Late to Eorzea, what to do before EW?

[LitheSuxman]

Just finished ShB 5.0 msq, now I am somewhat lost as to what should I do before EW launch.

Should I spend my time finishing and unlocking side contents instead of grinding end game to raise my ilv from 430 to 530, which I assume will become obsolete once EW launch with level cap raised?

After getting to 5.55, I have plans to save up some tomestone to buy lv70 gears for the 2 new jobs. So that's for sure is on my list. Given such short period of time left, what else should I prioritize?

[Kahnom]

I would suggest you to get your main job to highest ilv as much as possible so in END you don’t have to worry about your gears for the early level.
But if you’re not quite satisfying with your current main then you can taking risk leveling new jobs knowing full well that you might not like it at the end.

TLDR; Gamble your time and resources with new jobs or trust your current main and take them to the moon.

[Momo_Kozuki]

-Buy ilv510 items from Marketboard for the class you want to play in EW.
-Prepare lv70 poetic gear for reaper/healer if you want to play these classes. Get Maiming/Healing set, specifically.

-Cap 2,000 of each type of tome, as you can convert allegory and revelation to poetic later.

-Empty your leve allowance with coffee biscuit level. Don't need to craft. You can just buy HQ ones from marketboard, and it is still profitable. Require a lv78 culinarian, though
-Finish Gold Saucer's weekly challenge log.
-Finish a wondrous tail book next week but don't turn in, so that when EW launches, you can instantly gains half of a level bar for your class of choice. Do the book again on the launch week and get another half of the bar.

[Skivvy]

-Buy ilv510 items from Marketboard for the class you want to play in EW.
-Prepare lv70 poetic gear for reaper/healer if you want to play these classes. Get Maiming/Healing set, specifically.

-Cap 2,000 of each type of tome, as you can convert allegory and revelation to poetic later.

-Empty your leve allowance with coffee biscuit level. Don't need to craft. You can just buy HQ ones from marketboard, and it is still profitable. Require a lv78 culinarian, though
-Finish Gold Saucer's weekly challenge log.
-Finish a wondrous tail book next week but don't turn in, so that when EW launches, you can instantly gains half of a level bar for your class of choice. Do the book again on the launch week and get another half of the bar.

Do the leves reset in full with the expansion?

[Momo_Kozuki]

Do the leves reset in full with the expansion?

Don't think so, but the gold from leve will be nerfed to counter Gil inflation, so better to do it while it is still good.

[Drkdays]

The game director says it would be good to do the Bahumat raids at lv 50 in preparation for the Endwalker story.

[Iscah]

I don't think it's worth paying for gear on the marketboard at this late stage, except possibly a weapon. You're better to get what gear you can while completing content. You only need to reach i490 to clear all story content and i495 for the highest "casual" content (the third alliance raid), so paying for i510 isn't necessary just to get through it (though it does of course bring your average up).

On the other hand, do check whether the crafted gear is something you'll want long term for glamour. If so, you may as well buy it now while it has practical use on top of the glamour value.

If you wait two weeks to do the 5.X MSQ you'll get free i490 gear from it.

If you'd rather get into it sooner, you can start building up your ilevel by completing the 5.X side content starting with the Eden raids and possibly the first part of the Bozjan Resistance quests to get your free i485 starter relic weapon.

You'll also get a good amount of the mid-range "allegory" tomes from roulettes if you do them with your level 80 character, along with a smaller amount of the top-tier "revelation" tones, so you can be decently geared quite quickly even if it's a bit of a patchwork of different tiers.

Outside of the endgame gear treadmill, the story writer for Endwalker has recommended that you do the Binding Coil and Omega quest lines if you haven't already. (She actually recommended prettymuch all the side stories in the game, but singles out those two as most important.)

[Floortank]

I don't think it's worth paying for gear on the marketboard at this late stage, except possibly a weapon. You're better to get what gear you can while completing content. You only need to reach i490 to clear all story content and i495 for the highest "casual" content (the third alliance raid), so paying for i510 isn't necessary just to get through it (though it does of course bring your average up).

On the other hand, do check whether the crafted gear is something you'll want long term for glamour. If so, you may as well buy it now while it has practical use on top of the glamour value.

If you wait two weeks to do the 5.X MSQ you'll get free i490 gear from it.

If you'd rather get into it sooner, you can start building up your ilevel by completing the 5.X side content starting with the Eden raids and possibly the first part of the Bozjan Resistance quests to get your free i485 starter relic weapon.

You'll also get a good amount of the mid-range "allegory" tomes from roulettes if you do them with your level 80 character, along with a smaller amount of the top-tier "revelation" tones, so you can be decently geared quite quickly even if it's a bit of a patchwork of different tiers.

Outside of the endgame gear treadmill, the story writer for Endwalker has recommended that you do the Binding Coil and Omega quest lines if you haven't already. (She actually recommended prettymuch all the side stories in the game, but singles out those two as most important.)

Time is more valuable than gil in the last week before expansion.

Definitely buy the 510 gear, except for the belt. Unless it's very cheap a belt will be a waste of gil.

[Iscah]

Time is more valuable than gil in the last week before expansion.

That depends on what your goals are and how much money you have.

Also, if you're planning to do the side content anyway then it makes sense to do it now when it can save you some gil. You can very quickly get up to the second tier of Eden, which gives you i480 gear. Some of that, some tome gear and whatever you pick up from MSQ dungeons will get you well on the way to i490 and then if you really need to, you buy crafted gear to replace your weakest items at the end of it.

For that matter, in less than two weeks you'll be able to get augmented Cryptlurker i530 gear with poetics, so you can replace some more pieces then.

Overall I'd say the priority is doing all the story content you can get through once, doing those specific older raids that have been recommended, and not trying to gear up fully until 6.0 changes the level 80 gear to poetics.

[Floortank]

That depends on what your goals are and how much money you have.

Also, if you're planning to do the side content anyway then it makes sense to do it now when it can save you some gil. You can very quickly get up to the second tier of Eden, which gives you i480 gear. Some of that, some tome gear and whatever you pick up from MSQ dungeons will get you well on the way to i490 and then if you really need to, you buy crafted gear to replace your weakest items at the end of it.

For that matter, in less than two weeks you'll be able to get augmented Cryptlurker i530 gear with poetics, so you can replace some more pieces then.

Overall I'd say the priority is doing all the story content you can get through once, doing those specific older raids that have been recommended, and not trying to gear up fully until 6.0 changes the level 80 gear to poetics.

I am in the process of getting an alt through 5.55 in the final week of SHB. I have grinded them through the entire MSQ.

If I stopped to grind the iLvl just to go into Eden, I might not finish. It would require systematically unlocking dungeons and raids to pick up random loot drops that might not happen in 2-3 runs.

OTOH, I just used 500k I picked up from just doing the MSQs to buy the entire crafted set, saving myself a massive amount of time.

Eden is not a gear skip if you can't even get into Eden because your iLvl is too low. The MSQ is also iLvl locked at certain points along the way. So going through Eden to get into a required dungeon would be adding hours to what could only take you 20 minutes.

If you are running out of time, the ~500k gil is far less valuable than the time you can be using to finish the MSQ and clear optional content that might improve your enjoyment after.

Also, I'm on Crystal, where the 510 set is on average 25-50% more expensive than Aether. I have characters on both. Probably even cheaper than 500k on Aether.

EDIT: Been in an Eden 6 Normal queue while running around doing MSQs for over 20 minutes now and this is only drops 480 gear.