What do I miss if I take it comfy on launch?

[_Pigzig]

Say I take 3 months to get to Endwalker endgame. Is there any weekly tokens at launch or anything that will put me behind?
Or say I just take 1 month.

[SpiritualOcean]

No. Enjoy your slow roll, king.

[Jeeqbit]

There are what are called raid tiers. Every 8 months we get an item level cap increase of 30 and a new weekly-cap tomestone which allows us to buy one piece of gear a week on average and the savage raids allow us to get 1 weekly book from each of the 4 floors to eventually exchange for gear. You also get one chance to roll on that gear directly each week.

580 should be the item level of crafted gear, so the weekly-cap tomestone will allow us to slowly progress to 590 and savage raids will allow us to progress to 600. After 4 months there is a patch (6.1) which makes it easier to get to item level 590 and 600 without raiding.

You miss out on the gear progression and you also miss out on the fights being new, where we fight them at a very low item level and they are much more difficult. After 3 months you may find many of the fights, including extreme and savage, easier than they were at release depending on the party. It's possible to experience it that way again with friends using the "Minimum IL" and "Silence Echo" settings though.

So what you miss out on is just the gear progression and the day 1 struggle of the fights.

[Frizze]

But for the first tier, savage wont go live for a month(2nd and 3rd tier go live same day). The fastest players will get through the MSQ during early access. They wont know any of the story that takes place outside of instances(and they largely wont care). They wont really get much of a headstart on gear though because the crafted set, tome set, and savage set will all be released at the same time, which is one month after launch. Theyll have had a month to farm the Ex trials that come out of the box for some jewelry, and theyll have 2 weeks to practice the normal versions of the fights.

[Risvertasashi]

Say I take 3 months to get to Endwalker endgame. Is there any weekly tokens at launch or anything that will put me behind?
Or say I just take 1 month.

weekly tokens come in at the 1 month mark, and there's a bit of weekly, lowend gear you can get from the normal mode rids at the 2 week mark.

So if you get to the end within 1 month, you won't miss anything terribly meaningful, and if you get there within 2 weeks, you won't miss anything at all really. 3 months would put you behind a bit in gear but you'd catch up.

But this doesn't matter unless you want to do savage raids.

[Breakbeat]

Is there any weekly tokens at launch or anything that will put me behind?

Just out of curiosity... behind whom or what? There will always be people both "ahead" and "behind" you in progression. There will always be time to tackle content.

Unless you're doing a world-first attempt, e-sports or something similar (and if you are, I stand humbly corrected and retract my question), this idea of being "behind" in an MMO is one of those abstract made-up ideas that some folks uselessly worry about just for the sake of worrying. Players made up the idea of "being behind," and players worry regularly about this made-up thing.

It's just not necessary. And I am not saying you personally are like this... but some folks get really, really bent over this idea of being "behind," when in reality there's no such thing.

Take the content at any pace you prefer and enjoy. Shoot, I just started four months ago and have had a blast consuming old content, some of which came out, what, ten or eleven years ago? In that sense I was grossly and drastically "behind" most players. I didn't look at it that way, but even if I had, it would have had zero effect on my gaming except to add some weird tinge of guilt or jealousy that really doesn't belong in games I enjoy.

[Stepjam]

You'd be behind on Tomestone and Savage gearing compared to other players who are there at day one.

But the thing is that it really doesn't matter. You can buy gear that's good enough to get you through the tier whenever you reach endgame, and everything after that is bonus. And in the end, Best in Slot doesn't matter at all outside tiers with new ultimates (which there will be one for the first tier, but not until sometime during the 6.1 patch cycle, so you'll have time.) because otherwise you have to clear all the hardest content to get the gear, so there's nothing else to use it on.

And besides, the odd patches are generally "catch up" tiers where you get gear that's better than crafted and normal raid gear but not as good as augmented tomestone gear and savage gear. So that'll help if you want to catch up.