Curious about leveling speed

[Zfz]

I often see people claim on the forum or in other places, that it's easy to go from 1 to 50 in 2-3 days, but nobody ever provides details, at most only saying that they themselves did it, but with no details whatsoever.

Has anyone created a new character, leveled it from 1 to 50, including finishing the Ultima quest fight, within 3 calendar days? That is, including sleep, so reasonably at most 72-15=57 hours actual play time.

Or are they referring to leveling an alt class that has the armory bonus, in an FC with the EXP gain bonus active, plus friends helping run through all the dungeons or even dungeon spamming? Or are they doing it over half a year and only logging in when they have rested bonus?

If you have personally leveled a new character from 1 to 50 within the time span of 3 calendar days, i.e. before you ding 50 you have only ever logged in on that character on at most 3 separate calendar dates, could you share what you did, and the approximate number of hours that got you to 50? Or did you do it in 2.0 during the FATE zerg era?

For example "I got to Lv.30 by lunch on the first day, then I remember when I woke up on the second day I was already queuing for Garuda", something along those lines.


I'm genuinely curious, because people make it sound like they play for 10-15 hours a day and finish it in a weekend.


If anyone's really proud of having achieved this and is willing to reveal their LodeStone achievement page, that would put my curiosity to rest permanently.

For example, my first achievement of 10 quests was recorded on 2013/8/16, and got my GLA+MAR+CNJ+ACN all to Lv 20 on 2013/8/19, before I even joined the Immortal Flames on 2013/8/24, and by the time I ding 50 on my PLD (2013/10/09), I've also got past Lv 10 on many of the crafting classes and Lv 20 on the gathering classes.

So playing casually, it took me almost 2 months to ding 50 on my first class.

The achievement list will be definite proof.

[kyuven]

What most people mean when they say this is that you can take a new CLASS to 50 in a few days. While it IS possible to do in a few days with a fresh character, the number of unlocks make it impractical unless you FATE grind.
If you look at my achievement list, you'll see I did exactly that with Rogue/NIN: It took me almost exactly 3 days to hit 50.
But I already HAVE a class at lvl 50 (several, in fact) so i received the EXP bonus, in addition to my FC bonus and food. Plus this was when the ROG was new, so FATE grinding was super easy with tons of mobs to kill.

[tocsin]

I leveled my first class from 1-50 in about a month.

I started as CNJ, spent about 7-8 hours a day playing relatively casually, making sure to do my daily roulette. I also quested, a lot, and took the time to level my crafting classes a bit, mainly because I fell in love with crafting from day one I will say, though, that I did have a bit of help from the refer a friend circlet and fc xp bonuses, though, so its not a solo level experience.

The main scenario, however, I didn't finish until like month 3. I got to lvl 50 before even beating Titan. Unless you care about battle class endgame, the main scenario is relatively unneccesary.

Also, leveling multiple classes slowly is REALLY inefficient. higher level cross class skills are amazing, and you can help your low levels much easier with a single level 50 character on-hand.

[Zfz]

While it IS possible

This is what I'm talking about: everyone claims "it is possible" yet few if anyone has done it. Everything's based on leveling alt classes which has the powerful Armoury Bonus. And FATE grind is only efficient when there are hordes of people doing it, i.e. during launch month, during the month when new classes came out. What about now?

PS: Also LodeStone achievement lists are private by default. I would have had more material to work with if it was public by default.

Also, leveling multiple classes slowly is REALLY inefficient. higher level cross class skills are amazing, and you can help your low levels much easier with a single level 50 character on-hand.

Cross class skills are not necessarily at all on the leveling path save a few special cases like Provoke (WTF Square Enix) where a crucial tool to the role is missing. And as long as you have a class with higher level, you get the Armoury Bonus on every other battle class, so it isn't necessary to first get one to "50" before working on others. Having a 50 does mean that sometimes you get to ride into a camp of enemies, pick up the quest objective and leave on your 50, but if you do that on all the quests you probably slow down the leveling speed.

Still, I'm really only interested in the leveling speed of a fresh character. Perhaps it turns out that this "2-3" days started as "a week or so" and people gradually shorten it in their comments wanting to appear knowledgeable or being good at the game, vaguely referring it to "a few days", and finally "2-3 days".

There's also the factor of that particular mob grind bug position (AOE hits mobs but mobs can't hit you), a particular FATE with infinite mob spawns as long as you don't complete it, and the Bomb guildhest oversight---all of these granted extremely efficient EXP gains and were all patched away. Some people may have been using these now unavailable shortcuts in their leveling but genuinely forgot about this fact because it was considered "normal" at that time.

[JimboTCB]

I've been playing for a little over two weeks now at what I'd consider a "normal" speed (couple of hours a night during the week, more at weekends) I've got two War classes at 40 so far (started as Pugilist switching to Rogue, got bored and swapped to Lancer) and I'm just trucking through the main quest at a reasonably casual pace. Considering the amount of basically unskippable main quest scenario stuff I've had to do to unlock everything, I don't believe for a second that a new character could blitz their way to 50 in three days without substantial assistance from people rushing them through all the dungeons and stuff. Hell, I didn't even get my chocobo until about level 25 and that in itself is a huge timesink when you're forced to run everywhere on foot.

Sure, if you've already done all the unlocks on one character and you're just spamming hunt log entries and FATEs to level another class, it'd probably be quite a lot faster, but definitely not for a new player.

[Arkista]

Going by my lodestone.
8/16/13 level 10 Beta ( played lots of different classes)
8/17/13 level 20 beta capped at level 20
8/24/13 early access started at 2am PDT ( I had a late start that day was in the PM)

8/25/13 level 30 ( I remember having a hard time logging into the game for two days cause of server issues 90k days lol)
8/27/13 level 40 (hit 100 fate achievement, 10 instant dungeons, 20 battle leves, 7 guildhest same day)
8/28/13 level 50 (bumb on a log achievement)

Catrum/Praet mapping was 8/28 as well.

All in all it took me 50-60hrs to hit level 50 with my FIRST job. Hope this is what you were asking for. I'm pretty sure there are people who did it faster than 50hrs.

[SinisterJointss]

All in all fate grinds in between dungeon ques is the fastest way to get to 50. Thats pretty much it.... once you get a job to 50 the secondary ones are a little faster (50% bonus xp) so.

The one thing that will slow you down is the initial 1-50 story quests as they do take a lot of time.

[MageBlack]

Also got to find out WHEN they did this. At the beginning of 2.0 the FATE train was so strong that was all people did and could level up very quickly. they skipped all sorts of content though and didnt do story or dungeons or any of that, just straight FATE train. I wouldnt doubt that this was how people do the quick leveling. While it may work to get you to max level it doesnt teach you how to play the class in a party setting, you dont earn your 5lv skills, and you miss out on the majority of what the game actually has to offer. People getting to 50 in a few days are min/maxers, only looking for the single most beneficial portion of the game then focus solely on that. I wouldnt worry about competing or replicating it, play the game at your own pace and have fun.

[Zfz]

That is indeed what I was looking for. Thanks!

I thought 8/16 was Early Access, so it was Beta 4...hmmm. How could I forget that. :3

Indeed, during the launch FATE grinding was the fastest way to level with FATEs all finishing in minutes. Would you say this FATE grind will be of the same leveling speed if someone was to do it today with a new character?

I wouldnt worry about competing or replicating it, play the game at your own pace and have fun.

Thanks for the advice, although as you could find out from my LodeStone profile, I have no problem with leveling (Lv50*2, Master Crafter, soon to be Master Gatherer). I was just curious about this because I often see people saying to newbies that 1-50 takes 2-3 days easily. IMO "easily" would take at least 1-2 weeks of consistent play, of say 4-5 hours a day, not the 50-60 hours in 3 days meaning close to 20 hours a day of play time.

[SinisterJointss]

no, dungeons give way more xp than fates do as far as time per is concerned. However, dps que's suck bad, like really bad so doing fates whiule you que dungeons is the way to go. If you are a tank its pretty much instant que so not much time for fates. Healer is almost instant also but you have time to do fates with that