FFXIV: Quick Guide to Squads and Progression

squadrons are an interesting feature in the grand scheme of final fantasy xiv they're precursor to the advanced ai and flavor of trusts but also just end up kind of being forgotten due to just how shoved off to the side they are yet they're some of the most useful optional features you could hope to have especially if you're a solo player without a free company but before we get more into what squadrons are or how to progress them let's take a quick talk of the prerequisites it's actually really easy to unlock them back at level 20 in the story we joined a grand company while progressing through the story you'll gain plenty of grand company seals from fates and other activities and spend them on rank-ups keep ranking up until the max complete the first two ranks of the grand company hunt log complete the two quests that appeared to clear zamaio darkhold and arm veil and eventually reach second lieutenant rank very very easy if you for some reason lack an income of grand company seals enough from just doing the grand company hunt log you can do fates gather and craft a turn-ins or even leveling roulette's adventurer in need there's plenty of sources really unless you're trying to get into ranking up at like level 50 and didn't just naturally progress the grand company leveling this is the easy part at level 80 or even earlier will work getting to maxed out rank and unlocking squads can take under two hours even if you've not even earned a single grand company seal yet i actually did it the other day took a grand company from zero all the way up to second lieutenant in no time but i don't want to spend too much time on the unlocking i want to spend more time on squads themselves when you finally reach the rank of second lieutenant talk to the person behind the counter again and you will unlock squads enter the door on the side and begin your long long journey to progressing the squads when we get in there there's not much to see we'll be given a basic squad of three people to start and be able to progress through the tutorial the tutorial begins with leave and go to other stuff yeah weird start but it is an important thing to learn first by doing challenge logs new people will request to enlist in our squad any time you complete a log check the adventurous squadron selection under timers if you got someone it does give you an on-screen notification but i usually miss it until then if nothing else at least you have a convenient armoire and glamour dresser in here let's look at the challenge log itself most of these all have some tied in squadron members except i believe eureka and completion just about everything else if not everything else can give you squad members and each squad member has specific types of challenges they prefer one might only show up from treasure hunts and gold salsa challenges the wiki has the full list of squad members and of list of what challenges spawn them so go out do some challenges kill some fates do some dungeons and anything else you might have to do in the challenge log however not all challenges will give you squad members you only have a chance at getting a squad member even if it can give you one you may need to do three or four before you get even one squad member but when you do you can come back to the barracks the papers on the table will now have a mark over them but only for this tutorial section from now on you'll have to check the paper or the time section for any new squad members no matter who you get though just take this first person so we can continue the tutorial which is our introduction to missions the first mission no matter what is guaranteed to succeed and reward all of your squad members with some exp send them off and come back in an hour this is where it becomes clear that squadrons are just fancy retain adventures there's no gearing or anything but you pick an objective then go away for however long it takes this first mission is only an hour so let's go away again when the timer runs out talk to the sergeant congrats we had a very basic mission of being npcs and we succeeded now to celebrate with training the regiment board is key for progression both for exp and for stats this is a confusing window at first so let's break it down on the left we have all of the different types of training strength mental tactical combinations of the two trainings and a balance of all three at once we also see we have a daily limit of three trainings on the right we have stamps a base level of 120 out of 200 total stats and boys that show the spread of these stats this is completely separate to the stats of each individual member this is a squad bonus that applies for everyone and at the bottom we have our squad if someone will level up from training it will tell you here hovering over each training we see how it affects our stats each training will add 40 points to our stats except for the balanced training which will do nothing add points wherever you wish to start but i'd say strength is the best option to start but there is no one way to do all of this no matter what you pick you're likely to move stats around later but for now pick one and wait another hour well like i said fancy retainers most of what we do here will be waiting one hour later we can talk to the board see our success and that's it the tutorial is finally over i recommend doing another training at least before doing the next mission just to max out your training stats but otherwise it's now time for a real mission we have a list of level 1 to 15 missions each given their own exp having a gc seal cost to send the squadron out and at the top stat requirements it seems to me the following each stat threshold that is asked for is a 33.33 chance at completion of the mission so this level one mission all three stats are blue and i have a 100 chance to complete the mission the sergeant at the bottom even says as such pick another mission low and some turn red his flavor text will change for how many different stats are failing to meet the requirement and so does the chance to fail the mission you can't do a higher level mission than the highest level squad member you send out so to start this will be no worry at worst only one stat will be below the minimum and you will have a high chance of success so send them off and come back in 18 hours real missions are actually 18 hours long highland exploration just like retainers so go do stuff and probably complete more challenge logs and potentially get more squad members you can have up to eight of them and until you have eight of them just take anyone and everyone who comes your way you can even do training while the main squad is off on missions to boost your off-duty members levels or change around stats for the next mission you got 18 hours of free time after all so might as well spend some of it training everyone else when the squad returns you'll be told if they succeeded or failed and an overview of their leveling progress and a lot of empty space that will be filled up later now for another mission we can't repeat the same mission over and over because they're weeklies you are worried of this but now it's actually going to matter you were forced to try hard emissions and potentially fail due to stat spreads but now with five members of the squad we can swap people around in an attempt to hit different stat thresholds and attempt to tilt the odds back in our favor this level 15 mission though has a special reward you will definitely want when you have someone above level 15. enlistment manuals turn a chance to get a squad member into a guaranteed join the next time you complete a relevant challenge log extremely beneficial for this early point and doing said swaps and tilting the odds the other way to tilt the odds is some min maxing on your squad trainings after hitting the cap of training stats further training that isn't the balance training will remove points from stats and put them into others i'm sticking to all and just the strength for now just because i only have one strength-based member as we hit level 20 on at least one member for our first flagged mission a rank-up mission flagged missions are all or nothing you either succeed or you fail you must hit the stat requirements for all three specialties this is where the min maxing comes in you'll have to swap around members of the team train in different tiers or just brute force it by leveling up a bunch more some people also say that there is a chance to succeed even without meeting all the stats but i have never seen it succeed no matter what path you choose get the stats and go complete it spam as many missions as needed to get high up in level and all to meet the stat requirements wake up tomorrow and you'll be rewarded with a weird book and squadron rank 2. let's start with the book go talk to a squadron member and hit the left button you can freely swap everyone's class on the fly now provided you have books to do so you can earn more of these from more missions but don't count on them not until you're basically done with squadrons will these come into play at any good level more importantly we have more missions to do from level 20 to level 35. these are much harder to get the stats for but the rewards are worth far more than before you are likely to start seeing failed missions now but that's okay if you haven't seen one already a failed mission will give you half the exp reward of a success so it's not a total waste but one more thing has also unlocked command missions this is a useful way to grind jobs without worrying about queue times not all dungeons are in here but they go all the way up to level 60 so there's a lot of options and this is a sideway of grinding up levels without worrying about cues as i said it also gives you squad exp so any of those missions that are causing issues can be potentially quickly brute forced with a bit of grinding just make sure you and the squad members meet the minimum level requirement to get into the dungeon you will want to do these but there's a bit of roughness to them the ai is terrible tank positioning and aggro management is all but nothing they don't follow any real rotations but the damage is good despite that and they don't do mechanics or dodge aoes you have to use the engage slash disengage buttons on this little pop out to move them as needed these can also be found in the actions menu so you can put them on your hot bars if you need to but you can see all the issues here in the second holotali boss the boss is always messy even with real players but it's even worse with the squad members as they just don't listen also if a squad member dies uh hope you have a raise that would just go kill yourself and then you'll start at the beginning of the dungeon with everyone alive there is one special button though ungermax a squadron limit break you can use limit break still but this is better it not only does a bit of damage but gives everyone a damage up buff for a few seconds it also only spends one bar of limit break not the entire thing use this to make quick work of bosses and get some refund from the dungeon drops and sell them back to your grand company when you come out you will get exp potentially some special potions only usable in squadrons and a new tactics talk to any squad member and you can as they unlock them change their tactics to give them different buffs each one has five levels too ultimately though the goal is to just keep going till you have everyone at level 5 offense this includes the tanks and healeys just because they ignore most of the damage and the healer is not going to mess up anything special which tactics you get from a mission seems entirely random so just keep pushing command missions until you get what you want there's a line of achievements involved in command missions 2 but the most rewarding one is to do 10 command missions do 10 and you will get a set of emotes all the little training exercises they do when you set them off to train the push-ups the sit-ups and all that otherwise it's back to sending them off on ventures for the big exp rewards and doing other things while they work on themselves don't forget to do training too as ranking up to rank 2 also boosted your maximum training points to 280. but then comes when they get back from the mission successfully there is a chance for each member who went on the mission to get new buffs called chemistries their conditional operations usually if someone has a specific race or gender or a mission level you can get special rewards this first one i got is if there is an raw going on the mission with my tank they can get some books to turn anyone into a dps class go to the specific squadron member on the training board to confirm this chemistry chemistries do not automatically apply since each member can only have one but you can still obtain new chemistries as you go on more missions and you may get ones that are better or ones that are worse than what you already have now comes into play the mission affinity thing in the mission menu mission affinities do two things and apply to anyone that falls under the listed criteria such as roll or race so in this example it's asking for a marauder and that's what class my tank is for one this forces the chemistry to work no matter what this group does not have an all raw but the chemistry works anyway secondly it boosts the power of the chemistry instead of a 10 chance to get a book it's a 100 chance if the mission succeeds you can't really min max around mission affinities getting good chemistries is hard and getting good chemistries that work for your squad is even harder so pay a little attention to the mission affinity except for when you can abuse it on the fly which can be hugely worth it when you can you can get chemistries for materia craft descripts gatherer scripts or even mandeville gold saucer points for the golden saucer even if you hate the chemistries you get to start just like squad members take whatever you are given as you get it some chemistry and some random rewards you can sell or something is better than nothing for now just slot in team members chemistries and keep pushing missions up to level 40. swap chemistries as you get ones you prefer just don't forget to do so before sending people off on a new mission leaving these new chemistries to auto reject the moment you send them off that chemistry is gone at level 40 will once again get a special flagged mission this one is actually pretty hard to min max through you will need to mess around with the training levels party compositions and level up as much as you can just to clear the mission find a good balance of stats and get as close to success as you can then train until the threshold is completed if you can't come close keep playing around with stats and maybe even start changing classes around if you have books at worst you can constantly spam the flagged mission for failures for exp but you're better off going for wins on easier missions it'll be worth more exp in the end which if you didn't notice we're now dealing with level 30 plus squad members there are no jobs in squadrons only the nine classes the big flip is when you get a ninth squad remember as i said you can only have a maximum of eight so now you have to start deciding who you want to keep around in this case i got a second lancer who is of a higher level just barely than my current lancer to me this can be worth the swap because it means even just a tiny bit more stats for min maxing this is also wiser not to care who you get when you start you can always swap in people you like more but otherwise turn the new guys away and hope for someone else to show up if you don't like them either but with enough work you'll finally hit the magic numbers to succeed the level 40 flagged mission do it and get to the big boy girl rewards for start hitting rank 3 with your squad auto promotes you to first lieutenant this comes with a new grand company seal cap of 80 000. that's a lot of seals secondly we now have a third set of missions priority missions that are extra special you can only do one of these per week and you're almost guaranteed to never meet the minimum stat requirements the best you can hope for is two out of three these missions are where the best chemistries like crafty script rewards will come from but on top of that the rewards for these missions aren't the exp but the scrolls in the mission reward these are personal free company buffs level three free company buffs at that for example heat of the battle three is a plus 15 exp boost for everyone in the fc for 24 hours as a personal buff it's two hours of plus 15 exp and i use this wording specifically because they do not stack as mentioned on the buffs but you can stack on different buffs if your fc has meat and mead up throw on heat of the battle for yourself for two hours it's really really nice for grinding there's a bunch of other buffs too but i like this one the most but we're not done with progression either keep doing missions and trainings and the new cap for training buff is 400 stats and the max level isn't until level 60. you will need to boost everyone up to high levels anyway for the level 50 versions of the priority missions and captain rank but captain rank has another requirement first back to command missions to reach captain rank you must do five different command missions this count begins the moment you unlock command missions i did holotally back when i first unlocked command missions then four more ending on zamayl darkhold after hitting first lieutenant the hardest part of this is getting three different squad members all to level 44 to bring on the mission upon doing five different missions you will now have the final flagged missions in the second tier of missions a level 50 mission with a really easy to achieve stats by the time you have even one squad member reaching level 50 you will almost guaranteed achieve the minimum stats easily if not a little more grinding and you should hit there easily complete this flagged mission and you'll instantly be upgraded to captain rank the final rank of grand companies at least as of this video there are no higher ranks than captain and the grand company shop outside will have all items available and your grand company seal cap is now 90 000. the shop now includes special captain glamour weapons the warfare books for changing squad member classes and the manuals for guaranteeing squad members show up for every challenge log completion also some emotes but that's about it now you just send them off the dailies over and over keep spamming training and come back every week on tuesday for more personal free company buffs you can try to min max chemistries as you go as well make special squad builds maybe go for all one race farm scripts and the final unlock comes at level 51 for each individual squad member at level 51 or higher you can finally take away their ugly armor and manually glam your squad members so you can force them all to be peak fashion peak performance and peak looks yeah that's the stuff and as i said as of this video's release that's the end that's all there is to it if they ever add more to squads i will just copy paste this video basically and edit in all the new stuff because i am not leveling a new character just to do squats a third time look below in the description for a link to said video if that ever happens and use the chapter select and time stamps to skip ahead to the new stuff they add what you didn't see and will soon experience for yourself is that this took weeks and weeks i have 40 clips of video before i go to record more to fill in any empty space and almost all of them are on different days each maybe seven of them for a total of 33 different days of recording on a final note if you ever changed grand companies your squad will follow you so you don't have to start over if you decide to leave the twin at it and maelstrom loses to join me in the flames but hey at least it let me put eight people into pig costumes thanks for watching this little four way into the world of squadrons i hope it explained to you the things you didn't understand and why it's actually worth building your squadron up and getting it done personally the personal buffs redundant are worth it even if you're not a one-man army like i am and you have a free company the extra buffs are really nice to have around as a raider as a casual player whatever if nothing else you can get a few lucky crafty scripts and unless you like grinding a lot those aren't exactly easy to farm either but that's besides the point who knows what the future holds for squads but for now enjoy your new slaves take care and may the power of another hogsley waste to your enemies and as usual there's an extra special thanks to all my patrons over on patreon and an extra extra special thanks to aryadeva eamonn alcateb benjamin hahn body clock ethan ethan olson jimmy carterelle kyle steinhauser meowfie scott stanley vala llc and yvonne the moose if you'd like to become one of my patrons the link is down below the community discord down below my twitter uh something else down there too i think whatever thank you for watching thank you for all of your support everyone and have a good day

Channel: WeskAlber

Views: 165,366

Keywords: ff14, ffxiv, shadowbringers, guide, squad, squadron, grand company, free company, buffs, dungeon, mission

Id: GsectSvBFFY

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021

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