TYFP

As November nears, I know that many people are probably wondering how to get ready to have the best time possible. First and foremost, enjoy it how you want to. But if you’re looking for some ideas for things you can do to get ready, I’ve compiled quite a few things you can work on to increase your efficiency in the early weeks of Endwalker.
Lets face it, even the smoothest launches have issues; hell, I suffered through Raubahn’s Gate, so it might help you make up some time due to server maintenance or other issues that may arise.

If you want to increase your leveling speed, consider some of the following ideas:

• Stock up on food. At the end of Shadowbringers food with good stats should be relatively cheap, but even junk food still gives the baseline 3% exp boost.
• Join a Free Company that uses the exp boosts, or use the exp boost items.
• Have 20 completed side quests in your journal for rapid turn in for exp boost. You can also do this with 16 leves. Once Endwalker drops, quickly turn in all the quests for a head start toward level 81.

The first section we’ll talk about is leveling. Playing through the MSQ will give you a good amount of EXP, however, with every single expansion that they’ve released so far, the MSQ isn’t enough to keep you leveled to consistently flow through the MSQ. This means that you’ll have to re-run some dungeons, complete sidequests, etc. But you can do a couple things speed up the process and make your MSQ progression a touch smoother:

First, keep your food buff up. If you have food with good stats then use it, but even low level food still provides the 3% boost to gained EXP.

Second, join a a Free company to get their boosts. FC boosts can boost EXP, food effect duration, teleport fees, comat stats, and more. If you really dont want to join a Fc or if your company doesn’t have or use the EXP boosts, you can get Squadron Battle Manuals from two Squadron Missions that will provide the exact same EXP boost as the max power Fc boost, which is 15-goddang-percent.

And lastly, you can use an old WoW trick to give yourself a headstart toward level 81 by holding 20 completed quests in your journal and turning them in after the expansion drops. You can also fill up your maximum leves the same way for even more of a bump, or if you’ve finished your sidequests off. 

If you are trying to build up a nest egg prior to the new expansion, take a look at some of these ideas:

• Turn in clusters/beast tribe currency for materia and sell it.
• Roll for every item you can from your roulettes, desynth the items and sell the mats
• Use up any eden gear tokens/tomestones for gear to desynth/turn in.

Next we have money making. We’re about to replace all our raid and relic gear with questing gear, so its time to ditch the materia. Cash out your clusters, transmute your lower level materia, pull it out of the slots its in now, and sell it off. If the market is bad on your server for lower level materia, you can vendor it. If you fully upgraded your Doman Enclave, you get double the vendor price for it. 

Second, make sure you’re rolling on everything you can from any duties you’re running. You can sell off the items and some of the gear. If you cant sell the gear you and desynthesize it and sell the materials you get. If you cant desynthesize it, you can turn it into your grand company for seals. You can buy items to sell with the seals. 

Lastly, make sure you’re turning in your tokens. Raid gear, even if its too low for you to be used can be turned in for seals or desynthesized. Tombstone items can be sold as well. 

None of these tips will make you billions quick, but it will provide an income for the things you’re already doing. 

If you’ve been doing hunts, you can use hunt currency for aetheryte tickets, which saves a lot of money in the long run.

If you are trying to get a leg up in gear and stats prior to facing new challenges look at this list and see if anything strikes your fancy.

• Running Bozja/Zadnor for relic weapon (most important piece of gear)
• Finishing cryptlurker or laws order gear (can easily last longer than opening gear options in endwalker).
• Fully upgrading Doman Enclave (more money)
• Unlock beast tribe quests (exp for battle classes lower than Endwalker content, non-combat exp for money and self repairs)
• Join a Hunt linkshell! Hunts in Shadowbringers are excellent sources of tomestones, achievements, and more.

Some people may not want to invest time and work into getting gear that will be replaced by questing gear, and that’s understandable. But I argue to following point.

Special effects aside, reaching peak gear in the next 5 months will give you longer lasting insurance against the rate at which your gear becomes obsolete through the initial release. At level 90 you will no longer use it, yeah, you’ll prolly be wearing some mooncloth bullshit by level 85; but it’s a relief when you are redoing dungeons to replace gear to make your next iLVL benchmark for the next dungeon.

Upgrading the Doman Enclave will help you make more money from the vendor items you farm on your retainers. The story isn’t really anything special, but it can be fun to watch the Enclave slowly be rebuilt as you progress through the story.

By completing your beast tribe reputation quests you unlock some vanity items like more mounts or pets, but you also get access to lots of cheap materia and crafting materials, which in turn makes you more money, and builds your midlevel materia stockpile. This will give you fat stat boosts in the middle of the next expansion and you’ll find yourself swinging big dick DPS that your dungeon mates can’t really match if they weren’t prepared early…like you.

If you think of anything else, add it in the comments so people can see it (I’ll probably also add it to the body in a labeled edit too).