Vocabulary o wo

[OUTIILAW]

Thanks everyone for all the help!

So from what I think I understand this is how it goes?

1. GC = Pre 50 armor/ weapons, Early 50 armor/ weapons?
2. Tomes = End game armor
3. Dungeons = Somewhere in between?

Order of importance I guess when it comes to equipment I guess would be?
GC < Dungeons < Tomes


I just want to prepare for level 50 and the end game. I don't want to look back regretting doing something I should have waited till later. Haha. I'm sure we all know how that feels. xD

[Bixby]

You've got GC gear pretty much correct.

Tomes & dungeons are mostly reversed, though. Tomestones of Soldiery give i100 gear, which can be upgraded to i110 (via Hunts, Syrcus Tower, or 2nd Coil). Tomestones of Poetics give i120 gear which can be upgraded to i130 (via Final Coil). The highest gear you'll get from a dungeon is i90.

There's also:
Syrcus Tower ("easy mode" 24-man raid): i100 armor (can't be upgraded)
Second Coil: i110 gear
Ramuh Extreme: i110 jewelry
Shiva Extreme: i110 weapons, jewelry
Final Coil: i130-135 gear

Coil & ST are raids, the Extremes are arena boss fights, so I'm not sure if you're putting those together with dungeons. But the lines get blurred a bit among all those things. Your likely progression will be to use a little crafted/GC gear to get into the earliest 50 dungeons, then mix and match your way through dungeon drops & tomestone gear, work on your relic and possibly get a few weapon drops from primals and/or coils (if you do coils) and/or tomestones, working your way through more difficult content.

I wouldn't worry too much about regretting things. You might have to spend a little more time on something than you would otherwise if you buy something "early," but it's not likely to be a massive loss. Going from fresh 50 to raid-ready happens fairly quickly, and nothing is irreversible.

[OUTIILAW]

Info info info

Mkay. So what I'm look at is when I hit 50 get GC armor and weapons.

So dungeons, raids, and primals give tomes (still dont really understand what these are)/ drops; and these tomes (ilvl100-up)/ drops (ilvl90-down) is where i'll be getting my armor going towards end game? Haha. Sorry for going in circles.

[Bixby]

Mkay. So what I'm look at is when I hit 50 get GC armor and weapons.

So dungeons, raids, and primals give tomes (still dont really understand what these are)/ drops; and these tomes (ilvl100-up)/ drops (ilvl90-down) is where i'll be getting my armor going towards end game? Haha. Sorry for going in circles.

Don't be sorry. It's a confusing mess these days, honestly, even without having to figure out what's old info and what's new (people still talk about "philo mats" when philosophy hasn't been obtainable for months). The progression from fresh 50 to best-in-slot is not a clear line, but a bunch of blurry zigzags.

GC weapon when you hit 50, yes. GC armor, I personally wouldn't bother; you get your Artifact armor (the armor that makes you look like your job from classic FFs) from job quests at 45 & 50, and that's good enough to last until you get upgrades. The only slots you'll need to fill in are accessories, and I'd suggest getting those off a crafter/the market board. There's i48-i49 jewelry that will get you started for a reasonable price, and when you're done with it, you can convert it to materia and sell that; the GC gear you'd only be able to turn in for GC seals, which are easy to get.

Tomes are just another kind of currency, like GC seals and allied seals. You get tomes from (mostly) level 50 dungeons, primals, and raids, plus a few other sources (hunts, treasure maps, beast tribe dailies). At 50, the daily roulettes offer bonus tome rewards on top of whatever the content itself rewards.

[OUTIILAW]

info info infooo.

Awesome! Thanks! Ok I think I understand a lot more now. Haha. GC weapons at 50, Artifact Armor at 50 (completely forgot about those), and tomes to gradually get higher ilvl equipment for end game?! Haha. I just hate waste...when it comes to time, spending currency, etc. So the more waste I eliminate the more i'll enjoy the game. Haha.

[Camalott]

If you have a smart device, the Libra Eorzea app (Google Play and iTunes) is a great resource that I constantly use to construct spreadsheets of equipment progressions.

I can compare stats and start to develop a gameplan from it. Sometimes it will tell you where you can get it if it is sold or if it is loot. Sometimes you'll have to cross reference with Google.

[OUTIILAW]

If you have a smart device, the Libra Eorzea app (Google Play and iTunes) is a great resource that I constantly use to construct spreadsheets of equipment progressions.

I can compare stats and start to develop a gameplan from it. Sometimes it will tell you where you can get it if it is sold or if it is loot. Sometimes you'll have to cross reference with Google.

Yeah I got it the other day. It has been very useful. I'll probably make an excel sheet for my progression too now. Haha. Thanks for the idea. xD

[Urthdigger]

When it comes to dungeons and tomes, it basically goes like this: run the high level dungeons you can, and obtain drops from them to gear up once you hit endgame. You'll want to hit areas where the gear is a definite upgrade, but not where you're sorely outclassed. So, starting out you'll likely want dungeons that drop level 60 gear. The libra eorzea, fansites like GamerEscape, and the play guide on the lodestone are handy ways to see what drops a dungeon has. Once you've got a smattering of upgrades, feel free to advance to the next tier.

Alternatively, you can hit the highest level dungeons you can, and skip some of the lower tiers. This CAN be faster, but people won't like to see you do these, and if other people had the same idea you'll likely end up just wiping repeatedly. Crystal Tower seems designed for this, with the first phase dropping ilvl 80 gear, the second phase ilvl 100 gear (and the items to upgrade soldiery gear), and having 24 people so your individual contribution is less.

Now, as you run dungeons (and certain other endgame events like beastman quests) you'll get tomestones. There are two, tomestones of soldiery give level 100 gear that can be upgraded to 110, and tomestones of poetics give.... I think it's level 120 gear that upgrades to 135. They're also used to obtain weapons of their respective tiers, but need an extra item to do so. The item for soldiery drops in Syrcus Tower and the second coil, while the item for poetics drops in final coil and presumably will also drop in the final phase of CT. Anyway, use tomestone gear to upgrade slots you haven't really gotten drops for, and you can eventually use them to fully gear up in almost the best gear.

Now another thing to note is your relic weapon. You can start a quest for this once you beat the main scenario, and continually upgrade it throughout the game. Reaching level 90 is easy, and should be a great weapon to start with. Past that, it gets rather grindy and it's up to you whether to keep going, or get weapons from primals, tomestones, or final coil.

Primals drop various non-armor items. The hard mode of the first 3 and good king moggle mog drop weapons. The extreme modes of those and ultima hard mode drop accessories. Leviathan, ramuh, and shiva all drop weapons from their extreme mode versions, and the latter two drop rings as well. At the moment, only ramuh and shiva don't drop things you can find better of elsewhere for easier, but the others can be useful for stepping stones.

Finally, binding coil is 8-man dungeon content with the hardest fights, and drop armor and accessories from each turn of a given coil, and weapons from the final turn of each coil. At the moment, only the second and final coils are relevant, but you WILL want to be well geared first, at least full level 90 for second coil, and full level 110 for final coil. Still, this is currently how you will get the best gear.

[Niwashi]

I just want to prepare for level 50 and the end game. I don't want to look back regretting doing something I should have waited till later.

The thing is, there really isn't anything you can do at level 20 to prepare for level 50. At 20, you should be focusing on what makes your level 20 game better. Wait until you're 50 to worry about level 50 stuff.

Well, I guess the A and S rank hunts can technically be done at any level, and they do drop the tomes you'll want at endgame, but you won't score well enough to get very many until you near endgame anyway. I'd suggest get into your 40s, probably late 40s, before spending any significant time on hunts. I did actually take part in one on a level 10 character once, but only because it happened to spawn right next to me and I thought it would be fun to see what would happen at that level. I got like 2 myth tomes out of it, which I thought was kind of cool, but on my level 45 (at the time) character, I could have gotten 80 myth, 20 soldiery, and 20 Allied Seals for the same hunt.

As for stuff you could do early in the game and regret later, the only thing I can think of is using up a lot of materia to upgrade leveling gear that you outgrow quickly and then needing to either buy more materia (which can be outrageously expensive for some tiers) or spiritbond to create more (which is time consuming, especially if you don't get the type of materia you were hoping for). At endgame, one of the upgrade tiers for your relic weapon will involve adding lots of materia to it, so you'll want to save the good combat-stat materia for that. (For materia with crafting or gathering stats, there's no equivalent to that relic upgrade, but people generally have more interest in melding their top level 50 gear to best-in-slot parameters than in having melded gear while leveling up.)

So, hunts are the only thing I can think of that you could do, but not efficiently, at your level, and materia is the only thing you might use up too much of (not that you couldn't just get more if you did use up all the materia you had while leveling, just that re-obtaining it adds another grind).