Shadowbringers brought a wealth of new additions to the XIV formula. It’s a critically acclaimed expansion, and rightly so – it brought years of storytelling to a glorious conclusion and added tons of new content. MMOs are in really unique positions as games to learn and evolve from their history, streamlining and improving consistently. That’s not saying that all MMOs are just improving all of the time, of course. And with such high player counts, even a change that makes a lot of people happy will make just as many people angry. Part of these changes in the game’s structure is the replacement of job quests with role quests. Job quests are essentially your personal quest line. Where the Main Scenario Quest has you saving the world, going back to the Waking Sands every five minutes and running errands for teenagers, job quests are all about you. Or, more accurately, they’re about your job. It’s like real life, but with less menial labor and more monster killing (which eventually becomes a little bit menial too). Every class and job in XIV has its own quest line. These were the ways in which you would learn new abilities, discover more about your chosen job’s relation to the world of Eorzea, and meet independent casts of NPCs. Shadowbringers has taken a different approach, consolidating these quests into role categories instead of individually.
Why Did Role Quests Replace Job Quests?
There’s a couple of potential reasons. The role quest storylines give you lots of background information on the Warriors of Darkness, our counterparts from The First. Each questline focuses on a specific member, so it fills in a lot of the lore that hasn’t been touched upon yet. These enigmatic figures have been a thorn in our side for a while. And by following these quests, we understand a little bit more about who they are and what motivated them. It’s also likely that it was just way easier to make four sets of quests instead of eighteen. And if it could tie in thematically with the story Shadowbringers was telling, even better. The job quests were a great way of fleshing out the individual stories of our characters and their abilities. But the quality wasn’t exactly consistent throughout the bunch, and there’s only so many times you can repeat the same basic concept for a quest.
When To Do Your Role Quests (And How To Start)
If your aim is getting to the end of Shadowbringers as fast as possible, you should be doing these quests as soon as they become available. Completing at least one role quest storyline is necessary to complete the MSQ. So you’ll want to get the one relating to your main job done in a timely manner. They’ll become available at level 70, and each of the starting quests can be picked up in The Crystarium. Depending on which role questline you follow, you’ll be sent to various locations in Norvrandt to continue the storyline. No matter which role quest you follow, the next step of the quest becomes available every second level from 70-80. Example: first one at level 70, second at 72, third at 74, etc. There are five in total, along with a couple that take place after the main story concludes.
What Do I Get For Completing My Role Quests?
You will not be rewarded with new traits or abilities for completing role quests, but you do get a steady stream of EXP and small amounts of gil for your trouble. Perhaps the most exciting thing to come from it (besides the story insights) is access to your job’s artifact armor. These usually represent a decent boost in stats before you get into the meat of the endgame, and they look pretty awesome too. I’m still wearing my Gunbreaker artifact armor, about six months after getting it. It’s glamoured on, of course, but it’s great to have a gear set tailored to my job (even if it’s just the same broody trenchcoat that Radovan/Thancred wear).
Will Job Quests Come Back?
There actually isn’t a clear verdict on this so far, whether coming back in Endwalker or at a later date. But if I was to make an educated guess – they’re probably not coming back. We’ll probably get a few more snippets of job quests at max level to keep us up to date with the characters involved, but they may no longer be the breadcrumb trail to lead your character to new abilities and gear. By the time Endwalker launches we’ll have a total of twenty playable jobs in XIV. That’s a lot of different paths to keep creating new stories for, and some of them are getting pretty drawn out as it is. The new Reaper and Sage jobs will almost definitely have their own job questline to introduce them to the world at large, but we may see the new role quest system in place for good from here on out.
