GamerEscape

Whether you’re looking to try out Viper and Pictomancer, taking your favorite jobs up to 100, or simply deciding it’s time for a new job, you’ll have to go through the leveling process. Unfortunately with two DPS jobs newly launched in Dawntrail, queue times are likely to be abysmal for a good while. Luckily there’s plenty of options to smooth out the experience.

Now, this list is organized in a bit of a priority system. For the most part the most effective options are at the top while less effective ones are further down, but you should try to be queued for the most effective instance you can and work on non-instanced XP methods while waiting on your timer, and there are other circumstances that may make one method more enticing than others.

Before we get started, you will want to make sure you’re ready to maximize your XP. First and foremost, if you’re in an Free Company you can see if you can have Heat of Battle set for an XP bonus; they’ll likely be able to easily set a grade 2 for a 10% boost or maybe even a grade 3 for a 15% boost. You may also want to look into the squadron battle manual, earned from squadron missions at your Grand Company. This grants a 15% boost for two hours, but this is considered the same buff as the FC action so they do not stack. This does allow you to still have the buff if your FC doesn’t want to run the action or if they can only run grade 2 and you want the extra XP.

Secondly, eat food. Any food. Well, any food that’s suitable for battle classes anyway. This will give you a 3% XP boost, regardless of whether it’s a boiled egg or a baked eggplant. The most important thing is that you have *some* food, but if you can get it for cheap I do recommend using some food suitable for your level or higher where possible, since a bit of extra critical hit and vitality can smooth out some runs.

Speaking of smoothing out runs, gear up and read your tooltips. No need to always have best in slot or have your opener and rotation baked into your bones for every level range, but you want to ensure you’re not undergeared and that you know what your abilities do and when to use them. A dungeon that’s done in half the time is twice the XP after all. For Heavensward and beyond, poetics gear from the previous expansion can carry you a decent way, but five levels into the next expansion you’ll start to feel it, and by the time you’re seven levels in you really should see about replacing some pieces. Throw some materia in too; it’s not much of an upgrade but until you hit the level cap all the materia you can use can be taken out 100% of the time, making it basically free as you can sell it after using it.

Dungeons

These first few are your bread and butter, your primary way of earning XP: queuing up for dungeons. These will almost always be a better method of XP than the alternatives, but the main downside are the long queue times, especially when your given role is full of other people fighting for the same few spots. When leveling you’ll want to try and stay queued up for one of these whenever possible, and find productive ways to kill the time.

1: Roulettes

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first, it’s leveling roulette. This can be done once a day, picking a random dungeon that’s already primarily for XP and just pouring more XP on top of it. If you have time for just one thing on a given day, it should be this. It’s simply that good.

Now, you shouldn’t necessarily then proceed to go down the rest of your list doing the rest of the roulettes, because not all roulettes are created equal. In the testing I did, I find that while the Trial and Frontlines roulettes give a similar amount of xp for your time, Alliance and Main Scenario give a little bit less, and High-level Dungeons, Guildhests, and Normal Raids are simply are not worth doing for the XP.

2: Latest Leveling Dungeon

This one is a bit of a curveball. I usually see people consider the other roulettes as a primary XP source but if you really want XP you should queue up for the latest dungeon you have available instead. For starters it’s been my experience that the latest dungeon usually gives around twice as much XP as non-leveling roulettes, as they’re more for gil, tomestones, and a change of pace. You’ll also be rewarded with gear, not just from the chests you loot, but you’ll also just receive a piece of equipment suitable for your job that you don’t already own upon completing the dungeon. This is especially handy later on in an expansion when the poetics gear from the previous expansion starts to lose its edge.

That said, there is one important distinction to make: you specifically want to queue for the latest leveling dungeon, as in one that would be eligible for leveling roulette. Dungeons that were endgame for their expansion (The ones at 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90) give far less XP than the dungeons right before them (The ones at 47, 59, 69, 79, and 89.)

One other advantage to using your latest leveling dungeon is that if the queue times ever get to be too much, you can simply ignore them and run with duty support or trusts instead! This won’t work for every dungeon, only ones required for the MSQ so there are the occasional duties missing for A Realm Reborn through Stormblood, but it does cover all of the dungeons from Shadowbringers and beyond.

Open World

While you’re waiting for your queue to pop, you’re not out of options. There are a couple decent XP options that can be done solo without needing to queue, allowing you to keep leveling no matter what!

3: Allied Society Quests

Most quests aren’t really viable for anything beyond your first or second job since they can only be done once, but allied society quests are repeatable, scalable, and a nice little chunk of XP and gil. A Realm Reborn is a bit weird in this regard as you’ll only have access to them for the 40s range, but for all subsequent expansions you’ll have access to them once you hit their expansions’s range (Going from 0-9, so 50-59 for Heavensward societies for example). You will need to actually unlock the allied society quests on a job that is a decent ways through the expansion, but for subsequent jobs they can take advantage of them far earlier.

Like leveling roulette this is a daily influx of XP, and while you have twelve allowances per day the bigger problem will be only getting three quests per society, with two combat societies for Heavensward and Stormblood and only one combat society each for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. There also will likely not be any allied society quests for Dawntrail until a while after release. That said, doing those few allied society quests should only take a few minutes and earn you about a third of a level all on their own.

4: FATEs

Once your allied society quests are done, hit up the FATEs suitable for your level. If there are other people doing FATEs as well the XP can actually be comparable to running dungeons, and for Shadowbringers and onwards you’ll earn bicolored gemstones as you do so. These can be used for unique collectables like orchestrion rolls and minions, but mostly you can use these to purchase monster drop materials for crafters.

While doing FATEs I recommend opening up the Recommendations menu, switching the pulldown menu to FATEs, and locking it so it stays up. This will alert you any time a level appropriate FATE spawns in the zone, and you can click it to easily see the location.

5: Hunts

Like with Tribal Quests, hunts are a non-instanced daily source of XP. While daily hunts technically start in A Realm Reborn, those only give gil and allied seals so we’re concerning ourselves with the system introduced in Heavensward and carried through each expansion so far. In the starting city for each expansion you’ll be able to find a hunt board that offers up to three levels of hunt targets, based on how far you’ve unlocked them this expansion. These give hunt currency and gil, yes, but also plenty of XP. That said, despite being a daily they don’t give that much more XP than FATEs, and your targets will not be marked on your map so you’ll need to find them or use a guide. While you may decide it’s more trouble than it’s worth to do a full set of daily hunts each day, at the very least it can be handy to hold onto a list of targets when doing FATEs so you can take care of any in the area for bonus XP.

Alternatives

Sometimes you just want to do something a little different, whether that’s ignoring the party role restrictions, getting some supplemental XP, or trying an entirely new game mode. These are all methods of earning XP that are still decently fast, but a bit more… quirky in one way or another.

6: Deep Dungeon

If you want to level through instances, but don’t want to worry about gearing or party role requirements, then Deep Dungeon is the content for you! There’s three to choose from encompassing different level ranges, with Palace of the Dead serving 1-60, Heaven on High for 61-70, and Eureka Orthos for 81-90. If you’re new to Deep Dungeons there will be an initial startup where you have to progress up to the secondary starting point, but once you do you can simply queue for it and run that set of ten floors over and over since that’s where the XP per run caps out at.

Now, there are a few downsides. They’re not part of the roulette system, and you need to go to the actual location to queue up for it, which means if you have to wait for others to queue you likely won’t be able to do other things like FATEs in the meantime, and getting in is very dependent on there being other people queuing for the same Deep Dungeon at the same time.

The XP from these is not quite as much as many of the other methods, but the main advantages are that you don’t need to keep up to date on your gear, and that there are plenty of unique rewards that can be gotten from them. Even if you aren’t necessarily earning rewards while you level, you’ll be increasing aetherpool and practicing for when you finally delve into the deeper levels for riches.

7: Bozja

Similarly to Deep Dungeon, Bozja allows you to level up without concern for gearing or party role requirements. In fact it was likely meant to serve the same function, as it fills the 71-80 gap that Deep Dungeon lacks. In terms of gameplay however, the two feel extremely different. Rather than queuing up as a light party for a randomized dungeon, you’re entering a zone with everyone else who’s participating and doing what are basically FATEs, with a special bosses appearing now and then for greater rewards.

The sole reason Bozja isn’t ranked higher is the narrow range in which its relevant. The XP is great for that range, and in between FATEs you can farm up essences and lost actions which can be used to absolutely devastate encounters, alongside having plenty of unique rewards and an active community keeping the zones populated at just about every hour of the day.

8: PvP

If you want something *TRULY* different, queue up for PvP. You can start this so long as you have a job stone (so level 30 minimum) and your gear does not matter in the slightest. On top of this, each job functions drastically differently in PvP, with different jobs even within the same role fulfilling drastically different niches. It’s a playground of job identity we only wish we could have out in the main game.

Now, you will be playing against other players, which makes things more difficult. At the end of the day only one team can win and the other will lose. You can be extremely competent and put in a level of effort that would breeze you through any other content, but if the other team is doing the same you might just lose regardless. Sadly this does impact your XP, as you’ll only earn about half as much on a loss, but progress is still progress. If you can win consistently this can be one of the better spammable options, but otherwise the XP is simply ok.

You have several options for what to play, but when it comes to XP I highly recommend Crystalline Conflict. They’re fairly short rounds that offer a surprising amount of xp, and it’s also usually the best way to farm series xp and wolf marks as well. Next up is frontlines, this doesn’t give nearly as much xp for the time investment, except for if you’re doing the frontline daily challenge in which case it’s right up there with leveling roulette. Lastly, there’s Rival Wings which I personally find a lot of fun, but since it’s not the best spammable option nor does it have a daily challenge it has the extra problem of not having nearly as many people queuing for it.

As with Deep Dungeon though, one problem of PvP is that it’s not generally part of the roulette system, and there’s plenty of players who dislike playing against other players. As such, there may be times of the day where queue times will just stretch into infinity. In addition, it’s important to keep a good mentality when playing, as there’s no shortage of strategies people can use that feel cheap and it can be easy to get frustrated. However, also like Deep Dungeon there are plenty of unique rewards that are reason enough to play even without the XP, so leveling here can knock out two birds with one stone.

9: Wondrous Tails

This one is a bit of an oddball. Upon reaching level 60 you’ll be able to unlock Wondrous Tails in Idyllshire, a weekly activity where you do nine activities out of a semi-random list of 16 in exchange for rewards, and one of those rewards is half a level’s worth of XP for your current job. As a primary source of XP, this isn’t great, but this is definitely an option to consider.

For starters, you may find yourself ticking a few of those boxes simply by doing roulettes, and many of the others may be ones easily soloed unsynced. You may find that after a week of keeping a book on hand you’re just a couple easy duties away from finishing, in which case it’s absolutely worth doing. There’s also plenty of rewards you can earn depending on how many lines you make, with plenty of unique rewards on offer and tomestones and MGP if you’re not interested in those.

10: Challenge Log

Last but not least, you should be mindful of your challenge log. This likely won’t be something you go out of your way to do, as most of the objectives that give XP are things you’ll automatically unlock over the course of a week simply by doing your roulettes and running FATEs. Of the other entries, levequests are only useful for your crafters and gatherers due to capping at 58 for battle classes, and guildhests are strictly for level 40 and below. If you’re at a suitable level go knock yourself out, but if you’re later on it’s not worth going out of your way for these.

Now, the objectives you’ll be going for may be basically automatic, but you do have to pay some attention. Make note of when you’re close to finishing an objective and make sure you’re on the correct job when doing so. Your third roulette, fifth dungeon, and fifth time giving a commendation are the main ones that are likely to do on accident. Hopefully you can knock these out early in the week and then spend the rest of the week without needing to worry about them.

Honorable Mention

There are a few remaining noteworthy XP methods that are only viable for the early game. So if you’re taking up a brand new job these may be worth your while, for a chance of pace if nothing else.

Levequests are mostly used for crafters and gatherers, but for A Realm Reborn and Heavensward you could also do battlecraft leves. The XP isn’t amazing by any means, somewhere around a similar leveled FATE, but they’re short, soloable, and have their own challenge log entries dedicated to them.

Guildhests are a bit of an odd boat. They’re relatively short, and give around the same XP as a levequest or FATE of a similar level, and on paper wouldn’t seem worth queuing for. However, the first time you do each one you’ll get a hefty XP and gil bonus (Well, hefty for that level anyway.) The best part is this “first time” is per job, so while it’s not really worth it to spam guildhests the way one would spam dungeons, it is definitely worth it to run through the list once on each job… at least, for the jobs that start at a lower level. It’s definitely not worth it on jobs that start at 70+, and arguably not worth it for jobs that start at 60 either.

Lastly there’s command missions. These are a type of duty you unlock via your Grand Company squadron at higher ranks, and were the predecessor to the duty support system we have today. In a lot of ways they’re more clunky than just using duty support normally, and they only allow for a handful of dungeons up through Heavensward, but for those dungeons they’re actually capable of going through faster than duty support, and I’ve even heard of folks being able to clear dungeons faster than they can with players. It all comes down to the battle tactics you can earn.

Each successful command mission you go on has a chance of raising one of a squadron member’s tactics by one, and the offensive tactic in particular boosts their damage output by 60% when capped. There’s also the unique limit break available, which deals damage while also boosting the damage the party deals by a considerable amount. It does take a bit of effort to get set up, but if you’re planning to spam a dungeon that’s available for command missions anyway, maybe give that a shot over duty finder or duty support.

And there you have it, ten (give or take) of the best methods for gaining XP in FFXIV. Whether this helps you level faster than ever before, or simply gives your more options to switch things up, may your leveling be an enjoyable journey.

All screenshots taken by writer.