Experience lacking

I'll start by saying this is my first post and I'm not even sure if this is the right place to post this but... I started Heavensward with all my jobs at 52 or higher and I've been having trouble keeping up with the MSQ level on a single job despite using a 3% food buff and Menphina's Earing, which gives a 30% xp buff. At first, I thought this might be because my sister and I have been doing the dungeons synced and not getting xp from them, but from 56 to 57 there are no dungeons, nor any quests that have you going out and killing anything, and we both only put on about a half level doing all the MSQ that's available at level 56. I had a similar problem on another character that just finished the 2.0 MSQ, I forget if it was just before or just after Cape Westwind, that I had to run FATEs and levequests to get to the next level so I could continue. My first character through 2.0 had the benefit of the Road to 70 buff, which has gone away. My question is this - is this normal or did something get broken when they did the xp squish with EW's release?
Thank you.

When they did the stat squish, any experience you had on characters got reduced to 0. So if you had a character 90% to 53 for instance, it would have been dropped to 0% at the time of the stat squish.

Just run a few at level dungeons to get caught back to the MSQ and then you guys should be fine from there.

Thank you for your reply. I know about the stat squish, but I hadn't even finished 2.55 at that point and was already over 50 on everything but BLU. When I had PLD at 55, I needed to do non-MSQ stuff to get to 56, but then, despite using xp buffs, I still fell a bit over half a level short of being able to do the level 57 MSQ despite doing everything for the MSQ on the one job - basically, even with xp buffs, the MSQ isn't currently providing enough xp on its own to level one job. My question is - was this normal before the squish, or is this something that got broken when the squish happened? Oh, yeah, and I have been keeping up with my job quests, so that's not the issue either.

Before stat squish, I really only had an issue in the lead up to the final quests of 2.0. And I don't do the roulettes on any kind of regular basis or any extra content.

I leveled an alt to level 80 after the release of 5.3 as I wanted to experience the story trim to see how things were different. I only had issue in the 47-50 area. Once I got to ARR patch content, I had no issues with levels whatsoever.

I haven't leveled an alt in that range since Endwalker released so I can't say if it got broken or not, but given how far into Endwalker we are, it would have been something mentioned by now so if you searched and didn't find anything chances are there's something you forgot with regards to your experience that's caused the issue.

Do you remember what experience level you were at when Endwalker hit? You said you were aware of it, but didn't mention where you left the experience. If you left almost a full level's worth of experience on the table, that's probably a pretty big portion of what's causing the issue. Especially if you aren't doing non-MSQ stuff like roulettes.

How many classes are you leveling up currently?

If more than one, could you have accidentally done a final quest mission click on a different class by mistake giving experience to the wrong class?

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Originally Posted by Varretha

My question is - was this normal before the squish, or is this something that got broken when the squish happened?

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It's likely that dungeon exp was taken into account when it comes to gaining enough exp to reach the next step in the MSQ.
You mentioned doing the dungeons synced, but also not receiving exp from them. I'm assuming you mean unsynced? If you've been doing them unsynced, that would be 2-3 dungeons worth of exp that you'd be missing out on (depending on if you've bothered with the lvl 51 dungeon, since it's not part of the MSQ).

As an added note, since you've mentioned exp buffs. Buffs like food, or Menphina's Earrings, only apply to exp gained from kills (or crafting an item/gathering materials from a node). It doesn't affect exp gained from quests. Unfortunately, the game is very vague about this, by simply listing it as "Increases EXP earned by x%", or "EXP Bonus: +x%".

Thanks again for the replies. When I found out that the xp was going to be set to zero on each level, I made sure that everything was ticked over to the next level so I didn't lose massive amounts of xp - with the exception of my crafting and gathering jobs which were already so far ahead that I could see what I could make in Stormblood - so the most I lost was maybe around 10% of a level. Since my lowest job was at 52, I put all the 50 to 53 MSQ xp on it, then when the MSQ out-leveled it I switched to the job that was at 53, then switched to PLD when the MSQ hit 54 and have been leveling it alone on the MSQ since then. I did spend two or three weeks spamming Sohm Al with my squadron to get everything else caught up, but that's the only thing I've done for xp besides the unlock quests to get flying.

Thank you for the reply. You're right - I meant unsynced. We queued for Thok ast Thok, but did Sohm AL, The Aery and The Dusk Vigil with just the two of us, so when we hit Unrest In Ishgard and weren't high enough to turn it in, we both assumed it was because we hadn't queued for the dungeons. After hitting 56 and doing all the MSQ to 57 and coming up more than half a level short despite not missing out on any dungeons or trials, we began to wonder if something might have been broken in the squish.
Thank you for the heads-up about the buffs, too.

If you're having trouble getting enough XP to stay at the level you should be for the MSQ, try doing more roulettes. I've been doing only main story, blue, and class quests with a couple easy roulettes every day and have been at least 6 levels over what the current MSQ is. I had to stop doing side quests and other content that gives XP to keep from being hugely over leveled. That's with the ring (up to 30), earring, food, and rest XP bonuses.

Doing the Battle category of your Challenge Log every week will get you a decent amount of XP.

Thanks for the reply. I'd been doing everything that you mentioned with the exception of the roulettes and hit 56 on Summoner sometime before I hit the Praetorium, which was why I slipped a gear, went bonkers, and leveled everything else. By the time I hit the end of 2.55, my lowest job was 52 (I don't count BLU or professions) so I wasn't expecting to have an issue with not keeping up with the story. I see that I'm going to have to continue to get xp from outside the MSQ, but I'm still wondering if it was like this before they did the xp squish at the beginning of Endwalker.

MSQ dungeon XP is included in the calculation. You get between a 1/2 and 3/4 of a respective level from the dungeon. By unsyncing three dungeons you are easily nearly two levels behind the intended XP gains.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

MSQ dungeon XP is included in the calculation. You get between a 1/2 and 3/4 of a respective level from the dungeon. By unsyncing three dungeons you are easily nearly two levels behind the intended XP gains.

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This is likely most of the problem; Just preempting a comment here too since I think it will come up. The levels of the quests don't "neatly" coincide with the actual levels that you gain while you're doing them. OP mentions that they fell behind in 56 to 57 but there is no dungeon in that level range, but the expectation would be that you'd have "extra" xp from the last dungeon (well, specifically the ones done unsynced). Even though the xp is enough to keep up with the MSQ, the MSQ doesn't swap to lvl 57 as soon as you ding 57. _Usually_ the level that you have a dungeon, you're going to ding before the MSQ level increases and then the MSQ will "catch up" with you during the level with no dungeon. Kind of like this:


You: 55--(Dungeon)----56------------------------>57
MSQ: 55---------------------56------------------>57

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Originally Posted by Varretha

Thank you for the reply. You're right - I meant unsynced. We queued for Thok ast Thok, but did Sohm AL, The Aery and The Dusk Vigil with just the two of us, so when we hit Unrest In Ishgard and weren't high enough to turn it in, we both assumed it was because we hadn't queued for the dungeons. After hitting 56 and doing all the MSQ to 57 and coming up more than half a level short despite not missing out on any dungeons or trials, we began to wonder if something might have been broken in the squish.
Thank you for the heads-up about the buffs, too.

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This is likely why you and your sister fell behind. Dungeons at or around your current level give you the greatest EXP gains, so you should always strive to do them synced (with food buffs and/or Heat of Battle II if you are in an FC) to gain experience. Otherwise, as you have seen, you will fall behind the MSQ in terms of required level. There are periods of the main scenario where the quests of a same level (ex. Level 57 quests) are very few—so this will continue to snowball and roadblock you both. (To give you a heads up, when you read Shadowbringers, there is only one level 71 quest—and then it immediately jumps to level 72. To just sort of illustrate what I’m saying here.)

I would recommend queuing for the highest level dungeon you have available and running it a time or two to catch up. Strive for a third run to give yourself more of an experience buffer, as well.

Daily roulette are the fastest way.