Castrum Fluminis and item level

[Lilseph]

ilvl 307 is about where one should be after following the MSQ and doing the compulsory dungeons, but not running all the optional duties

That is what makes the ilvl requirement of Castrum Fluminis so annoying, because it is such a huge increase in required item level compared to what the MSQ has required before.
The last required duty before Castrum Fluminis was Drowned City of Skalla with a minimum ilvl of 300.

The jump from 300 to 335 is pretty steep, and comes with no warning.
You are following the MSQ, enjoying the story and then - POOF - you have to break off from the story for a couple of weeks just to grind gear before you can continue.

Because it's content that dropped 6 months after the first set of ilvls were implemented. It makes sense. What warning do you want? "Hey, you should go gear yourself up before keep going". A couple of weeks to get that ilvl? Not really. It's fairly quick, specially with Sigma NM being out, Rabanastre and Ridorana. Even both Fractal and Hell's lid drop 325 that helps to pump your average up in par with other gear you can get throughout the week. The tomestones you get from doing that let you buy Lost Allagan gear which is ilvl 330.

The Final Steps of Faith was the same, it was the previous ilvl's cap -5 (240 at the time, 210 before that, so 205). Right now the cap is 370, being 340 the previous cap, -5 is 335.

EDIT: Regarding the gear grinding. It's an MMO, that thing kind of happen. I personally find it fun to make my character stronger, so it's all subjective.

[Iscah]

Sure, there have been steady increases and “catchups” and time to gear up between story chapters for people who’ve been at Lv70 for a while already. But for someone who just got through Stormblood this week? You’re level 70, and so is every single quest from 4.1 to 4.3. There’s nothing to stop people from doing all that MSQ at a run, and nothing to encourage you to update your ilevel from Skalla until you hit Castrum. The dungeons are optional, and the MSQ isn’t giving you gear upgrades. It’s easy for a new player to be caught out.

In future when they can just buy their i400 (or whatever) gear with poetics the instant they hit Lv70, it won’t be a problem any more. But for now, it is.

[HyoMinPark]

Sure, there have been steady increases and “catchups” and time to gear up between story chapters for people who’ve been at Lv70 for a while already. But for someone who just got through Stormblood this week? You’re level 70, and so is every single quest from 4.1 to 4.3. There’s nothing to stop people from doing all that MSQ at a run, and nothing to encourage you to update your ilevel from Skalla until you hit Castrum. The dungeons are optional, and the MSQ isn’t giving you gear upgrades. It’s easy for a new player to be caught out.

In future when they can just buy their i400 (or whatever) gear with poetics the instant they hit Lv70, it won’t be a problem any more. But for now, it is.

It really isn't a problem, though. This game throws tomestones at you. Even with Mendacity being capped, there is still Creation and Rabanastre Coins to give you instant i340 for very little effort. Heck, you can get a few pieces to up your item level to i325, and then hop into Swallow's Compass for i345 gear - the most non-demanding dungeon this game has probably ever seen.


I started this game back at the tail end of 3.0, beginning of 3.1. By the time I made it to endgame (within 1 month of starting), it only took me a couple days to grind out enough old Law tomestones to up my item level enough to progress with the 60 content, and, by then, I'd capped for the first time on Esoterics, and bought an i200 piece with it. I had not been keeping up with roulettes, only doing MSQ up to this point. I was not "months" away from the casual endgame.

It's only a problem for people who don't put in the effort to do it. This game doesn't ask much of its playerbase; item level requirements for story or "casual" level-capped content more than 30 ilvls below the current cap is really not that high of a demand.

[MistakeNot]

It's only a problem for people who don't put in the effort to do it. This game doesn't ask much of its playerbase; item level requirements for story or "casual" level-capped content more than 30 ilvls below the current cap is really not that high of a demand.

It is completely irrelevant what the current ilvl cap is. It could be 340 or 12000 - it doesn't matter.
The point is the sudden big jump in ilvl requirement in the MSQ. Not the first time that has happened, but that does not make it any better.

It is not a big problem for those who are doing content as it is released. It will not be a problem when the next expansion comes out and current gear becomes much easier to get.
It is a problem for those who are just now reaching level 70 and who have yet to do any of the optional level 70 dungeons.

[HyoMinPark]

It is completely irrelevant what the current ilvl cap is. It could be 340 or 12000 - it doesn't matter.
The point is the sudden big jump in ilvl requirement in the MSQ. Not the first time that has happened, but that does not make it any better.

It is not a big problem for those who are doing content as it is released. It will not be a problem when the next expansion comes out and current gear becomes much easier to get.
It is a problem for those who are just now reaching level 70 and who have yet to do any of the optional level 70 dungeons.

This could be easily rectified if they stopped removing at least 1 dungeon from the post-main expansion MSQ. Meeting item level requirements for level 60 post-Heavensward content was never an issue for me when I first started playing, and I did only the MSQ from the day I started to the day I hit level 60—because the dungeons during at least gave me pieces to bump up my item level enough to progress. That, and Law Tomestones were ridiculously easy to come by... much like Creation Tomestones are now.

Like someone has mentioned before, this will stop being an issue in 5.0 when they start handing you gear for level-70 post-Stormblood MSQ. But even still, gear and tomestones are so easy to come across in this game even for newer players, I don’t really find “this big jump in item level” to be that big of a deal unless, again, you’re someone who only does MSQ and nothing else.

Considering that people in i340+ can barely put enough of their skills together to clear Castrum Fluminis NM cleanly since Day 1, I appreciate the item level requirement, and I wouldn’t really call it irrelevant. My talk of the item level cap is to show that this isn’t something new; this was a thing as much in ARR and HW as it is in SB now (Chrysalis, Final Steps—both major MSQ trials, both had item levels ~35 item levels below current cap). At least it can provide an HP cushion; I’d rather not see someone at i307 in there, since the content is the sole piece of challenging MSQ content in Stormblood, save for Royal Menagerie. Again, this game barely asks anything of its playerbase; an i335 item level requirement for a relatively challenging story trial is reasonable enough.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It is a problem for those who are just now reaching level 70 and who have yet to do any of the optional level 70 dungeons.

There's a simple solution to this problem. Stop blitzing through the MSQ and take a deter to unlock those dungeons so you can obtain Creation or do the 24 man raids. It takes less than a day to have everything unlocked; perhaps a few more if you're only playing a handful of hours a day/week. If that is too much, well, sorry the game doesn't provide even more hand outs than it already does. Come 4.4, should we just start gifting people i380 gear upon release? God forbid you have to do side story content.

[MistakeNot]

There's a simple solution to this problem. Stop blitzing through the MSQ and take a deter to unlock those dungeons so you can obtain Creation or do the 24 man raids. It takes less than a day to have everything unlocked; perhaps a few more if you're only playing a handful of hours a day/week. If that is too much, well, sorry the game doesn't provide even more hand outs than it already does. Come 4.4, should we just start gifting people i380 gear upon release? God forbid you have to do side story content.

The problem is not the ilvl requirement, nor the need to do side content. The problem is the big jump in ilvl requirement which necessitates breaking off the MSQ and doing a lot of side content in a big chunk.

There should have been 2-3 more mandatory dungeons and/or trials between Drowned City of Skalla and Castrum Fluminis, each with a smaller increase of ilvl requirement. Then the progression would feel far more natural, and the grinding more spread out.

[DrWho2010]

Are you one of those people that just runs things once and never does any roulettes at all? there's your problem right there if that's the case.

[ZJyn]

The biggest problem here, to me, isn't that the item level cap is what it is; it's that it feels inorganic compared to the way that it flowed in Heavensward due to how they decided to pull the dungeons away from the MSQ.

As someone had mentioned before, Swallow's Compass, and other 4.X dungeons, have a required item level that progresses in such a way that you would, if following it, find yourself pretty dang close to Castrum. They just aren't part of the main story. So a player is going to find themselves able to progress everything in the MSQ without touching any of he dungeons, trials, etc, and then suddenly... boom... they hit a brick wall.

It would have likely felt a lot more organic if they had included the dungeons as part of the Main Story, not part of the Four Lords.

[Vaer]

The biggest problem here, to me, isn't that the item level cap is what it is; it's that it feels inorganic compared to the way that it flowed in Heavensward due to how they decided to pull the dungeons away from the MSQ.

As someone had mentioned before, Swallow's Compass, and other 4.X dungeons, have a required item level that progresses in such a way that you would, if following it, find yourself pretty dang close to Castrum. They just aren't part of the main story. So a player is going to find themselves able to progress everything in the MSQ without touching any of he dungeons, trials, etc, and then suddenly... boom... they hit a brick wall.

It would have likely felt a lot more organic if they had included the dungeons as part of the Main Story, not part of the Four Lords.

I think this is a result of people saying the MSQ takes too long, so they pulled the stuff out to shorten it. (When SB is legacy you will be able to skip all this stuff due to the gear boxes they add, shortening the leveling process instead of being forced to do all this stuff to get to the next xpac)

They could put all the stuff back in, but OP would just be locked and still have to grind anyways which is his main complaint. (He wouldn't be able to get into Hell's Lid/Fractal since he would be 3 short.) After he gets those dungeons, he would be locked out of Byakko since it is 325. Then he would need another 5 levels for Swallow's etc. It would be back to ARR 2.x style where the first half of the patch story was just fluff and the second part was the actual story.

Right now you can bypass most of the stuff and you have the choice of acquiring gear the way you want to meet the requirement.