Once you approach level 50, your job gets a couple of quests that given them better gear. A quest at level 45 gives all the major armor pieces except the chest and the job quest at level 50 gives the chest piece.
At level 50, the Main Scenario Duty Roulette gives you access to a repeatable quest that gives Tomestones of Poetics, usually referred to as simply Poetics. These Poetics are exchanged in Revenant’s Toll for Ironworks Gear, which is item level 120, and is the most easily attainable powerful gear at this level. Each run takes about a 30 minute wait followed by 30-45 minutes for the run. The cutscenes cannot be skipped. Also each run gives a large amount of XP – usually enough to grant a level – and either 200 or an additional 200 if any member is doing the duty for the first time.
But what about the Main Scenario Quests – Heavensward expansion quests- beyond level 50? Don’t those help level? As it turns out, no, not at all.
Each level 50 Main Scenario quest gives about 4800 XP. Levels beyond level 50 have more than 1 million, indeed more than 2 million XP to the next level. So each quest only gives .2 PERCENT of a level. So it takes 500 quests to get a level, which is more than there are of these quests, and there are an amazing number of them.
They do give gear, including jewelry, which you may have been missing out on up to this time. The item levels for this gear is 70 and 110, so it’s helpful. For comparision, the item level of Ironworks Gear from Poetics Exchange is 120 and it’s also level 50. So the quest gear will make do until you run the Duties enough times to fully gear up. You can run these duties once per day. They are separate from the Daily Roulette.
Let’s look at the iron works gear.
Here’s a comparison of some of the quest gear and the Ironworks Gear. You can stop by the NPC and try it on for your job and compare it with what you are using.
Just for review here are some charts of the XP per level with some columns added to show percent change from level to level. Notice the red and blue highlighted levels.
One of the things to remember is that you can buy gear for your other jobs while running the Duties with another job. For example, I’m not wanting to run these as Tank or Healer, so I have taken a Red Mage into there. The gear for a Red Mage is “Caster” gear that is useful for Summoner and other classes. Except for the weapon of course. But the Red Mage can purchase Paladin, or Samurai gear for those jobs.
I’ve had a great time running these Duties with Bard and Red Mage.
While other games have “Grinding” dungeons at the “End Game”, they usually have “Drops” where you don’t know what you are getting for your grinding. In FFXIV, you know what you’ll get and can play what to buy with the Poetic currency. This looks like a lot better system to me.
Enjoy,
:ww
Windy Weather 