So... I took a fresh alt character to EW in under 4 days worth of time

[NekoMataMata]

Someone else mentioned rushing a character through the game, so thought I'd put this out there.

In-game time totaled to 3 days, 10 hours, but maybe 6-8 of that was time spent afk. I spent about a month playing on the character though, but I would hope you wouldn't assume that I just casually ran through the MSQ like that in 3 and a half days straight. The hours are a bit uneven over the month since there'd be times like today where I spent 8 hours on the character(unhealthy I know, but I just finished my last final for this semester this morning and I was in a really good mood).

The character was made on Dynamis for the road to 80 buff. I started CNJ, grabbed SAM at 50, DNC at 60, RPR/SGE at 70. Played as WHM through HW(did all job quests up until that point), and around that point I hit level 70 so I grabbed SGE. Did all the SGE job quests for Panhaima which took about an hour too. I probably didn't need it, but I didn't want to be that person(that's a lie, I needed it for SoS and literally every level 80 dungeon because my teams kept running through every resource I had). You can create keybinds for each class, and I'd usually have one for my healing class and one for my DPS class or one Healer along with one for RPR + one for DNC(for Pelo).

I only did 4-5 levelling roulettes and around the same for MSQ. The gear from SGE/RPR overgears your left side for SB and below. I probably should have checked the MB for cheap upgrades but I didn't bother until level 80.

Generally I tried to use trials from HW on and as check points. I queued for everything as a healer, and I never had a dungeon queue over minutes. I never had a trial queue over 10 minutes, but I believe that's because I did my best to do my msq trials either around reset time or in the evening.

Oh and for solo instances, if you can die at the beginning really quickly you can use that to get access to "very easy" mode to maybe speed up the quest. If you can't or if you know the instance is tied to a story line then it's not worth it.

The character ended with around 1,500,000 raw gil from progressing through the story line. 100,000 of it was spent on cheap level 80 upgrades.

You could probably do this way better than what I did.

I actually had a plan with this in mind but it's just way too tedious. The only reason I really finished this character(or at least finished getting it to the goal) was mostly because I started it. Obviously don't do this as a regular player, and probably don't do this on an alt either unless you're really curious.

[Renalt]

snip

I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

[Absimiliard]

I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

Doubleagent is still going. Man's still in the panda starting zone, and he still picks flowers.

[Jeeqbit]

I've done this multiple times. It's not long if you just burn through it and skip cutscenes as a veteran player that knows what to do. But new players don't know what to do so they are likely to do it slower and a lot of them don't have that sort of time if they have life commitments and play casually, so every time they spend longer on something than a veteran player would it takes up their 4 hours a week.

And a lot of players are completionists so they actually do sidequests or at least blue quests and get stuck in a queue for ARR extreme trials for hours and other side content, or get lost in the gold saucer content or social environment of the game such as an FC. They also just want to explore this brand new world and take it in slowly rather than being efficient.

When you account for all of this, queue times and cutscene watching it builds up to be a lot for some players.

[DixieBellOCE]

There was a post about 2 months ago with video footage showing actual speedruns of the MSQ.
It was around 2 days and 19 hours to complete the story start to finish skipping cutscenes and just over 6 days with cutscenes.

People just really over exaggerate how long the MSQ is, And its just an excuse that people want to skip the MSQ so they can play more alts.

[Ishe-P]

I'm impressed. I would have thought it would take longer. I wonder if people are gonna start speed run records.

This kind of reminds me of the people who made challenges for themselves on WoW. One guy maxed leveled without leaving the starting area and another guy max leveled as a pacifist.

Are you sure you're impressed? I'm not saying sitting thru all the cutscenes is high art, but omg no one should care at all about this. Like, seriouslyl

[Renalt]

Doubleagent is still going. Man's still in the panda starting zone, and he still picks flowers.

That's cool they made him into a card in that Hearthstone game.

[Voltyblast]

Hmm I guess it is possible, but during my levelling with alts I also try to get the Aether Currents - it will make the post patch travelling easier - and I guess if you don't use a class like tank or healer, this takes a lot longer.

I guess it is possible to do in less than a week...but then you need to have a lot of patience because it's still over 700 quests (over 800 if you count EW and its current post patch content) and I don't know if a new player can do that many quests in a single sitting. I certainly can't: not even in WoW or SWTOR I did this many quests.

[NekoMataMata]

Are you sure you're impressed? I'm not saying sitting thru all the cutscenes is high art, but omg no one should care at all about this. Like, seriouslyl

If you don't care then why did you post? Like seriouslyl

Hmm I guess it is possible, but during my levelling with alts I also try to get the Aether Currents - it will make the post patch travelling easier - and I guess if you don't use a class like tank or healer, this takes a lot longer.

I guess it is possible to do in less than a week...but then you need to have a lot of patience because it's still over 700 quests (over 800 if you count EW and its current post patch content) and I don't know if a new player can do that many quests in a single sitting. I certainly can't: not even in WoW or SWTOR I did this many quests.

Aether currents are a waste of time if you're speed running it. There's only one location you return to enough times for it to be worth it, and I'm sure you could route the side quests in for it, but I didn't bother to consider it.

[SassyAssassin]

This is interesting thank you ^_^ thought about levelling an alt but every time I think of how long Stormblood is I nope out