Level Sync

Level Sync is a feature used in instanced quests, instanced duties, and FATEs to keep difficulty consistent. Level Sync allow players to party together for a wider variety of content across different character levels.

Duties

Level Sync is automatically applied when joining a duty (such as a dungeon or trial) where the character's level is higher than recommended. While the character's level is reduced, the character will temporarily lose access to any actions (weaponskills, spells, or abilities) their job would normally learn above the synced level, with the exception that Role Actions are kept available. Their HP and the damage of their abilities will also be reduced and the effect of gear will also be scaled down. Once the duty is finished or the player leaves, the character will afterwards be restored to their normal potential. Some duties come with additional item level syncs. This is more common for dungeons than raids.

The player is able to disable Level Sync when creating a pre-made Unrestricted Party, which bypasses the usual matchmaking functions of duty finder. If the character's real level is much higher than that of the dungeon, avoiding Level Sync will enable them to use their full power to quickly solo clear the duty.

Unfortunately, Level Sync only works downwards, when the character is higher than that of the duty. Level Sync does not increase the level of characters that are too low to enter or in the middle of the recommended range. PvP has a similar system where all characters are synced to a similar level of power, but this is not generally considered Level Sync.

Quests

Main article: Quest Battles

Many Class Quests or Job Quests have portions of instanced combat where the player participates with friendly NPCs. While these NPCs do not join the player's party like a multiplayer duty, the same rules apply with action restrictions.

There are some mechanics related to difficulty but are not Level Sync. For example, if the quest duty instance is failed, then the player can choose to scale down the difficulty when they try again to Easy or Very Easy, but this doesn't affect the level sync mechanic. Quest Sync is a different feature that instead scales the rewards instead, rather than the difficulty of the content, and thus is not particularly related to Level Sync. Another unrelated feature is Leve Difficulty, which can be chosen by the player and scales up the level of mobs instead.

FATEs

In the open world it is not possible to participate in a FATE when higher than the recommended level. The player has to hit a button in the Duty Tracker to sync down. Please note that other mobs around the FATE target can still gain enmity/aggro, and attack the player while they are weaker under level sync, so it can be useful to kill them at the player's usual level first before applying level sync to make it easier.