Time to tomestone grind.
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail patch 7.05 dropped this week, which means that as of right now, the Archeo Kingdom crafted gear is some of the best kit you can get, especially if you've a mind to head into the newly-released Savage difficulty of the Arcadion raids.
That's because high quality (HQ) Archeo Kingdom gear is item level 710—the highest non-raid gear can get—and it can be "pentamelded", allowing you to slot up to five bits of materia into every piece.
If you're just getting started out, though, don't sweat the pentamelding as much. Actually committing to all five melds is only necessary if you're racing to world first. Simply overmelding as and where you can is more than acceptable everywhere but the most hardcore of raiding environments.
The first, and most basic way to get Archeo Kingdom gear is to just buy it from the marketboard. If you're reading this guide on the same week the patch dropped, you might notice it's pretty pricey—that's because lots of players are in a rush to do the new savage raids. These prices should drop within the month if you're willing to be patient.
If you'd like to kit up now, though, or are a fresh omnicrafter looking to get their bearings, here's what you'll need to cobble together:
Since you'll need to have all of your crafting jobs at level 100 to get any use out of this guide, I'm going to assume you've got your basics down—this'll act more as a checklist of the most important things to get squared away before you properly start crafting.
Speaking of, here's a quick summary of what you need before we get deep into the paint. Keep in mind, everything below except for the Master Recipes can be purchased from the marketboard (you can't buy tomestones, but you can trade the materials you get for them):
Now for the nitty-gritty details: First, you're going to want to get geared. The items you'll be looking for are as follows:
You can either craft these yourself, or buy them from the marketboard.
In terms of materia melding, The Balance Discord has recommended melds for different budgets (though they're also posted to Icy Veins). Unless you want to really dominate the Marketboard—which it'll be a little too late to do by the time you're reading this, alas—the mid tier meld set will do you just fine.
Next up, you'll need to get your Master Recipes for each job. You can buy these for 1,200 purple crafter's scrips at any Scrip Exchange. The exchanges for Dawntrail's two main cities are located at (9.1, 13.3) in Solution Nine and (16.2, 11.1) in Tuliyollal, and you'll need 9,600 total to claim all eight.
The quickest way to grind purple crafter's scrips by far is the level 90 collectable recipe Rarefied Sykon Bavarois, since a level 100 crafter can just pop Trained Eye to get full collectability on them. You should also make sure to do your Custom Deliveries for the week for the bounty of easy scrips they'll give you.
There are seven sets of Archeo Kingdom gear—meaning there's a ton of recipes available once you've got all of your Master Recipe books. Since there are so many, I'm not going to list them here, especially since you can see exactly what you need via the in-game Crafting Log. I am, however, going to go over the basic high-level materials you'll need so you know where to start.
First off, the bread and butter of Archeo Kingdom gear: tomestone materials.
These mats are comprised of two halves—gathered materials from Folklore nodes (which will require Folklore books, purchased similarly to your master recipes, and spawn in specific locations at specific times) as well as tomestone materials, purchased from Zircon in Solution Nine (8.6, 13.5) with Allagan Tomestones of Aesthetics. You can get these tomestones by doing most end-game content on a max level job, such as Duty Roulettes.
To gather these items yourself, you'll need at least 4480 perception on your gatherers. The times listed below are in "Eorzea Time" (ET), which you can see by clicking on your in-game clock until one of the listed times is ET. One ET hour is equal to 2 minutes, 55 seconds real time. The materials are as follows:
As per usual, all of these materials can also be purchased from the Marketboard, though given the tomestone investment they're usually too expensive to be worth it—especially if you can craft them yourself.
There are also Grade 2 Gemdraughts, though in my experience these are generally cheap enough on the Marketboard that they're not worth spending your tomestones on crafting unless you're severely strapped for cash. In which case, you've got a different issue to solve before you go about making end-game crafted gear.
The second most important material for Archeo Kingdom gear is Aethersand. There are four kinds: Sungilt, Mythloam, Mythroot, and Mythbrine Aethersand. You can purchase these for 200 orange gatherer's scrips each at any Scrip Exchange vendor, but a far more efficient way is to simply gather collectibles from Ephemeral Nodes, then use the Aetherial Reduction job action on them. As with the tomestone materials, you can also buy these from other players on the Marketboard.
Mythbrine Aethersand is a little more involved to gather, but the other kinds can be found at these Ephemeral Nodes in the following locations:
If you're looking to farm either Folklore items or Aethersands, I highly recommend ffxiv-gathering, which lets you track and set timers for everything rather than rocking up with a notepad and paper. The rest of the materials you'll need are easily uncovered via the crafting menu in the game, and are typically from sub-level 100 gathering nodes.
As for the actual crafting process, that's both incredibly involved and also covered by The Balance so thoroughly I'd just be repeating their work—you can also plug your stats into ffxivteamcraft and get optimised rotations and macros to smooth your way.
As for general advice: ensure you're using the recommended food and medicine times, which are Rroneek Steak (HQ) and Cunning Craftsman's Tisane respectively. When crafting your tomestone materials, make sure to aim to create high quality versions, too—going in with mostly HQ materials, I've been able to get 100% on my quality rating for my Archeo Kingdom gear no sweat, even at mid-tier materia melds with a few ones missing. Happy crafting!
