Preparing for 8.0

Final Fantasy XIV Guides
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Hey Everyone! It’s been a hot minute since I have posted here; However I’m going to post my steps for End of Expansion Preparation. This will be current until just before 8.0. Please keep in mind these are just suggestions and not in anyway should be interpreted otherwise.

Alt-Jobs:

If you haven’t already you should level alternate jobs to 100, this is including Gatherer’s, Crafter’s, and all Support and DPS Jobs (Maybe even Beast Master and Blue Mage)

Complete Roulettes, Wonderous Tales, Challenge Logs, Etc.

Retainers:

Leveling retainers can be a long process as starting off it takes 18 hours until you unlock the Hour long ventures. Square likes to lock Minions and other Rarity stuff behind certain ones such as Miner/Botantist/Fisher. So doing Grand Company Turn-Ins can help you load up on Venture coins early for 8.0 or any expansion.

Crafter’s/Gatherer’s:

if you do anything MAX OUT YOUR SCRIPTS BEFORE 8.0 Patch, Orange scripts will become the new purple scripts and you can redeem Purples later to get more free Orange after 8.0. Generally keep a stock of Crafted Food and Gatherer food this will come in handy when making the new Gear once you’re level 110 and it will also help giving a small EXP buff while Crafting and Gathering.

IF you are pentamelded, and have the Gathering/Crafter Relic or Crafted Tools. They will last you 10 Levels do not reinvest into New Crafted stuff til you’re 110.

As far as Materials go, We never have a good prediction of what will be re-used, but in the Past A LOT of CUL materials will be recycled. I recommend keeping anything you have in a Designated Retainer, except for the fish to make current foods.

Stock up on Spiritbonding materials, that I have mentioned in Previous Guides, they will help you immensely when getting to 110 and above.

Currencies:

I recommend Capping these Closer to just before 8.0. Currently its unkown if we will used Sack of Nutz again or not, but if we do great! you can get a mount or minion early.

Battle Jobs and Gearing:

IF you have all your jobs 100, Great! you cleared Savage? Baller you’re BiS can be used to about roughly 108/109 until you craft and buy weekly stuff for the new tier.

Augmented gear, Crafted or Tomed will be able to do the same. If you’re leveling from 1-110 I recommend using Dungeon Gear while you’re power leveling and keeping that gear until all the other subclasses (Phys ranged, Caster, ETC.) no longer need it.

Gil:

If you are lacking funds right now, I recommend crafting the Courtly Lovers Gear/ Weapons until 8.0. or you can Focus Tanking Gear for level 90 as the new Bastion Class will surely use it. People are lazy and will forget Tome Gear Exists and purchase off the Marketboard. you can also check out whats selling well on Universalis as well. Be smart, and look for things that sell regularly. Food Items will be bought even past 8.0 starting for the EXP buff.

Conclusion:

Once again these are things I do months before a new expansion to keep myself ready. The sooner you’re finished, the less you have to worry about.

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Watched Chaiji’s video on this very topic last night. He goes more into stuff you can do the leading week of to get a head start if you really want to get an extra push ahead. Good watch to supplement your post.

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I’m patiently waiting for the Riku content creation arc.

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Materia:
If you have a bunch of materia or materia clusters lying around, it can be worth it to transmute your materia at the launch of Evercold. The goblin where you unlock materia melding in Central Thanalan is where to go; you can trade 5 materia for a random materia that can be the same grade or one grade higher than the lowest level materia you put in. Two important notes: 1) the materia you get out will be different from all 5 materia you put in; 2) the materia that you get out can be crafting or gathering materia in addition to combat materia. Trading [piety materia XII, tenacity materia XII, spell speed materia XII, skill speed materia XII, determination materia XII] could output a valuable grade XIII crafting or gathering materia, which will either be useful to you (if pentamelding) or sell well on the marketboard.

Rested XP:
On launch, if you’ve been capped at omni-100 for months (like me), you’re going to have a bunch of rested XP. If you rush MSQ, this rested XP is going to immediately be spent on the job you are doing MSQ on. That job is going to reach level cap long before the end of the MSQ, so this is a bit of a waste. If you want, consider spending this rested XP elsewhere before diving straight into MSQ, whether you want to spend it on the new jobs or on a job you HATE and want to play as little of as possible.

Avoiding Spoilers:
Do yourself a favor and filter out shout and yell chat from your chat log on Evercold’s release. You might even consider filtering out say chat. Don’t forget to also disable the chat bubbles from these chats. Don’t go on the internet if you don’t want to be spoiled. Going on your XIV-filled Twitter timeline is asking to be spoiled.

Gear:
If you want to use ilvl 790 tome gear for your jobs, you can buy the 780 stuff now. Even if you don’t want to bother upgrading them using the materials from nuts (or Alliance Raid coins) right now, you will be able to upgrade them for Poetics at a much cheaper cost than buying the 790 augmented piece outright for Poetics on launch.

Beast Tribes:
Traditionally, the previous expansion combat beast tribes still give decent XP, at least for the early levels of the new expansion. Do your Pelupelu quests for some easy XP for the alt jobs you want to level quickly, or else the alt jobs that you are not interested in but want to eventually get to max level for whatever achievement reward we get this time. Also, Arkasodara dailies and, to a lesser extent, Pixie dailies will be worth doing to get Bastion and [insert phys ranged here] some easy XP.

Queues:
If you’re trying to do any roulette, be warned that tanks are going to be flooding the queues for the first bit of the expansion, especially the first few days when people are trying to powerlevel Bastion to run the MSQ with it. You will also see plenty of [new phys ranged]s in queue, so if you want to get your roulettes out of the way, playing healer will almost certainly give an instant pop queue, while the other two roles will likely take longer than normal, since very few people are going to be queuing healer for levelling roulette when there’s juicy MSQ to be done.

Previewing New Jobs:
About a month before the release of Evercold (probably early to mid December), SE will invite media to record footage of and showcase the new jobs. All of your favorite (and least favorite) XIV content creators will hastily put together showcases of the new jobs’ rotations. The build they see will actually be a few months older than the current build, so things will be subject to change before the release of the expansion, but this will give you a pretty good idea of what your favorite job will look like in Evercold. For example, this is where we learned that SE has no fucking idea what they’re doing with BLM and WHY WOULD YOU TAKE AWAY ICE PARADOX THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE I SWEAR TO–

Levelling a Crafter:
You will want to level at least one crafter to 110. You will only be able to meld materia yourself if you have one crafter to 110, and Materia Melder NPCs cannot overmeld. You actually don’t need to level your other crafters for repairs: level 100 crafters will be able to repair level 110 gear (at least, that has been the case in the past; currently to repair level 100 gear, you only need to be a level 90 crafter).

Squadron Items:
For some reason, no one wants to hear me say this, but if you just send your squadron out every week, they can come back with some great materials. One of these is the Squadron Battle Manual, which gives a +15% bonus to XP from battle. This does not stack with your FC’s Heat of Battle II (which should be running) which is only a +10%. If you don’t think this is worth it, there are also Squadron Engineering Manuals and Squadron Survival Manuals, which give a +20% XP bonus to crafting and gathering, respectively. Additionally, if you’re going to be doing a lot of crafting or gathering at level 110, Squadron Spiritbonding Manuals can increase the rate at which your gear spiritbonds and will net you some additional crafting or gathering materia, both of which will be in high demand at the start of the expansion. If you’re holding onto +4% XP-boosting food from the previous Twitch drop that came soon after Dawntrail’s release, Squadron Rationing Manuals can make this food last for 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Squadron Rationing Manuals can be gotten from your squadron like the other manuals, but they can also be purchased for Wolf Marks.

Other Manuals:
You can also stock up now on Revised Engineering Manuals and Revised Survival Manuals, which can be purchased for Purple Crafter’s and Gatherer’s Scrips (respectively). These give a massive +75% boost to XP from crafting and gathering, respectively, but only up to 2,000,000 XP. This means you’ll want quite a few of them if you want to get all of your crafters and gatherers to 110!

Food:
Boiled Eggs, Orange Juice, literally any food. You can buy some from a housing vendor or from the vendor in the Golden Saucer for less than 10 gil a pop. Always have a food buff going. It’s +3% XP. Is that a lot? No. Is it something? Yes. Eat. Your Warrior of Light is hungry. They haven’t eaten anything but popcorn in months.

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Powerlevelling Bastion / [new phys ranged job]:
I did this for PCT in DT. If you want to play one of the new jobs through MSQ, you’ll need to level them up ten levels first.

  • Pre-order the expansion
    • Pre-ordering the expansion will give you an earring that increases XP gained while level 100 or below. Importantly, this also works when your character is synced to 100 or below. You were going to do this anyways so you can start playing on the Friday before the “release date.”
  • Remember that Wondrous Tails exists
    • Each book gives half a level. In the week prior to the expansion’s launch, pick up a book and don’t turn it in. Hold onto it until you get to the later levels, around 98, then turn it in, pick up another book, complete it, and turn it in.
  • Remember that Variant Dungeon exists
    • Luckily, we got a new levelling method in DT. The Merchant’s Tale is good XP and importantly has no queue times. Since levelling roulette / MSQ roulette / DT dungeons are all going to have a bunch of tanks and DPS queuing for them and not a lot of healers, this is going to be a good method of levelling your new job. For Bastions, while Variant Spirit Dart gives tanks decent DPS, it’s still not as efficient as running an actual DPS. Something important to note is that the XP awarded from The Merchant’s Tale is only awarded upon killing the last boss and you can swap jobs while inside the instance; this means you can run the entire dungeon on a DPS job, then swap to Bastion before pulling the last boss to save you some time.
    • Wear your earring, as you will be synced to level 100 (and the earring still works AT level 100, just not ABOVE it).
    • You might be tempted to form a group to run this, and you’re free to do so. In my experience, the dungeon scales with the number of players in the group, so it takes about as long to complete with 4 players as it does with 1 player, even when all 4 players play DPS.
  • Stock up on sidequests
    • Before the expansion launches, completely fill your quest log with DT sidequests and do everything you need to complete them, but don’t turn them in. Then, when Evercold launches, swap to your new job and turn them in. Sidequests are actually OK XP, but the reason they normally aren’t worth doing for XP is that they are time-consuming. By completing them before launch, you’re getting rid of this downside, so then you’re just getting free XP.
  • Buy level 90 and level 100 augmented tome gear before EC launches. You need XXX of Fending for Bastion and XXX of fending for [new phys ranged job].
  • Do one levelling roulette and one MSQ roulette
    • Yes, the queues are going to be abysmal. Sign up for these roulettes while you farm FATEs or, more realistically, you take a much-needed bio break. Or, queue with a friend who is willing to give you healer queues. Just prepare a gift for them in return.
    • I know MSQ roulette sucks. It’s good XP. Prepare some YouTube content on your side monitor. Have you listened to CHALKEY’s new album? Can recommend.
    • Alliance raid roulette is traditionally also good XP, but the queue times for that truly are going to be horrific for DPS and tank. Run it if you can get it to pop or if you have a friend who is willing to sacrifice their time to give you healer queues.
  • You could get a levelling group together to run 3 DPS / 1 tank levelling.
    • You could get 1 Bastion and 3 [new phys ranged job]s in one party. If Bastion has any healing in its kit at all, this should be pretty easy to pull off. If you can get a consistent group, queuing the highest level dungeon will by far be the fastest way to get to level 100.
      • If you get a group that dies to mechanics, this will NOT be as fast as a normal dungeon party and will NOT be worth doing. In order to pull this off, you need people to pay attention to mechanics, use self-healing when necessary, and the Bastion will need to throw out whatever party healing they have regularly. You’ll also need all four players, but especially the Bastion to use their mits, which many people don’t realize exist. For this reason, I probably wouldn’t advise this method if you’re PFing 3 randoms to join you, but you’re welcome to prove me wrong.
    • IF going this route, spend your Wondrous Tails books immediately on EC’s launch to get your new job to 91 so you can queue Ihuykatumu. X0 dungeons give piss poor XP.
    • Do NOT run Origenics. The forced single pulls and the stupid fucking turtle make it too slow in XP / min compared to just running Vanguard. Continue to run Vanguard all the way to 100.
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I mean I stream from time to time on Tiktok, I’ve just been burnt out on life lately. Plus, I have no idea how to even post stuff to youtube or anything I just vibe.