When it comes to any video game I play I make it a big priority of mine to either find the fastest way to do a task or try to find the method that provides me with the most variety of resources I need. Whether it’s to get currency or to get the best XP, I will always try to min-max the amount of effort I put into a game to ensure that I do not burn myself out by focussing too closely on one goal.
The reality is that FFXIV has a variety of different currencies, 3 different Tomestones, Gil, Grand Company Seals, Crafting and Gathering Scrips, PVP Wolf Marks, Allied Seals, Centurio Seals, Sacks of Nuts, Bicolour Gemstones, MGP, Skybuilder’s Scrips, and dozens of Beast Tribe currencies. Did that overwhelm you? Because it sometimes overwhelms me.
Though Tomestones of Poetics feel like an outdated currency that no one would want to farm, they are infact an extremely useful resource to have no matter what level you are, especially if you have side jobs in FFXIV.
Players will often feel grateful to have these on hand, especially when level caps rise as they can provide you with the second best Gear Set of every expansion and not to mention you can make a hefty amount of Gil if you know how to use them properly.
Although there are a variety of ways players can get Tomestones of Poetics, this guide will take you through as many that are considered efficient so you can choose what content you want to complete.
No two human is the same and the things that I enjoy doing in FFXIV may be things you absolutely dread, so my goal is to provide you with as many options as I can.
As a pre-emptive piece of information, I personally get around 2,000 Tomestones of Poetics every two days generally passively. Of course, this depends on what content I am running and whether or not I am focused on securing these. As almost all of my jobs are level 90 at this point I have less pressure to farm for Poetics and mostly use them to get Gil, however, when I was deep into the levelling grind I was capping at least twice a day.
I will, of course, share how I did this in case you are in the same boat and need a quick scheme as the topic of what to spend your Tomestones of Poetics is one that can be thoroughly delved into, I will cover that in a different post that I will link here.
Note: If you have any questions about FFXIV that you want me to cover feel free to leave them in a comment below, you can also ask me while I am streaming on Twitch, YouTube or in our community discord.
LEVEL 50/60/70/80 DUNGEONS AND TRIALS UNSYNCED
One of the more passive ways of getting Tomestones of Poetics is simply by completing content that is below level 80, shockingly this can be done both synced or unsynced. I personally only discovered that you get Poetics when doing unsynced content since I run the Extreme Trials I need to do each week for Wonderous Tails this way.
I will say, doing content Unsynced is tremendously boring and I would strongly recommend against it unless nothing on this list piques your interest or if there is a Glam or Triple Triad Card that you absolutely want from the content.
Admittedly, this can also be useful if there’s a sellable Minion that is worth some Gil in this content though all of those rewards are RNG so prepare yourself for a bit of disappointment.
I personally never run this type of content for Poetics as I find it inefficient, though this is coming from a player who typically buys his glams from the Market Board and is fine with not having a Dungeon Drop until he so happens to get it during one of his Daily Roulletes. I must admit that the only thing that could get me to begin farming this is going to be my completionist nature that either wants every single Minion in the game, but more prevalent the completionist that wants every Triple Triad card in the game. Even just saying that made my heart race because my first thought is to drop everything I am doing to start farming Bicolour Gemstones again and buy the remaining Triple Triad Cards I forgot I had missed.
It is extremely important that you note check the rewards for the content you are about to do unsynced as anything that doesn’t end in 0 for the most part will not provide you with Tomestones of Poetics. You can check this in your Duty Finder under the “Rewards” header. While Trials will always give you less there are some you can do in a matter of seconds, making it ridiculously easy to spam as long as you know how much or little damage to deal in a burst.
My personal recommendation is Bowls of Embers as that is the one I consistently do in 14 seconds, even on a Tank, allowing you to also begin taking the steps towards your Tank Achievements. *cough* Did I mention I enjoy min-maxing?
Note, if the Achievement is something you want to min-max you need to do an Extreme and not just any Trial.
The Yield for Tomestones on Poetics on all of this content ranges from 10 to 100 and oddly enough it doesn’t seem to matter what the level of this content is, in so far as a level 50 piece of content can give you the same amount as a level 60 or 70. The only thing that really matters is which one was released first in that expansion.
Newer content in each expansion always provides more than earlier content, but with that being said it usually takes longer even unsynced unless you have more players so this may be something you want to weigh.
I personally tend to choose the content that takes the least amount of time and that I can solo when it comes to farming anything. I’d rather not have to rely on others and typically I don’t need too much of a resource to justify trying to farm quickly.
DAILY ROULETTES
The most efficient time spent trying to get Tomestones of Poetics is by doing your Daily Roullete. Admittedly, your best use of time in the game period is by doing these Roulletes.
The content you run will specifically have to do with what you are trying to achieve and acquire. However, it is extremely important that you do not farm content when on a job that is 10 levels below max as this will typically remove the big yield of Poetics you would get.
The following are the yields for the Roulletes:
| Level 50/60/70 | 100 (+20 or more) | ||||||||
| Main Scenario | 300 (+200) | ||||||||
| Alliance Raids | 100 (+100) | ||||||||
| Normal Raids | 80
|
If you are doing this content on a Job at least 10 levels lower you will only make the amounts in brackets.
BEAST TRIBES
I won’t lie, I’m only adding this to the list because you are able to get Poetics from Beast Tribes and not because it is efficient by any means. The old Combat Beast Tribes provide players with 15 Tomestones of Poetics per quest and realistically I would never do these simply for Poetics, unless I’m on my alt trying to get my side jobs Gear. Otherwise, this is way too much effort for very little payoff.
On my main, the only time I run lower-level Beast Tribes is if I’m in the area doing Hunts and I have a job that is the level range to get some extra experience. This is only because I have already maxed out my Beast Tribes and have gotten all of the rewards I want, so I have no interest in farming the currency for more stuff.
I will sometimes go back if I see an item that is exclusive to the Beast Tribe is selling for well on the Market Board and not many people are selling it, but otherwise, not worth the time spent if you’re specifically looking for Tomestones.
At most, players are looking at 180 Tomestones this way, but this is only if they spend their full daily allowance.
WONDEROUS TAILS
The choice to use Wondrous Tails for Poetics is going to be a very specific one. I have never gotten Poetics this way on my main simply because I rarely struggle to have Poetics, but on my alt, this is what I grabbed each week.
As my alt is the account I run Savage on, I’m levelling up side Jobs to switch into in case we need more of a specific thing. So, due to that, I need a lot of Poetics to optimize my levelling since I want to spend as little time as I can on the account.
You see, on my alt’s server, all of the Gear you need to get into the next expansion’s content cost me about 1 million Gil per set and after a while… well, I couldn’t keep up.
Although I have ways to make over a Million Gil in a few days on my main, the thought of doing that for my alt just made no sense. So, Poetics was always the way to go for me, even if it meant choosing them over the 10k Gil a week.
Wonderous Tails gives a generous amount of Poetics a week, being 500 and while this does mean sacrificing Gil or a Treasure Map, it’s a guaranteed reward and will save you Gil in the long-run if you are trying to get your side jobs levelled.
If you are trying to make money off of your Poetics, I always recommend simply taking the Gil though. That also being said, I’d still recommend the other options of farming Poetics if you have the time rather than using this resource. Still, complete your Wondrous Tails every week because it’s amazing experience and you can get some dope rewards.
PVP!
Y’all, I’ve converted. I’m now a PVP main and I don’t think I will stop anytime soon. I haven’t done a single expert roulette in two weeks and still have maxed my highest level Tomestones with how much I’m grinding PVP.
Admittedly, my hype for PVP is going to die once I reach max level on my PVP Track, but damn can you get a big yield of Tomestones this way while securing some really nice Glams, Mounts and Tomestones.
This is extremely rash for me to say, but… I think I currently prefer farming PVP than regular content especially due to the changes in combat.
While yes, overall I prefer having access to my full kit and rotation, PVP has become a lot more palatable to me and this is the first time I know for a fact I will be able to get all the rewards I want.
I personally farm PVP on a max-level job because it’s the most worth it when it comes to all three types of Tomestones, however, at minimum you will be making 50 Tomestones of Poetics per match.
Depending on the game mode you are playing matches will last between 10-15 minutes, so it is not the fastest way to get Tomestones of Poetics, but is ideal if you want all the Tomestones and PVP Glams.
Luckily you have a few options when it comes to PVP game mode are extremely unique in what you have to do in them, so there’s bound to be one you enjoy more than another. With that being said, there’s no real difference in rewards between the game types and I wouldn’t think too much about min-maxing which game mode you play and instead just spam the one you enjoy the most.
If you hate PVP, seriously don’t do it. It’s really not worth the burnout as most matches you play will end in failure because players don’t know what they are doing or don’t try. It’s extremely rare that you get a full team of serious PVP players who want to be there, so you have to somewhat enter with a state of “I don’t care if we win or lose and I will still try my hardest because I want to be here.”
What makes PVP really fun to me is trying to figure out how to escape situations where my team runs away instead of helping me. As I primarily play Tank, it’s my duty to leap into battles, and sustain while my team tanks. Obviously, there are plenty of occasions where my team chickens out and starts running away leaving me to either fend for myself and take down a couple of enemies or try to find ways to self-sustain and escape. However, with that being said, I haven’t played Crystalline Conflict yet and have been sticking to the massive player PVP due to the Moogle Tomestone Event.
GET YOUR BLUE MAGE ON!
Well, well, well… are you shocked I’m adding the Blue Mage to yet another list? Listen. The Blue Mage is awesome and I absolutely cannot wait to start streams where we all do Blue Mage content together.
Not only is the Blue Mage extremely useful for over-world content and getting generally unique currencies like Allied Seals, a Blue Mage is going to be one of the fastest ways to get Tomestones of Poetics each week.
Now you may be saying “Flamèz, I don’t even have my Blue Mage levelled!” Well, baby, I got you. It will take you a maximum of a day to get your Blue Mage up to max if you have a friend help you and while you will need a decent amount of Spells from mobs, realistically to get a decent amount of Poetics a week you don’t need that many.
Even I, Sir Min-Max the Great, refuse to do all of the Blue Mage content every week because I simply do not want to put in the brain energy required to figure out how to do the content. The content I am specifically referring to is the Masked Carnivale.
Depending on how far you’ve gotten with the Blue Mage you may or may not have heard or completed stages of the Masked Carnivale. If you have not completed any of the stages and are in dire need of Poetics, you’re honestly in the best place possible.
For the first time complete any Masked Carnivale mission you will get between 40 and 160 Tomestones of Poetics. That may not seem like a lot, but given the fact that you can finish the majority of these with two spells in a matter of seconds, this is an immense profit.
For players who are planning on doing the Masked Carnivale regularly, you’ll be looking at the weekly challenges. Some of these are ridiculously easy, even when they have the most modifiers, though if this was true for all of them I would do all three every week.
Essentially, each week a random instance of the first 50 gets chosen. Target C has no modifiers and simply yields extra rewards for (re)completing it, B has 1 Modifier that is typically easy and A has 3 Modifiers which I would say I complete about 50% of the time.
Now, my personal reason for not completing this content does not have to do with the fact that it is incredibly hard, but morso because I simply do not care.
Players will get the following rewards for completing all three challenges:
Gil: 18,000
Allied Seal: 550
Allagan Tomestone of Poetics: 440
Though the Poetic yield might not seem like a lot from a weekly perspective, it’s important to remember that this is solo content that be done in a matter of minutes rather than group content you need to queue for and varies from day to day depending on the skill and familiar of your team in regards to the content.
Most players who have an alt will immediately unlock the Blue Mage when they have levelled enough to get it simply because of the Tomestones of Poetics. Even my husband who believes in true efficiency did this on all of his alts because of how lucrative it was to getting Gear without much effort.
EUREKA (THE FORBIDDEN LAND)
Although Eureka is significantly dead content on many servers, it is a good way of farming Tomestones of Poetics when players complete one of the FATEs. Now, players can typically solo FATEs in Eureka if they are skilled and have enough Potions and buffs to get them through, though this is not really recommended because of the time it takes.
If you are going to farm Eureka for Poetics your best is going to be on weekend and peak hours as there is a chance that more players will be doing that content.
There are also some discord communities that have shouts for certain content, though I can’t say I’ve joined one with a Eureka shout. Even our community who has expressed interest in farming Eureka together has not actually done so and has ended up group farming many other forms of group content.
Though this is the case, my husband has been farming Eureka on and off for the past few months and has expressed that it isn’t too much of a challenge with small amounts of players and that he’s been finding a decent amount of success tapping into his Relic Weapons.
As much as I would like to finish off my Relic Weapons from Eureka, the reality is that I choose the next option on this list every time.
Each boss in Eureka gives a different amount of Poetics ranging from 30 to 120. This is true in all the instances of Eureka including Anemos, Pagos, Pyros and Hydatos.
BOZJA
Now, the reason I prefer Bozja is for two. Firstly, you can get experience in Bozja while you cannot in Eureka. This makes it extremely ideal if you have Jobs between level 71 and max to farm regularly if you’re looking for a way to get multiple things done at once.
I, personally, have a single job to get to maximum and thus if I’m going to do mindless combat content I will pretty much always head to Bozja, as soon as that is no longer true I will be going back to farming Eureka especially if I want to get Tomestones of Poetics.
Again, for me, the goal is always hyper-optimizing what I am up to in order to make sure I don’t experience burnout somewhere down the line. I will do all the grindy content you can imagine as long as I am working towards many goals and it feels worth it. Otherwise, there’s really no point in doing it for me.
Bozja yields significantly less Tomestones of Poetics, though this also depends on how you look at it. While the FATEs will still yield between 30 to 120 Tomestones of Poetics you see many, many more of the ones that yield 30, though this isn’t much of a problem when you realize that players have found a trick in Zadnor to make FATEs ridiculously easy. Essentially there is a pothole which is a blindspot in Zadnor and if players are standing in it between FATEs it will reduce the difficulty of the Zone as there are technically “no players” in the zone.
This was only made possible later on when they reduced the difficulty of the Zone, so if you’re a player who has not been back since you may not know about this trick. Typically if you are in a group a player who regularly farms Zadnor will flag this area with a waypoint, but there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to this.
First, if enough people are inside this zone FATEs will take about a minute or two maximum to complete FATEs. This is both a blessing and a curse. Basically, if there are too many players in Zadnor who are doing this there is a very high chance that you will never make it to a FATE before it is taken down. That also being said, if not enough players are killing specific mobs around the world the higher FATEs will not spawn. Now, this isn’t always a problem, especially if you’re not someone who is going to get bored of this content as the time you save when doing quick FATEs tends to still outweigh the time it takes to properly farm Zadnor.
Admittedly, without the higher level FATEs you do miss out on a good amount of Mettle, so I personally prefer when half the players are in the pit and half are spawning these FATEs and I will typically lead my group to spawn these FATEs if I am the leader and there are enough players in Zadnor to safely do this content.
This is honestly most possible due to the fact that most players I play with have maximized their stacks of buffs, essentially making it so each of us is 2 or 3 players depending on the job we are playing and which stacks we have maximized.
I wouldn’t say that Zadnor is completely solo-able as a player will have to be extremely safe while doing FATEs on their own no matter the difficulty.
I personally only do this on Warrior because I pull stupid crap and even with maximized stacks of damage FATEs take a while. This can be helped with some Bozja-specific Potions, but I would still recommend you grab one or two friends to help you as it makes things much easier especially if you have a DPS friend.
You will never need a healer in Bozja due to the role-actions that are provided regularly and I would strongly advise against playing one if you are not levelling it up as damage is what’s really important in Bozja.
As my final close-off note, on most servers, it seems like Bozja is decently lively, so if you’re trying to pick between Bozja and Eureka due to the fact that you are new to both pieces of content I would probably recommend Bozja, however, if you have farmed both and have a good chunk of the upgrades in each, your choice will be on what you want to do.
HUNT TRAINS / A RANKS / S RANKS
In my opinion, the most passive way to get Tomestones of Poetics is through Hunt Trains. For me, Hunt Trains are incredibly boring and I don’t participate in them often, however, I will kill any A-Rank I see that is level 70 or below in the over world.
If you don’t know what an A-Rank or S-Rank is, they are essentially Elite Mobs in an area that are at the cap level of the expansion. For example, in A Realm Reborn areas they are level 50, Heavensward 60, etc.
It can be hard to spot an A-Rank and many go missed, but a good rule of thumb is to always pay attention to when a mob’s level ends in 0 as unless they are in a starting area of an expansion, these don’t typically exist.
Most, if not all mobs cap out at X9 in the highest-level zones of an expansion, so it is safe to assume that you are killing an A-Rank (or B-Rank), though there is also Triangle indicator next to the Mob’s name to confirm if this is true. If the symbol is Blue, this is a B Rank and unless you are farming for that achievement or trying to finish your log for the week, I wouldn’t recommend killing these because they don’t reward you with anything, not even XP.
Now, there are some general rules to Hunts and while not every player follows them, I would strongly recommend you do in order to help ensure that your server’s Hunt Community stays healthy. On Odin, my home server, we’ve been having a lot of friction as of late and though I haven’t been part of the Hunt Community my whole time playing FFXIV, this is the first time I see the friction.
The “rules” or etiquette go as follows:
A-RANK ETIQUETTE:
A-Ranks respawn every 3-6 hours, depending on the expansion, so while rare these can be regularly farmed for Tomestones and are taken much less seriously in terms of Etiquette when it comes to the Hunt Community.
- If you ever spot an A-Rank always use /shout to alert players in the area of its existence by either stating its name, using the verbiage A-Rank and using a flag. If no one responds you are free to kill it on your own. (This for content under Shadowbringers)
- Try to avoid killing A-Ranks in Shadowbringers or Endwalker areas. These tend to have players scheduling Hunt Trains that you are more than welcome to join, however, players will spend hours tracking which A-Ranks are up in order to schedule these trains and are trying to make sure that the most players can profit off of this.
- If you are planning on leading a Hunt Train make sure you either post about it in a Hunt Train discord (such as Faloop or your data center-specific one) otherwise ask around for an invite to a CWLS that is specific to Hunts so you can give a shout there.
A-Ranks each give 30 Poetics, no matter the expansion.
S-RANK ETIQUETTE:
S Ranks are taken pretty seriously on every server and honestly, what has caused a lot of drama on our server as of late since they take 40-60 hours to respawn. S-Ranks do not just pop up and require a series of steps in order to spawn, often leading those who spawn them with the thought that it is rightfully theirs to take.
Though I understand why a player might feel this way, the reality is that the Hunt Communities from all across servers share information and help each other spawn these S-Ranks in order to maintain the health of this content. This has grown even further with the ability to data center hop and due to this we are seeing an up-surge of S-Ranks being spawned.
Although data center hopping is not recommended for hunters due to the significant amount of time it takes to do this, the Hunt Community encourages players to World hop to help a player etch a bit closer to their achievement for 2,000 S-Ranks. Of course, due to this, there can be quite a bit of controversy especially when players get into the territory of calling players moochers or are simply self-focussed rather than community-focused.
Unarguably, FFXIV is one of the more community-focused MMOs out there and this is embedded both in the player base and by the rules of the game. Though Hunts are not regulated by the FFXIV staff, players do help carry the spirit of these rules into content such as Hunts. Breaking this spirit has led members of our server to stop spawning S-Ranks and stop sharing S-Rank shouts outside of their close-knit groups, thereby cutting down the amount of opportunity a player can have to get this achievement. There has also been an ample amount of verbal toxicity spewed in /shout chat, ultimately making the game less appealing to play, especially if you were not even participating in the content.
The following is the general etiquette when it comes to S-Ranks though it varies more from server to server than A-Ranks:
- Never complete an S-Rank by yourself. This is extremely selfish even if you’ve had no help. Chances are you’re going to be completing S-Ranks that were spawned by other players or the S-Rank you spawned was planning on being spawned by other players so the least you can do is let people know that it has popped.
- Always join a Discord to give shouts for S-Ranks or at the very least a CWLS. You can use these to get help with spawning S-Ranks and to potentially line takedowns on multiple worlds at the same time. As these mobs share the same timer on different worlds as long as they were taken down at the same time, many groups of players will either split up and do all of the tasks required on multiple worlds or one group will hop from world to world completing the tasks required. When done with good coordination you can complete a train of 4-6 S-Ranks on different worlds, significantly improving the time it takes for players to get their achievement.
- Try to get in touch with members of other worlds’ hunt communities. The best thing about Hunts is that it brings together not just one server but multiple, and realistically this can help you expand your group of FFXIV who can help you work on other goals. For example, my hunt group will also do special FATEs or other grindy achievement content with players since we’re all interested in it.
- Always wait at least 10 minutes after an S-Rank has been spawned to actually pull it. Trust me, I understand wanting to get things done so I can move on to the next bit of content, but the more patient you are and the more team spirit you bring into an activity like this, the higher the chance you will encourage other players to join in on the content. In terms of S-Ranks this means more players will help you spawn them especially when they are made known of when you spawn them.
- Only attack a lower-tier S-Rank once. You don’t need to land very much damage on lower-tier S-Ranks in order to get the rewards and in many cases, one hit, even as a healer, guarantees you the highest yield of resources. Now, this isn’t as true when you start getting into the 80 and 90 Territory, though it’s important to know that the rewards are given based on enmity and not damage, so your best bet is to be on Tank with Tank Stance and throw an ability with enmity to secure your reward. Otherwise, always look for a Party Finder group as if you are in a group of 8 your chances are higher due to the fact that your whole groups enmity is accounted for.
S-Ranks provide players with 100 Poetics per kill and an SS-Rank provides players with 200. It does no matter what expansion an S-Rank is from.
MOOCH OFF A NOOB
Have a friend who just joined the game? Use them.
Every time you enter a Duty with a new player, whether they were in your initial party or not, you will get bonus Tomestones relating to the tier of the content. This can be a highly enticing way to get players to run content with their friends and is honestly a really pleasant surprise when you are doing a Duty Roullete and that little message pops up that you’re going to get bonus Tomestones for completing the Duty.
This is also true if you haven’t completed a duty before and even counts if you have paid for a story skip.
I will often ask members of my community whether or not they need to run a duty for their MSQ, honestly not even for the bonus Tomestones, but because I can help them get a fast queue with a Tank or a Healer, but it is a nice little bonus for doing older content. This also helps make things like running Duty Roulletes or even the Mentor Roullete regularly more appealing.
