The challenge log in FFXIV is a great weekly checklist that gives you easy resources. Perhaps the biggest draw is the large chunks of experience it throws at your combat classes.
Levelling combat jobs can sometimes feel like a slog, especially if you’re trying to do all of them. When you finish a roulette while simultaneously completing a challenge you get a huge experience reward and it just feels so satisfying to see those level ups.
The first thing you need to know is how the value of the challenge log exp changes above level 70.
Level 70+ Jobs
Each of these challenges rewards you with 5%, 10%, or 15% of your exp bar while you’re below level 70. From 70 and up it seems to scale down linearly.
A level 75 job for example gets about half the proportionate reward as a job below 70 (about 2.5%, 5%, or 7.5%). A level 79 character would barely notice the bonus at all. This means it’s most efficient to use challenge logs for lower level jobs. Don’t worry too much about getting the challenges done if you’re working on something that’s already in the mid to high 70s.
Battles Category
‘Feeling Lucky‘ requires you to complete three dungeons via the duty roulette. You’ll be rewarded with 15% of your exp bar to reach the next level.
For such a simple task it sure gives you a whopping amount of experience. I definitely recommend getting this each week.
You’ll probably complete it passively while you go about your regular playing, so watch out early in the week. You might accidentally complete the challenge while on a level 80 job in the expert roulette, wasting the exp reward.
To avoid this pay attention to the notification in chat and the one in the middle of your screen. This will tell you when you’re one task away from completing the challenge.
‘Dungeon Master‘ and ‘Exercising the Right‘ each earn you 10% of your exp bar for completing five dungeons and commending five players respectively. These two challenges seem to have been designed hand in hand, and they can easily be completed together at the same time. Just be sure to commend a party member at the end of each duty.
Once again, you’ll want to keep track of how close you are to finishing the challenge. You can easily queue for a levelling or alliance roulette for your final dungeon and commendation to make sure you get all that experience on a lower level job.
‘You’re the Hest Around‘ I and II for three and ten guildhests respectively are simply not worth it. The time spent doing 3 guildhests is just too much for the mere 5% of your exp bar. I suppose if you have a very low level job you’re working on and you want to just sit in queue while alt tabbed doing something else, then this might be worth doing.
The ten guildhest challenge is even less efficient though, and you wouldn’t benefit from the duty roulette bonus for at least three of them. Ain’t nobody got time for ten guildhests.
FATEs Category
‘In Your FATE‘ I and II are both pretty good and worthwhile, especially for lower level jobs. You need to complete five and ten FATEs respectively with the highest participation rating. This can easily be done while queued for duties, waiting for a party in party finder to fill up, or even while gathering if you’re waiting for a timed node.
Since you need a high participation rating, be aware that joining a FATE that is nearly complete already may yield only bronze or silver credit. It’s important to get in there earlier before it’s close to completion, which you can check by hovering over the FATE on the map. Fighting with a party can also help to build and share the participation rating.
Keep in mind that if you leave the area before the FATE is complete, whether by teleport or accepting a duty, you will receive no reward or participation credit for that FATE.
I find the Shadowbringers zones are more active when it comes to FATEs (because of the Shared FATE system most likely). This could make it very quick and low effort to complete if you can knock out a few FATES with other people. Remember that challenge log rewards do not scale well into the 70s though, so don’t expect much if you finish the challenge while in the Tempest.
If you’re in Heavensward or Stormblood zones, then I would just make a note to avoid boss FATEs. They’re often too difficult to solo reliably, even with your chocobo companion helping you. Go for the ones where you just have to kill a number of mobs instead.
If you play DPS or just find yourself sitting around in long queues, even with friends, consider fighting in FATEs for some nice filler exp and an activity that keeps you engaged.
Levequests Category
Leve allowances and levequest challenges are generally best left to crafters and gatherers in my opinion. However, if you have no interest in that content or if you’ve already levelled them all to max level, you can still make use of this challenge category for your combat jobs.
Each of the two challenges here will give you 15% of your exp to reach the next level which is significant. The trick to completing them quickly is by using mostly tradecraft or fieldcraft leves to fill the progress bars. You only want the very last leve of the challenge on your combat job, since battlecraft leves are the slowest of the three.
‘Just Leave It to Me‘ requires leves of five unique leveplates to be done, so you will want to check out tradecraft and fieldcraft leves first.
Having a crafter will let you complete constancy and charity leves, or ingenuity in ARR zones (but you have to teleport somewhere else to turn it in).
Fishers are actually useful here as their leves work just like tradecraft leves, which are faster than those of the gatherers’. Fishers in Shadowbringers have the concord and sincerity leveplates on their levequests.
If you have a level 70+ crafter and fisher, I recommend just buying the items needed to turn in one each of the constancy, charity, concord, and sincerity levequests. These can all be turned in quickly at the Crystalline Mean in the Crystarium.
After that, just pick any combat leve you like in a zone from ARR and stomp it for an easy chunk of exp. Leves are not subject to level sync so if you just want the challenge exp you can pick a really early low level levequest.
‘Making Like a Tree‘ requires you to complete any 20 levequests. They do not have to be unique. Honestly if you tried to do this all on combat jobs it would take a very, very long time. Since levequests are not super efficient for combat experience in the first place, I don’t recommend doing this.
However, if you have the gil to spare, you can speed your progress on this challenge along very quickly by buying NQ items and turning in 19 tradecraft leves.
I bought 19 lengths of NQ white oak lumber (for about 13,000 gil) and turned them in at the Crystalline Mean on my Carpenter. I actually earned about 29,000 gil in rewards, as well as some logs and elemental shards. That was a ridiculously easy profit which I was not expecting.
After that, I took a combat job to a low level levemete (I chose the one in Quarrymill) and did a single leve for the challenge reward. Leves are not level synced, so you’ll complete it quickly on a higher level job (just remember the challenge exp is most efficient below level 70).
From buying the leve turn-in items in the Crystarium to finishing the combat leve in South Shroud, this entire process only took me about ten minutes. Fair warning though, this is a boring ten minutes that mostly involves a lot of clicking.
If you already have your crafters ready and you enjoy squeezing out every advantage you can get, check out the levequests category. It’s not an exciting task, but if done correctly it can be a sizable exp reward for very little time investment once a week. If you’re an efficiency junkie, this is pretty good stuff.
Conclusion and Recommendations
My recommendations for the best werkly challenges to complete are ‘Feeling Lucky‘, ‘Dungeon Master‘, and ‘Exercising the Right‘, all found in the Battle category.
These are definitely the easiest and most fun to complete but you have to keep an eye on their progress to avoid wasting the exp on a max level job.
I advise you not to bother with the ‘You’re the Hest Around‘ challenges as they are a big waste of time. Guildhests are not quick enough duties, and the rewards are simply too low to be worth the number you need to complete. You’re better off running a single dungeon of the appropriate level.
The FATEs and Levequest categories are worthy of consideration deprnding on your playstyle. FATEs are good if you need something to keep you engaged in queues, while Levequest challenges are extremely time efficient if you don’t mind a dull activity for ten minutes or so.
What are your thoughts on these challenges? Do you find them worth the time or not? Let me know below.
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