Eorzean Evening Post: Leveling in Heavensward .

One of the fundamental shifts that has come with Heavensward is throwing players back into leveling mode.  For many of us it has been almost two years since we last completed quests for the purpose of leveling.  While many of individuals in my free company have managed to complete the climb to sixty, there are still more of us who are somewhere in the middle of the process.  I myself have reached level 58 on my Warrior job, and am still on the process of catching up on moving the main story forward.  Today during the Eorzean Evening Post, I am going to focus on the various leveling options players have in this expansion and discuss some of the benefits and issues with each.

 

Main Story Quest

For any player who has spent more than a passing amount of time in Final Fantasy XIV, they will know the importance of making sure you are caught up on the Main Story Quest.  Just like in A Realm Reborn, the Main Story gates a number of important things to unlock.  You will gain your ability to fly through the story, as well as access to most of the dungeons, and the ability to enter various new zones.  The only problem here is the fact that you cannot level by the Main Story alone.  There will be several “level walls” as I have taken to calling them that will force you to gain a level in order to progress forward through the content.  The challenge is figuring out just how you plan on moving past these, and today I am going to cover some of the options we as players have.

 

Class Quests

While technically these are “Job” quests, they are generally referred to by the players as completing your class quest.  For Heavensward, your new job quest will begin at the quest giver you were completing them for in A Realm Reborn. At level 50 you will have one waiting on you that will introduce you to the quest give that will continue your training process.  Every even level you will have a quest waiting on you, so this means 52, 54, 56, 58 and 60. These will be worth a significant amount of experience and also reward the player with brand new job abilities for completing them. As always it is important that you stay up to date in this quest chain, because as the difficulty level of content increases, players will often need these new abilities to conquer it.

 

Side Quests

This is the most obvious option for players, and as they progress through the storyline new side quests will keep appearing.  It is my feeling that Square Enix intends on players to complete all of the side quests along with the main story to progress through the most smoothly.  One of the key strengths of Final Fantasy XIV is that you can level quite literally every single job in the game on one character.  This however also ends up being a weakness because these side quests that aid in your leveling process can only be completed once.  When I leveled through A Realm Reborn I completed every single quest along the way, and managed to end up drastically overleveled at any given point.  As I progressed the five jobs that I ultimately ended up with, I had wished many times that I had saved a few story quests to help get over some of those tricky humps.  As I am leveling this time I am trying to keep a few side quests in reserve for me to level my other jobs.  However if you want to level the fastest and easiest your best option is to focus your way through the storyline and complete every single sidequest you come across.

 

F.A.T.E.s

One of the most interesting features of Final Fantasy XIV is the ubiquitous zone Full Active Time Event system… or F.A.T.E. for short. These spawn in semi regular intervals in zones and allow groups of players to cooperate together in order to complete them.  They reward experience, grand company seals… and if the F.A.T.E. is large enough additional rewards. As players complete them they are rewarded Bronze, Silver or Gold status depending on just how much they have contributed. There are ways you can “game the system” as a tank or a healer, or if your class has particularly high enmity abilities as the rating is rewarded based on how much “hate” you have generated among the mobs.  The only problem that I have seen in practice with this is that the amount of XP you gain seems greatly reduced in Heavensward.  I have my own personal theories about this, mainly that Square Enix is once again applying Social Engineering and trying to get players to favor questing over F.A.T.E. grinding. With the “Armory Bonus” applied, aka the experience bonus you gain for players lower level than your primary job, they become valuable again.

 

Guildleves

One of the stranger concepts to get used to in Final Fantasy XIV is that of the Guildleve or Levequest.  These are the form of repeatable quests that send you out into the field on a timed mission.  You are rewarded based on how quickly you can complete it, and at times have a chance of a random loot box to appear giving you access to upgrades as well.  The quests themselves reward experience, gil and an item.  These items could be venture tokens for your retainers, pieces of gear or sometimes consumables like potions or food.  The catch however is that you have a fixed allotment of 100 leve allowances that replenish over time at a rate of three every twelve hours.  As always these remain a very solid way of leveling anything from battle to field classes, but with Heavensward they introduced something new called the Temple Leve which can be found in Ishgard.  These special guildleves take 10 allowances at a time, but reward significantly better rewards than a normal level.  These are designed for players who can’t play every day so that they can get some benefit from their stack of leve allowances.  You will still gain better rewards doing normal leves, but one Temple leve would take significantly less time than doing ten separate guildleves.

 

Clan Hunts

One of the nice ways to gain gear in the previous content was that of the daily and weekly hunts.  With Heavensward they have taken this content and expanded into a method for gaining a good chunk of experience as well.  Beginning at level 53 players can go to the Forgotten Knight in Ishgard Foundation and pick up the quest “Let the Clan Hunt Begin” from Aytienne which unlocks access to the Clan Hunt Board.  From here you can pick up a daily quest that asks you to go out into the world and take out five different targets.  At 56, 59 and 60 additional hunt marks unlock giving you more targets that you can go after each day.  While leveling these provide a decent source of experience, especially if you have unlocked flight in the zones they are asking you to return to.  You will continue doing them at maximum level however because they reward Centurio Seals, which currently do not offer much in the way of rewards but in the past content hunt seals served as a gateway to gear.  For the time being however the rewards include minions, barding and some cosmetic items.

 

Dungeons

This is my personal favorite way of leveling, and I run dungeons with my free company as often as I can. Generally speaking at worst a dungeon will reward a sixth of a level of experience and at best I have gotten as much as a third of my level. This of course is determined by many variables, not the least of which is how many of the mobs your group attempts to skip.  Running dungeons through the roulette system gives the added benefit of a bonus chunk of experience for completing the content. The only problem here is that the way dungeon roulette is working is a bit counter intuitive. Presently speaking running a Hard Roulette gives you content that will reward no experience to the player other than the one time bonus at the end of a successful dungeon run. Low level roulette on the other hand will include the post 50 dungeons.  The few times I ran it I managed to get the Aery which is the third dungeon available. In any case it is well worth your time to run a few dungeons if you are close to your next level.

 

Reaching Sixty

My hope is that by the time I write to you all next week I will have myself reached sixty on my Warrior.  My goal is to speak a little bit about the post level cap gearing for Heavensward and how best to obtain gear once you reach the other end of your leveling journey.  I would love to hear from my readers how they are enjoying the Heavensward experience.  The story so far has been absolutely phenomenal but I am always afraid to talk about it too much for fear of spoiling content.  There are a number of plot twists and surprises that make keeping it all secret extremely worthwhile.  In the mean time however I am going to get back to the leveling process and I will see you all next week.