Guide to Level the Fastest with Viper and Pictomancer in Dawntrail

With the launch of Dawntrail's early access on June 28th, 2024, two new jobs will become available to players who've purchased the newest expansion for Final Fantasy 14 -- the magical ranged DPS class Pictomancer, and the melee DPS class Viper. For those looking to immediately level these classes to the level required to start the 7.0 main scenario quests, there are a few steps you can take to prepare for the launch of the jobs, as well as a few things to keep in mind once you do start playing to make the leveling process as efficient as possible.

• Wonderous Tails can be prepared starting Tuesday, June 18th, a week and a half before early access goes live. These only stay valid for a certain period of time, so you can't prepare these too far in advance, but you will want to pick these up in Idyllshire and complete all nine seals and have nine second chance points prepared before the expansion goes live. Once servers do go live, you can drop by Idyllshire to turn these in and get roughly half a level right off of the bat.
• Azeyma's Earrings grant an additional 30% EXP to any combat class under level 90 when equipped and can be obtained by pre-ordering Dawntrail. As these will passively increase the amount of experience you gain from other tasks on these list once the servers go live, it's worth checking to make sure you have these equipped once you log in before doing anything else.
• Hunt marks are another thing you can prepare for a good chunk of experience very quickly after the launch of the expansion. Unlike Wonderous Tails, these don't have an expiration date on them, so you can prepare these as far in advance of the expansion launch as you'd like. These can be picked up from Old Sharlayan, near the Scholar's Harbor Aethernet Shard at the Guildship Hunt Board. A full stack of junior, associate, senior and elite guildship marks should net players roughly a third of a level. Make sure to leave one monster of each left to kill for when the server goes up. You can use hunt tracking websites such as FFXIVHunt to better plan your hunt routes as well, should you want to further optimize your time.
• Bloodsworn rank Arkasodara tribal quests will net players roughly a third of a level as well. Given that these Tribal quests take roughly a month to max out from scratch, it's best to start these ahead of time, as higher rank quests give more experience. You can't complete these quests to store ahead of time, so keep in mind that what you're doing here is simply making sure you're the proper rank before the expansion launches. We'll get into what to do on the day of Dawntrail's launch later on!
• Challenge logs are yet another source of roughly a third of a level. Your challenge logs reset each Tuesday, so these can't be prepared more than a few days in advance of the launch. On June 25th, you can prepare by doing two dungeons via Duty Roulette, four dungeons (be careful not to do the additional two via Duty Roulette, as this will complete the aforementioned challenge early), giving four commendations to other players and completing four FATEs in the open world. Once the servers go live on June 28th, you can complete the final step for each of these to get a quick boost of EXP.
• Free Company buffs, such as The Heat of Battle can be prepared ahead of time, and grant between 10% to 15% bonus EXP depending on which tier of the buff you prepare ahead of time. These can be prepared via the Aetherial Wheel of your Free Company, or by buying them through your Grand Company through seals, if your Free Company doesn't have access to them.
• Leveling food is also an easy way to increase EXP gains through combat by 3%. Making sure you have an adequate stock of Boiled Eggs ahead of time will help you to avoid having to buy price gouged food once the servers go up.
• Finally, the well-rested bonus is another way to get a 50% bonus on any experience earned through combat (that is, enemies defeated). This isn't a bonus on all experience, but it's still worthwhile to make sure you have a proper amount saved going into the expansion. Well-rested bonus is earned by going idle or logging out in a sanctuary, which is indicated by a crescent moon next to the experience bar. This caps after seven days, so you'll want to make sure you have your leveling finished a week in advance of the beginning of early access to make sure you aren't consuming it ahead of time. This bonus works passively, so there's nothing special you need to do to utilize it once the server go live.

Having a gear set lined up for the classes you intend to level with the launch of Dawntrail can save a fair bit of time as well, avoiding the need to sift through your inventory and find the gear pieces that fit each class. In addition, by ensuring you have the pieces you want ready to go and the currencies needed to buy others ahead of time helps to avoid having to spend time grinding out tomestones after launch. As such, attempt to do the following in preparation for the expansion launch.

1. Make sure you are capped on all forms of tomes going into the expansion so you can buy the relevant pieces of gear. You can prepare the gear before the expansion with the exception of the weapon, as the weapons won't be obtainable until the servers have gone live. Any tomes that may become retired have traditionally been able to be traded in for another form of tomestone, and it's likely that pattern will hold in Dawntrail.
2. Having all dungeon gear from the leveling dungeons from level 81-89 for the role will ensure that you will receive the weapon as a drop from that dungeon as you are leveling. This isn't as big of a deal if you plan on leveling to 90 purely through Deep Dungeons, but if queuing with others for a dungeon, it's still best practice to keep your weapon somewhat updated. In addition, having a stock of potential crafting materials to make crafted weapons for the new jobs will help fill in the gaps if you're unable to do this. Example sets for level 80 Pictomancer and Viper can be found by clicking the name of their respective job, but keep in mind that without the job's skills from the Media Tour information that these are likely to change in some way as we get better insight into how they interact with Skill Speed and Spell Speed. Check back regularly if you plan on using these. These sets do not include earrings, as they assume you will be using Azeyma's Earrings for the bonus EXP. You can click the "Show marked items only" option to make these pages easier to read as well.
3. You can use websites such as XIVBars to make your hotbars ahead of time, which you can export to a macro ahead of launch to run once the servers go up. If no sites add native support for Pictomancer or Viper ahead of the launch of the expansion, you can easily replace the action names from another job with the action names we get from the Media Tour to accomplish the same thing.
4. It is very likely that the new weapons will be purchasable in Eulmore once servers go live, so you can opt to log out there or where the job is unlocked before servers go down for Patch 7.0 maintenance.

The following is a loose idea of what you should do once the servers go live for the early access period of Dawntrail. If any are time-sensitive, their bullet point will mention this. Pay attention to this, as in some cases, if you don't complete the task in time, you'll miss out on a sizeable amount of EXP.

• Unlock the job you wish to play first, either in Gridania for Pictomancer, or in Ul'dah for Viper. The Pictomancer unlock quest The Joy of Pictomancy is located at Old Gridania (X: 8.0, Y: 10.3) from the NPC Cheerless Hearer. The Viper unlock quest, Enter the Viper, is located in Ul'dah, the Steps of Nald (X: 9.3, Y: 9.2) from the NPC Worried Weaver.
• Purchase the level 80 tomestone weapon for the corresponding job (or both, if you've got extra!) in Eulmore.
• Start your queue for the following activities. These are ordered from most efficient from an EXP to time perspective to least. You can continue down this list while waiting for you queue to pop.
  1. Duty Roulette: Leveling
  2. Duty Roulette: Frontline
  3. Duty Roulette: Main Scenario
  4. Duty Roulette: Trial
  5. Duty Roulette: Alliance Raid (note that you can no longer guarantee which raid you get through item level here, so queue at your own peril)
  6. The highest level 81-89 dungeon you're able to access, either with a group (if you have one) or through Trusts if you don't.
• Turn in your Wonderous Tails from the previous week and then pick up another book from the week that Dawntrail begins. Since Wonderous Tails resets on Tuesdays, you can start a second set to do as you do the rest of these tasks and turn in another fully-completed set after finishing it for another large EXP boost.
• Time sensitive: Teleport to Thavnair and complete your daily Arkasodara tribal quests. This must be done before the next daily reset to allow you to pick up another set once the daily reset occurs.
• Time sensitive: Finish the hunt bills you picked up by killing the last of each monster, then pick up your new bills from the day before. Once again, this must be done before daily reset, and you can use a site such as FFXIVHunt to plan your pathing more efficiently if need be.
• Complete any remaining challenge log entries you haven't finished. This includes one more roulette, another dungeon, one more player commendation, and one more FATE in the open world.
• Once you've completed all of the above, you can fill the remaining time by completing FATEs in the zone matching your current level while awaiting your next queue to pop.

If you don't have a pre-made group, or don't intend on leveling through dungeons to level 90, you have a few options. For level 80 to 81, Bozja is still a viable way to complete the first level for each job. After hitting level 81, however, the experience gained will remain at level 80 values, so it's best to hop to the next option, which is spamming floors 21-30 of Eureka: Orthos. This set of floors can be queued for in Mor Dhona and can either be done solo (not advised) or through Duty Finder. If doing this method, it's advisable to remember that others are likely going to be trying to move between floors as quickly as they're able so that they can level quickly and move on to the new main scenario quests, so don't go in expecting others to frequently want to stop to collect chests.

Finally, as mentioned above, this article should be considered in flux   we're still somewhat early in the launch information window, and as we get additional information from the Media Tour and other places, it's possible (and even likely) that information contained herein will change, especially when it comes to the gearsets linked. Check back frequently leading up to launch and keep an eye on the changelog on the page to make sure you're up to date with any changes that may be made.