5.5/5.55 Progression Clarification

This will be my first time playing the game going into .5 and .55 patches, and I'm not clear about what happens in terms of gear progression.

I get what happens to the resistance weapons, but what about tomestone gear? What illvl will the alliance raid drop? Should tomestones be capped ahead of 5.5? Will there be other sources of new ilvl gear?

Thanks!

Alliance Raid gear - i520

Dungeon gear - i505

Augmented Crafted gear - i520 (Purchasable with Tomestones of Allegory + Item from trading in regular crafted gear)

If we get new Bozjan gear, I would estimate this as i515, though it's highly probable we won't.

Expect caps on both Savage and weekly tomestones to be removed later in the patch cycle. People that are not doing savage will be able to gain upgrade items from the new raid coming out which will let them upgrade from 520 > 530 tomestone gear.

In a .X there’s new story, gear, usually an increase in item level. It progresses the story forward. IRC, .xx are bug fixes, raid release and small minor changes.

Tomestone gear and normal/savage raid tiers advance together on even-numbered patched (.0 .2 .4). Alliance raids and "other stuff" advance on odd-numbered patches (.1 .3 .5).

The middle patches (.x5.. occasionally others) are usually to add content that didn't fit nicely into the patch timelines. This is usually where relic progression happens, and in the case of 5.45, is where BLU was advanced a bit. So that sort of thing.

The short version here is that the tomestone gear doesn't advance again until the next expansion. You can expect an alliance raid that awards i520 gear and a currency that drops from it and combined with the other two to buy upgrade tokens for i520 tomestone gear (previously only available in the savage Eden tier). As for the "other stuff" well... we dunno yet. There's always other stuff though. There's a live letter at the beginning of April that will likely explain some of it.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

This will be my first time playing the game going into .5 and .55 patches, and I'm not clear about what happens in terms of gear progression.

I get what happens to the resistance weapons, but what about tomestone gear? What illvl will the alliance raid drop? Should tomestones be capped ahead of 5.5? Will there be other sources of new ilvl gear?

Thanks!

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The ilvl will not be changing; the current max of 530 will remain the same, neither will there be new tomestone gear. The Alliance raid will drop 520 gear, along with a coin that when combined with one coin from Bunker & factory, will allow you to buy one weekly upgrade mat to upgrade any tomestone piece to 530.

There will also likely be the crafted gear upgrade system, where for x amount of allegory (the non-weekly one) you can upgrade your 510 crafted gear to 520 versions.

Each expansion lasts 2 years, consisting of 5 major patches that are 4 months apart.

5.0 - item level cap raised from 400 to 470, new crafted gear/normal raid gear (450), new tomestone/gear (460), new savage raids (470 gear), level cap raised (obviously)
5.1 - catch-up patch so non-raiders can reach item level cap. new 24-person alliance raid (casual content that drops 460 gear and an upgrade to tomestone gear to 470), you can farm hunts to get this upgrade too.
5.2 - item level cap raised from 470 to 500, new crafted gear/normal raid gear (480), new tomestone/gear (490), new savage raids (500 gear)
5.3 - catch-up patch so non-raiders can reach item level cap. new 24-person alliance raid (casual content that drops 490 gear and an upgrade to tomestone gear to 500), you can farm hunts to get this upgrade too.
5.4 - item level cap raised from 500 to 530, new crafted gear/normal raid gear (510), new tomestone/gear (520), new savage raids (530 gear)
5.5 - catch-up patch so non-raiders can reach item level cap. new 24-person alliance raid (casual content that drops 520 gear and an upgrade to tomestone gear to 530), you can farm hunts to get this upgrade too.

4 months later is 6.0, same system for the 6.0 patches.

The patch cycle has only been delayed once because of COVID-19, which caused 5.3 to be 2 months late. There are lots of smaller patches and they may include other things like PvP, blue mage, relic weapons, story content and dungeons, but I'm specifically explaining the item level and tomestone progression.

Very helpful! Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Expect caps on both Savage and weekly tomestones to be removed later in the patch cycle.

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Weekly tomestone caps have never been removed, just doubled. Expect the weekly cap to increase to 900 around late August.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Weekly tomestone caps never get removed, just doubled. Expect the weekly cap to increase to 900 around late August.

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Ohh I do actually stand corrected on this; 5.56

Only thing no one else has mentioned is that, unlike the other X.X5 patches, X.55 tends to have a good chunk of main story quests.
But no new gear (unless you count Bozja) in 5.55.
The EX Trial, new 24-man, and i520 crafted gear upgrades are all coming in April, though if you've been regularly capping your tomestones in 5.4 (let alone doing savage) none will be an upgrade for your main class.

At some point in the Summer (probably 5.56, though some may arrive in 5.51 or 5.55), you'll be able to farm 900 revelation a week; it'll only take four E12N tokens for a revelation weapon (instead of today's 7) and you can farm as many as you want instead of being limited to one a week; and (probably) savage will get its weekly restrictions removed too, alongside raiders attempting savage getting a 20% buff. It's possible that weekly restrictions on the 5.5 24-man will be removed as well.

Note that none of that is worth going out of your way to farm for any classes you don't plan on playing before Endwalker, as all of the level 80 rewards will be purchasable for solely poetics in 6.0, at prices similar to today's level 70 poetics (i.e., the cap of 2000 poetics buys you almost an entire gear-set.)

new bozja gear probably i525
first one was i495 most people are/will be bis or around i530 anyway at 5.55

I wouldn't be surprised if the Bozja gear shakes up the BiS gear again, as the Elemental+1 gear did in 4.5, because they probably want to get more people to do that content.

Again, this is very helpful info. I started playing FF14 last year (around 5.3, iirc), so this is my first go for these later patches and new expansion.