I was working on some "near completion" achievements and came across the "Do 10/100/200/500 GC levequest" achievement. I always skipped doing those since my experience in ARR from doing Atma books and the levequests involved always seemed like a real pain.

For anyone interested, read on.

Turns out, not as bad as I initially thought. I takes about 2-3 minutes to do 4 levequests, on average - if you pick and choose which ones.

There are 4 types of GC levequests:
  • Kill 1 enemy (that would summon reinforcements, but you'll one-shot it)
  • Defend an NPC or some other target from 3-4 waves of enemies
  • Find a disguised enemy - that you can do just by killing everything in sight
  • Kill as many enemies as possible in 5 minutes (we don't want this one, ever)

The first 3 are really quick, the last one we don't want.

To grind through your leves for the achievement, I tested out East Shroud (for Twin Adder). It is an ideal spot since the GC Leve NPC has two tiers of levequests to pick up. That's 4 per round. Anytime the "kill enemies for 5 minutes pops up" - just don't pick it up. That'll only give you 2 leves in your log. When you turn those 2 in, the "kill enemies for 5 minutes" leve is replaced with other types that are more acceptable.

For East Shroud specifically, you just want to avoid Sylph Strands and Constructive Exorcism.

Once you are familiar with where the leves spawn, and where certain mobs spawn, it will probably take about 2.5 minutes per 4 leves. I blew through 100 leves in just a little over an hour. I'm going to guess that for Immortal Flames, Camp Drybone is probably the best spot. And for Maelstrom do this at Moraby Drydocks.

So, if someone was looking to get these achievements - it isn't as bad as it might look and you are probably sitting on 100 leves anyway. Blow through them and then come back 16 days later and do it again.