Let’s say you haven’t started playing Final Fantasy 14 yet.

First of all, SHAME ON YOU! Secondly, you probably have friends who have been begging you to play the game for years. MANY years. If you’re so stubborn that you waited until the end of 2023 to dive into the world of Final Fantasy 14, you would be at a pretty serious disadvantage compared to other players. 

The game has been running for more than ten years. There have been four major expansions that add hundreds of hours of enjoyment, with a fifth on track for release next year. There are at least 1,000 hours of gameplay to be had here, and some of the top players have tens of thousands of hours under their belt! You uhhh… have some catching up to do.

Thankfully, Square-Enix aren’t sadists. They have implemented a level boost system that helps you get up to speed quickly so you can enjoy later game content faster than it would have taken at launch. Whew, thank The Twelve for that!

To help you better understand Final Fantasy 14’s level boost system and everything it offers, We put together this handy guide. You’ve probably wasted enough time already, so let’s get started!

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Be prepared to pull out your wallet regardless of which level boost option you choose.

The Basics

This is the screen that awaits you when you purchase your level boosts. (Image Source: NA.FinalFantasyXIV.com)

There are a couple of different options that Square Enix offers for players looking to advance their FFXIV experience, depending on if you want to skip parts of the story to get to the most current content or max out your level so you can breeze through all of the story up to the current endpoint. 

Both of these will get you where you want to go, but keep in mind that in order to get to the latest expansion from the very beginning of the game - even with your job level maxed - could take months. And that’s for no-lifers who play for hours and hours every day, it’ll take much longer if you don’t have as much free time. 

The story of Final Fantasy 14 and how it progresses is truly impressive and engaging, and there’s no substitute for experiencing it firsthand. That being said, there are a ton of story recaps available on YouTube created by die-hard Final Fantasy fans, which should do a good job of getting you up to speed in a few hours versus a few months. 

The choice is ultimately yours, and this is just a suggestion!

Option One - Tales of Adventure: One Hero’s Journey

Join your max-level friends! (Image Source: Press.NA.Square-Enix.com)

The first option presented to new Final Fantasy fans (or those who don’t want to grind) is called Tales of Adventure: One Hero’s Journey. 

This option automatically levels up a single job of your choosing to level 80. That means all of the job and role quests will be completed for you without taking the time to do them. Great! If you plan to carry on to other expansions of the game with multiple characters or jobs, you have to pay for each one individually. Not great!

Yeah, the One Hero’s Journey level boost items cost $25 each, and they only work for one job and one character. That can get pretty steep depending on how you plan to play the game, and there’s no getting around that if you want to use this form of boost.

However, you don’t just get the boost to level 80 on each job. You also get a level 530 augmented cryptlurker weapon and a matching set of augmented cryptlurker armor, a chest full of accessories, and 50 Allagan platinum, which can be sold to vendors for a whopping 500,000 gil. That’s not a bad way to kick off a new playthrough, but the cost of One Hero’s Journey does have to be factored into the total cost of the experience. 

The base game can be bought with a $20 Starter Edition that contains A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood, while the $60 Complete Edition contains all of that as well as Shadowbringers and Endwalker. There is also the $140 Complete Collector’s Edition if you foresee yourself becoming a lifelong fan, which has a ton of extras on top of everything currently available. 

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You will need at least the Complete Edition in order to level-boost the Samurai, Red Mage, Gunbreaker, and Dancer jobs since they require valid product keys for all of the expansions up to Shadowbringers.

But hey, if money is no object and you’re looking for the most complete, stress-free Final Fantasy 14 experience possible, go for it!

The good thing is that they’ve made it pretty simple to use the level boost after you’ve bought it. After you’ve purchased what you need from the Final Fantasy 14 Online Store, you just have to log in, talk to a delivery moogle, and accept your delivery. Then you can use the Tales of Adventure item within a large settlement, which will automatically log you out to refresh your progression. When you log back in, your selected job will be maxed out, you’ll have a ton of awesome new gear, and all those platinum pieces to sell. Sweet!

Option Two - Tales of Adventure: The Expansions

You'll get where you want to go, but you might not be ready for it! (Image Source: Press.NA.Square-Enix.com)

The second option to progress through Final Fantasy 14 faster is the Tales of Adventure purchases for the expansions. 

This option is a little more nuanced in that you can skip as for or as many of the expansions as you like. 

Here are the Main Scenario Progression options in the Final Fantasy 14 Online Store:

  • Tales of Adventure: A Realm Reborn - $11
  • Tales of Adventure: Heavensward (also completes A Realm Reborn) - $15
  • Tales of Adventure: Stormblood (also completes the previous two expansions) - $20
  • Tales of Adventure: Shadowbringers (also completes everything that came before it) $ 25

As you can see, these options are a little more reasonable while also giving you more options. However, these items DO NOT raise your character’s level, and you will need to be at a certain level in order to begin the main quest of the expansion you skipped to. 

That’s where things can get a little dicey, as this system is clearly set up to make you buy both of the Tales of Adventure Items, which at best is going to be $50, and at worst MUCH more expensive. At least the expansion skips also come with a bunch of in-game items.

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While you could buy a skip to the latest expansion, you might be out of luck if your product key doesn’t include it. Meaning, if you only have the Starter Edition and skip to Shadowbrigners, you won’t be able to enjoy that expansion because you haven’t paid for it yet. And you would have flagged all of the previous content as complete, so you wouldn’t be able to go back and enjoy all of it. As you can see, it’s really important that you pay attention to what you have and what you’re trying to do!

The Tales of Adventure items for each expansion give you a certain amount of Allagan platinum to sell, all of the minions from the previous expansions, all of the mounts, and more in addition to unlocking New Game+ and all of the story cutscenes from each. 

Make the Most of Your Experience

Be ready to take flight. (Image Source: Press.NA.Square-Enix.com)

There are a dizzying number of combinations you could use to get to where you want to go in Final Fantasy 14, but it all depends on what you want to do.

We would recommend using a level boost to max out the job of your choice, and then taking your time to experience the game’s story as it was meant to unfold. All of the other expansions and content will always be there, although the possibility of spoilers is a very real thing. 

We hope you found this guide helpful, and we also hope that, however you choose to get into Final Fantasy 14, that you have as awesome of a time as we have since we started playing the game.