Last evening after work I finished the quest chain for “A Realm Reborn” in Final Fantasy 14, so I’m officially back to where I left off in July of 2019.
Well, a bit further actually. Let me explain…
This time I leveled through the main quest line content all the way to 47, which is right about where the experience you get from the main quest-line stops being enough to keep you leveled enough for each subsequent quest… Meaning you need to start running side quests to get to the next main quest’s level.
They did this because back in 2015, when the “Realm Reborn” quest line was made, 50 was the level cap. So Square Enix slowed the experience gain to slow players down a bit in the hopes it would give them time to finish the next storyline.
These days, with three more expansions worth of content already available, the solution to this problem is to simply give Square Enix some cash. Square Enix, in-turn, will give you level 70 on pretty much any class (or “job” in FF parlance) you want.
This doesn’t advance you in the storyline though. It simply gives you level 70, some level 70 starting gear, and access to your level 70 skills for said class.
And this meets the level requirements for the rest of the main quest-line, meaning you can move straight on to the rest of the level 50 story, the boss fights, and the cut scenes.
Now this seems a bit unfair to said bosses because you now out-level them by 20 levels and your gear is literally the stuff of fantasy to some poor bad-guy from 2015… But the game handles this quite well by scaling your level to the content.
So, for a level 50 boss you are reduced to about level 52 and your gear and skills scale as well. Meaning you participate in the fight as a well-geared character of appropriate level, so there’s still some challenge and excitement to be had.
And this is what I did.
The last three instances of the Realm Reborn content are the first 8-man content the player experiences as well. The first is a single boss-fight that is over in about 5 minutes, while the second is an actual ‘dungeon’ and a bit longer and more convoluted… The third is about two hours of storyline, cut-scenes, and probably a half-dozen epic boss-battles.
Once you deal with the ultimate baddy you ‘win’, the credits roll, and more story occurs.
It’s really a pretty epic ‘hero’s journey’ storyline. I highly recommended it, and you can easily fit it into the free 30 days you get for buying the game.
But back in 2015, even though the credits had rolled, the next expansion wasn’t quite done yet — so Square Enix crafted a series of patches that added what is known as the ‘hundred quest slog’… Linear filler content at level 50 to keep people occupied while the “Heavensward” content was finished.
This filler content has to be finished to unlock the literal gates to the next expansion though. And not many people make it through the hundred quest slog to get to the next expansion — even after Square Enix trimmed out twenty quests to make it the eighty quest slog.
Soooo, there’s a fix for this as well; you give Square Enix $, and they move your character to the beginning of “Heavensward”.
And I did this as well.
Onward to the 50-60 content!
I’ve not seen any of the more recent expansions, so my progress will slow a bit as I click, poke, wander to, and read everything. 🙂
And I’m caught up with my friends as well, so I can help them out with various dungeons and whatnot.
Should be fun!