Hi all.

On July 1st, 2018 I streamed a run of FFXIV where I played through the entirety of the A Realm Reborn 2.0 Main Scenario in a single session, completing the run in 14 hours and 30 minutes (based on /playtime). I went in to this with a very specific set of rules so that it could be recreated fairly by other people. The rules included no Free Companies, no Party Finder, no preformed parties, no unsynced duties, no premium/veteran items (including exp boosting equips) and Road to 60 server. The idea being to see how fast a new player could complete the game in what can be taken as a "solo" run, whereby they get no help from anything but the Duty Finder.

The run was streamed on Twitch to show it was all done in one go and later uploaded to Youtube for permanence. The reason I chose to use a Road to 60 server was two-fold: Firstly it helped to eliminate hours of grinding and secondly the Road to 60 buff is assumed to be on-going in that new players to the game are directed to these buffed servers to start off, allowing them to catch up to more experienced players given that the game is now 2 expansions deep. Seeing as the point was to see how quickly a new, solo player can complete this content it seemed appropriate to utilise the features they would have access to as a fresh player, including this buff. Let me know what you think!

Part 1:

Part 2:

nice run, although i'm on the fence whether to accept the road to 60 buff or not. on 1 hand it eliminates a lot of hours (effectively double exp the entire time) on the other who knows when it'll go away, this was introduced because SE needed the new servers filled quickly and you would get this as a bonus perk not so that newer players could catch up. that's the reason they got these items in mogstation that will bring you to lvl 60 with all the quests done in 1.0 ARR and HW.

i'll be doing a run next week (somewhere) and i'll probably use the road to 60 buff until we get a solid ruleset for this that either accepts or bans the road to 60 buff (ofcourse no mogstation/pre-order bonus from the delivery moogle)

Hey Dyllon

Thanks for checking the run out. I get what you and a bunch of other people are saying about the Road to 60 buff and I can 100% see why some people would think that it's not a fair method of play when it comes to speedrunning.

From where I sit as a long-time player though, I can justify to myself that SE will use the Road to 60 buff or some variation of it for the rest of XIV's lifetime as a way of expediting new players through the game. FFXIV is a game that unlocks 90% of it's content by playing through the Main Scenario and as such, SE needs to make sure that in 5.0, 6.0 and so on, that new players are not being gated off from the majority of the game simply because they're not able to level enough to unlock it. At this point in the game, the buff is used to direct people toward underpopulated servers in an attempt to balance the population values as people move to more heavily populated areas to take advantage of stronger markets and a more plentiful player base.

As such, they need the Road to 60 buff to entice newer players to stay on smaller servers and especially as the game continues to release content, it becomes more important to have it so that they can bring a wealth of new players to the game with the promise of content being available to them faster.

I also see it as just another type of run. In single player games you have for example New Game and New Game+ as separate categories where New Game+ will be much faster. Any% vs 100%, runs that enable the use of specific glitches, playing as specific characters and lots more depending on the game, are all different categories that are agreed upon by the community because there are so many potential ways to play the game quickly. To me, Road to 60 is just another category like all of the above where you can have a run with it or without it.

For me personally, it was just much more convenient to run with it because I'm not a speedrunner and hadn't worked out any additional method of optimising the run. On top of that it was the only opportunity I was going to have to spend 15 hours non-stop in front of the game and pretty sure if I had to do a single session on a server without the Road to 60 buff I would have died. =P

All the best with your run!

I can indeed see the road to 60 buff lasting for a while (and especially with expansions, road to 70 would become a thing aswell although the difference between 51-60 and 61-70 is a landslide with 61-70 being faster to power through) at the moment if we talk about the game i only see that DPS will not be a viable option for these kinds of runs with how the duty finder is. DPS queue's will be 15-20+ minutes and that will kill anyone attempting it concidering that you'll need around 3-4 dungeons per level (depending on more factors ofcourse) this would make Palace of the Dead a viable thing for DPS since it's fast queue's as it doesn't care about 1 tank 1 healer 2 dps composition but PotD is so boring and to do that all the way to lvl 50 or 60? as for this reason healers/tanks are the only real choices since those queue times are short. gonna do a run later today (starting late in my time so i can power through the night a bit easier xD) and only thought about a few things to make the run a bit faster (this only applies to the 1-60 and later on 1-70 categories) lvl 50 is a gate and then some (lvl 50 dungeons give little EXP so you would be stuck doing another 3-4 runs on aurum vale but if you save your roulettes for lvl 50 you can speed up that process since DR leveling gives you EXP based on the difference between your lvl and the dungeons lvl) ofcourse the chocobo mount is essential for movement and it's pretty streamlined till lvl 15 (MSQ till 15 then start queue'n for dungeons as much as possible while doing the MSQ)

Stil hope we get a ruleset for this. right now as i see it the ruleset would be very simple.

• No outside source help (includes Free Companies, delivery moogle(this would eliminate the entire mogstation), no Party finder or parties outside of instanced content(dungeons/trials) If you want friends to help you with queue'n they need to start the run from lvl 1 aswell and do the run as you're doing it.
• for now we accept the buff to 60 as it may or may not be a permanent thing, can't tell with how random Yoshi-P is.

Not sure if i missed anything, obviously the EXP boost accessory you get from completing the hall of novice would be allowed since anyone can always do it.

I actually had another question on this: How do we want to view, say, stormblood classes being used to complete the ARR MSQ run? I was scheming over the routing and figured that due to gear and such you'd almost want to drop whatever class you were running and pick up either Red Mage or Samurai to push the actual quests while you get gear for whatever your main class was (probably one of the tanks or Conjurer, because queue times are being clocked too). Samurai if you chose conjurer and red mage if you chose one of the tanks so that you could nab accessories for the Stormblood DPS class without robbing gear from the arguably faster queue-times wise class you started with.

It would mean though that in a weird way the A Realm Reborn MSQ run would require the DLCs to complete.

I'm certainly not someone who makes these decisions here, but by the sounds of it, it would probably be rejected simply because people that don't have the expansion can't do the run. If a strat requires some players do something beyond owning the base game in which the story is present, it means that people are required to buy Heavensward or Stormblood to make use of those tools or they simply cannot compete.

That is where I imagine the concept of not being allowed to use recruit a friend rewards etc. comes from. Some people don't have the friends (or the money to buy more accounts and sub just to give themselves those rewards) and it's easier altogether to just level the playing field for every player regardless of their external resources.

Cool, I was wondering. I got a few friends into the concept of doing ARR% MSQ runs and we're routing and planning and having a good time, that was just something that I was considering.

At first they'll probably be segmented runs because of the nature of the run, but I'm planning a marathon eventually!

I'm actually planning an ARR% run myself, but I'm loony enough to do the marathon because I've had some practice while just leveling alts and I think I can manage it. That is why I've been recently fishing around for info about it. Downside is that there isn't too too much activity on here from what I've seen, so while I plan to stream this, it may not reach any of the interested parties.

There is a possibility that I'll do a streamed run this weekend. I've got a pretty good idea as to how I'm gonna tackle it, but if you've jotted down any routing info you wouldn't mind sharing I'd certainly love to see it.