Grand Cosmos ilvl gate

[Wana_]

Hi so I just got to this part, I need 430 gear level to do this Grand Cosmos place. When Endwalker comes out, are these gear requirements gonna go away? The MSQ didn't give me any 430 accessories so I gotta track down ilvl 430 necklace, rings, etc. just so I can keep going with the quests.

Later on I read that there's another gate later on that's 460-something and i'd rather just wait for Endwalker and go through the quest line normally without gear gates in it.

[Baxcel]

No minimum item levels wont change or go away with Endwalker. Your best bet is one of 3 options. 1)grind past dungeons for accy. 2)Use Tomestones in Eulmore 3)craft or use the market board and buy max level gear

[Stepjam]

If you got some gil, just go buy Exarchic gear off the marketboard (make sure it's high quality. You've wasted your money if you buy NQ gear for anything other than glamour) or grind some tomestones. Crystarium gear which you can get with the uncapped tomestones will get you to 490 and while you grind those, you'll be getting revelation that can be spent on cryptlurker gear which will put you above and beyond where you need to be before Endwalker drops.

[MistakeNot]

Hi so I just got to this part, I need 430 gear level to do this Grand Cosmos place. When Endwalker comes out, are these gear requirements gonna go away? The MSQ didn't give me any 430 accessories so I gotta track down ilvl 430 necklace, rings, etc. just so I can keep going with the quests.

Later on I read that there's another gate later on that's 460-something and i'd rather just wait for Endwalker and go through the quest line normally without gear gates in it.

The requirements are unlikely to go away, but after Endwalker is released you will probably get more gear from the MSQ, thus making it easier to fulfill the requirements.

Meanwhile, you have a couple of options.
The first is what people are supposed to do - run the various level 80 dungeons and raids to get gear.
The second is to buy the needed gear from the MB. Last I looked you could get a full set of HQ-crafted i510 gear for a mere one or two million gil.

[Iscah]

The starting point to get above i430 is the Eden raids and possibly the NieR alliance raids (once you get to i435). The first part of Eden released soon after expansion launch and has the lowest bar to get in; you can quickly acquire the antique pieces you need to start trading for i450 gear, especially jewellery, and pull your level up enough to continue. You also may have enough Allegory tomes to start purchasing i490 Crystarium gear.

Your weapon is generally the slowest thing to upgrade through normal gameplay, so you may want to jump straight to buying an Exarchic crafted weapon, or if you've done the Ivalice alliance raids then you can get a free i485 weapon by doing a follow-up quest in Kugane that starts the level 80 relic weapon questline.

You'll need i465 to complete patch 5.3 so I suggest getting to that as soon as you can. After 5.3 there's a break in the story where you might want to finish off the raid quests and get more gear from those.

Item level requirements are never going to go away, but they do get easier to overcome. Once Endwalker launches, players will receive free gear (probably Crystarium) from quests and go straight to buying Cryptlurker gear with poetics.

[Frizze]

As the others said, the "gear gates" arent going to go away. So what do you do? Aside from waiting until November, you have several options. You should have access to 3 level 80 dungeons. One you did for story, two are optional(and worth doing for lore/music). All 3 will drop the 430 belt and jewelry. In addition, youll get the level 80 tomes for clearing them(including the first time bonus for the optional ones). The blue and white ones buy 490 gear, the red and blue ones buy 520 gear. You can get more tomes by running roulettes with a level 80 class(alliance, normal, trials, and pvp being your best payoffs for now). If you participate in hunts and have some of the clan nutsy "sacks"(hunts also being a good source for 80 tomes), those can also be used to buy 460 gear too.

All the explanations aside, just playing at level 80 for a few days will tend to provide you with the means to upgrade and bypass these gates. Its not nearly as hard as you might be thinking it is.

[Jojoya]

Hi so I just got to this part, I need 430 gear level to do this Grand Cosmos place. When Endwalker comes out, are these gear requirements gonna go away? The MSQ didn't give me any 430 accessories so I gotta track down ilvl 430 necklace, rings, etc. just so I can keep going with the quests.

Later on I read that there's another gate later on that's 460-something and i'd rather just wait for Endwalker and go through the quest line normally without gear gates in it.

Gear gates do not go away. They exist to ensure players have the gear needed to complete the dungeon.

Once Endwalker is released, there will be gear coffers added at various points along the 5.1 to 5.5 MSQs so players just getting to that part of the MSQ will have the minimum gear needed without having to grind out tomestones. Those rewards will not be granted to you retroactively if you've already completed the quest that will reward them.

Since 5.1 to 5.55 is still current endgame, you're expected to obtain the gear through normal end game gear grinds. Since you've already completed the quests leading to Grand Cosmos, you will need to get some gear from other sources to continue.

Doing some of the daily roulettes and/or level 80 Rank A/S hunts will give you Allegory and/or Revelation tomestones to buy i490/520 gear in Eulmore. Sacks of Nuts from the hunts will buy i440/460 gear at the hunt vendors in Crystarium and Eulmore. You also have access to the Amaurot dungeon, which drops i430 accessories and there's always the marketboard.

My personal recommendation is to try to join Rank A hunt trains for your data center (you can join cross world trains in addition to those on your home world). They've very good when it comes to getting gear currencies. A full 12 mark train will give a total of 120 Revelation (up to the weekly cap of 900), 240 Allegory, 360 Poetics and 480 Sacks of Nuts. There's no cap on how many trains you can join per day.

If you're trying to avoid any sort of group content, you can get the daily hunt bills to earn Sacks of Nuts plus a bit of gil. Completing all 3 daily bills is worth 110 Sacks of Nuts and about 17,000 gil. There's also a weekly bill to kill a Rank B elite that's worth an additional 100 Sacks of Nuts plus 5,000 gil This are all intended to be done solo so you don't need to worry about grouping with other players. It will be slower for gearing this way but you'll be able to get the gear you need to continue. A set of i440 gear costs 420 Sacks of Nuts or i460 gear 865 Sacks of Nuts (you'll need to get one ring from a different source to complete a gear set).

[Wana_]

Thanks for the replies, everyone is so helpful.

I managed to get passed 430 ilvl and now i'm back on track enjoying the MSQ. I only have 1million gil so I didn't try the marketboard at first. I ran the Amarout dungeon a few times and collected all the accessories I needed save one ring since I can't wear the same one twice. Unlocked the other two dungeons only to find they dropped the same ring so I was stuck there. Then I checked the marketboard, the ring was like 200k but I found my weapon was only like 80k so I so I went for that and my ilvl shot up. It seems crazy that I could either spend a week grinding for stones or only a minute just buying the stuff.

[Iscah]

It seems crazy that I could either spend a week grinding for stones or only a minute just buying the stuff.

It's because you're coming in at the tail end of the process after they've released two more tiers of gear upgrades. At the time Grand Cosmos was released, you could only get gear around i450-460.

You don't exclusively have to grind for tomes to buy upgraded gear, either – Eden is going to drop decent stuff much faster than you can earn the tomes to buy something equivalent.