 440 accessories, a couple of 440 left pieces, and a 460 accessory.
You now have an average ilevel of about 440, in two weeks, of minimal play time, while not running any single piece of content more than twice.

Throw in Eden raids part way through, they only take 10 minutes (an hour or so of story when unlocking the first time) and you could get tokens for 450 pieces, while gaining an additional 10 Phanta each run.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

The other aspect this affects is the ability to play multiple jobs, you need to grind for each JOB you want to play (there's absolutely NO REASON story content in 5.1 should be 20+ iLevels above 5.0) which makes the game's core concept 'one character, all classes' a joke when it actively prevents you doing this unless you're prepared to run the gear grinds multiple times.

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You do realize gear can be shared via roles, right? BLM/RDM/SMN/BLU all use the Caster gear sets, WHM/AST/SCH use the Healer sets, BRD/MCH/DNC use the Aiming set, PLD/WAR/DRK/GNB use the Fending set, and all Melee DPS use the Slaying set of accessories, except NIN, who uses the Aiming set of accessories. You dont have to gear up as much as you think, honestly. And this is from someone who actually took the time to level ALL 29 Jobs, both Combat and Crafting/Gathering, and gear them up to be ready for 5.2 content.

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Originally Posted by Doru_Nintendan

You do realize gear can be shared via roles, right? BLM/RDM/SMN/BLU all use the Caster gear sets, WHM/AST/SCH use the Healer sets, BRD/MCH/DNC use the Aiming set, PLD/WAR/DRK/GNB use the Fending set, and all Melee DPS use the Slaying set of accessories, except NIN, who uses the Aiming set of accessories. You dont have to gear up as much as you think, honestly. And this is from someone who actually took the time to level ALL 29 Jobs, both Combat and Crafting/Gathering, and gear them up to be ready for 5.2 content.

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Same, think I have 10 pieces of gear total that covers ALL jobs and 7 accessories.
Fending, healing, Striking, Aiming, Casting, Maiming, Scouting, Crafting, Gathering, Blue Mage (lvl 60) Obviously if you're levelling still you will have a max level set and a levelling set but you def don't need gear for each job. Just level each job under the banner and keep the gear till you are finished then throw away everything that isn't your end gear as you will no longer need that level 30 fending set because all tanks are now level 50+ or 80. Good inventory management :) and no "multiple gear grinds" needed.

Unless you level tank to 80, throw everything away, level caster to 80, throw everything away then go back to do another tank....then yes you will need to get more gear but that's what you get for throwing away your levelling gear before all your tanks were passed that gear requirement. That's really inefficient.

You straight up get free 430 gear for half your slots along the MSQ. Then you just need accessories. You can run eden a bunch of times for easy 450's

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I'm curious why your main class is Arcanist at level 70? Did you not take the time to get a job stone?

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His highest are actually scholar and smn. He got the job stones it just isn't registering on the forums. Mine registers as Thaumaturge and I just haven't bothered to fix it.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

with limited time to.

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this is a poor excuse. I understand that people can have a lot to do in everyday life. but this excuse should not been used when you choose to play MMO if u cant spend 20-40 min for one dungeon run per day then maybe this game is not for you

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I'm curious why your main class is Arcanist at level 70? Did you not take the time to get a job stone?

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The FORUMS will use the same class you joined with. Forever. You have to manually go in and change from Class to Job in your profile.

Just letting you know that your attempt at snark was grossly misplaced.

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Originally Posted by Fayt1203

well not completely free u need to finish the role quest of the class type your playing :D :D

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You have to complete at least one role quest to progress the MSQ in the Tempest, after which you can just talk to Grenoldt to get that role's gear from a menu. The first set is as free as any other quest gear, and literally unavoidable unless you're skipping it on purpose.