Resuming Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker After Four Years

5 January, 2026. 2,682 words.

I’m as shocked and appalled as anyone, but I got into Final Fantasy XIV again, for the first time in four years. Playing an MMORPG again? Playing that genre that’s been dead and buried for almost ten years? Playing like, a lot? Outrageous!

This is the three-day story of how I started a brand new character in Final Fantasy XIV to play Endwalker, got really into leveling them up to 50, and then completely lost interest in leveling them after 50 when the experience curve dragged to a crawl. Then I went back to my main to resume Endwalker.

A New Character

On Friday, I decided to start a brand new character in Final Fantasy XIV. I wanted to resume playing the Endwalker expansion, which I had barely started four years ago, but I just wasn’t “feeling” my old main character anymore, and wanted to do something completely different.

(A minor defect of FFXIV is that all of your “alts” are actually on the same character, so there’s a lack of character variety (and a paucity of storage for 20+ jobs worth of gear). The game doesn’t lend itself to playing multiple characters, unless you have a lot of free time or dedication.)

I ended up making a big lion dude, which I haven’t seen before.

For this new character, I wanted to get to level 80 and the start of Endwalker, so I could play through the Endwalker Main Scenario Quest with the new character.

I wish I’d started this way sooner in my two-week holiday vacation, instead of waiting until the last three days. I had no idea I’d get so into it. But quite quickly, FFXIV sunk its hooks into me. Something about having an achievable goal that you can incrementally make good progress on is very satisfying.

But first, I had to find a server to build a character on. The Aether data center is pretty much full, and I couldn’t make a new character there, where all my other characters are. (I only have one main character but about a hundred test characters, most of which are level 25 or under.)

I ended up creating a character in the Dynamis data center on one of the Preferred Worlds. There’s three North American data centers now, which I think is triple the amount when I last played four years ago. (Incidentally, there were still plenty of queues logging into the new one.)

The thought of going through the full MSQ from the beginning is quite daunting, so to get started, I bought a Tales of Adventure boost thingy for $14, which unlocked the Main Scenario Quest all the way through the end of Shadowbringers, ready to start Endwalker, which is roughly where I last left off on my old main character. It’s insane how cheap it was.

It’s important to note, though, that the Tales of Adventure boost doesn’t level your character at all. After applying it, you’re still level 1. It just unlocks all the tools and locations and dungeons that you’d get from going through the Main Scenario Quest. And flying.

It might not sound like much, but I think of it as a time savings of some five thousand million hours. (An absolute steal for $14.)

But you’ll still have to invest some days (weeks?) grinding through class and job quests and dungeons to get at least one job from level from 1 to 80, before you can actually start Endwalker.

There are purchase options to level jobs too, but it looked like they would only level a job all the way up to 90. I only wanted to go to 80.

Leveling Notes

Here are my notes from the process, for future reference.

I tried a few different classes to start with. I had trouble picking one, because there’s only two that I actually like at the start, which is Archer and Lancer. But I’ve played those to death.

I realized that what I really wanted to do was get to 50 so I could switch to one of the Heavensward jobs I’ve never really played before (e.g. Machinist) the rest of the way. The quickest way to do that is to stick with one thing and stop switching back and forth, so I settled on Lancer to ride to 50.

I wish they’d put in ways to start the newer jobs from level 1.

Levels 1-50

Getting from 1 to 8 is almost automatic with the level 1 and 5 class quests, combined with hitting the Hunting Log targets that are usually right in front of you.

Getting to 10 for the next class quest is a little annoying, what with mostly chasing down Hunting Log targets.

The worst part is getting from level 10 to 15. The Hunting Log helps but it’s not enough. I ended up doing a couple of random side quests, but it was a big bottleneck in the road.

At level 15, I was able to do the first dungeon Sastasha with the Duty Support system, and then the levels started rolling in. I think I was pretty close to 20 when I got out of the first dungeon. You get the regular dungeon experience, a first-time bonus, a 30% bonus from an earring I have, and a Preferred World bonus. It’s a lot.

From there, it’s alternating class quests and dungeons up to level 30 and the start of the specialized job quests: Copperbell Mines, then Halatali, then Haukke Manor got me to level 33. I didn’t note down the exact levels, unfortunately, but it was pretty straightforward.

I noticed that there were some simplifications to the dungeon boss mechanics: I don’t know if those are specific to the solo dungeons or if they’ve changed the regular Duty dungeons, too. I’d swear there was a brand new boss I’ve never seen before in Copperbell Mines, but my memory could be faulty.

At the end of day one I’d reached level 33 and unlocked the Dragoon job, and the Gysahl Greens chocobo companion thing (not that there’s much need to use it with all the dungeon leveling).

At this point I’ll pause and praise the Duty Support system. It’s 100% viable to run the leveling dungeons solo with an AI party, and it takes basically the exact same amount of time and effort as a random PUG. (Well, slightly slower, since the tank isn’t trying to speedrun it.) (Balanced out by the fact that there’s no waiting for DPS queues.)

The next day (Saturday), I continued my leveling project, and took more careful notes.

33-36. Braflox’s Longstop.

Then the level 35 job quest.

36-39. The Sunken Temple of Qarn.

39-41. Cutter’s Cry.

Then the level 40 job quest.

41-44. The Stone Vigil.

44-46. Dzemael Darkhold.

Then the level 45 job quest (two of them for Dragoon, and thank god the Tales of Adventure unlocked flying).

That left me at level 46 2/3, just short of the 47 required for the next dungeon. Ugh. Now what? Hunting?

Yes! Completing the Rank 2 Hunting Log got me to level 47. Way faster than finding quests. To this day, I still don’t understand why side quests in FFXIV give so little experience points that they’re an absolute waste of time unless they give out unique rewards.

Moving on. First, a break for lunch.

47-49. The Aurum Vale.

49 1/4. 3/4 of a level short of 50. Ugh.

I didn’t want to chase all over the world to complete the Rank 3 hunting log, so I tried The Thousand Maws of Toto-rak, a level 24 dungeon, hoping that the First Time Completion bonus with sync would be enough to get me to 50. It wasn’t. I left the dungeon at about 49 5/6.

I completed three hunts in the Rank 3 hunting log, which got me to 50. (I should have just done that instead of the dungeon. Each hunting target gives a lot of XP.)

Then the level 50 job quest. (Incidentally, I killed Estinien in the last Dragoon quest. Huh. Puzzling.)

After getting the gear set, my Dragoon item level was only 61. Not enough to get into level 50 dungeons Snowcloak (80) or Keeper of the Lake (90). [It turns out this was not a problem after all, because you can just buy level 50 jewelry to up your item level right away.]

I noticed there were no more positional actions with Dragoon up to level 50, at least not that I saw in the tool tips. Did they remove that? Or does it only take effect later? It meant I could just stand still during every fight, which is nothing like I remembered.

I should note here that somewhere along the way, I got a 1,000,000 gil bonus for playing on a Preferred World. And the Tales of Adventure gave me 500,000 gil worth of tokens to sell. More than enough money for teleports and buying miscellaneous gear as needed.

Machinist 30-50

Upon getting any job to level 50, according to my calculations, I can unlock the following jobs:

Machinest (MCH)
Dark Knight (DRK)
Astrologian (AST)
Red Mage (RDM)
Samurai (SAM)

Since I’ve never played Machinest or Red Mage, I think I’ll go for one of those. Machinist, sadly, begins at level 30, so I may skip that one. My new character is a big lumbering oaf of a Lion dude, so I like the idea of dressing him up as a caster.

I went to Foundation and unlocked Machinist, Dark Knight, and Astrologian, the Heavensward jobs. It’s two quests each, and they all start at level 30 (boo). Luckily you don’t need to actually know how to play those jobs to pass the duties.

Then to Ul’dah to unlock the Red Mage, which begins at level 50 (yay), and more importantly item level 86: Enough to enter Snowcloak (80).

Incidentally, I wondered if I could have started immediately by unlocking the Heavensward jobs and skipping to level 30 right away, but, while you can accept the initial quests at level 1, it isn’t long before they require a level 50 war job to continue. Same deal for the Red Mage.

There’s often a gap at level 50, 60, 70, 80, and presumably 90+ as well, as there’s a big jump in item level to accommodate endgame progression. That is, there’s a huge jump in item level from level 50 to level 51, etc. I worried I’d have a problem there, but it turns out I just went to Foundation and bought some jewelry which bumped my item levels up to the point I could do any level 50 dungeons. Easy peasy.

Time for watching football, and switching to the PS5 for mindless grinding.

Honestly the Red Mage mechanics haven’t ever clicked with me, and I’ve already played Samurai before, so I decided to try to get Machinist from 30 to 50.

Machinist 30-33. Haukke Manor.

Machinist 33-36. Braflox’s Longstop.

I did the level 35 job quest.

Machinist 36-39. The Sunken Temple of Qarn.

Machinist 39-41. Cutter’s Cry.

End of day two. And day three (Sunday) begins.

Level 40 job quests (there were two for Machinist). I ended up a couple of ticks away from 42, so I went outside in Coerthas Central Highlands and killed three monsters to get to level 42.

Machinist 42-44. The Stone Vigil.

Machinist 44-46. Dzamael Darkhold.

Ended up at about 46.8, just short of 47. The Level 45 job quest (there were two for Machinist) got me over into level 47.

Machinist 47-49. The Aurum Vale.

At this point I can report that the Machinist is decent. It’s very similar to the Bard in terms of mobility, just with different animations. Has a pretty big burst DPS feature, which the Bard doesn’t have, and I think it has a better AoE action than the Bard. But it lacks the party utility of the Bard (so far).

Now stuck at about 49 1/3. No hunting logs for the Machinist. What to do? I suppose I could just repeat Aurum Vale, which could theoretically get me to 51.

Machinist 49-50. The Aurum Vale (abandoned after two bosses).

Level 50 Machinist job quest (there’s actually three), collect level 50 gear set. Buy a level 50 weapon with item level 115. From here, the job quests are every two levels. (50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60.)

Machinist After Level 50

And now things start grinding to a halt.

Machinist 50-51. Snowcloak (50 ilevel 80). Only a single level from this dungeon, sadly. Maybe I should have picked the other one.

Unfortunately the level 51 Heavensward dungeon isn’t yet selectable with Duty Support, so the first solo Heavensward dungeon isn’t available until level 53. Until then, it’s Snowcloak or Keeper of the Lake.

Machinist 51-51. The Keeper of the Lake (50 ilevel 90). Did not gain a level! Yikes. Getting less fun. This is the only dungeon to spam until level 53, so we’re looking at two or three more times in this one.

At this point it’s pretty clear that you’ll need to settle in for the long haul getting a job from 50 to 80. Two dungeons with first-time bonus and I only gained about 1.5 levels. Kind of sad that the Main Scenario Quests aren’t available for their experience points.

Dungeons are fun but repeating them over and over again isn’t fun.

Machinist 51-52. The Keeper of the Lake (50). Finally, a second run got me to level 52. I’d estimate it will take three more runs, at least, to get to level 53, where I can start on the first Heavensward dungeon. I can’t think of any faster way to do it. (It’s about 30 minutes per dungeon run.)

At this point I’m running out of enthusiasm for the grind and thinking I’m just going to go back to my main character, who is already a level 80 Bard, and consign this experiment to the dust bin where it belongs.

CORRECTION: It only takes about 20 minutes to run through Keeper of the Lake. The next run, the next day, got me to 52 3/5, with the rested XP bonus. So maybe I gave up too soon.

Conclusion

In short, leveling up to 50 is fun and only takes a couple days. You could possibly even do it in a day if you’re more aggressive than I am.

Leveling above 50, however, is a real chore and takes considerably longer. For future reference, those One Hero’s Journey job boosts are well worth the money, which are currently on sale for $17.50.

Remember when everyone hated the idea of buying your way to the endgame? I can’t even imagine spending so much time slogging through an entire MMORPG of fetch quests and cut scenes again. It’d be well worth the time savings even if it was $100.

These days I think they should just build the option into the new character creation screen to let you pick which expansion you want to start at. Then just automatically create the character at the right level with the right gear to start immediately. Surely there’s nobody left playing MMORPGs that still thinks their time spent playing is a valuable commodity?

Back to My Main

This whole thing started because I wanted to continue Endwalker from where I left off four years ago, so I returned to my trusty main Miquot’e character on the Aether data center, who is already a level 80 Bard, to continue with the Main Scenario Quest in Endwalker. (No other job is above 60, though, as I recall.)

I last left off in 2021 exactly eight quests into the story before I stopped playing. I vaguely recall it was frustrating to log into the game at the time because of all the queues at the start of Endwalker.

As of this writing, I’ve completed a whopping seven more quests in the Endwalker Main Scenario Quest, and have reached level 81 Bard. The vast majority of the first 15 quests, by the way, are just watching cut scenes and running back and forth.