Final Fantasy XIV Leveling Guide

You can spend a lot of time grinding levels in Final Fantasy XIV Online before you reach the endgame. It can feel extremely intimidating, and the grind never seems to let you down. 

For those looking for a singular task to focus on to make leveling easier, we have some recommendations for you that should speed up your progress.

The question you can ask yourself when you level up your first or second job is: What is the most profitable or quickest way to level up?

Avoid Being Hungry and Feel Fed

Whenever you are about to go on quests or go monster hunting to complete your hunting log, make sure your character has eaten some food. 

Food lovers in Final Fantasy XIV are beneficial and provide a small boost that helps you through the leveling process. So, always have some form of food that you can eat in your inventory when the buff wears off.

Do Job Quests

If you are building your first job, then it will be obvious that following the epic is your #1 priority. This will give you a large amount of experience and unlock most of the dungeons you will have to go through during the story. 

Be informed that you can also pick up a few side quests on the way, especially if your level starts to get close to or below the level required to continue the epic.

If you are on a second job and you have already completed the epic, do not hesitate to travel to the zones to do the side quests that you may have left there.

Every five levels or so in Final Fantasy XIV, your character will have a chance to do a job quest. 

As you progress, it is vital to complete them to ensure you gain new abilities for your character and increase their talents. Whenever you get the chance to complete a job quest, while they do not offer the most XP, they do give you access to more powerful abilities, making leveling up easier.

The bestiary in Final Fantasy XIV is a good way to earn an experience bonus up to level 50. Each job has its own bestiary so do not forget to kill the enemies in your level range. This function unfortunately disappears from level 50, with the Heavensward extension.

Use the Dungeons 

You should be in dungeons almost constantly. Dungeons are the best way to level up in Final Fantasy XIV, and you should always queue for one. 

Once per day, you will have access to the leveling wheel, which gives you a random dungeon to run through. 

Be sure to complete this before going to the highest level dungeon that you can complete with a group of random players.

Dungeons are the basis in Final Fantasy XIV, and they will punctuate your daily life. You will go through the story dungeons during your epic quests and will have the possibility of chaining some of them to level up effectively. 

If you are a healer or a tank, do not hesitate and use the dungeon tool to enter quickly without having to suffer from queues.

The Palace of the Dead is the current best way to get up to level 60. The ability to enter it quickly without having to worry about your role or your level makes this tool a perfectally during your leveling.

The dungeon tool casters allow you to do random dungeons of different types every day by receiving a daily bonus. It is possible to participate in different roulettes: low level roulette (available at level 16), 50–60 roulette (available at level 50), challenge roulette (available at level 50 and scenario roulette (available at level 50).

Doing your roulette every day is by far the most profitable way to gain experience.

Hunting Diary

Your Hunt Log in Final Fantasy XIV contains a list of various monsters you can hunt in a certain area. You only need to defeat a handful of them before completing the journal. 

Once you do, you will receive a huge XP boost, and it is an excellentway to give yourself some extra XP while you wait in a dungeon queue.

Go In For Making Recipes

Your character gains a considerable bonus when discovering/succeeding a new recipe. To easily spot them, you have a small yellow V in your notebook.

Accomplish the Main Story Quests

Whenever you get tired of dungeons or the current highest is too difficult for your character, you can always default to main story quests. 

These quests are designed to be much easier than any side or FATE quests you might find while roaming an area. Therefore, completing them is a good way to give your character significant XP boosts without much effort. 

Then, when you are ready, you can return to dungeons, which provide the biggest XP boosts in the game.

ALEAs are a must in FFXIV, and you will come across them at all levels. This is one of the most profitable means of XP provided you succeed in chaining them correctly. Although truly profitable, this method remains extremely boring after a while.

The Mandates

The Final Fantasy XIV mandates are to be seen as an experience bonus, for completing a desired level for example. They use your stock of Warrant Permissions which slowly regenerate each day (6 per day) up to a maximum of 100. 

This method should be set aside for leveling combat jobs for its lack of profitability.

As the penultimate way to get experience points, we have mandates, you know, right? The thing at the bottom right of your quest log where it says “Permissions” and is limited to 100 max. 

Well, you can use them to do mercenary mandates (fighter class) or craft and harvest mandates (which interest us).

The principle is simple: you take a mandate from an agent (mandate levels in increments of 5 levels on ARR / 2 levels on HW / 2–3 levels on SB) and you accomplish the mission that he has given you.

When you take an artisan or fisherman’s mandate in Final Fantasy XIV mandates, he just asks you to give an item to his neighbor, and this gives you experience.

If you take a harvest mandate (excluding fisherman), it will ask you to harvest a defined quantity of objects (boost your harvest statistic to the max to make it easier).

Here is a site listing all the possible mandates with the necessary objects, how to craft them, where to find them and the quantity of mandate to return to level up.

Accomplish the Squad Command Missions

Squad Command missions are a terrific way to develop your character and earn EXP. You will be fighting in a dungeon, and if you do not want to fight with other players, this is the best way to do it with just your team.

First, you must reach the rank of second lieutenant of the great company and raise the level to 2 of the squad.

How do they work:

• You need the rank of second lieutenant.
• The squad must level up to level 2.
• Similar mechanics to other dungeons but with NPCs instead of players.

Guild operations are similar to Bestiary. They act as a tutorial for new players of Final Fantasy XIV and offer a fairly good experience bonus when they succeed the first time. 

You can get this bonus once for each job, so do not hesitate to do them from level 10.

Passive EXP Buffs

There is no reason not to use passive EXP buff items! These items can be anything from food to any item for the team. 

The rested EXP bonus is also crucial and can significantly increase the amount of EXP you get from dungeons and other tasks. The advantage of these buffs is that they can easily give you more EXP.

How Passive EXP Buffs Work:

• Different EXP buff gear sets are increased by a certain percentage at a certain level.
• Food items increase EXP gain by 3%.
• Rested EXP requires the player to log out on an Aetheryte, which contains one and a half bars of EXP.