Returning player questions

[bronstrong]

Hello,

I quit the game a year ago and ditched my lvl57 Monk I was like halfway through the Heavensward campaign I think. I have come back to play the expansion and rolled a samurai to try out the new class. Now he is sitting at level 50 not sure where to go from here in terms of leveling and finishing the campaign and moving on to the new expansion.

[Rongway]

If your goal is to catch up to 57~60 quickly so that you can continue the story on SAM, one of the popular options is to level in Palace of the Dead (Lv17 quest in Gridania Adventurers' Guild, "The House That Death Built"). Once you clear floors 1-50 (a fairly easy feat), you can begin fresh runs at floor 51. Between Lv50 and LV60, you'll gain a level per 3 to 5 runs (3/Lv for low 50s, 5/Lv for high 50s). One run is 10 floors, 51-60, 61-70, etc; you can continue going deeper, or restart and do 51-60 over and over.

This is probably your fastest option outside of making friends with a tank/healer who can run level-appropriate dungeons with you.

[Niwashi]

As far as leveling, roulettes and then level appropriate dungeons are a good way if you have some friends to run them with (in particular if you have a tank friend to run them with) so that you can avoid the DF queues. But the long queue times for DPS are making a lot of people choose Palace of the Dead instead, where you're not disadvantaged by being in the most popular role.

As far as finishing the campaign and moving on from there, if after such a long break you've lost track of quite where you were, there's a new Main Scenario Guide feature to help you find where to pick up on it again.

That will tell you where you need to go once your SAM is at the right level for it. If it's not showing, it can be toggled on/off from:
Character Configuration -> UI Settings -> HUD -> Display Main Scenario Guide

And you might want to go to the "Completed" section of the quest Journal and read through the descriptions of the last few MSQ you'd completed if you want to refresh your memory as to what had been happening in the story. The next few quests will probably make more sense if you do.