Leveling

Blue Mage starts at level 1 and has a maximum level of 80. The overall leveling process for us is dramatically different from the rest of the jobs. Since we’re unable to queue for roulettes via the Duty Finder, we need a different way to level up efficiently! Blue Mage gets a massive experience bonus (10x) when killing overworld enemies (enemies outside of duties and FATEs). This means that the best way to get to level 80 is simply by killing enemies in the overworld.

There are three methods of leveling up: being powerleveled by someone at max level, powerleveling yourself with specific enemies, or manually leveling yourself by killing enemies around your level. Each method is described below, but it’s worth pointing out that the manual method is largely a waste of time. It takes significantly longer and there is no benefit to doing it that way. You don’t get to “practice” playing Blue Mage while leveling since most of the tangible “practice” happens at max level once you’ve started learning spells, anyway! For Blue Mage the process of learning spells is more closely related to leveling up on other jobs, and leveling up on Blue Mage is essentially just a formality.

Here is a quick video that goes over some of the leveling locations for us:

Powerleveling

As mentioned before, Blue Mage gets a massive bonus to experience from defeating overworld enemies. This bonus applies to any enemy up to level 80, but no higher than 80. Experience in FFXIV is interesting because whoever tags the enemy first gets the full experience, regardless of who actually kills the enemy. This means that we can level up by having a low level Blue Mage tag a level 80 enemy and having a max level player kill that enemy. The result is that the Blue Mage will get the full experience for the enemy and level up extremely quickly.

One important thing to note is that the Blue Mage should not be in a party with the max level player or they will receive very little experience. Being in a cross-world party is fine since that doesn’t technically count as a party, though. Multiple Blue Mages can be powerleveled at once by being in a party together as long as they are close to each other in level. If powerleveling they are at different levels, start with the lowest level one first. Once they reach the level of the next lowest, those Blue Mages can join a party together. Repeat the process until all are in a party and all reach level 80.

Preparation

There’s not a ton of prep that’s needed for this. It can be helpful to have an instant cast ability like Flying Sardine to make tagging enemies easier. This spell can be learned from Apkallu in Eastern La Nosce (x:27, y:35). The Apkallu are level 30 so you will need help to learn this if you are starting at level 1.

How It Works

Once you know where you’ll be powerleveling, the process is pretty straightforward. The Blue Mage tags an enemy with a spell and the max level player kills the enemy. You simply repeat this until you reach level 80. The job of the max level player doesn’t matter, but I like using shield healers since you can put a large shield on the lower level players for extra safety and resurrect them in case they happen to die. Ranged DPS is going to be the “fastest” but the difference is minimal since you’ll be mostly limited by respawn times, anyway.

Expected Time

It should take about an hour to go from level 1 to 80 when being powerleveled this way. You can use experience buffs such as expansion preorder earrings, battle manuals, food, FC buffs, etc. to make the process faster.

Solo Powerleveling

There is a peculiar enemy in The Tempest that we can use to powerlevel ourselves. Just north of The Ondo Cups there are Leeches and Clionids. If a Leech gets close to a Clionid, the Clionid eats it. As long as we tagged the Leech first, the same rules from before apply and we get the full experience for the kill.

Preparation

Similar to being powerleveled by someone else there’s not a lot of preparation that is needed. Flying Sardine can be helpful, but we can actually get away with using just Water Cannon and Sleep.

How It Works

The goal is to tag a Leech and then have a Clionid eat it. You can cast any spell on a Leech and then bring it towards a Clionid, or you can cast Sleep on a Leech then aggro a Clionid and bring it next to the Leech.

Expected Time

It will take about an hour to go from level 1 to 80 when powerleveling yourself. It will be slightly slower than being powerleveled by someone else, but not by much. Experience buffs can help here, too.

Manual Leveling

Some folks prefer to do things the old fashioned way. This involves killing enemies around your level until you reach max level. However, there are still some nice tricks for this. You can start out by running around and killing things with Water Cannon. Once you reach about level 20 you should try to learn 1000 Needles and Acorn Bomb. 1000 Needles can one shot most enemies early on, and 2-3 shot enemies up until about level 40. You will alternate between Acorn Bomb and 1000 Needles and continue grinding to level up.

Once you get to around level 40, other abilities will start dealing more damage. I recommend running Cutter’s Cry to learn Ram’s Voice. This 220 potency AOE spell will also apply Deep Freeze on enemies. Your “rotation” is now just spamming Ram’s Voice until about level 50.

At level 50ish you can learn Choco Meteor which is a 300 potency AOE, and your new “rotation” is basically just using Ram’s Voice to freeze enemies and spamming Choco Meteor until they die. On enemies that are the same level as you or below, you can use Ultravibration every 2 minutes for an instant kill. You can continue this all the way to max level.

How It Works

This is a long and boring grind, and it can be separated into three phases: before 1000 Needles, 1000 Needles, and after 1000 Needles.

Before 1000 Needles

Our goal before learning 1000 Needles is to get to a level at which we can learn 1000 Needles. If you have someone that can help you learn it, then you can do this at level 1 (but if you have someone willing to help, why are you leveling this way?). Otherwise, you will need to run around killing enemies with Water Cannon until you reach roughly level 20.

1000 Needles

1000 Needles has an interesting property where it deals exactly 1,000 damage evenly split by all enemies hit. 1,000 damage is enough to kill enemies in one or two casts at low levels, even enemies that are a much higher level than we are.

1000 Needles is learnd from the Sabotender Bailaors in Southern Thanalan (x:16, y:15). They are level 25-27, so we are able to kill these at around level 20. Once we have learned the spell we are able to start the next stage of the leveling process.

At this point we are going to be killing enemies with 1000 Needles. This will one-shit enemies for a bit, but eventually it will take two casts. For extra safety we can use Sleep which will allow us to get the full 6-second cast off. Swiftcast can be used to make the cast instant, but it has a 60 second cooldown.

After 1000 Needles

1000 Needles does exactly 167 DPS (1,000 damage / 6 seconds). Once a standard 220 potency filler spell such as Electrogenesis does more than 167 DPS, it is faster to use that. Given a 2.5 second recast time, this means we need our filler spell to do 417 damage per cast in order to be better. I recommend using The Ram's Voice since it has the additional benefit of freezing enemies, rendering them unable to attack you for 15 seconds.

Once we get to level 50 or so we can learn Choco Meteor from Courser Chocobos in The Dravanian Forelands (x:34, y:28). This deals 300 potency when we have a companion chocobo summoned, which makes it the most powerful spammable spell we have in the overworld all the way to level 80. At this point we can just spam Choco Meteor and The Ram's Voice (to reduce damage taken) until we reach level 80. If you’re leveling on enemies at or below your level you can also use the “Vibe Check” combo of The Ram's Voice and Ultravibration to instantly kill enemies. This can only be done every 2 minutes, but you can reset the cooldown by entering and leaving a duty.

Where To Level

There aren’t any “best” zones for leveling this way or anything. You really just need to find enemies around your level and kill them. An easy way to figure this out is to see which zones have FATEs around your level. It’s not an exhaustive list, but some possible options are:

  • Levels 1-15: Western Thanalan
  • Levels 15-20: Western La Noscea
  • Levels 20-30: South Shroud
  • Levels 30-35: Eastern La Noscea
  • Levels 35-40: Coerthas Central Highlands
  • Levels 40-45: East Shroud
  • Levels 45-50: Mor Dhona
  • Levels 50-55: Dravanian Forelands / Churning Mists
  • Levels 55-60: Sea of Clouds / Azys Lla
  • Levels 60-65: The Peaks / Yanxia
  • Levels 65-70: Yanxia / The Lochs
  • Levels 70-75: Amh Araeng / Kholusia
  • Levels 75-80: Rak’tika / The Tempest

Gear While Leveling

Unlike with powerleveling, your gear does matter if you’re leveling yourself. After you outgrow 1000 Needles you will need to make sure you are using level-appropriate casting gear. Below level 50 this is basically just vendor or crafted gear, and at 50 and above you can start using Tomestone of Poetics gear (Ironworks, Shire, Scaevan).

Expected Time

It will take many hours to get to level 80 doing it this way. It starts out quick and then slows down dramatically. As mentioned before there is no practical benefit to leveling this way.