What to expect when you're 50

I'm half wondering if the search engines will find this page and present it to people turning 50 years old. That might make for an amusing read!

We've recently brought a few groups through the final two dungeons of the main story, completing the game while protecting them from the "speed run" mentality of duty finder groups which can really spoil the atmosphere of the final cutscenes of the game. We still did it pretty quickly, but we had fun doing it! I also know that it can be a little overwhelming going from the normal 4-person dungeon to the 8-person craziness with tons of AOEs flying around!

Whee, completion for the first group we brought through!

Now after the end credits have finished (all 45+ minutes of cutscenes and credits!), you may be wondering what to do next. If you simply follow the questline, you'll get directed to start on your relic quest, take on Ifrit hard mode (HM), and if you're up-to-date on your Grand Company quests, you may be directed to Amdapor Keep (AK). Well, the truth is that the game until now has just been the tutorial. At this point the gloves come off and you have to start playing a grindy MMO.

Endgame in FFXIV is different from FFXI. There is a progression of content you have to get through to be appropriately geared before you can take on the next tier, similar to WoW, SWTOR and other MMOs, and unlike FFXI where you can jump into Limbus and Dynamis being a fresh 75.

There are three main components for success:
1. Boss mechanics -- a.k.a. player skill or memorization (surviving)
2. Maximizing your class -- Figuring out the best way to use your skills  (executing)
3. Gear -- The "item level" or ilevel of your equipment (farming)

Boss Mechanics
In the various dungeons coming up, you've learnt a lot about the different mechanics that are out there. You'll also see that if you know of the mechanics before hand, or have experienced the mechanics a few times in the past, you can easily handle the fight by moving out of the way or taking counter measures to prevent damage. All the endgame activities essentially follow the same rules -- learn the mechanics and execute. As you go to the harder fights, you have less and less room for mistakes and all 8 players have to execute the mechanics perfectly to win.

To learn the mechanics, you have a few options. You can go with a group willing to talk you through the mechanics. You can try Duty Finder, though with the "first time" warning that pops out, most people simply drop out of the Duty Finder instance instead of putting up with trying to teach someone new. Or you can watch a video guide on what to expect.

For the video guides, my advice here is that you watch it to learn about the mechanics of the boss fights, what to avoid, where things will pop, what they look like and what to expect. However, take the strategies that the guides tell you to use with a grain of salt. There are many different ways to do these fights, and you should talk it over with the lead what to do. Sometimes, the guides also get things wrong or make bad assumptions. (A couple of examples from SheepheadCG's guide: He says that the Garuda HM slipstream attack cannot be dodged. Crothay dodges it consistently. He also says that you have to save your Limit Break for the Demon Wall. My group never limit breaks for the entire AK dungeon.

Here are a few links to some of the boss mechanics:
Amdapor Keep - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laOUldaIpMU
Ifrit HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiT5WRb5ATM
Garuda HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7o9CJ5j4Rg
Titan HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3S8w0yT6no

Maximizing your class
Getting from 1-50, you've either been mostly playing alone doing quests, or grinding out FATEs. You may have done a few dungeons, but for most of those, you could get away with only using half your abilities. In many cases, some of your abilities would seem hard to use, or not worth it given how short some of the fights are. (For example, the "Heavy Thrust" ability from LNC/DRG needs to be delivered from the flank of a mob to get the higher potency and 10% damage bonus. While this is hard and doesn't seem worth it for shorter fights, for longer fights, keeping that buff up makes a significant impact.

If you are a damage dealing job, you might want to take a look at your skills and see how you can make the most of the abilities. You also get a number of new traits as you neared level 50 which do change how you may want to use your skills. Review these, and possibly talk to other people for ideas on how to maximize your damage. (If there is interest, I could do an article about BRD. PLD I'll leave to people who have played more on the job)

The big reason for why you need to maximize your class is that in many of the boss fights from now on, there are significant DPS checks where you have to do a certain amount of damage in a short amount of time or else you will lose the fight. It's like the Ifrit and Titan story fights, except at a larger scale.

For gear, simply put, in many of the dungeons, there are gear checks in terms of either needing to do a ton of damage in a short time (DPS check), having to survive a big hit (HP check) or having to heal up a ton of damage quickly. In some cases, the Limit Break can make up for some deficiencies, but for the most part, you pretty much need to get the appropriate gear to progress through the different tiers.

Gear
This is where the "progression" part of FFXIV comes in. In order to do one part of content, you essentially have to get enough gear from a lower tier before you are capable of passing the content. SE actually acknowledges this and plans on implementing ilevel requirements to queue up for dungeons in an upcoming patch. Until that happens, you run the risk of getting into a bad Duty Finder group where people aren't appropriately geared.

To get started as a fresh level 50:
- Your AF serves as a good starting point
- Pick up your accessories, the level 48/49 items. These should be available on the AH for relatively cheap
- You may want to pick up one HQ ring. There is a limitation of only using one Darklight item of each type, so you can't use two of the same Darklight rings. I have a crafted HQ ring melded with materia for my ring slot.
- For your relic quest, you need to turn in a materia infused ilevel 55 crafted item. Since you need this item anyway, my advice is to obtain it and use it until you get a replacement

For getting the relic item, you can either buy it directly from the AH, or farm the materials and have one of our crafters help you out here in crafting and melding it! You *can* turn in the HQ version for credit in your relic quest, so don't be afraid to spend a bit extra here.

Progression
Now that you have the basics, you can start farming some gear up. With the basic AF + ilevel 55 weapon, you can probably do some of the following activities.

Castrum Meridianum(CM) / The Praetorium speed runs -- These reward 100 Tomestones of Philosophy, which can be exchanged for ilevel 70 Darklight gear for all slots. This is also probably the easiest and most mindless one to just grind away. An average speedrun of CM takes between 30-40 minutes to complete, depending on the gear and competency of the group. You've just completed both dungeons so you know how it goes, except this time you're skipping all the cutscenes and progressing to the end. You'll also see shouts for speedruns at Mor Dhona, which are usually set up as 1 tank, 2 healers and 5 DDs.

Aaaaaaand... sometimes we get goofy when farming!

Wanderer's Palace -- This 4-man dungeon rewards 50 Tomestones of Philosophy if you complete the entire dungeon. It also drops ilevel 55 gear, including weapons, and is about the only place to get a good shield before you complete your relic shield if you are a PLD. The chests in this dungeon drop white weapons that crafters use to create the items you need to turn in for relic quests, so they sell fairly well on the AH. It's a fairly fun dungeon, with some interesting mechanics including avoiding a wandering mob that makes positioning your fights and situational awareness important. The final boss does have a small DPS check mechanic where you want to kill the boss before things start getting too crazy!

Hi there! If you're lucky, you might meet this guy!

These two dungeons give you a good start on your gear. With the tomestones that you've gathered from just doing the story quests, you should almost have enough for your first piece of darklight gear. Darklight is ilevel 70 and covers all slots except for the weapon. In total, you need about 6000 Tomestones of Philosophy to completely gear yourself out with full darklight and for your relic quest, but you don't have to do it all in one shot. (Trust me, you do NOT want to do it all in one shot!)

Alternatively, you can also craft your gear. You can craft ilevel 55 gear which should be better than the Wanderer's Palace gear if you also meld it with materia. You can also craft ilevel 70 gear, but from what I read, this gear actually requires crafting materials that are purchased with tomestones of philosophy anyway, so it is actually harder to obtain compared to simply using darklight.

Once you have a few pieces of ilevel 55 gear, and a couple of darklight, you should be able to move up to the following:

Ifrit Hard Mode -- This is an 8-man trial. While you can win this trial with new-50 gear, it's probably best to pick up a few pieces of ilevel 50, 55 or Darklight gear before you attempt it. The two keys to winning are to execute the mechanics of the fight well (where to stand, how to avoid damage), and to win the DPS race to take down the nails at the halfway point. It's possible to do this fight and take almost no damage except for the unavoidable AOE right after the nails stage if you are a healer or tank. The reward from this fight are small amounts of tomestones, and a single ilevel 60 weapon drop.

Ifrit weapons glow! (And yay for Austin, Teven and others for the completely random drop bow drop!))

Ampdapor Keep (AK) -- This 4-man dungeon is the first one to really throw out a challenge for people in terms of mechanics and gear. The 2nd boss in this dungeon has a timed DPS check. If you don't do enough damage fast enough, you'll lose the challenge. Gear helps to make it easier to pass the DPS check, but it's really a matter of how well you play. You need to not only execute on your job, but also dodge all the boss moves thrown at you. AK gives you 80 tomes of philosophy but also 40 tomes of mythology. You will eventually need 900 mythology tomes for your relic, and after that, the "AF+1" gear. Both of these are ilevel 90, and you are limited to collecting up to 300 mythology tomes a week. The counter resets every Monday at 8am US Pacific time. AK is also where the ilevel 60 armor drops, so if you can run this regularly, you'll gear up fairly quickly. Completing AK will also let you get your Grand Company promotion so that you can simply buy the ilevel 55 weapons!

Due to the limited content, AK is really the only place for you to farm mythology tomes. As such, even if you form a full party of 4, you might still encounter a wait while the game "reserves an instance". Mondays is especially bad after the reset as everyone wants to get their quota of tomes, with waits of 20-150 minutes just to start the dungeon.

You'll need to do AK at least 8 times a week for 3 weeks for the necessary mythology tomes to upgrade your eventual relic to a +1. If you want the ilevel 90 job-specific gear, well, keep doing AK for now. It takes about 5 months of continuous mythology farming to complete a full set.

What next?
If you're at a point where you can succeed in doing Ifrit and AK consistently, you have a few different things you can do next.

1. You can make progress on your relic quest once you get a replacement weapon. 
There are a couple of 8-people fights that are actually not in Duty Finder. Either get the FC together, or look for a shout group. The two fights against Chimera and Hydra are actually not hard at all, just a matter of learning and executing the mechanics.

The fun way to finish a fight!

2. Continue on to Garuda & Titan hard modes
If you are appropriately geared, you can move on to perform the next two hard mode trials. You will need these for your relic quest progression anyway. Like before, it's mostly a matter of learning the mechanics of where to move, and having the necessary damage output to pass the DPS checks. For Titan though, you do want a significant amount of HP to survive the unavoidable AOEs.

3. Prepare for the Binding Coil of Bahamut
This is currently the final content available in FFXIV. It drops ilevel 90 gear and is quite difficult. To even start on it, you need to have finished Titan HM. It appears that full darklight and at least a relic weapon, if not relic+1 is recommended for this area. It's not only instanced, but you're limited to doing each "turn" or section of the dungeon once a week.

It feels like there is some content missing between Titan and the Binding Coil of Bahamut. There is a jump between ilevel 70 and 90 which seems to indicate that there should be ilevel 80 gear which you could go after finishing Titan HM. Hopefully this is coming out in the 2.1 patch.

In the meantime, work on AK, work on Darklight, and grind your way up!

As a side note, if you need help in learning AK, let me know. If I'm free, I don't mind helping people learn the fights and if necessary, figure out what needs to be done to help you pass these dungeons. Also, look out on the LS channels for farming runs for CM, Ifrit, and even relic quests!

Ok, here are some random pics!

You can see the Gridania airship dock from outside the city!

Some of the results of our first Ifrit farming run!

Demon Wall -- 2nd boss of AK and first real DPS check in the game.

Sometimes it takes a little prayer to win! (Healer LB to recover from a Chimera near-wipe)

Ya, we're totally underdressed for Ferien's final dungeon!

Dramatic CS is dramatic! (Plus that's not my bow!)