Late to Eorzea, what to do before EW?

Just finished ShB 5.0 msq, now I am somewhat lost as to what should I do before EW launch.

Should I spend my time finishing and unlocking side contents instead of grinding end game to raise my ilv from 430 to 530, which I assume will become obsolete once EW launch with level cap raised?

After getting to 5.55, I have plans to save up some tomestone to buy lv70 gears for the 2 new jobs. So that's for sure is on my list. Given such short period of time left, what else should I prioritize?

I would suggest you to get your main job to highest ilv as much as possible so in END you don’t have to worry about your gears for the early level.
But if you’re not quite satisfying with your current main then you can taking risk leveling new jobs knowing full well that you might not like it at the end.

TLDR; Gamble your time and resources with new jobs or trust your current main and take them to the moon.

-Buy ilv510 items from Marketboard for the class you want to play in EW.
-Prepare lv70 poetic gear for reaper/healer if you want to play these classes. Get Maiming/Healing set, specifically.

-Cap 2,000 of each type of tome, as you can convert allegory and revelation to poetic later.

-Empty your leve allowance with coffee biscuit level. Don't need to craft. You can just buy HQ ones from marketboard, and it is still profitable. Require a lv78 culinarian, though
-Finish Gold Saucer's weekly challenge log.
-Finish a wondrous tail book next week but don't turn in, so that when EW launches, you can instantly gains half of a level bar for your class of choice. Do the book again on the launch week and get another half of the bar.

The game director says it would be good to do the Bahumat raids at lv 50 in preparation for the Endwalker story.

I don't think it's worth paying for gear on the marketboard at this late stage, except possibly a weapon. You're better to get what gear you can while completing content. You only need to reach i490 to clear all story content and i495 for the highest "casual" content (the third alliance raid), so paying for i510 isn't necessary just to get through it (though it does of course bring your average up).

On the other hand, do check whether the crafted gear is something you'll want long term for glamour. If so, you may as well buy it now while it has practical use on top of the glamour value.

If you wait two weeks to do the 5.X MSQ you'll get free i490 gear from it.

If you'd rather get into it sooner, you can start building up your ilevel by completing the 5.X side content starting with the Eden raids and possibly the first part of the Bozjan Resistance quests to get your free i485 starter relic weapon.

You'll also get a good amount of the mid-range "allegory" tomes from roulettes if you do them with your level 80 character, along with a smaller amount of the top-tier "revelation" tones, so you can be decently geared quite quickly even if it's a bit of a patchwork of different tiers.

Outside of the endgame gear treadmill, the story writer for Endwalker has recommended that you do the Binding Coil and Omega quest lines if you haven't already. (She actually recommended prettymuch all the side stories in the game, but singles out those two as most important.)

If you have the gil, you can go to the market board and buy 510 gear by clicking each icon such as the head, body, legs. The top of the list should be 510 item level. You won't need better gear than that to do any current content.

Complete up to 5.5 of the MSQ, so that you are ready to start the expansion right away.

If you are into the story, do the raid quests for each expansion (Coils, Alexander, Omega and Eden). These are already relevant as references in Shadowbringers, but might also be in EW.

When EW releases, you should be able to buy 515 gear from the market board and vendors for level 80. This is also given as a reward in the main scenario quests.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't think it's worth paying for gear on the marketboard at this late stage, except possibly a weapon. You're better to get what gear you can while completing content. You only need to reach i490 to clear all story content and i495 for the highest "casual" content (the third alliance raid), so paying for i510 isn't necessary just to get through it (though it does of course bring your average up).

On the other hand, do check whether the crafted gear is something you'll want long term for glamour. If so, you may as well buy it now while it has practical use on top of the glamour value.

If you wait two weeks to do the 5.X MSQ you'll get free i490 gear from it.

If you'd rather get into it sooner, you can start building up your ilevel by completing the 5.X side content starting with the Eden raids and possibly the first part of the Bozjan Resistance quests to get your free i485 starter relic weapon.

You'll also get a good amount of the mid-range "allegory" tomes from roulettes if you do them with your level 80 character, along with a smaller amount of the top-tier "revelation" tones, so you can be decently geared quite quickly even if it's a bit of a patchwork of different tiers.

Outside of the endgame gear treadmill, the story writer for Endwalker has recommended that you do the Binding Coil and Omega quest lines if you haven't already. (She actually recommended prettymuch all the side stories in the game, but singles out those two as most important.)

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Time is more valuable than gil in the last week before expansion.

Definitely buy the 510 gear, except for the belt. Unless it's very cheap a belt will be a waste of gil.

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Originally Posted by LitheSuxman

Just finished ShB 5.0 msq, now I am somewhat lost as to what should I do before EW launch.

Should I spend my time finishing and unlocking side contents instead of grinding end game to raise my ilv from 430 to 530, which I assume will become obsolete once EW launch with level cap raised?

After getting to 5.55, I have plans to save up some tomestone to buy lv70 gears for the 2 new jobs. So that's for sure is on my list. Given such short period of time left, what else should I prioritize?

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Clear 5.55.

Don't worry about gear too too much. You'll likely have the gear you need by the time you clear 5.55 for Endwalker. Purchasing 510 gear can save you some time.

Pick the job you'll be doing Endwalker with now get what gear you can, and ignore your other jobs.

If you have any time left over, focus on unlocking content you've skipped. (Flying, blue ! quests)

Stock up on black dyes so you can go maximum edge with Reaper :cool:

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Originally Posted by Floortank

Time is more valuable than gil in the last week before expansion.

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That depends on what your goals are and how much money you have.

Also, if you're planning to do the side content anyway then it makes sense to do it now when it can save you some gil. You can very quickly get up to the second tier of Eden, which gives you i480 gear. Some of that, some tome gear and whatever you pick up from MSQ dungeons will get you well on the way to i490 and then if you really need to, you buy crafted gear to replace your weakest items at the end of it.

For that matter, in less than two weeks you'll be able to get augmented Cryptlurker i530 gear with poetics, so you can replace some more pieces then.

Overall I'd say the priority is doing all the story content you can get through once, doing those specific older raids that have been recommended, and not trying to gear up fully until 6.0 changes the level 80 gear to poetics.

Get your retainers geared as well as you can too. If you can craft your own, great. If not, dungeon gear's good too. Since you'll only be getting one set of each type (tank, heal, ranged physical, ranged magic) when questing, you might end up being gear-limited on the retainers.

Complete 5.55
Cap your tomestones
Get glamours from content that won't be played as much after EW release ( Nier raid ).
Unlock Bozja, it's a great place to level alt jobs between 71-80. It will be packed at release, thanks to all the reaper/sage "mains".

I wouldn't worry about gearing up at this point. The quests in the first expansion zone will offer gear that is good enough to get by with.

My suggestion would be to spend the time in a laid back fashion, just running over the world to see what the various blue quests open up. All of them will unlock something, though the ones located in major cities generally lead to dungeons, raids and meaty side quests. If you have not yet unlocked access to the Gold Saucer as of yet, that's something that I think is worth looking into. The quest that opens it up starts in Ul'dah, not far from the main aetheryte with an NPC called 'Well Heeled Youth'.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That depends on what your goals are and how much money you have.

Also, if you're planning to do the side content anyway then it makes sense to do it now when it can save you some gil. You can very quickly get up to the second tier of Eden, which gives you i480 gear. Some of that, some tome gear and whatever you pick up from MSQ dungeons will get you well on the way to i490 and then if you really need to, you buy crafted gear to replace your weakest items at the end of it.

For that matter, in less than two weeks you'll be able to get augmented Cryptlurker i530 gear with poetics, so you can replace some more pieces then.

Overall I'd say the priority is doing all the story content you can get through once, doing those specific older raids that have been recommended, and not trying to gear up fully until 6.0 changes the level 80 gear to poetics.

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I am in the process of getting an alt through 5.55 in the final week of SHB. I have grinded them through the entire MSQ.

If I stopped to grind the iLvl just to go into Eden, I might not finish. It would require systematically unlocking dungeons and raids to pick up random loot drops that might not happen in 2-3 runs.

OTOH, I just used 500k I picked up from just doing the MSQs to buy the entire crafted set, saving myself a massive amount of time.

Eden is not a gear skip if you can't even get into Eden because your iLvl is too low. The MSQ is also iLvl locked at certain points along the way. So going through Eden to get into a required dungeon would be adding hours to what could only take you 20 minutes.

If you are running out of time, the ~500k gil is far less valuable than the time you can be using to finish the MSQ and clear optional content that might improve your enjoyment after.

Also, I'm on Crystal, where the 510 set is on average 25-50% more expensive than Aether. I have characters on both. Probably even cheaper than 500k on Aether.

EDIT: Been in an Eden 6 Normal queue while running around doing MSQs for over 20 minutes now and this is only drops 480 gear.

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Originally Posted by Momo_Kozuki

-Buy ilv510 items from Marketboard for the class you want to play in EW.
-Prepare lv70 poetic gear for reaper/healer if you want to play these classes. Get Maiming/Healing set, specifically.

-Cap 2,000 of each type of tome, as you can convert allegory and revelation to poetic later.

-Empty your leve allowance with coffee biscuit level. Don't need to craft. You can just buy HQ ones from marketboard, and it is still profitable. Require a lv78 culinarian, though
-Finish Gold Saucer's weekly challenge log.
-Finish a wondrous tail book next week but don't turn in, so that when EW launches, you can instantly gains half of a level bar for your class of choice. Do the book again on the launch week and get another half of the bar.

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Do the leves reset in full with the expansion?

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Originally Posted by hobostew

Stock up on black dyes so you can go maximum edge with Reaper :cool:

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Gunmetal black or pure black?

And to answer the OP... everything!

Actually, I'd go through each class and job and make certain that my exp was only slightly into a level. Otherwise, you are going to lose a ton of exp when EW is released.

I'd suggest just making sure you finish the MSQ over the time you have left rather than leaving it so you have to rush at all.

Other than that, if you've got the Tomestones, just try to get your main job up to BiS. Not because you need it but because it will let you sail through the initial bits of EW without needing to worry about gear at all and you can just take any quest rewards or dungeon drops for secondary or tertiary jobs.

One more thing I would suggest is actually giving yourself at least a couple of days off from FF14 before EW launches. Chances are you'll want to go in on EW at full force so make sure you don't burn yourself out on the game before then by trying to smash everything you may have "missed" into the time between now and then. The content you've "missed" will still be there after EW comes out and if there's bits of gearing or storyquesting you want to do you can do it all later when you have the time to truly enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Gunmetal black or pure black?

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Jet Black obviously! You can try to fool others with gunmetal or soot but deep down you'd know you aren't at your maximum edgy potential!

Now if only we could get one of the scions to play a sick guitar riff in the background after every victory...

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Originally Posted by hobostew

Jet Black obviously! You can try to fool others with gunmetal or soot but deep down you'd know you aren't at your maximum edgy potential!

Now if only we could get one of the scions to play a sick guitar riff in the background after every victory...

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Jet black is alright, but sometimes I like the sheen from gunmetal, for certain pieces. Soot is dollar store black, that one I will rarely use, unless the jet black is way too dark.

Clean your inventory, sell the obsolete materias like VII (or VIII unless you keep it for transmute later)

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Originally Posted by Floortank

If I stopped to grind the iLvl just to go into Eden...

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You're getting my suggestion back to front. Don't grind to get into Eden, make use of Eden (and other side content) when you have the ilevel to get into it but not higher MSQ content.

Doing content earns you tomes. Tomes give you free gear. You'll get an assortment of gear as you work through the MSQ dungeons along with tomes to buy more.

Even if you plan to do nothing but MSQ, it doesn't make sense to go out and buy a full set of i510 gear to tackle content that only requires i430 initially (for the 5.1 dungeon) and never needs more than i490.

If you're going to buy gear, get a weapon and enough pieces to see you over the necessary threshold* but don't pay to overgear yourself at this point.

*I would suggest aiming for i465 initially as that gets you into the 5.3 trial and Shadowbringers' final epilogue, then play through to that point, then fill any gaps in your equipment first with tome gear then either purchased gear or Eden Part 3.

Edit to add: ...and then get the rest of the Cryptlurker gear with poetics once Endwalker hits.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

Do the leves reset in full with the expansion?

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Don't think so, but the gold from leve will be nerfed to counter Gil inflation, so better to do it while it is still good.

I'd say get iL520 minimum. Your gear will get replaced by 2nd dungeon gear drops (lvl 83). iL530 get's their gear replaced with 3rd dungeon gear drops (lvl 85). All players should gear themselves with quest gear rewards + 3th dungeon drops (lvl 85). Else lvl 87 and lvl 89 dungeons will be a nightmare to heal. They are usually very hard-hitting because players go into them with low iL.