On July 7th Patch 3.0.1 arrived for Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward, and with it brought the brand new 8 player raid Alexander. This content represents a slight departure for Final Fantasy XIV in that the “normal” mode of the raid is designed to be far more achievable than the Binding Coil of Bahamut was at launch. Savage Alexander is scheduled to open on July 21st which is intended to ratchet up both the difficulty and the rewards of these encounters. The first hurdle however that players must pass is the gear check. Alexander requires that players have an average item level of 170, which while not terribly difficult requires a significant amount of effort and planning. Having recently completed this climb, today I am going to talk a bit about the process.
As was previously the case in “A Realm Reborn” the focus of your gearing is largely about running content in order to collect “Tomestones”. These are tokens that allow you to purchase gear for the job of your choice and serve as the “starter” gear for much of the end game content. To find the tomestone vendors you need look no further than Idyllshire where Rowena and her crew have set up shop once again to take care of the need of end game adventurers. The big surprise this expansion is just how reasonable this process is as compared to past expansions. The prices are similar, but what you will notice as we go through this article is that the acquisition rate has been largely increased. The best part of this is the fact that you can now get a solid weapon purely with tomestones, and no need for a secondary currency like the level 100 and level 120 weapons required.
So you will need a grand total of 3665 Law to fill every possible slot in your armory with a level 170 Law item. The caveat here of course is the fact that you can only have one of a given ring. For some Tanks and Healers this is pretty straight forward, because you can simply pick up a dps ring to tide you over until you get something better. For everyone else however… you have to upgrade one ring to level 180 before purchasing a second 170 ring, which is a process I will get into next.
When I spoke about leveling in Heavensward in the previous guide, I mentioned the concept of Clan Hunts as an excellent way to get a little experience between quests. My hope is that you heeded this warning, because in the end game this becomes an extremely important currency. The level 170 set of gear can be upgraded in Idyllshire to 180 gear through the use of items purchased from the Centurio Seal vendor in Ishgard. The vendor Ardolain is located in the Forgotten Knight at coordinates x13, y11 which is in the Foundation area of Ishgard. Until you reach level 60, this vendor offers you various baubles including some cosmetic pets, however upon reaching the level cap you can return to see an “Advanced” menu.
By themselves these items don’t seem like much, however you can take them to a special Blacksmith in Idyllshire to turn them into the level 180 equivalent of each gear piece. Seika is a bit off the beaten path and is located at x6, x7. She will craft the following items.
The challenge for most players is not necessarily obtaining a full set of Law gear, but instead upgrading each piece to 180 through the use of Centurio Seals. As a result I am going to cover this process first. This is apparently a big enough deal that in future patches Yoshi P has already mentioned that they will be adding in additional ways of obtaining these upgrade components. There are two basic routes to obtaining Centurio Seals and they are either the use of the daily/weekly Clan Hunts to gain a steady stream of seals, or instead hopping on the “Hunt Train” and hoping to find a good group that zips from zone to zone taking down A and S rank Mobs.
Clan Hunts are the easiest method and these involve going to the Clan Hunt board outside the Forgotten Knight in Ishgard each day and accepting new Level 1, 2, and 3 hunt bills similar to how the hunt bill process worked in “A Realm Reborn”. Once weekly you can also accept an Elite Clan Hunt which involves tracking down a specific B Rank Hunt mob located in a specific zone. These tend to be of similar difficulty to the old world hunt mobs, but are far harder to find given that each of the Heavensward zones is at least twice as large as its old world counterpart. Through this process you can get a total of 110 Centurio Seals per day, and once you factor in the 100 seals you get from the Elite that takes you to 870 total Seals per week.
As I mentioned before the other option is to find a Hunt group in the party finder and hope to have good luck in getting credit for the various hunt mobs. I personally find this process frustrating, but if you are looking to brute force the process of grinding out your Centurio Seals this is going to be the fastest possible option because it will allow you to earn far more than 110 seals per day. You also get the side benefit of earning some additional Tomestones of Law from each of the ranked hunt mobs.
In order to upgrade every single piece of gear available to 180 you will need a grand total of 2795 Centurio Seals. Which means that if you are getting your maximum possible hunt seals per week it would take a little over three weeks to get enough parts to upgrade everything. This is the reason why the ranked hunt mob process is so popular, because it allows you to essentially “cheat” this process and speed it up.
The tried and true process for farming Tomestones in the past has always been your daily roulettes and and any additional level cap dungeons. The secret to my success however has been the “first time bonus”. This is a neat feature of Final Fantasy XIV that rewards players for running content with players who are going through it for the first time. As one of the primary tanks in my Free Company I have volunteered to tank for many players as they unlock new content, and for doing this I have been rewarded 40 Tomestones of Law each time. Over time this adds up significantly, so I highly suggest if you are offered a chance to run content with new players that you jump at it. For example an end game dungeon is worth 80 Tomestones of Law with no other modifiers. When you add in the first time bonus that dungeon run becomes 120 making it very quick to get those pieces of gear.
The dungeons themselves are a potent way of gaining Tomestones of Law, especially if you factor in a “first time bonus”. However the most efficient way to gain Law is through the daily Roulette rewards. For those unfamiliar with this concept, players are rewarded a bonus amount of tomes for completing each of the roulettes once daily. These bonuses are extremely significant and are part of Squares “social engineering” that ensures players continue to run lower level content. The bonus rewards are only available for max level characters, which means to get your law you have to bring your level 60, which in turn tends to make the run go more smoothly.
Hopefully this information will help you as you begin your push for a full set of item level 170 gear through Tomestones of Law. I wanted to add a footnote to this discussion in regards to the gear that you get from dungeons. At face value it is really easy to ignore level 160 items that drop in both Neverreap and Fractal Continuum. In theory these will not get you to the item level needed for Alexander, or at least not in themselves. However if you are doing all of the things above, and getting upgrade tokens as well as pieces of law gear, they do help to bring up your base item level. When I hit 170 I had four items of 160 gear, 3 items of 180 and the rest 170, giving me an average high enough to do Alexander. If your goal is to get there as quick as possible, just make sure you are rolling on those dungeon items to help flesh out your gear. While I did my daily roulettes, I also tended to focus on running dungeons with anyone who needed to unlock them. This gave me the first time bonus, as well as a chance at gear to improve my baseline. If you follow this train of thought you will be sitting at 170 before you know it, and getting to experience the fun new raid.
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