The next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is not that far off. Sure, we’re at the start of May, and it’s not launching into early access until the end of June, and that’s a while away… but it’s not really that far away. It’s the sort of thing that goes faster than you might think, especially if you’re not paying too much attention to it on a daily basis. There are fewer than two months to go, and that means that it’s time to wrap some things up and start preparing for the expansion.
Some prep you either cannot do or will not actually provide a material advantage for you, of course. You could go park yourself in the city that will let you unlock Viper or Pictomancer if you want to start with those jobs, sure, but there’s not a whole lot of point in doing so unless you plan to not log on for two months – and if that’s how you live your life, you’re probably not the kind of person who would be reading this column in the first place. But there are some things you can do to start preparing for the expansion right now, and in today’s Wisdom of Nym, that’s exactly what I want to talk about.
Get your gear for Poetics
Viper and Pictomancer are going to use Scouting and Casting gear, respectively, and they’re going to start at level 80. That means right now is a perfect time to go get the level 80 sets for those two gear categories from the Crystarium. Seriously, they’re not even all that expensive. I actually did this months ago, myself, but you have plenty of time to do so right now, which will tie in very nicely to the fact that you should also…
Cap out all three types of tomestone
As of right now, there are Causality, Comedy, and Poetics to collect. Each one has a cap of 2000. Before the expansion arrives, you will want to have all three at that cap because as soon as the expansion rolls around they’ll all be merged into Poetics, and that’s going to still have value.
How useful Poetics will be is always in flux to a certain degree, but at a bare minimum they’ll let you get the level 90 gear that’s currently a bit more expensive and/or requires upgrading with minimal effort. If you don’t already have fully upgraded sets for Scouting or Casting, this will be useful as you level Viper or Pictomancer. If you have other jobs that you haven’t leveled? Useful. If you just happen to really like a weapon model that would otherwise be a pain to get? Also useful. These tomestones will help you; best to bank them up now.
And while we’re banking useful stuff…
Grab a full set of Endwalker hunts
This one is a little more optional; if you have no intention of leveling the new jobs, it’s pretty pointless. But if you want to level them, even if it’s not your first priority, you can head to the hunt board right now and pick up a full set to bank them for the day the patch drops. Heck, if you wake up early enough, that’ll allow you to do a full set, grab another full set before the daily reset, and then grab another full set after the daily reset. Minimal time spent for maximum reward.
Unlock the Arkasodara quests
Again, this is chiefly relevant for leveling, but as with the hunts, you can grab a stack of these quests before the daily reset and then after the reset for more levels. Unlocking these quests requires completing two side chains in Thavnair, and if you have already finished leveling and perhaps don’t like doing tribal quests, you may not have already done this. Now is the ideal time to do so in order to be prepared.
There are other leveling tools that can help give you a shot in the arm, but none of those is anything you can necessarily prep this far in advance beyond the hyper-generic concepts like “buy food for experience buffs,” so there’s no real need to offer that advice. But there’s still stuff worth doing! For example…
Finish out your PvP track
If you still want PvP rewards from this particular track, the good news is you still have a couple months to earn them! Even better, that’ll help with fleshing out your tomestone savings. That’s in addition to the fact that you’re likely to have new PvP rewards available when the expansion arrives, so having a backlog of currency to buy them is hardly a bad idea even if you already have everything you currently want.
There’s a lot of stocking up currency, huh? Might as well make that a whole header.
Stock up on useful currencies
Obviously, gil is going to be useful basically forever, we all know that. But stocking up on Grand Company seals and MGP is probably going to be worthwhile, too. You can buy potentially useful items like dark matter with seals, you can always get cosmetics with MGP, and there are always new cosmetics added with the launch of new expansions. Even better, some old cosmetics might be more desirable with the addition of a second dye channel. And while you’re at it…
Stock up on useful items
Aetheryte Tickets are always nice for saving gil on teleports, especially now that they’re automatically usable. Did you know you can also get tickets that bring you straight to your Grand Company for seals, thereby saving you a general ticket and making a potentially faster trip? You can also earn manuals to reduce gear durability loss and gain other buffs from squadron missions, so maybe you should get those set up in advance. Any consumable item that you use is worth holding onto in numbers.
That includes crystals, by the way.
Clear out old inventory
If your inventory is anything like mine, it probably includes a whole lot of stuff that you’ve held on to through the expansion just in case you might need it. Now is the time to admit that you are probably not going to need it. The odds are good that random crafting materials for mid-level crafts you can just re-gather in a few minutes as a Miner will not be in high demand (usually those sorts of materials are from a couple expansions back when they come up), and you are probably not going to use those Pandæmonium tokens you still haven’t traded in. Clear out gear you don’t really want because there’s more coming, right?
Obviously, most of this isn’t strictly necessary, and some of it might not be applicable to your personal situation; maybe you have a full stock of tomes already and weren’t planning on leveling the new jobs. But if you do have these things in your mind and want to do some expansion prep now? There are options. Pretty good ones, even.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to speculate in broad strokes about some of the abilities that we might see come to our existing jobs – which we’ll no doubt learn about with the next live letter in the same week.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
