Levelling can be daunting in an MMO, especially when you’re able to play every single Job in the game like in FFXIV. Though I refused to level up the majority of Jobs in the game when I first started playing FFXIV, this year I made it my goal to push every Job to level 90 in preparation for Dawntrail coming out next year.
While it’s not important to level every Job up to max as the only thing it provides you is a Mount, albeit this happens when all your Jobs are level 8, I do recommend that Tank and Healer mains get all their Jobs to 90 as it will greatly impact your understanding on how the jobs can play nice together.
Although I would say that I was an above-average tank in FFXIV before I played all of the jobs, this year has opened my eyes up to all the little things I can do to make Dungeons run more smoothly, especially when it comes to Barrier Healers and Melee Jobs.
You see, for many years I refused to play Melee Jobs other than Tanks and realistically I hadn’t given much time for some of the Ranged Physical Jobs. Throughout my time levelling all of the jobs I’ve gained a much better understanding of how close I need to pack mobs for certain DPS to have better success with AoEs and I’ve gained a massive understanding of where each of the healers struggle to keep a tank up to help me choose my mitigation accordingly.
While for many players this will be intuitive as it’s not the hardest to gauge what your teammates are up to and whether or not you play the job, the learning curve is much shorter when you play the job as it will put the knowledge into your body versus just in your head.
This year I also started an Alt on a North American server so I could Savage Raid with the NA portion of my Twitch community and let me tell you, though I min-maxed the way that I levelled I still felt a decent amount of burnout especially because I was doing so much levelling on my main.
The way that a player quickly and efficiently levels in FFXIV highly depends on what level they are and whether or not they have a group of friends as things like running Duties can vary quite a bit depending on the skill of the players you are paired with. Sometimes doing something like a Levelling Roulette will not feel worth it especially if the players are newer or in a few instances I’ve had groups of players strictly roleplay in a Dungeon killing very few mobs at a time, choosing to walk instead of running or sprinting and reading every interactable even though it wasn’t their first time in a Dungeon. Though I don’t want to knock players for enjoying the game the way they desire to, this can feel overwhelmingly frustrating especially when you have a goal in mind and want to spend as little time in a Duty as possible to move on to the next.
Though I’m sure players who are reading a post like this aren’t the culprits who hold groups hostage to walk-only, small-pull roleplay as you clearly have a desire for speed it’s worth saying, please only do this when you are in a group of friends and they have agreed to participate. FFXIV is still a multiplayer game and not every player desires to interact in this manner, especially when it can take well over 30 minutes to an hour to complete a single duty this way.
Alright, enough venting, Let’s get onto the real content to help you push to the maximum level as quickly as possible. It’s worth noting that this guide does not take into account how to level up a Blue Mage quickly, however, this guide shares the fastest method to levelling up your Blue Mage. This guide will also be focussed on Combat Jobs as Crafters and Gatherers follow a very different method of levelling efficiently.
The way this will be written is by covering the least grindy methods to the most grindy. You will have a good amount of options to choose from and I will point out which are the best for time spent versus mediocre or not worth the effort.
Note: If you have any questions about FFXIV that you want me to cover feel free to leave them in a comment below, you can also ask me while I am streaming on Twitch, YouTube or in our community discord.
DO YOUR HUNTING LOGS (LEVEL 1-50)
I wish, I wish, I wish I had done these when I was low-level because I didn’t realize just how much experience they give you.
When I started playing FFXIV I rushed absolutely everything. I skipped through all the cutscenes, I didn’t read any guides and I just powered through everything. It wasn’t until I started levelling my Alt that I took the time to figure out what the best way of levelling was because I was getting too burned out doing everything on another character.
There are two types of Hunting Logs, though both are accessed in the same area by hitting (H) on your keyboard or by clicking the Log Menu then Hunting Log.
The first are the Hunting Logs that are separated by Class and the others are the ones for your Grand Company. Both provide a good amount of experience and should help power level any job from level 1 to at least 25 without doing any other content essentially prepping you for levelling roulettes and tasks that yield much more efficient experience.
I would strongly recommend that when you are starting a Job/Class that has a Hunt Log that you complete these while you are waiting in queues, at least do this until you are a level that is suitable for Dungeons and then you can forget about it.
Although I knew about the Hunt Logs when I started the game, I remember the thing that really killed me was that mobs were scattered all over different areas.
At the time I was only planning on playing DPS jobs so I didn’t think about min-maxing how quickly I levelled up my jobs, but if I was to efficiently do this I would accept all of the level 1 jobs and kill all the mobs in each area of the Hunting Log.
I have gone back on my main to do these for the achievements, but since the time has passed for me to actually get levels that are worth it from this venture it always feels like a pain rather than a task that I can do to help me progress to something worthwhile.
This is why I strongly recommend you get this done if you are new to the game because the boost is actually significant. With that being said, there is no reason to do Hunting Logs on the job you take through the main story as you will never be far off from the mission you are completing, though if you want to do two jobs at a time to start off this is a good way to make this an option.
ALWAYS USE FOOD IF YOU ARE WITHIN 10 LEVELS OF CONTENT
I’m an absolute baddy when it comes to food as I refused to use it for the longest time and sometimes I’m still caught in newer Extreme Trials without food. While I would never be caught dead without food in something like a Savage Raid, I can’t say that I’ve always been good at remembering to eat food while I level.
You see, I tend to be a penny pincher and while I wasn’t always as good as I am now at making Gil I refused to buy food and refused to use it if I didn’t have to. Well, truth be told, you don’t always have to and there are plenty of foods that don’t break the bank.
While a player will need a high iLvl food when it comes to doing content such as Extremes (if it is the current tier), Unreals, Savages and Ultimates, the food you use while the echo is up does not matter. This means that players can stockpile on Rasins, which only cost 5 Gil and reap the highest benefit for experience.
You also get a decent amount of food from doing side content and while I wouldn’t recommend using it, as it can typically auto-sell for more than 5 Gil each, if you’re a forgetful ADHD’er like me, you can pop any of these foods when in a Duty that is at least 10 levels in your range.
Realistically these foods don’t really sell on the Market Board, but you can try if you want to save up for more Raisins. 😉
It doesn’t matter whether the food is high quality or not, you will always get a 3% boost in experience, though this doesn’t apply to all experiences. For example, while you get an XP buff for killing Hunt Mobs, the experience you get from the actual log is not boosted, so I’d never pop food during this.
I personally only pop food if I’m doing FATE trains or Dungeons, otherwise, I don’t really care about the minuscule min-max.
Though 3% doesn’t sound like a lot, the higher the content the more impactful it gets. Say a Dungeon boss gives you 500,000 experience, this means that the food will give you 15,000 extra experience. For 5 Gil, I’d say that’s a steal.
USE GEAR THAT PROVIDES AN EXPERIENCE BUFF
Shockingly there are a few pieces of gear that will provide players with a significant experience buff. While the majority of these are from pre-purchasing the next expansion, there are a few that can be gotten in other means and are worth trying to get, though these come much later in the game.
It should be noted that some of these items can no longer be obtained, however, if you have been playing the game for a while or took a long break from the game you can simply use /isearch to see if you have the item and where it is.
It should be noted that players can combine the different sources of XP boosts in order to maximize the buffs, though there are not too many options for this as most of the Gear are earrings.
MOOGLE CAP
The Moogle Cap is one of the cutest items I’ve seen in the game, but alas it was only provided to players who pre-ordered A Realm Reborn and thus well before my time playing the game.
Realistically if you don’t have the Moogle Cap, other than cosmetics, you’re not missing much as this item only provides you with a 20% experience buff until level 10. Why even use it then you may ask?
Well, it’s one of the only Head pieces you can wear that provides an XP boost and if you combine it with a couple of other items it can get you to level 10 by just killing a few mobs.
HELM OF LIGHT
The Helm of Light is the alternative version of the Moogle Cap, providing the same boost to the same level, however, it was only obtainable for buying the A Realm Reborn Collector’s Edition.
Unless you love the glam, it’s not really worth the money.
FRIENDSHIP CIRCLET
Your free option is going to be the Friendship Circlet, however, this will require you to Recruit a Friend or be recruited into the game.
When we first got FFXIV my husband and I recruited each other to the game. Unfortunately, this must be done either while a player is still on their free trial as they are about to pay for their first subscription.
If a player has already made the purchase for their subscription they do not qualify as a recruit, this includes players who are taking advantage of the returning players events.
I will say, this interaction is a bit hard to complete as a player is only able to generate a single code every 2 hours and that code is only usable by a single-player.
At the time of writing this post a generated code lasts for 24 hours, but I would strongly advise that you only generate your code when you know your friend is online and ready to use the code.
The most frustrating part of the experience is that if you refresh the code page you are forced to regenerate a code, even if your code has not been used. I personally made this mistake when inviting a community member to the game and had to wait an extra two hours because I mistakenly copied another piece of text.
By far, the Friendship Circlet is an item I recommend you try to get your hands on. It also provides a 20% Experience Boost, though this goes to level 25.
As level 25 is already into the Dungeon-level territory, it will help you get some massive amounts of XP with minimal effort, especially if you have some of the other buffs up.
Quite frankly, this was the biggest blessing for me when I was levelling up my level 1 jobs because I absolutely cannot stand running Dungeons under level 50 if I don’t have to. Yes, I’m happy to run them if community members have just started the game, but when I was personally levelling up my jobs I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
As a side note, many players will attempt to post their Recruit a Friend code online Though there is no risk to this, of all the people I know they’ve never actually gotten a successful recruit. Still, you can try it, but I don’t want to get your hopes up.
BRAND-NEW RING
Another free way to get a piece of Gear that provides an XP Buff is by completing all of the Hall of the Novice training exercises on a single role.
While this is time-consuming, they are relatively straightforward and will save you a great deal of time levelling your jobs in the future.
You see, the Brand-New Ring is the only ring int he game that provides an XP buff and thus it can be stacked with the Friendship Circlet and a Pre-Order Earring for maximum efficiency.
Now is it important that you min-max this hard? Not really. And if I’m being extremely upfront I didn’t actually do this until all my jobs were above level 30 because I simply didn’t realize it existed. As someone who was a cutscene skipper and simply wanted to pew-pew I actually didn’t realize how much side content I was missing out on that could help me reach my goals faster.
I actually thought I knew about the majority of the side content that was worthwhile, but that’s clearly not true.
Now, depending on what role you take into the Hall of the Novice you may have to do more or less Duties.
Tanks have 8 Exercises, DPS have 7 and Healers (shockingly) only have 5. Realistically, the role that you choose won’t matter all that much as while a bit tedious, if a player is used to the job they are playing and understands the telegraphs in the game these will take a maximum of a few minutes each.
The Brand-New Ring provides players with a 30% boost in experience up to level 30 meaning that you can use this for a number of Dungeons before it is obsolete. It’s extremely useful when combined with the other pieces of Gear and will significantly help reduce the amount of grinding you need to do in the lower levels.
BOZJAN EARRING
If you are someone who cannot farm pre-order FFXIV expansions or you came in during Endwalker, I strongly recommend that you try to grab the Bozjan Earring.
Though I will cover Bozja later in this post, the Bozjan Earring is an adequate substitute for other XP gear, though I say adequate since it only provides you with a 10% experience boost up to level 80.
While yes, the Bozjan Earring provides the smallest amount of experience boost out of all the other pieces of Gear, it is relatively easy to get and chances are if you are reading this post you’re already going to be completing the method to get this.
The Bozjan Earring is free however it does require you to apprase 1,000 Forgotten Fragments in Bozja. This is extremely passive as players collect Forgotten Fragments when mobs are killed or when they complete FATEs and while I have to admit that I do not have this achievement done, this is just because I didn’t realize it existed and ended up either selling more expensive Forgotten Fragments on the Market Board or quick selling them to Vendors.
If I had known I probably would have had this achievement by now as I’m only 200 Fragments shy and I know I sold hundreds of these back when they were selling like hotcakes. Now, if you pre-ordered Endwalker you will not need this Earring, however, if you only pre-ordered older expansions or simply never pre-order, this is the only option for you.
PRE-ORDER EARRINGS
There have been 4 Pre-Order Earrings Available so far, though these are the remaining ones I have not covered.
Each will provide you with a 30% experience buff:
Ala Migan Earrings – Pre-order Stormblood and max level 50.
Aetheryte Earring – Pre-order Shadowbringers and max level 70.
Menphina’s Earring – Pre-order Endwalker and max level 80.
Unlike most other experience-yielding pieces of Gear, these scale to your level and will provide you with a good chunk of the stats you’d be missing out on for wearing a level 1 piece of Gear. This is epic as not only does it mean you’re not going to be missing out on damage, but it means you will not need to replace it with Tomestone Gear until you hit the last 10 levels until max.
We can safely assume that another earring is coming out with Dawntrail and it will take us to level 90 with a 30% experience boost. This means that you will be able to use it on the two new jobs making the pre-order still worth it even if you have already levelled everything else to 90.
JOIN AN FC (FREE-COMPANY)
Free Companies, or FCs can be tough to come by or more specifically, a good active Free Company can be hard to come by.
Essentially a Free Company is somewhat like a guild that puts members into a group chat and opens up a series of tasks you can complete as a Free Company. The more members in that Free Company the more chance that they will be able to get the resources required to do all these tasks.
Now, as a fair warning, make sure you don’t get scammed or agree to be part of a Free Company that has rules you don’t want to follow. For example, my Free Company is that just in name. While we sometimes do content together, none of us “pay dues”, are forced to go to meetings or hang out or anything else. We’re just a group of players who help each other out when someone needs and the core group of FC members will gather the resources to complete FC-related tasks that benefit the FC itself.
Dynamics can be tough in an FC and even though we’re a very chill group overall, there has been drama over the 6 years I’ve been in the Company, leading members to come in and out due to friction.
I mostly say this so you know you may have to shop between a few FCs before you land one that you enjoy. That being said, most FCs will place buffs that will benefit the group without even thinking about it.
There are 3 EXP buffs that can be placed using an FC and these are:
The Heat of the Battle which increases XP earned in battle by 5%.
The Heat of the Battle II which increases XP earned in battle by 10%.
The Heat of the Battle III which increases XP earned in battle by 15%.
My FC typically always has these on unless it is Raid Night when they use different buffs, or when there is an MGP Event so we can make the most of the boosts. Most FCs will do the same even if they are comprised of mostly veteran players. This is especially true when a new expansion comes out, though as this requires resources from the FC you may want to find one that is mid-to-large size or at least an established FC.
Many FCs will use /shout chat to promote that they are looking for more members, though you can also do the same and ask if any FCs are recruiting.
Different FCs have different requirements and you will have the opportunity to ask what sorts of buffs they provide their group or if they have social events you can join. Though I’m not much of a social butterfly when it comes to my FC, there are plenty that host movie nights or other discord gatherings so just know that those are out there!
ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU REST
Resting in the game is very important, though this tends to happen passively if you’re someone who actually logs out of the game. I am personally notorious for leaving myself AFK in random places, often missing out of the amount of Rested XP I could have gotten.
Now, I personally do not min-max Rested Experience in the sense that if I have it, I have it and if I don’t, I don’t. But there are some things you want to know about this experience if you want to utilize it to the best of your abilities.
Rested Experience is gathered when a player AFKs or logs out in a Sanctuary. Sanctuaries are typically located at an Aetheryte or anywhere in a large city that has no mobs.
Although players are notified that they have entered or left a Sanctuary in their echo chat, players can also tell that they are in a Sanctuary or “resting” from a small crescent moon icon that appears to the right of their experience bar.
It will take 7 days to get a full bar of rested experience, however, this is not a flat amount of rested experience, but instead is a percentage of experience. So what does this mean?
Well, if you rest for a full seven days you are guaranteed a full-level of experience, though the actual boost you see is 50% for everything that can be boosted.
This means that lower-level jobs will gain less from this than higher-level jobs, which is where you may want to min-max.
When I was in the brunt of my levelling I would use all of my rested experience on my highest level side job since a 50% boost on something like 200,000 experience is much better than a 50% boost on 10,000 experience. The way you want to go about spending the rested experience is your choice though as there is no wrong answer.
Do however note that rested experience is shared between Combat Jobs and Crafters and Gatherers which is why you’d really want to focus on maximizing this if there is a specific job you want to level up.
I would strongly recommend that you only spam Dungeons while you have rested experience as this is going to be the biggest time saver and when you have run out do some of the other things on the list or do something you just want to do! I would say I completely stop thinking about rested experience once a job hits level 80 or so as at that point I stop spamming levelling content since I know I’ll be at max within a week.
Rested Experience is visually shown by the blue in your experience bar. This is a good way to visually see how much of a bonus you will get for each job.
TRY TO FOCUS ON ONE JOB AT FIRST
Alright, this is advice I want you to take with a grain of salt and there is an extreme amount of leeway in here.
Essentially if you have a single combat job that is a higher level than the job you are currently playing you will receive an Armoury Bonus.
So, it doesn’t matter if the job you’re currently playing is level 29 and your highest is 30 or if your highest is 90, you will get the same amount of Armoury Bonus.
Since FFXIV strongly encourages players to play multiple Jobs this isn’t to put pressure on you to stick to one job until the very end, however, encouraging you to at least keep a level between each of your jobs and not have them all be the same level.
Actually, I’m going to somewhat take that back… please do not level every single job at the same time. This is going to be detrimental to you building the muscle memory for the GCDs and your rotation. Okay, okay, back to Armoury Bonus.
Players will receive 100% bonus on any job that it at least one level below their highest level Combat Job up to 10 levels below cap. So, during Endwalker it was 100% for level 1-79 and then 50% from level 80-90.
Still, the last 10 levels only getting 50% is a massive boost especially because a player doesn’t need to do anything to have this.
The Armoury Bonus is by far my favourite form of XP boost and I will typically level a single job to max every expansion then begin levelling up one Tank and one Healer so I have all the Roles I need when farming later.
Typically I will only do main story quests on my main job, which is currently the Red Mage and will do levelling roulettes on my side job as the main story quest should give you all of the experience you need in order to hit the maximum level.
This is true unless you have taken a break from the game. If you’ve done so, I may recommend you run levelling a single job to cap before you’ve finished the main story as you will be able to begin collecting the highest level Tomestones by doing any Roullete on a max level job.
The trade-off for this is the fact that you’ll be missing out on chunks of experience for side jobs for a number of weeks, but the only easy way to have your cake and eat it to is by joining Hunt Trains until you cap for the week.
Now, not everyone is going to be a min-maxer like that, so if you’re not and simply don’t care, just keep the Armoury Bonus portion of this schpeel in mind.
FOCUS ONLY ON PROFITABLE DUTY ROULETTES
Not every Duty Roulette is made equally and quite frankly even some of the Duty Roulettes that yield a decent amount of experience may not be worth doing if you are trying to save time. My go-to roulettes by priority are as follows:
Levelling Roullete
Alliance Raid Roullete
Trial Roulette
Raid Roulette
You may be a bit shocked that I put the Alliance Raid Roulette on here and while it doesn’t provide the highest amount of Experience, they go relatively fast depending on which pops. Not to forget, Alliance Raid Roulletes are one of the fastest ways to get your Tomestones of Poetics which you will need if you want the highest level gear for each expansion under max.
While you can get Gear in Dungeons, this shouldn’t be your main source as not only will you be at the mercy of the RNG gods to see the loot you need, but Poetics Gear will always ensure that you can complete all the content for the expansion you are working on. I was surprised with this when levelling up my alt with how much the iLvl required to do the next tier of content and although I tried to farm enough Poetics due to the fact I paid for a story skip it wasn’t possible to get enough by the time I hit the max level of each expansion.
This is much less of an issue when you are playing on your main as chances are you have multiple methods unlocked to farm Poetics and realistically, you wouldn’t catch me on my alt unless I had a full group to run content with or I was running daily roulettes.
Whether or not you have a full group of friends, the above Roulettes are worth doing daily for the following reasons:
Levelling and Alliance will give you about half a level each and sometimes more depending on how close the content is to your level. This is more true for Dungeons than it is for Alliance Raids as Dungeons give much more experience than Alliance Raids.
I have gotten quite lucky when it comes to levelling roulette and gotten two levels off these buggers, it’s not always possible.
COMPLETE CHALLENGE LOGS
I’m a sucker for challenge logs and will typically complete the challenge log that requires you to complete 30 Challenges a week. Now, this isn’t and hasn’t always been the case, but a lot of this has to do with the fact that I’ve selected tasks that I consider low effort in order to consistently complete these.
Similar to most things in the game, not every challenge log is worth doing and if you are someone who has a limited amount of time to play FFXIV I would strongly recommend you stick to the following Challenge Logs when it comes to experience on Battlecraft Jobs:
Complete 3 Dungeons via Duty Roulette
Complete 5 Dungeons
Vote 5 Times in player commendation
Complete 5 FATEs with the highest ranking possible
Complete 10 FATEs with the highest ranking possible
Although it might be tempting I would ignore the Challenge logs for Guildhests as they themselves do not provide much experience and unless you are trying to get an achievement or trying to quickly farm commendations (which typically is also not worth it) they can be ignored entirely for all your time playing FFXIV.
I’ll cover more on these Challenge Logs during my conclusion so you know how I “weave” them into my schedule and go about my week.
Note: Challenge Logs are mostly worth it if your job is 11 or more levels below the current maximum, when your Job is 10 or fewer levels below the maximum it will provide you with the same amount of experience you would have gotten at that point. Meaning, if the current cap is 90, you will get the same amount of experience between 80-90 as you would have at 79, so it is best to use these logs on a lower-level job if you have hit this threshold.
ALWAYS DO WONDROUS TAILS
I find it incredibly weird that I forgot about Wondrous Tails for so many months of me playing FFXIV.
I do remember running them consistently for a while, but I think I completely fell off when I got my initial jobs I wanted to play to the maximum level.
I can’t lie, Wondrous Tails is extremely worth doing even if you are not levelling up any jobs or using on Jobs you absolutely never want to play.
Essentially, Wondrous Tails will always provide a player with half a level of experience no matter what level their selected Job is at. This never falls off, meaning that it is most useful when a player is pushing extremely close to the maximum level.
As I knew it was my goal to get all of my jobs up to the maximum I always used Wondrous Tails on my highest-level Job. That being said, while I had Jobs I absolutely hated I did not use these to power level a job so I never had to play it. This choice was mainly due to my wanting to become a Mentor who could help a player with their rotation and the fact that since I write guides… well I kind of need to know what I’m doing to give you my thoughts.
I personally would never recommend a player levels a job from 1 to 90 only using Wondrous Tails as this is extremely inefficient, instead throw some Challenge Logs in or Beast Tribes in the mix so you can boost the experience by even a small amount to make better use of the Book.
I will somewhat optimize this when I see that I am one or two FATEs or Hunts away from the next level and will do those first on Tuesday morning before turning in my Wondrous Tails.
This can make an impactful difference as the difference between half a level on 79 is much less than half a level on level 80 for instance.
Of course, you don’t have to do this and I usually make the call based on if I have already completed my Hunts for the day or not. I would much prefer hitting this level increase that way than through FATEs.
If I don’t have much time or I can’t be arsed to level up before using the book, I won’t since realistically there is no rush to level.
While a player may be overwhelmed with the fact that they must complete 9 specific Duties a week the reality is that players can essentially rush this by only completing Duties unsynced.
Typically when I receive a new Wondrous Tails I will immediately do the Extreme Trials I can solo unsynced (the level 50s and 60s) and then will re-roll on them anytime I have hit the 9 saved re-rolls. Otherwise, if I am actually running Dungeons consistently that week I will simply wait for one to be in Wondrous Tails or will re-roll a Duty that I have gotten in the Roullete if I am at cap.
I wrote a more thorough article about Wondrous Tails and how I maximize my efforts in it that you can check out here.
ALWAYS DO YOUR COMBAT BEAST TRIBES (LEVEL 50+)
I’m a massive fan of Beast Tribes and it is actually one of the first topics I ever wrote about on Basically Average especially since I’m a Mount Collector and each Beast Tribe provides one or two Mounts.
Now, some Beast Tribes are much more beneficial than others and I’m pretty sure the older expansions got nerfed because I don’t remember levelling taking so long with them. With that being said, it’s really the Crafter and Gatherer ones that are the bread and butter of levelling.
Alright, so, let’s talk about this.
Every day players are allowed to complete 12 Beast Tribe missions. These can be mixed between levels and roles. Though you have 12 allowances, you can only complete 3 quests for each Beast Tribe, minus the level 50 ones who have different tiers of quests and function pretty differently than the rest.
Although I would recommend you complete all three quests on the same Job, a player can accept the three allowances on different Jobs, however, they must complete each quest with the job they accepted the quest on. This is sadly true even for things like fetch quests or interaction quests.
Each Beast Tribe quest will provide you with at least 5 FATEs worth of experience based on the expansion you are in. This amount grows as you level up and as you get more bonded with a Beast Tribe. This is why I would strongly suggest running Beast Tribes even if you are not actually levelling up that job.
What do I mean by this? Say you have a job that is level 48 and thus cannot do a Beast Tribe yet, but your other job is level 60; I would do 3 Level 60 Beast Tribes and then do the maximum amount of level 50 Beast Tribes on the level 60 job until I have maxed out my relationship with them or at least until that side job hits level 50.
Though it might not feel like much, since Beast Tribes are very short and realistically many of the vendors sell some decent loot with their currency, it shouldn’t take too much of your time and is a simple task to do if you are waiting in a queue.
Now, in terms of experience, if your job is over 10 levels of the Beast Tribe quest, you will not get much experience. So I would only recommend this if you simply need to get that Beast Tribe to max.
When I was in the brunt of my levelling I would keep jobs 10 levels apart at all times. I picked 4 jobs at a time (though a mixture of Crafters and Combat Jobs as my Gatherers are always max level within a week of each expansion). I would only take one job into Roulletes so I could get an extended amount of time practicing its rotation and I would slowly level up the other jobs using Beast Tribes and Hunts (which I will cover next).
I will talk more about what my day-to-day looked like power levelling in the conclusion of this for a concise rundown.
DO YOUR HUNTS REGULARLY (LEVEL 50+)
I understand that many players hate Hunts and refuse to complete Hunt Boards, so I won’t be surprised to hear that many of grunted, sighed or simply wanted to skip this part.
HOLD IN WITH ME.
Straight up, Hunts are incredible for levelling. Hey, hey do not call me a liar, here’s why I think so.
For every Hunt you clear that is on the non-elite bills you will get the equivalent of at least FATE in experience. That means if you complete all three Bills you get 15 FATEs worth of experience without having to spend nearly as much time.
The biggest issue with Hunts is locating the mobs, so let me give you the easy solution: FFXIVHunt. I honestly recommend this website so often and have convinced many of my friends to participate in Hunts because of it.
Now, note that you do not get experience for B Ranks or A Ranks and while you will get Seals or Nuts for each, these are not going to be your main focus. I do still recommend going after both of those in the future and will write a post on why, but for levelling and speed you’re just focussing on the first 3 bills of each expansion.
I do not recommend completing A Real Reborn’s Hunts, but I do recommend the others which can be found in the following places:
Heavensward (Level 50-60) – Foundation / Ildyshire
Stormblood (Level 60-70) – Kugane /Rhalgr’s Reach
Shadowbringers (Level 70-80) – Eulemore / The Crystarium
Endwalker (Level 80-90) – Old Sharlyean / Radz-at-Han
Realistically Hunts are going to be more time-consuming and less efficient than Beast Tribes so if you don’t have the time or don’t care about the Hunt Currency, just ignore this part.
SPAM YOUR HIGHEST LEVEL DUNGEON
The absolute most efficient way to level is by spamming your highest-level dungeon over and over again. Though a player may believe running the levelling roulette over and over again is profitable, nothing could be further from the truth.
The Levelling Roullete is only worth it for the daily bonus and then it will most likely yield less profit than waiting in a long queue for your highest-level dungeon.
With the Armoury Bonus, an Earring, Rested XP and the FC Bonus a player can level once per every two highest level Dungeon, meaning that you will need to run a total of 4 Dungeons before you can do the next tier of Dungeon.
Without Rested Experience, I was running 3 Dungeons per level which is still not bad. But as this adds a bit of extra time you may want to just wait for Rested Experience.
I really cannot recommend power-levelling through Dungeons when you don’t have an Armoury Bonus, especially if you don’t have an FC or Rested Experience.
When I did this on my alt, Dungeons it took me around 6 Dungeons to get a level and since my alt is on a Roleplaying server you know there was a lot of shenanigans I didn’t want to participate in especially when I had the goal of finishing the main story as fast as possible to prepare for Savage Raiding.
I would strongly suggest that if you are planning on power levelling through Dungeons you at least have the following:
1 Piece of XP Boost Gear
Rested Experience
Food
Try to have a group of 4 players you know run Dungeons with you as this typically speeds things up due to the knowledge of your friends’skills. Even in groups of 3 if one is a healer and two are DPS dungeons tend to go faster as the lagging tends to be with healers that let tanks die or DPS that simply doesn’t deal enough damage. Slow Duties will not feel worth it in any way, unless they are the Daily Roulette.
Otherwise just don’t do it. It’ll stress you out and burn you out. This is mostly a problem for players who have paid for a story skip as otherwise players are basically guaranteed a job that is well above the rest through their main story completion.
UNLOCK BOZJA (LEVEL 71+)
It will take players a decent amount of time until they are permitted in Bozja, but Bozja is the most useful zone a player can ever have access to.
Not only is Bozja a pretty decent area to farm Gil in due to the collectables that can be obtained, but it is one of the fastest ways to level up from level 71 to 90, though it is unclear if this is still going to be a good place to farm with the launch of Dawntrail.
Essentially to unlock Bozja players will have to first complete the Alliance Raids from Shadowbringers. This can feel pretty daunting as Alliance Raids tend to take a while to queue for when you’re not queuing for a roulette. Still, the amount of time it takes to queue for these Alliance Raids and complete them will be worth it due to the speed levelling you can do in Bozja.
This all being said, while you can begin farming Bozja with a level 71 job, you have to complete a level 80 quest first, so you’re going to have to wait a while until you can access it.
Bozja contains two zones in it, the Southern Front and Zadnor. While both provide you with similar amounts of job experience, you get more of the zone-specific experience (called Mettle) from the second area. If you plan to spend a lot of time in Bozja or use it as a tool for all your side jobs to level up, as I did, I strongly recommend unlocking the second area and farming it regularly as you can raise the amount of damage you deal by overfarming Mettle.
Essentially both Zones act the same. There are a series of FATEs that spawn and each will provide you with Mettle, Loot and experience for your job outside of the zone. As the echo is active in this area, players can be in relatively small groups when farming, though Zadnor in specific has a blind spot that treats it like no players are in the instance forcing mobs to scale down in difficulty.
Due to this blindspot, fates can take as little as 30 seconds to complete making it the ultimate fastest way to level up your jobs. Now, this does tend to get boring for a number of players and to be honest, I’d probably be bored out of my mind too if I wasn’t writing at the same time as farming content like Bozja.
Although I do not have all three upgrades completely maxed out, simply having the damage upgrade at maximum has significantly decreased the amount of time it takes to get these FATEs completed. It has also made the side content you have to farm in order to get your Relic Weapons a lot easier to do in small groups. I can personally solo most of the FATEs in Bozja while on Tank, though I don’t really recommend it because it takes a while to complete them even with the echo.
I’d say a good group size is at least 3 if folks don’t have their upgrades, but it can be done with as little as two people with ease as long as they have a few upgrades.
You’re looking at experience that ranges between 100,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the difficulty of the FATE and what level you are. Unlike most other content, when you pass the level 80 threshold you get more experience and it continues scaling until you hit 90. Shockingly a FATE in Bozja provides much more experience than a FATE in the final zone of Endwalker making it more efficient because of the time it takes to finish Bozja FATEs and because of the raw EXP.
Depending on how much you’re willing to farm, you can easily get a few jobs to the maximum level in a week. While yes this will involve a good amount of no-lifeing if you have the luxury of working from home or need something to do while you watch TV, then Bozja is much less intensive than all other forms.
The only real time you’re going to have to focus is when you are taking part in Critical Engagements which tend to have more difficult mechanics. Critical Engagements aren’t the most common these days in Bozja as most players are simply trying to farm experience in the fastest way possible and players will have to kill a significant number of mobs in order to spawn them.
I must admit that I am one of these players and typically I will not attempt to spawn Critical Engagements unless I am with a group of friends who are bored of regular FATEs and want to do something more challenging. Otherwise, give me that quick XP and don’t have me look at the computer too often.
If you’re not someone who likes FATEs in the overworld you will not enjoy Bozja, so just beware of that.
SPEND YOUR LEVEQUESTS/LEVEMETES
Levequests/Levemetes are something I used to do a lot of when I first started playing FFXIV and I’m not 100% sure what made me stop doing them, but I remember them being pretty decent experience for the little time you had to spend on them.
Similar to Beast Tribes, players will have access to a set amount of Levequests/Levemetes a day and unlike Beast Tribes these can be saved up to a maximum of 100 and they are shared among all Jobs no matter what the Class, meaning that you will have to choose if you want to use these for Crafters, Gatherers or Battlecraft Jobs.
While Levequests don’t provide as much experience as spamming Dungeons they can be done while you are queuing for Dungeons, being best for DPS players as Tanks and Healers generally have a very fast queue. I strongly recommend that you make use of these whenever you have some downtime and don’t know what to do, especially because they provide players with a decent amount of Gil.
However I would prioritize these on Crafters first as they are a bit harder to level, but if you’re not interested in the Disciples of Hand or Land just forget them.
I do not recommend using your Levequests/Levemetes daily if you have other things to do and quite frankly, though they yield a bit less experience overall, you can simply dump all of your allowances into these.
Finally, something to keep in mind is that it will only be worth doing Levemetes and Levequests that are at your player level. Now this isn’t always possible, though if players can only access Levemetes and Levequests that are below their level they can simply use the level modifier once they accept the quest. If you are using Tomestone Gear from Poetics and have a relatively trained Chocobo Companion you can accept quests that are your level and modify them so they are a level of two higher than your level.
Now, the only way that this is actually worth it is if you are able to complete the Levemete/Levequest fast enough as it’s really the time bonus that helps with experience and doing a lower-level Levequest/Levemete may actually be more beneficial to you than trying to brass knuckle through one that is too difficult.
GET A MENTOR / BECOME A MENTOR
It’s going to take a player a long time before they will be able to become a mentor as it requires a player to receive 1,500 Commendations. Now your goal for becoming a Mentor shouldn’t be just to get an experience boost and realistically there is no way to farm this anyway.
It’s uncertain exactly how much of an experience buff a player receives for being a Mentor, but I think when my friends and I tried it out we figured out it was between 5-10%.
In order to receive the Mentor bonus players will have to be in a party with a Mentor, or a Mentee before entering a duty. This also works in the Overworld, however, it doesn’t seem to work in instances like Bozja. This might just be because the Mentor bonus requires players to be more than 10 levels below the maximum level in that expansion.
I was actually shocked that both the mentor and the mentee get the experience boost, though it wasn’t until a month or so ago that I realized that Mentors even have an experience bonus.
As a player will have to be in a party with a mentor before they enter the Duty if can be hard to receive this bonus, however, chances are there is a mentor hiding under your nose who won’t mind spamming Dungeons because they want to get their tanking achievements done. I’ll be honest, unless there is an event happening I don’t mind spamming Dungeons with my community to help them power level. I’ve done it for a few members so far, but I can’t wait to have mentor so it can go that much faster. Though I do not have mentor, my husband does and typically we’ll run Dungeons with the community members so they get the bonus off him, it’s also much faster since I Tank and he Heals.
TRY TO AVOID FATES
Unless you are trying to get a challenge log done, farming for a relic or simply just really enjoy FATEs, I strongly recommend you avoid them for experience. There is one exception to this rule, though.
If you see a boss FATE in an area that is close to one of your Job’s levels, do it. You see, FATEs just take way too long to complete and even if you’re dealing a good amount of damage the real hold-up is with mobs respawning.
For the time you spend on a FATE you can get a few Levequests or Levemetes done and I would strongly recommend those over FATEs. The only time FATEs are somewhat profitable is if you are in a group of friends chilling as you are getting social interaction out of it, or obviously if you are farming things like Bicolour Gemstones.
The only time I personally farm FATEs consistently for experience is during the launch of a new expansion and this is only because the later expansions require you to complete X number of FATEs until you unlock the best rewards from the Bicolour Vendors. As I am a sucker for loot, this is always a priority for me and typically dozens of players have the same idea, leading to farm parties of 20-30 people. I personally levelled up 3 jobs this way when Endwalker launched, but by no means was it efficient.
At this point, I only do the FATEs required to complete my Challenge Log or if I see a Boss FATE in an area where I am completing a Beast Tribe as I’m not really one to put in more effort than I need to, especially in FFXIV.
TRY TO AVOID DEEP DUNGEONS
While Deep Dungeons are decent experience for the time you spend in them, it’s actually still more profitable to spam regular Dungeons for Experience.
Deep Dungeons, in my opinion, should only be completed for experience if you have extremely long queue times and you are not playing during the peak hour on your server.
You will have to do Deep Dungeons that are in your level range as spamming things like Palace of the Dead over and over at higher levels is not worth it.
When using Deep Dungeons as your source of XP you will only want to run the Dungeon from the highest floor you can as starting from Floor 1 will provide very little experience.
Players only receive experience if they successfully finish 10 floors or else they get nothing. While this tends to be possible even when solo even if you are not skilled at your job, I would strongly advise against it due to the time it takes to clear 10 Floors on your own.
Typically there are players waiting and ready to do the middle 10 floors of each Deep Dungeon though there is still a bit of time of day to these.
So when are Deep Dungeons worth it? Basically during the time of day when queuing for your highest level Dungeon takes 30-minutes or so to get into.If you’re only waiting 15 minutes I’d actually still recommend that you spam your highest-level Dungeon and choose to do other things on this list while you wait.
The biggest issue with Deep Dungeon queuing in my opinion is the fact that you have to stay in the area of the Deep Dungeon in order to keep queueing for it. This is extremely limiting for a player and unless you have something to gather or have tasks that are worth doing in the meantime then you’re kinda stuck AFK-ing in the area, especially if queues are fast enough.
I’m sure that by now you have learned that seriously prioritize combining tasks for maximum efficiency and while I will do silly things that aren’t worth it, like completing Alphascape 4.0 with only two tanks, I will only do this for the entertainment value and when I have nothing else I want to do.
IS PVP WORTH EXPERIENCE?
Honestly, yes. While I wouldn’t recommend players pick up PBP if they are not interested in it, it can be a very good way of getting experience on jobs you simply do not like playing.
You see, PVP is the only content a player can queue for on a job, switch jobs and still get the experience for the job they queued for. This is actually why PVP is and always has been the most popular content for levelling up side jobs.
I personally enjoy PVP. Though it is not my favourite content of all time, I find the changes they made since I joined the game much more engaging, though I personally never used it to level up my side jobs.
You see when you play PVP as a maximum level job you are provided with all three types of Tomestones, Poetics and the two newest ones, meaning that for me I hyper maximize this to get my resources capped for the week. Though I could do this more efficiently by doing things like Expert Roulletes, when events like the Moogle Tomestone Event are happening this tends to be the most efficient way to complete everything at once.
That also being said, I’m a sucker for Mounts and given PVP has the Series Rewards, I have to get them. If you do not care about Tomestones or have capped for the week, then I definitely recommend that you use PVP as your method of levelling up side jobs you hate.
SO WHAT DID MY POWER-LEVELLING LOOK LIKE?
The following is what my weeks when power-levelling look like. Note that while I use the term “power-levelling” this doesn’t mean that I am constantly doing these activities, but I do rank many tasks higher than others based on the effort spent.
This is what a week looks like starting from Tuesday weekly reset. As I am able to play the game before daily reset this is the method that works for me, however, if you are someone who can only begin playing after the daily reset you will have to adjust this schedule. For a better picture, Tuesday daily reset happens at 9 AM my time and the daily reset happens at 4 PM.
First thing Tuesday morning I take a look at my highest level job, if I can level it up by a single level with a couple of Hunts and I have not completed them all for the day I will do the minimum amount required.
If the Job needs more than a few Hunts I will take look at how much experience the newly refreshed FATE challenge logs provide and if they do then I will run these in the lowest level area so it is as fast as possible. I strongly recommend you do this every week since it doesn’t matter what level the FATEs you complete are for this achievement and the time you save is much more profitable than farming FATEs that are around your level.W
I turn in my Wondrous Tails whether or not I have a line completed, but only when I have 9 Seals.
I then complete the level 50 and 60 Extreme Trials I can easily do before I run an Expert Roullete.
If I have 9 Rerolls and there is a new player in the Expert Roullete I will re-roll one of the Duties I just completed, typically the one that takes the shortest amount of time. After this, I stop playing until Daily Reset, unless I have nothing else to do and can passively farm something like Bozja (which again requires level 71.)
At Daily Reset, I accept the Hunts from the area of the Job(s) that I am focussing on levelling. If this Job is not above level 50, I skip this part.
I head to the Beast Tribe that I am completing for that Job, though I personally choose to only do Level 70+ Beast Tribes as I don’t enjoy the pacing of the older ones.
I queue for an Expert Roullete which typically immediately pops as I Tank these, however, if it doesn’t pop because there are too many players online and the server is crammed I am already in the position to do other content. While I wait for the queue to pop I begin travelling to the Beast Tribe and kill any Hunts that are on the way.
If for whatever reason I was unable to complete an Expert Roullete in the morning or you are unable to due to your timezone I suggest doing the 90 Roullete next. I do not do this Roullete often and will typically only do it if I missed the morning Expert Roullete or if a friend wants me to complete it, you’ll see why in the next step. The only other time I do this Roulette is if I want the second-highest Tomestones, which were especially useful in Endwalker due to the Relic Weapons being tied to them.
I then queue for a Levelling Roullete on my highest level Job as long as it is not level 80 or higher. Due to the way that things sync up whichever Job you are currently playing will get the challenge log for completing 3 Duty Roulette. During the time waiting, I tend to finish one Beast Tribe and all the Hunts in that area, however, this varies based on how long the queue is and whether or not the server is congested with players.
If I have completed my Beast Tribes and the Hunts in that area I either move on to the next Beast Tribe or if no job is level 70, as I don’t do Combat Level Beast Tribes that are under 70. If my Crafters and Gatherers are not max level this is when I would do their Beast Tribe and the Hunts in their area.
My Priority list is as follows:
- Highest Level Combat Beast Tribe w/ Hunts in the Area
- Crafter/Gatherer Beast Tribes w/ Hunts in the Area
- The next highest Combat Beast Tribe w/ Hunts in the area if above level 70
The only time I complete all of the Hunts per tier is when I don’t have a second job that is above level 70, even then I only do Hunts in locations that have at least 3 mobs that I must kill as otherwise it feels like a wasted teleport. If I have many jobs under 70 I will do as many hunts in their level range until I have finished the rest of the list.
After the Levelling Roulette, I will queue for the Alliance Raid Roullete on any job that I want to level, typically this is the highest level Job. If you find Alliance Raids too long or simply do not enjoy them, skip this step. I personally really enjoy Alliance Raids, minus one of the Nier ones so I don’t mind if they take a tiny bit longer. Still, of all the tasks a player can complete Alliance Raids provide a significant amount of experience, especially if you get the level 50 ones that take such little time.
I will then do the Trial Roulette and Raid Roulette just because of their speed, you can choose to swap these in or out if you don’t like doing them.
I try to make sure that I don’t do any other Dungeons for that day unless I’m planning on spamming a Dungeon. If you have the time to spam a Dungeon then do one on whatever Job you want to level the most, but make sure the next is on a Job that is under level 80 as you will get the second challenge log. I typically would log into Bozja instead and would spam FATEs while watching Twitch streams as it tended to be too late to focus on something that took effort.
Days after Tuesday look similar for me, though as soon as I capped on the highest level Tomestones for the week I would focus more on Hunts because I’d have some extra time.
I would essentially have 1 Job in it’s 50s, one in the 60s which I would do Levelling Roulettes and Alliance Raids on while weaving in Hunts if I was bored. I would then have one Job at 70, which I would take to 71 with a few Beast Tribes and Hunts then power level it to 80 with Bozja. Then I would finish off that job only doing the level 80 Beast Tribe with Hunts in that zone unless I wanted to keep farming Bozja and didn’t have a job at level 71.
While this is the way that I levelled my jobs I do not expect everyone to want to do it this way. The reality is that sticking to one Job from the lowest level to the maximum level is going to be the fastest way to level up a single job, though I wanted to min-max things like Wondrous Tails so I never used them on a job under 60.
So I’m curious, how do you like to level? Do you use some of the same tips and tricks? Let me know in the comments below!
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