Tales of Adventure MSQ and Job Level which one to do first?

[Sebille]

If I want to level a job to 70 and also complete the main story quest to Shadowbringers, does it matter which one I do first?

I'm a veteran MMO player and I would prefer to save time.

Oh and I was strongly considering Scholar or Summoner as the job to level, but I am still open to what job.

I played a Red Mage in FFXI, up to level 11 or so.. what a difficult game that was.

[Stepjam]

You'd need to do both if you instantly want to be at Shadowbringers, order wouldn't really matter.

If you care at all about plot though, I'd highly recommend not doing either, at least not doing the story skip. Shadowbringers is the culmination of multiple plot threads introduced over the course of the entire story. Though getting the point of the story isn't that hard, a lot of it will be more impactful if you are familiar with the characters and what they've gone through up to this point.

[Sebille]

I suppose one could level a job and then try to go through the MSQ. How long would that take?

[Iscah]

I suppose one could level a job and then try to go through the MSQ. How long would that take?

You level a job *by* going through the MSQ, basically. (Possibly two jobs if you're getting overlevelled and want to juggle the two.)

Quests give EXP and are designed to guide you through the game.

Time-wise... this post says eight days if you rush it, though I'd suggest at least a month or two.

[Stepjam]

That's the hard part is that the MSQ is actually really long, there's no way around it. If you wait for the next patch (which is out in June or July depending on coronavirus based push backs), ARR's MSQ is getting about a 13% cutting down, but as is it's a long time. On one hand that means you are getting a lot of bang for your buck, but there is a lot of padding in ARR. It's much better in HW which is the tricky part about the recommendation, but you still got like 200 quests to get from ARR to HW.

So this is totally judgement free. You said you aren't new to MMOs, so if what you want is the endgame content, feel free to do the jump. But if you wanna experience the story, consider playing through.

Also a third option that I totally forgot until just now is that the game now has NG+, letting you replay completed story content. At the moment ARR isn't available in NG+, but it should be added with the next patch along with the ARR culling.
So really it's up to you. On the argument of just playing through the game like normal, you do save $50 dollars AND gain a free fantasia after beating the final boss of base ARR (letting you basically remake your gender/race/appearance/all that jazz minus your name, which is another item on mogstation). You don't get the fantasia if you boost.

Edit:Also just in case you were wondering, NG+ doesn't give any rewards at all aside from exp gained from killing stuff. It's not a method of leveling up alternate classes, it's purely just for re-experiencing the story with your existing character.

[Iscah]

It's also worth mentioning that FFXIV is intended to be about enjoying the story and not just rushing to endgame. It seems to be a common complaint that there's just not enough to do for high-intensity players who've gotten through everything already.

Though of course, on the other hand there are people complaining about the story length too...

Personally, Heavensward and Shadowbringers were my favourites from what I think of as a series of RPGs, but (as was mentioned earlier) fully appreciating Shadowbringers relies on already being familiar with the world and characters.

[RicaRuin]

Also, being a veteran MMO player doesn't necessarily mean one understands the systems and mechanics of FF XIV all at once. If you never played before, I'd suggest to run low level Dungeons working your way up, even if you decide to use the Skips.

[VictorTheed]

No it don't matter, but if you're wanting to boost a job to lvl 70 and boost your story progression to the start of Shadow bringers then you'll have to buy the story jump and job lvl jump, but it don't matter what order u get em in.

Plus you mentioned scholar and summoner, cool thing about those 2 jobs is if you lvl one then the other lvls with it, so if you got a lvl 80 Summoner then you'll also have a lvl 80 scholar, also rdm is a very fun job to play in this game, u might like it as well.

[Iscah]

Another thing if you're looking at buying a job skip but not an MSQ skip... as well as arcanist's two-jobs-for-the-price-of-one effect mentioned above, the most efficient jobs to buy if you want to play them ASAP would be astrologian, dark knight or machinist, as these aren't naturally unlocked until you reach Heavensward.

Also, whatever job you boost, you will effectively get Lv50 red mage, Lv50 samurai, Lv60 gunbreaker and Lv60 dancer along with it, because being Lv70 will make you eligible to unlock those classes as soon as you can access the cities where the quests are located - one of which will be your starting city, and the other two accessible at Lv15 of the story.

(Also I'd recommend Ul'dah for your starting city if you're not skipping story - it has the best of the three early-game storylines.)