Returning Player Needs Guidance

[Mythrella]

Hi! A friend and I are in the same boat as you. It looks like you had quit about the same time as us and are in about equal gear (I didn’t log out in my main job, i79ish).

I think the main thing is going to be, do you want to upgrade your relic? From the replies I got here and after talking to a few players in-game, the main things I understand we should focus on:

1. We need to catch up on all the main storyline to start Heavensward’s story when it releases.
2. If you want to upgrade your relic, make it a priority right now as it’s a long process. The quest probably starts for you at Gerolt in North Shroud.
3. How geared you want to be will ofc be determined by the time you spend. In the thread I asked the same as you did, Crystal Tower sounded like a good starting point which could be chain run for upgrades.

I did some digging online last night and found:

Guide for the i90+ relic weapon upgrade path:
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Zodiac_Weapons

Patch notes which will give good starting points for quest chains that may have been overlooked:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...patchnote_log/

My post here asking much of the same you did where I got some good advice from veterans about unlocking quests for poetics currency, where to get gear, etc:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...turning-player

A googledoc guide via reddit about “you just hit 50 in 2.5”:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...0_in_patch_25/

If you want to find a FC and are open to transferring I think reddit may be an easier place:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVrecruitment
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/

Personally I’ll probably work on the main story, getting just geared enough just to progress through that only, and alt jobs and the gold saucer while waiting on Heavensward. I don’t think I’ll have the time and gil to upgrade my relic before Heavensward, I only have the i90 one as well. Oh well. Good luck!

[Risvertasashi]

If you want to raid, I actually don't recommend a relic; it's very very long, Heavensward is but 2 months away, and you can get an i130 weapon much faster.

There's a guide to gearing up in my signature but the short answer is you'll want to get i110/i100 ASAP. There will be a lot of new dungeons since you played so take advantage of first time soldiery tomestone bonuses. Once your ilvl is high enough, you'll want to start running "expert roulette". This dungeon mode will cap you on poetics before the reset with time to spare if you can run it every day.

If you can't do it every day, PVP roulette is another 40 poetics/80 sold for doing almost nothing. In fact, PVP roulette is available much sooner so you might start there for earning poetics.

If you can stomach World of Darkness, you can get i120 left side pieces there. Poetics is sadly still under a weekly cap; WoD and FCoB are not. You'll probably want to get some WoD pieces as, at this point, not many raid groups are going to take someone in i110.

WoD and the other CTs have a weekly quest. The Encrypted tomestone will get you an i130 weapon. Hunts will let you get upgrade items (carbontwine, carboncoat) faster than the CT weekly.

Welcome back and good luck!