FFXIV Leveling Guide

[Freelancer]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

Leves are insane exp now, and you choose to link them or not.

5 people, 3 leves each, 120-288sp a mob, was great, I was actually getting SP while turtle-tanking w/o landing any hits, my shield went from 11 to 13 without me actually trying to stall and take hits, I'm very pleased.

Though SP parties seem to be struggling with 80-150sp a fight against very hard mobs, especially the R40+ crowd shout moaning about it whenever someone is shouting for a party.

A quick fix for that issue, and the Dec update in 2-3 weeks and everything should be ok.

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

5 people, 3 leves each, 120-288sp a mob, was great, I was actually getting SP while turtle-tanking w/o landing any hits, my shield went from 11 to 13 without me actually trying to stall and take hits, I'm very pleased.

I just could not handle the megalocrabs at R19 soloing them (It's the leve version, eventually you end up fighting 10 ... 8 initial with the last one of that group sprinting away to call 2 more of his friends) I manage to survive until the last one ran off and with 3 it's damn near impossible. What's worse was the fact that I only got 288 sp per crab and it must be the most excruciating 288 sp I've ever had to earn. Each crab takes seemingly forever and despite their size they were totally evasive to about 60% of my attacks.

I also got screwed over on a leve in Camp Tranquil for 2,800 gladiator marks due to an R0 ... and it seems that I always get that on important leves. I could not get a reissue of this leve either so either SE's claims are still not implemented or they're currently buggy. Ugh.

On a side note I discovered that repairing gear is not dependent upon the rank of the gear but probably on the rank of the recipe that produced that gear. For other items that are not produced (i.e., unique rare) I believe the repairs do go by item rank. I repaired my Bronze Chain Coif with my ARM 15 even though the item is R27 ... but the recipe is R10 so that's my theory so far. Might explain why I can't repair certain items where the difference in the ranks are only 6 (but the recipe to produce that item was much higher, say 12 ranks higher)

(Oh and Mala I do not use the Bronze set for grinding ... it's mostly "parade uniform" to look cool in ... I have a grinding set that's appropriate for my rank)

[Zempten]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

The experiences I've had so far is that behest and guildleves are decent ways to get SP on my THM. I still miss my 500SP/raptor every 1-2 mins though T.T Leveling from 1-10 is a joke now and only from 10-20 you have a slight grind session. I'm enjoying getting my shield up to 17 now by leveling conjurer and gladiator. That's a plus. I guess I should just work mainly on getting jobs to 20 for their Job Traits now since grinding on my THM (34) seems to be very very slow. Has anyone found a solution for 30+? Efts are pretty nice at 130-180 SP/mob. Maybe I should get more people to kill them faster?

[Etra]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

The experiences I've had so far is that behest and guildleves are decent ways to get SP on my THM. I still miss my 500SP/raptor every 1-2 mins though T.T Leveling from 1-10 is a joke now and only from 10-20 you have a slight grind session. I'm enjoying getting my shield up to 17 now by leveling conjurer and gladiator. That's a plus. I guess I should just work mainly on getting jobs to 20 for their Job Traits now since grinding on my THM (34) seems to be very very slow. Has anyone found a solution for 30+? Efts are pretty nice at 130-180 SP/mob. Maybe I should get more people to kill them faster?

Get 10+ people, do leves, you'll level faster than the cluster fuck gang bang that was pre-patch leveling.

[Freelancer]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

Is is too good, I foresee a nerf coming.

[Etra]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

Is is too good, I foresee a nerf coming.

Seriously. While I was crafting up a storm a LS mate was doing a behest and consistently got 650+ SP a fight. (New SP cap is 750, or that's the highest anyone has gotten.)

[Zempten]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

is this pre-20? or after 20s?

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

I did a Behest at Camp Da Kine in the Black Shroud (name escapes me, it's the R10+ camp to the northwest of Gridania ... I'd like to say Emerald but I could be wrong) I did this very late last night, about 3am PST so there were mostly JP players and maybe some EU players milling around the crystal. When the Battle Warden started the event there were maybe 5 participants and (from what I could tell) all were JP players aside from myself.

While it's probably highly recommended that you do these with a tight knit group if you're participating at low ranks (i.e., 15sh) I don't think it's possible to do this with strictly 15 players all at R10. Unless the event scales automatically to who is participating, the end boss (in this case, a pair of puks) are red to an R20 GLA like myself. The other mobs ranged from anglers to galagos in blue, green and yellow with "sub bosses" being orange or red and the end boss (I'm assuming) more difficult than the "sub" bosses.

Seems like the JP players participating feel that the appropriate rank for behests at camp are usually 8-10 over the minimum rank of the camp. So Bloodshore is 20 and behest there would be more appropriate for 28-30 (25 or so if you're in a set group of people who know what they're doing) 4 of us were 18-20 with one archer at 27 (not sure if he was there just for the gil or what)

The archer did make things painless but none of us were grouped together so mob tagging became an issue when someone got overloaded (A Conj died from an AOE on untagged mobs of around 5 or 6 and there were probably 20 just sitting around in the area constantly aggroing someone or another) While I was getting beat down by a pair of "sub bosses" the archer stood there spamming heals on me while I slowly whittled them down. The bosses popped and it seem to be a silent agreement to let the archer take them and I reverse roles and spammed heals on him. The other players didn't seem to know what to do and kind of stood around seemingly engaged with something but not being able to do anything. We managed to complete the full event in about 10 minutes of total combat with an additional 5 minutes for initial travel time to the spot indicated on the map. The only casualty I knew about was the Conj and I think he got back in time to get rewarded.

A paltry 1,900 gil. I think I've gotten chests with twice that in my leves.

The average amount of SP was nothing exciting. Around 150 per mob and the "sub bosses" yielding 250sh or so ... the boss, I have no clue, I think only the archer would know.

---------- Post added at 12:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:31 PM ----------

Oh and getting back on the topic or what seemed to be that topic. I am not sure how things are at R30+ but so far at R20 things have changed considerably. While there are those who are physical R50 blowing through Aldgoats like hot knife through butter as a R17 MRD I find them unpleasant as an R20 GLA. These are the ones that are yellowish-amber to me atm with a few greens. They also yield around 160-220 SP depending on the difficulty even if the same color. From R10-15 you'll still be able to "blow up" mobs that yield 280-350 SP and it seems that (just like FFXI!) the difficulties of the mob from a soloing standpoint gets all weird the higher you go. It's probably due to larger health pools and higher defenses but it could also be that you're almost "required" to purchase abilities from various guilds with your marks in order to supplement and possibly replace your suite of abilities.

I think it's an exaggeration that SE nerfed partying. They nerfed exploitations from partying, sure, but partying is still viable. As Etra indicated, leves and linking is the name of the game, so if you're able to get groups, use the leve system (and yes, the JP players have been doing this even pre-patch)

It's almost necessary for me to level up Conj and Thau more (at least to 10 each) in order to weather the rocky storms of grinding and especially through the 20s. I don't mind it but I did find something that all FFXI players should already know by now. Sometimes, churning 100 sp at a time at 1/4 the time it takes to get 300 sp is far more desirable and is better over the course of your grinding. The only problem is finding good camps that have insane respawn timers.

[Zempten]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

I've been doing leves today on my 12 gladiator, 18 conjurer and 35 thaumaturge and the SP is staying constant around mid 100s to lower 200s with and without guardian's aspect. I've varied the number of people and the difficulty up to 5 stars and it's stayed that way. So I'm very curious as to how people are saying things like 600 SP off leve with guardian's aspect.

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

So I'm very curious as to how people are saying things like 600 SP off leve with guardian's aspect.

They may be over-exaggerating those claims or it could possibly be from Behest only and off the end-boss in those events (meaning that they get 600+ that ONE time and then claimed they got it everytime)

I've been grinding on my Conj last night and found it pleasant and got 10 ranks in just under 2 hours. Too bad the first 10 ranks is about as good as it gets and then everything goes into the gutter beyond R20.

As for my GLA, I did some leves and found to my disappointment that w/o Guardian Aspect, your SP from the leves just really blows tuna chunks. I would've been able to get near 350 sp per kill as an R21 doing these R20+ leves with the aspect on but I don't have any (I should have some more tonight after the maintenance) I was able to find a Bloodshore leve yielding a few marks for GLA and then disposed of my completed Tranquility leves and pushed up the marks to a paltry 980sh. I say paltry because the reward system is so random and I've yet to discover other methods of obtaining marks. I visited the GLA guild and the NPCs don't say anything different so I gave up pestering them. Instead I burn up my anima visiting all the cities in hopes of finding a randomly issued leve with GLA marks and usually only find a f*-ton of PUG mark-related leves instead. My PUG is only at 10 >.>

---------- Post added at 10:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 AM ----------

Anyway ... gonna try later on in the week to grind through a lot of 100-150 sp mobs and see if they are any faster than fighting 200 sp mobs. I also need to find a solid camp to support this. Any suggestions welcome (R21 GLA)

[Zempten]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

i was doing monkeys in muy tah cellars in Grid from 19-20 solo for about 180-202 SP a mob, there is tons of monkeys there - just watchout for AE

[Etra]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

I've been doing leves today on my 12 gladiator, 18 conjurer and 35 thaumaturge and the SP is staying constant around mid 100s to lower 200s with and without guardian's aspect. I've varied the number of people and the difficulty up to 5 stars and it's stayed that way. So I'm very curious as to how people are saying things like 600 SP off leve with guardian's aspect.

They are doing it with a large group of people around their level, which boosts overall exp/sp gain.

You can't expect to solo in an MMO and get the best exp.

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

I've varied the number of people and the difficulty up to 5 stars and it's stayed that way.

They are doing it with a large group of people around their level, which boosts overall exp/sp gain.

You can't expect to solo in an MMO and get the best exp.

He's saying he's not getting the same thing as your friend was even in a group. And the number of people he participated with (presumably) varied from a small one to a large one. So my own feeling stays the same ... your friend exaggerated or simply stated how much they got off ONE or TWO mobs (end boss mobs in behest, I just did it last night and that's the only game in town that gives that much SP beyond R10)

[Etra]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

He's saying he's not getting the same thing as your friend was even in a group. And the number of people he participated with (presumably) varied from a small one to a large one. So my own feeling stays the same ... your friend exaggerated or simply stated how much they got off ONE or TWO mobs (end boss mobs in behest, I just did it last night and that's the only game in town that gives that much SP beyond R10)

I've seen screenshots of it. There's multiple users on fantaji uploading the same thing all the time.

And, like I've said many times in other posts, you need a max group of people doing leves to get the best exp. Obviously, the ones that stay within the -10 level rule get the most out of it (especially those that restrict to the +/-5 rule.)

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV Leveling Guide

And, like I've said many times in other posts, you need a max group of people doing leves to get the best exp.

Like a full raid you mean? If that is the case then that punishes players who are unable to corral that many players together at any given moment to work on these leves. It does reward cooperative LS and those that routinely play together, but I don't understand why they need to make the small groups a bad thing. Leave the large group requirements for Faction Leve and NMs but let's not involve mundane activities like leveling into the mix.