Levelling in FFXIV can sometimes be a slog, but there’s actually a mechanic in this game that rewards you for taking breaks every once in a while. It’s called Rested Experience, and it acts as an Experience boost to help you level your jobs when you return to the game.
What is Rested Exp?
Rested Experience is an Experience boost given to characters that have been offline (or just AFK) for a bit. It can be useful in levelling all jobs, whether they’re combat jobs (Disciples of War or Magic) or non-combat jobs (Disciples of the Hand or Disciples of the Land).
Like most other Experience boosts, Rested Exp is only applicable to combat, gathering, or crafting activities. It does not apply to quest rewards or daily offerings like roulette or turn-in rewards.
You can see your current Rested Exp as part of your Experience Bar on your HUD. It looks like a dim extension of your current Experience.
If the bar is blue, that means you have enough Rested Exp stored up to take you to the next level. You can store up to 1.5 levels worth of Rested Experience, which takes 4 days to fully store.
How Do you Gain Rested Exp?
All you have to do to build up Rested Exp is log out or go AFK in a Sanctuary. Sanctuaries are indicated by the little crescent moon symbol at the end of your Experience Bar. If you’re in a city or settlement then you’re most likely in a sanctuary.
The game actually won’t let you log out right away if you’re not in a Sanctuary. A countdown window will pop up instead. If this happens, you know you’re not in a Sanctuary and should cancel and get to one first.
You do NOT need to log out in an inn room. This is a common misconception for newer players. All the inn room does is give you a cute ‘waking up’ animation when you log back in to the game.
Generally speaking, if you’re near an Aetheryte, NPC vendors, or a zone with no enemies, you’re in a Sanctuary. But if you’re ever unsure, just check your Experience Bar for the crescent moon icon.
Interestingly, if you’re in a Sanctuary when you enter a duty like a dungeon, you’ll continue to accrue Rested Exp over time. This means even if you started the dungeon with nothing stored, every once in a while you’ll get bonus Experience from the dungeon enemies because you’ve earned a bit of Rested Exp.
How Do you Use Rested Exp?
You can think of Rested Experience as a stored pool of Experience, and as long as you have some left it’s doled out to you as an Experience Boost. Whenever you gain Experience through combat, gathering, or crafting, you get an extra 50% Experience that’s taken from your store of Rested Exp. This will be included in your system message when you gain experience.
For example, you could get the message ‘You gain 8,313 experience (+50%) experience points’ which means part of that 8,313 exp was due to your Rested Exp being consumed. As such, you don’t exactly get to ‘choose’ which jobs to spend it on, it’s just consumed automatically until it’s all used up. You’ll have to pay attention and choose to play on the job you want to receive the Experience boost.
If you’re using a max level job, don’t worry. You won’t waste Rested Exp while playing on these jobs and your store of Experience won’t be consumed.
Combat jobs often have multiple Experience boosts active, whether from the Armory Bonus, food effects, or special pieces of equipment. The 50% Rested Exp is added to these to get a single total, so you may see something much higher, like (+200%).
It’s usually harder to spend Rested Exp on crafters, since it only affects Experience from crafting recipes, not quests or turn-ins. You’ll have to have a lot of materials ready for crafting in order to squeeze all that stored Experience out. Gatherers can always grind nodes or do Leves to use the boost, since their Levequests give experience for the activity, not a turn-in.
Tips for Using Rested Exp
Rested Exp is a single resource shared by all your jobs. If you have some saved up, any of your jobs below max level will consume it when they gain experience through combat, crafting, or gathering. Keep this in mind if you’re trying to level up a specific job.
You get the most ‘bang for your buck’ by using Rested Exp on higher level jobs. Low level jobs need less experience to reach the next level, so 1.5 levels worth of Experience isn’t as significant on a level 10 job as it is on a level 60 job.
That said, it’s a small difference and only matters if you’re really trying to min-max your levelling to make it as fast as possible across multiple jobs. I tend to level just one job at a time, so if that job is still low level, it gets the Experience anyway.
The fastest way to use it up is to earn large amounts of Experience repeatedly. Killing lots of enemies at your level (such as in a levelling dungeon), crafting recipes at your level, or gathering materials at your level are all efficient ways to get the most out of that 50% boost.
Summary
Always be sure to log out or AFK in a Sanctuary (check for the crescent moon on your Experience bar) to ensure you gain Rested Exp while you’re not playing.
Spend your stored Exp by doing at-level dungeons, crafting at-level recipes, or gathering from at-level nodes.
While you have stored Experience, focus on the jobs you would most like to level up first, so you don’t spend it on secondary jobs by accident.
I hope this helps you get the most out of your Rested Experience, and encourages you to take regular breaks when gaming. Do you have any questions about this or any other Experience boosts? Let me know in the comments.
Marco
Your site is a huge help! Thank you!
Ken
Just the info I was looking for. Thanks!