FFXIV: Restoring Ishgard – Patch 5.11
Here’s a great guide with macros and stat requirements that should help you craft all your collectables with ease.
Last night I got my first of the scrip items from the Ishgard restoration – the /lean emote, which is perfect for Amon! You can see it in the header image above.
So, let’s talk about this restoration. My server has welcomed it with open arms, and it’s little wonder. When you’re in the Firmament zone, there’s almost constantly the ding of someone leveling up. The crafting experience you get from turn ins and participation is just insane. So, if you’ve had any interest in leveling crafters but thought it would take too long, this is for you.
On Mateus, the zone is always packed. On the morning of the release, it looked something like this:
Let me note that there are so many people here that the game has to cull them until you get right up on most of them. Aside from holiday events, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of server participation before.
This leads to some issues… but I’ll talk about that later. For now, I’m going to focus on what this is all about.
Restoration Unlocked!
As you might expect, there’s a short quest that you need to finish in order to unlock the zone. In order to have this quest, you must have completed the Litany of Peace quest, which I believe is the end of the Dragonsong War storyline in Heavensward.
You can do the unlock quest on a non-crafting job, and still access the area even without a crafter. You can join in the crafting aspect as long as you have at least one level 20 crafter.
Once you’re in, they give you the grand tour. They also hint at… housing!
If they don’t add Ishgard housing after this tease, that’d be evil of them. I’m not chomping at the bit to get a house in Ishgard – it’s too snowy for me – but for those who want it, I hope they get the chance at it!
Restoring Ishgard – How it Works
Each server will restore Ishgard at a different pace, depending on participant contributions. You can see the progress of your server at the Skybuilder’s board in the middle of the zone.
To make progress, you must turn in specific collectible crafted items. These are listed under the Ishgard Restoration section in the Special tab of your crafting log.
There are 5 different items, based on your crafting level bracket: Levels 20, 40, 60, 70, 80. So, starting at level 20, you should always have something level-appropriate to turn in.
Keep in mind, that in order for the crafted item to count, it must meet the baseline collectability/quality number for that collectable. The NPC where you turn in the collectable will tell you what this quality level must be. If you go above the baseline collectability level, then you earn more scrip rewards for your turn-in, so it’s always good to shoot for the stars, if possible.
Have no idea what any of this collectable/quality crafting is about? Here’s a quick video that can help:
Keep in mind that as of patch 5.11, collectable synthesis is automatically turned on for these items, so you shouldn’t have to enable it.
Okay, so now that you know how to create the collectables, where do you get the materials for it? Well… you either gather them or buy them from the marketboard/gatherers. Yep. There’s no cutting corners here.
There’s a bunch of new gathering materials added with this patch, most of which are named “Skybuilders'”- something-something that are used for these items. Look for them under the Ishgard Reconstruction section of your Special tab of the gathering log.
The nice thing about many of these materials is that you sometimes get nodes that allow you to gather many times the normal amount. I’ve see up to +9 per swing on a node so far, which is always nice to get. So gathering this stuff, though you’ll need a lot of it, isn’t as bad as you might think.
Scrips and Rewards
There’s no limit on how much you can turn in. There’s no limit on how many scrips you can earn (up to a cap). But there is a lot of nice stuff you can pick up with the scrips including a cosmetic outfit and all of this:
Interestingly, this includes items that used to be tied with the Diadem (which is now closed – it will reopen next patch as a gathering location for the reconstruction). There’s also a number of new things here such as an emote, hair, minions and a mount. Including the Pegasus!
Concerted Works (FATE)
So, once your server reaches a certain level of stockpile on the Board, this kicks off a series of Concerted Works, which is just a fancy name for a zone-wide crafting FATE. I think this happens every 8 hours. I’m not sure because I have yet to actually be able to attend one.
The reason for this?
Because folks from other servers hop over and pile into the Firmament. I was shocked to find out… oh… there is a limit to how many people can be in the zone at one time. It looks something like this:
My Sad Story
So, I logged in on Tuesday after work, and was in the Firmament. I checked the board, saw that there was 40 minutes until the event, and thought – oh, I’ll go do some hunts and my pixie quests for the day and when I get back, the event will start.
Oh, if only I’d known. I warped out to do just that, set an alarm for 10 mins before the FATE, and by the time I got back, chaos has ensued. The zone was full, not just with folks on our server, but from other servers who knew that this was going to happen and were hopping over to take part.
Apparently, you get 500 scrips and a hefty chunk of crafting XP for completion. The FATE itself isn’t very hard. Click supplies, click workbench, click final destination. Do as many times as you can in the timeframe. It looks like this:
Then, some little piece of the Firmament will change and update. For example, I noticed that the stalls where you purchase stuff with scrips were taking shape yesterday, and weren’t like that before. So minor updates happen to the zone with each FATE.
The issue was taken into consideration by the dev team, and as of today, they have made it so that world visitors can’t enter the Firmament on other servers now.
So I guess this became a big enough issue, especially for high pop servers, that they took notice. Maybe that means I’ll actually get to join a Fate?
Even if I don’t, I’ve got plenty of stuff to work towards on two characters. There’s a few hiccups, but overall, the restoration seems to be super popular and has certainly encouraged people who’ve not crafted as much before to get involved in something other than dungeons and raiding. So that’s a win in my mind!
