FFXIV: FATE Farming Guide
* Updated for Heavensward – 2/1/16 *
For those who don’t know, FATE farming is the fastest way to gain experience in FFXIV if you’re a DPS (Dungeons are more optimal experience for Tank/Healer jobs due to fast queues). FATEs are dynamic events that spawn throughout the various regions of Eorzea. Based on your participation in the FATE, you earn experience and additional rewards, such as Grand Company seals. By quickly moving from one FATE to another for an extended period of time with a large group, you can level up very quickly.
Regions for FATEs
Please consider the follow list as a reference for which zone you should be farming FATEs in, depending on your level. While I won’t go into great detail about priority of FATEs, please note there are specific FATEs in each zone that yield much higher experience than others and these should be prioritized.
- 1-12: Horizon in Western Thanalan (Thanalan)
- 13-20: Aleport in Western La Noscea (La Noscea)
- 21-30: Quarrymill in South Shroud (Black Shroud)
- 28-34: Wineport / Costa Del Sol in Eastern La Noscea (La Noscea)
- 30-38: Dragonhead in Coerthas Central Highlands (Coerthas)
- 38-42: Revenant’s Toll in Mor Dhona
- 42-52: Ceruleum Processing Plant in Northern Thanalan (Thanalan)
- 52+: The Churning Mists (Dravania)
Rule of thumb: If more than 50% of the FATEs spawning in your zone require you to sync your level down, you should move on to a higher level zone.
Tips for FATE farming
- Completing FATEs yields Grand Company seals. This currency is used at the Grand Company vendors for various gear, consumables and glamour items.
- Spamming AoE is generally your best bet when participating.
- Once you have enough participation for Gold, you can move on to the next FATE spawn (turn-in FATEs: gold requires 6 turn-ins).
- Assuming you have a level 60 job already, while farming FATEs, you can farm your Anima crystals for the first part of your Anima weapon quest chain.
Heavensward Anima FATEs
As stated above, Heavensward introduced the Anima weapon quest chain. This chain requires a level 60 job and starts off with a quest to acquire 3x Luminous Crystals from each of the Heavensward zones. Once you finish leveling your first job, it’s highly recommended you level via FATEs to optimize your time in game, as you can level another job while farming crystals for Anima weapons. Please note, you can farm as many crystals as you want while you have the quest – so make good use of the Party Finder to farm multiple jobs’ crystals during the FATE experience grind.
- 46-52: Coerthas Western Highlands
- 50-54: Dravanian Forelands
- 53-57: Churning Mists
- 55-58: Sea of Clouds
- 57-60: Dravanian Hinterlands
- 57-60: Azys Lla
Love dis.
How do they know that FATE grinding is the fastest way to level? I’m just wondering because I’m stuck at work and I’m trying to plan the fastest way to level once I get home!
While I haven’t confirmed it by the exact number, all the 50’s I know got there from grinding FATEs. It’s extremely fast.
It’s fast because story quests make you travel all over the world. FATEs are basically the same thing as questing but you don’t have to go across the world every other quest to complete them. They also give you seals which you can spend on the level 50 gear, so that’s nice as well.
I also can’t get you numbers, but my husband is a tank so I get insta-queues in dungeons. It was STILL faster doing FATEs… even ones I had to level down for. Plus, not only do you get crazy EXP, you get seals to boot. Can’t argue that.
You get seals, bonus xp that is comparable to instances, you don’t really have to try, and don’t have to travel far. I haven’t done it myself, too mundane, but it seems like a strong strat.
Surprised Highbridge isn’t on the list for 28ish. You can hit up lesser FATEs around the area (might even have to sync down to 15 on the west side) waiting for the big chain to start, but that’s like 25k exp just from FATE alone, not even counting the mob kills.
naked rock in central shroud is good for 1-10
What about keeping up with your gear? The main story quests give you gear. You guys jist buying gear?
If you’re in a Grand Company you can use the thousands of seals to get yourself gear.
Seal gear from GC is a lot better than quest gear. Quest gear is usually of a common quality where GC gear is usually green quality and lasts a lot longer.
You should also do at any range from 22 – 30 the Fate series near High Bridge it’s about 3 fates in a row that takes about 6 to 10 minutes depending on people and they give about 35k of exp @ lvl 27
Hello, i’ve been to Mor Dhona Ravenant’s Toll and i’ve only noticed one FATE in 15 minutes. It was an escort southeast (lvl45), is this normal?
In Camp DragonHead there’s an escort north that totals 3 FATEs, escort, kill a few monsters, then kill dragon. I don’t know the time it takes to appear again tho.
It’s honestly all relative to the amount of players in the zone. So if Mor Dhona is dead, head to Dragonhead. If Dragonhead is too swarmed to get tags, head to Mor Dhona.
Ive seen that quest done and my god did it take forever. That dragon had a list of DoTs three lines long and it still took 20 minutes to kill the damned thing.
I have found that if you can get a group of 8 together the exp shared helps to bolster the rewards of Fates, I have yet to try the 24 man group to see if you still get exp or not.
1-15 in Central Shroud is way better then horizon. The zone had constantly 2/3 fates up for me and new ones within 2/3 min.
I wonder how many people are kicking themselves for fate grinding with first char and realizing they had to do the story mode anyway hahaha
What
Definitely join a fate party when you grind. The exp boost is great, and healers get exp for many party kills even if you don’t tag the enemy. Also, Svara (Dragonhead fate) is very good during prime time hours because it gets killed quickly and you get great exp.
Fate grinding is much faster. If you do a dungeon (30-60 min) you get a decent amount of exp. The only difference that really affects decision is that you do get green/pink gear drops from dungeons. But if you’re going for leveling, you don’t necessarily want gear that will be obsolete in the next few min when you level up. And fates give you seals with which you can buy GC gear.
We gotta stop this “tagging” mobs disinfo going around. I’m about 99.999999% positive that the ONLY thing it effects is who gets a possible drop. I’ve gotten tons of xp from downing “purple” mobs. The only good in tagging them is with things like Flash or DoTs, which is better in terms of the game’s definition of “contribution” than focusing down one enemy at a time. If you don’t believe me, go to your next Fate and only kill stuff that was already “tagged” by other players. Assuming you got there in time to “contribute”, you’ll get Gold. You’ll see.
Also, Fate group!!!! For those of you who are arbitrarily skeptical (anti social?) about the utility of grouping up for Fates, let me quickly explain why you really should: the game’s mechanic for “group contribution” is OP as all hell. It’s damn near broken it’s so ridiculously OP. So you can keep being a loner and ignoring the “LFM Fate group!” shouts, or you can start being amicable towards strangers and reap the rewards SE has sown therein.
I don’t know what “tagging mobs disinfo” you’ve heard is going around, but here’s how mob tagging works.
A yellow/orange mob is tagged by no one. The first player to hit it will tag it for their party if they are partied, or themselves if they are alone; it will turn red. If that mob dies for any reason, the party that tagged it will get 100% of the XP for the kill. If another party tags a mob, it will turn purple to you. If you don’t assist in killing it, you’ll get no XP. If you assist in killing it, you’ll get an amount of XP based on your contribution, which can be up to 100% of the XP value for the kill.
While FATE grinding, I recommend tagging as many mobs as possible. Other players will kill them and you’ll get full credit.
It works both ways actually. I get gold and seals in a group or not. The greatest advantage of being in a group–and it’s a HEEE-UGE advantage–is in the level of FATES you can grind out. If you have healers and tanks in your group you can tackle far higher levels with greater bennies and it’s always preferable,
That said, loners get gold too, and can zip around from FATE to FATE killing the minimum for gold at each one and moving on. That’s the key to solo FATE grinding–you just don’t stay until the bitter end and your aim is quantity over quality. This is especially useful for arcs/brds and magic users who can stand on the outskirts, peg off a few mobs then take off as soon as the next one pops. Unless/until SE fixes the system it’s a great and 100% legal exploit.
Provided people have not gotten wise to what you’re up to. I’ve seen large parties doing this then leaving the FATE before it’s over. People wait for the mobs to turn BACK to yellow before hitting them, thus the joke is on the taggers who “think” they’re letting everyone else do their scut work for them.
I make sure every new player who comes into my FC knows about this. I don’t mind exploiting SE, but I don’t believe in exploiting other players. In fact once some FC based parties realized people were getting wise to what was going on they quit doing FATES, period, in a cute little hissy fit. “If I can’t have my way I’m taking my toys and going home–wahhhh!” It was adorable, really. Fortunately, FATES are still the best way to get quick exp. and ppl are doing them again.
As for what Xortiz said… Um yeah.
Of course the story and job questing still needs to be done and it’s a fun part of the game, but it’s not how you get from level to level.
(d’orly?…)
There’s no such thing as “tagging”. When a mob is attacking another player (not in your team), it appears to you as purple, meaning YOU have not the enmity. When you attack such a mob, if you generate more enmity than the mob’s first target, then the ennemy will turn red, meaning that you have the enmity.
If you don’t generate enough enmity, then the mob remains purple.
But in both case, if your contribution is quite enough, you earn 100% exp. If it’s not enough, you earn absolutely nothing.
The same goes for the original target : if his contribution is too low (due to your participation, maybe), no matter he was the one that pulled the mob : he’ll earn nothing.
This way, several players which are not in the same team can earn 100% of the exp on a mob.
During FATEs, it’s very simple : even if you don’t kill a single mob, you can obtain gold and earn the maximum reward. It depends on your contribution : if you lowered 75% of the HP on every monster of the FATE (with 0 killing), you’ll earn a bigger reward than if you dealt the killing blow on, let’s say, 25% of the monsters.
Obviously these numbers are not accurate, it’s only for the example.
But killing a mob, you’ll earn 0 either 100% of the exp. Even during FATEs.
And the amount of exp you earn as the FATE’s reward doesn’t depend on the amount of exp you earned killing mobs of this FATE.
This being said, FATEs are not the fastest way to lv up.
If you’re a tank or a healer, doing dungeons is WAY faster, as you gain more than 1 lv per half-an-hour.
And if you’re a dps lv 43+, doing your daily quests, bestiary, etc. while waiting for the Duty Finder is also very faster than chaining FATEs.
Or you may be in a FC, and so, even as a dps, you can chain dungeons whithout waiting.
Besides, leveling with FATEs is the worst thing to do. You don’t learn how to play you character (which doesn’t matter if you don’t do dungeons or raids, of course), you don’t obtain good gears (the green/pink gears are very powerful, you can sometimes keep them 5 or 10 lv, simply because there’s no better gear for you)…well, in fact, to sum it up, it is absolutely useless to level up all your classes and jobs to lv 50 if you don’t know to play them, and if you have no proper gears to equip them with.
Because YES ! Lv 50 GC gear is a very, very bad gear, compared to the one you can obtain in some pre-lv 50 dungeons.
The best way to level up : story/class/job quests with your main class ; other quests, class/job quests, bestiary, dungeons with your secondary classes.
Doing some FATEs with your main class, only when needed by the story quests’ required levels, is waaaaaaayyy faster than farming FATEs to lv 50 THEN accomplishing the story quests.
And with your other classes, a dungeon provides you with a very better time/exp rate than farming FATEs.
So stop this stupid “lfg fate” shouting just because some kikoolol guys told you it was fast as hell. Try other means by yourself, and make your own mind about power leveling in FF XIV.
It’s absolutely not true that the 1st player to hit a MOB might not get xp. The first player to “tag” a MOB gets 100% xp for it. Anyone who hits it after that gets XP for their contribution. That’s confirmed by Squeenix. I believe it’s in the new player guide.
don’t know where u got u’r facts but purple mobs don’t turn red unless the pt who pulled it is completly down or too fare away. with this small point i just detroyed u’r entire argument XD
also some of the other facts from these posters r right, the one who pulled/attacked first gets 100% from that mob no matter what.
just passing by, cya 😛
pls say this will be updated for heavensward
Hey there. I actually did just start playing again. I’ll do some research and get this updated, since it still gets some pretty heavy traffic. Until then – hang tight and thanks for reading!
I believe to get exp in a tag you need 30% contribution to the kill. Also a lot of misinformation about tagging here. Tagging is ENCORAGED in the game be it hunt logs, random encounters, fates, ect ect. If you ever meet someone complaining about tagging, don’t even bother explaining the game mechanics to them. They clearly never pay attention. As for fates this worksa little different. You don’t have to 30% every mob you touch. Just go in, rip roar a few mobs here and there, and you will have some sort of contribution. Personally I stay away from the overwhelmed fates unless in a party. You won’t get enough damage in to bother even chasing most of the mobs that are pulled. I toss a dot or two and move on. Rarely do I get anything above minimum when actually trying for those because the player count is far to high.
But back to the tagging subject: You are encouraged to tag players mobs. In fact its common to find people even trying to tag your duty mobs then laughing because they couldn’t. Its part of SEs attempt at socializing the game and I think it works great.