SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jul 21, 2021

• First, note that you now get Allagan Tomestones of Poetics from, well, most things you do in groups. You can spend these on ilvl 130 gear in the major cities, which will last you until midway through the Heavensward MSQ.
  
• Do the 24-man raids for Crystal Tower. They're even mandatory to progress the MSQ later nowadays, but used to be worth it anyhow. Like all the 24-mans they're easily done in random queue. Their design is quite outdated, especially for the first two, but they're reasonably fun the first time. Starts with the quest Legacy of Allag in Mor Dhona.
  
• Do the Hildibrand questline. It's a very japanese slapstick comedy where the devs see how far they can stretch the animation engine for laughs. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but a nice break overall. Starts with the quest The Rise and Fall of Gentlemen in Ul'dah.
  
• Start the Relic Weapon series. I don't recommend trying to finish it, the books are a grind and a half, but the first few steps are easy enough. You'll unlock a couple of new trials and get some potentially cool weapon glams. Starts with the quest The Weaponsmith of Legend in Vesper Bay.
  
• Grab an 80 goon or two and do the Binding Coils of Bahamut 8-man raid. Later 8-mans can be done in roulettes, but Coils is an exception. You're not going to get a ton out of the fights, but you do get some backstory on what the hell was up with that big moon with a dragon in it everyone has been talking about, and it introduces some NPCs that will be very important later. Starts with the quest Primal Awakening in the Waking Sands.
  
• There are I think 15 optional dungeons, most of which start in Mor Dhona or a faction capital. Many of them are a bit old and weird -- Squeenix didn't really figure out how they want to do dungeons until the last few ARR patches -- but they're usually an interesting weird. Occasionally and unfortunately they're sometimes also bad weird, Stone Vigil (Hard) is one example of experimentation that did not work. Note that in FF14 the hardmode versions of old dungeons are very different from their normal mode cousins, with completely different bosses and so on. They're not actually very hard.
  
• Start the postmoogle quests. It's a long series of side quests where you learn more about various tertiary characters. The rewards are a lot of text, a slathering of innuendo and a pair of star-spangled underwear. It's very insignificant and there's a lot of it so don't try to shotgun the entire thing, but like Hildibrand it can be a nice diversion. Starts with the quest Of Errant Epistles in Mor Dhona.
  
• If you have a willing L80 friend you could run through the Extreme versions of the Primal fights a couple of times. Each drops a mount relatively often, and getting all of their mounts gives you a quest for an especially shiny horse. Having someone to do all of them repeatedly is a bit of an ask, though, getting all the horses will take a couple of hours. You can expect that people will be happy to run them once after the weekly reset: there's a weekly quest of sorts players get in HW ("the catbook") that gives everyone 16 random old raids and dungeons to clear for cool stuff, usually including at least 3 of the ARR Extremes. The quests are generally handed out in the Waking Sands or by the minstrel/producer stand-in in the Rising Stones.