Location or Pay

While I broadly agree with the comment above, think we need some context.

There's more to a job than just the role. Here are some questions worth pondering:

1. Social: Do you know anyone in the city you're being asked to move to? How long will it take to travel home to see friends and family? The best job in the world probably still sucks if you get to your apartment and have nobody to socialise with.

2. Job role: You say its a job that's 'more' what you want to do. How much more? Is it your dream job or just a slightly better one? How competitive is it to get one of these jobs i.e. will you get this opportunity (or similar one) again? Uprooting your life to a new city for a job that's only slightly better with more pay might not be worth it depending on the answers to these Q's.

If you didn't take the new offer, picture yourself in 10 years, lets say you're in the same role with the team you like. Do you think you'll regret not taking a chance?

If you do choose to leave, just be honest with your team and keep the bridges alive. Be polite and simply say while I love the team here and really appreciate the experience, I am choosing to pursue a different role for X,Y, Z reasons. They should understand if they're reasonable.

Life is more interesting when you take chances. If the new job in the different location turns out to be a shit show, you need thick enough skin to roll with the punches. It comes down to how risk averse you are.

For me my priorities are: Role>Location>Pay. Just gotta define yours and see which jobs sits where.

Location, but you're missing the forest for the trees. Role is a highly paramount answer. I got a pretty decent raise to move from a location I highly desired to one that I like less. The job is still mostly the same, but I preferred the old deal more, and am basically burning my entire raise on rent. Remember, experience in the role gets you further options there, and a career switch is hard.

How terrible of a location are we talking about? For me, it was role first right after college and still pretty much is since I just changed positions. Mamba weights the social aspect a lot but it's really not that tough to make new friends in a new place as long as you have at least a small kernel of social skills and don't mind being independent from the fam (on my third new city currently and have never looked back). A serious significant other definitely makes this a different story, and I've left one behind to chase an opportunity (doesn't sound like your situation though).

Now's the time to get after the position that you want the most without anything weighing you down, so to me, it's an easy choice. Also highly agree with the first comment on comp.. it comes naturally once you're killing it at a job because you love it.

Let us know what you choose buddy.

The answer will probably vary a lot with your age/career stage. I was willing to go pretty much anywhere for my first 1-2 positions and my main focus was career upside. Now that I'm farther along in my career my interest level in moving to a shithole is zero. If you have a partner this will likely be even more true. There's a reason Thornburg, for example, has a ton of turnover.

Always choose experience over anything else, especially in this sense. Once you have the experience you can try to move to a city that you want to live in after a couple of years doing the job you want to do. Win-win right there. Plus, you'll be much happier doing something you genuinely like doing and will pay off in the long run.