Guide for Players Coming from RuneScape

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This is a guide for RuneScape players wishing to try out Final Fantasy XIV, whether full-time from quitting the former or alongside RuneScape, regardless if it is Oldschool RuneScape or RuneScape's current iteration.

A section details similar content between the games at a glance (but not one-to-one). This is useful for those seeking specific activities in XIV or those wishing to skip to sections of interest.

Note: this may get expanded in the future soon, I am exploring level +50 content to explain it better

Intro

  • Like RuneScape, there are no hard class restrictions; you can level any job/class of your choosing just by equipping a job's weapon-type and/or job-soul crystal provided you have the class initially unlocked
  • Unlike RuneScape's grid movement; XIV movement is keyboard or gamepad based (yes, you can use a controller!); you move with the WASD keys on a keyboard or a joystick with a gamepad
  • Starting base classes are two tanks (Gladiator, Marauder), two melee-DPS (Lancer, Pugilist), one ranged-DPS (archer), two magic DPS (Thaumaturge and Arcanist) and one healer-class (Conjurer)
  • Global cooldown or GCDs in XIV are approximately 28% slower than RuneScape's GCD (XIV's 2.5s compared to RuneScape's 1.8s) but becomes faster-paced with job-progression unlocking new abilities + abilities that the player can trigger between your GCDs
  • There are no individual stats as skills such as strength, magic or defense; progression is earned instead via leveling up classes and/or jobs + doing MSQ quests and/or job quests; strength, defense etc are represented as typical RPG stats
    • However, there are eight Disciples of the Hand classes that are like traditional RuneScape gathering or artisan skills: Carpenter, Blacksmith, Armorer, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, Weaver, Alchemist and Culinarian; and three Disciples of the Land sub-classes: Miner, Botanist and Fisher
  • Leveling these is the recommended way of acquiring equipment for classes or their unlockable jobs, such as an Archer who uses Carpentry, Leatherworker and Goldsmith to be self-sufficient in respectively making their bows, leather armor and accessories such as earrings, bracelets, necklaces and rings
    • Goldsmith has the most utility among any of the DotH classes, being able to produce accessories any combat-class can utilize
  • Almost all-important game features and mechanics are locked behind Main Scenario Quests with level requirements; this guide will discuss most of the important locked-content below

You will enjoy XIV:

  • You like games with a story and strong narrative focus; XIV shares this with RuneScape
  • You enjoy material gathering and crafting; whether as the primary focus or as a supplement to your main combat/raid focuses

However, you will likely not if:

  • You wish to rush to end-game or even mid-game content; not only is XIV heavily narrative-focused as a contrast to most MMOs being an MMO that is an RPG first, but it is also recommended to take your time with the content the game offers; including story-content, raids/dungeons and/or side-content
  • You primarily enjoy RuneScape for its PvP elements; XIV has PVP but it's only regulated to specific gamemodes/mini-games

RuneScape vs XIV

For those looking for similar content within XIV, content may not be one-to-one but has obvious similarities; this includes information on UI navigation for typical MMO content such as quest-logs and map keys

  • Beasts of Burden: Chocobo Saddlebag [CTRL+Shift+I]
  • Banks: Retainers
  • Bank Presets: Gear Set
  • Clan: Free Company [;]
  • Construction: Carpenter
  • Cooking: Culinarian
  • Crafting: Goldsmith, Leatherworker and Weaver
  • Daily Challenges: Challenge Log
  • Dueling: Wolves' Den Pier
  • Dungeoneering: The Palace of the Dead & Heaven-on-High
  • Edit Layout Mode: HUD Layout
  • Friends/Group Chat: Linkshells [L]
  • Grand Exchange: Marketboard
  • Herblore: Alchemist
  • Keepsake Keys: Glamour
  • Lodestones: Aetheryte Crystals & Aethernet Shards
  • Magic: Thaumaturge/Arcanist class & Summoner/Blue Mage/Red/Mage classes
  • Melee: Gladiator/Marauder/Lancer/Pugilist classes & Dragoon/Monk/Ninja/Dark Knight/Samurai/Gunbreaker/Reaper jobs
  • Mini-games: Timers [CTRL+U]
  • Music Player: Orchestrion List [CTRL+O]
  • Pets: Minions
  • Powers: Actions & Traits [P]
  • PvP: Crystalline Conflict, Frontline and Rival Wings
  • Quest List: Journal [J]
  • Ranged: Archer class & Bard/Machinist/Dancer jobs
  • Sheathe Weapon: Stance [Z]
  • Slayer: Hunts
  • Smithing: Armorer and Blacksmith

General notes:

Retainers can sell items on the Marketboard for you

Gear Sets are in the Character UI [C] and can store sets of class/job equipment for you in the form of swappable presets

Challenge Log resets weekly, not daily

Despite sounding like a ranged-DPS class, Gunbreaker is a tank class and uses the Gunblade weapon introduced in Final Fantasy VIII

Rival Wings is currently not available; the developers have stated it is being readded in patch 6.2 with major balancing fixes

RuneScape's mini-games when used in this section refer to the area of the menu under Adventures that shows timers for various dailies/distractions/etc; XIV's Timers serve a similar purpose

Gear sets and menu options such as Golden Saucer can be dragged onto the ability slots, allowing one to switch unlocked classes on the fly or access menus using a hotbar

Inventory space is much larger than RuneScape, with 140 slots for items in a player's inventory compared to RuneScape's much smaller 28

TOS and Enforcement

Toxic behavior is not permitted heavily within XIV. Such behavior will get you easily banned with repeat offenses. If you see someone behaving as such within the list below, report them via the Support Desk!

  • Being intentionally toxic and/or harassing/stalking other players
  • Being rude to sprouts (the in-game term for new players with less than 300 hours of play), whether in general or due to a sprout's perceived lack of knowledge
  • Malicious trolling
  • Posting story spoilers in all and all non-private chat rooms
  • Shaming people over their play skill; this includes meter-shaming (shaming/harassing people over poor DPS/tanking/etc)
  • Any sexist/racial/homophobic/etc language
  • Win trading/match-fixing/etc in PvP
  • Kicking players from groups without justification
  • Pressuring new players to skip cutscenes in dungeons
  • Offensive usernames for players, retainers, chocobos, housing, etc
  • Griefing using in-game mechanics such as maliciously aiming a boss cleave to wipe the party intentionally
  • Real World Trading

Additionally, damage meters or other third-party addons are against the terms of service. Use them at your own risk and if you are streaming the game, do not show them!

UI and Settings Tips

  • Sprinting is not a button in XIV; it is instead a skill (thus placable on hotbars) with a minute-cooldown
  • Any gear obtained is placed in your Armoury Chest, which the player can access with the [CTRL+I] key-combo
  • When viewing the map, you can press CTRL+RMB to set a red flag as a waypoint
  • Pressing CTRL+Up or CTRL+Down can move the camera up or down, which is useful for zooming out in trials or raids
  • If you are maining as Summoner, it is advised to type "/petsize all small" into the chat to make summons less annoying for other players as summons are very large by default
  • The weather icon near the mini-map is important, as certain rare hunts or FATEs only spawn during certain weather conditions
  • The Journal has a limit of 30 accepted quests at once so it may be best to keep to MSQs and Job Quests and save certain side-quests or blue-quests for later
  • If you dislike XIV's movement/camera system after trying the game for a few hours, try changing it to Legacy Type (Camera-based) in Character Configuration [K]
  • If you wish to stay on standard movement, go into your Keybind menu and change Strafe Left to [A] and Strafe Right to [D]
  • The setting *Display target's remaining HP percentage.* in Character Configuration will display the target's remaining HP as a percentage
  • The *Cutscene Skipping* section below the Movement Settings part of Character Configuration can be used to automatically skip previously viewed MSQ cutscenes as well as cutscenes for transportation already done such as airships
  • You can disable recast timer error messages and action-fail error messages in *Log Window Settings* if you prefer to spam abilities
  • In Character Configuration, you can enable additional clocks for Eorzea Time or Server Time or even disable the Local Time clock
  • For Item Request guidleves/quests/etc, you can right-click the grayed-out icon to place the correct item into the window automatically
  • With striking dummies, you can right-click it to reset its enmity

Aetheryte Crystals

Aethernet is analogous to RuneScape's lodestones and is activated similarly to lodestone activation called attuning. Aethernet Shards can be considered sub-locations to a city's main aetheryte crystal; however, shards can only be teleported from within their respective city. Until you gain a mount at level 30, you will primarily be running everywhere to get to places. Access to a fast-travel network and building it whenever you see aethernet shards/aetheryte crystals is highly recommended.

Notes and tips!

  • You learn two abilities upon attuning to a main aetheryte crystal for the first time: Teleport (return to any unlocked aetheryte crystal with a Gil fee, based on the distance for fees) and Return (teleport to your home aetheryte crystal at no Gil cost besides a 15 minute cooldown)
  • To save on Gil both at the beginning of your playthrough and beyond, be sure to set an aetheryte crystal as your home and up to three other aetheryte crystals as favored destinations, which will cut their teleport cost in half
  • You can also set an aetheryte crystal as a free destination but this requires you to have 2FA set up with your Square Enix account
  • When you gain access to airships and lack funds in the beginning, it may be wise to utilize airships instead of teleporting from one city-state to another, as they only cost a scant 120 Gil
  • You can also utilize 'free passage' to Ul'dah via traveling to the Gold Saucer from an airship and then traveling to Ul'dah from the airship in the Gold Saucer
  • Later on, you can buy Aetheryte Tickets using Allied Seals earned from Hunts; the player will consume these tickets instead of the Teleport's Gil-fee
  • Various locations have Chocobo porter NPCs; these can be talked to purchase a rental Chocobo for a minimal Gil fee; these Chocobo do not pull enemy-enmity (aggro) and move very fast (typically carrying you to your destination in 1-2 minutes), they carry you to your specified destination in real-time over a couple of minutes but the player cannot remount them if you get off before you reach the destination
  • Rental chocobos also become available at level 10, these function identical to regular Chocobo mounts obtained at level 30 but function under a time limit; exceeding the time limit will make the rental Chocobo dismount and vanish
  • Some places also offer ferries to sub-locations; these can take you to other places for a cheap fee of Gil

Roles & Jobs

Roles are split into tank, healer and DPS; in short, tanks set the pace of the party for raids/dungeons and keep aggro (known in-game as the term "enmity") away from other party members and to themselves, healers keep their party alive and DPS contribute to damage to kill monsters faster

Tanks and healers do have capabilities behind their expected roles, tanks can output large amounts of damage and most healer-jobs have defensive and combative utility spells/abilities; healers are also perfectly capable of outputting their DPS, at least enough to be combat-capable

You can switch into a new class called a "job" at level 30 after completing the class's level 30 requisite job quest and then the new job's job quest; there are also mid-game and end-games jobs that don't have base-class requirements; their only requirement is character level i.e, Heavensward's Machinist only requires level 50 and completion of all base-game MSQs. When switching to a new level 1 job or class, hotbars reset, so it is best to take note of or memorize how your hotbar is set up so you can modify your new job's hotbar to look similar.

Tank jobs include Paladin, Warrior, Dark Knight and Gunbreaker. Healer jobs include Scholar, White Mage, Astrologian and Sage. DPS jobs include Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Bard, Black Mage, Summoner, Blue Mage, Machinist, Samurai, Red Mage, Dancer and Reaper.

Notes and tips!

  • For terminology, classes refer to the initial-class one can choose and jobs are the unlockable classes treated as an extension of their base-class (i.e: Level 1 Conjurer>Level 30 White Mage)
  • There is no content for base-classes past level 30; any job that is not a direct extension of the nine initial classes will require purchasing additional expansions beyond Heavensward such as Endwalker; there is also no content for combat base-classes past level 30
  • For job quests, the ability to learn other classes (and thus their job extensions) is unlocked upon completing your respective starting class's level 10 quest; gear sets also unlock after completing said quest
  • Role actions are role-specific abilities that can be learned by a specific role and thus are usable by any class/job within a role (such as Ranged DPS roles); they are gained just like class actions by leveling but unlike class actions, learning a role an action permanently unlocks for all classes/jobs within the role (therefore if you learn Addle as an Arcanist at level 8, it will still be usable if you switch to a magic DPS such as Black Mage or Red Mage)

Quests

Press J to open up the Journal. This is akin to RuneScape's quest list UI and the map can be opened up from the Journal from respective quests chosen, showing the player where they need to go. One can also click the quest's current task-text for a quest on the right side of the screen to open the map of where one needs to be for a quest's current progression

It is advised to keep up on job quests along with MSQs (Main Scenario Quests) if you meet the level-requirement for an upcoming job quest for your current class as the sets of job quests for each class/job are what unlocks new abilities as well as tends to give new gear and miscellaneous rewards.

Notes and tips!

  • Some quests offer multiple optional item rewards upon completion; these quests will have their "Complete" button grayed out unless you select one of the optional item rewards offered
  • It is recommended to save non-blue side quests for later, especially when you obtain secondary classes/jobs you need to level

Inns

Quest Requirement: Main Scenario QuestSpirithold Broken or Main Scenario QuestJust Deserts or Main Scenario QuestWay Down in the Hole

Inns provide private instanced rooms, available via talking to the innkeepers found in a city-state's adventurer's guild. Inn rooms offer access to:

  • A journal that records your adventures so far and allows you to rewatch MSQ cutscenes
  • A glamour dresser, which can conveniently store all glamoured gear for you
  • An armoire, which stores seasonal or limited-time gear
  • A summoning bell, summons your retainer
  • A crystal bell, summons the aesthetician to customize your appearance
  • An orchestrion, a music player that uses 'rolls', special scroll items that unlock new music tracks for it when used
  • A toy chest, which stores seasonal-based mini-games you have unlocked

Additionally, logging out in an inn-room or even sanctuaries such as city-states or towns will provide the player with a "rested" 50% percentage bonus to XP for a duration of any XP earned outside of quests or guildleves.

Guildleves

Quest Requirement: Main Scenario QuestSpirithold Broken or Main Scenario QuestJust Deserts or Main Scenario QuestWay Down in the Hole

Guildleves are repeatable quests split into three types: combat-oriented guideleves, material gathering guildleves and crafting-item delivery guildleves. These can be done to earn Gil, experience and items; however, guildleves can only be done if you have "Guildleve allowances" to do so and you get 3 of them every 12 earth-time hours.

You can accept guildleves at adventurer guilds in the city-states or by speaking to NPCs with "<Levemete>" under their name. Afterward, like regular quests, guildleve quests appear in your Journal, which is accessible via the J key.

Notes and tips!

  • For crafting item-delivery guideleves, if you deliver an HQ-version item instead, the XP and Gil receive will be doubled

Retainers

Quest Requirement: Main Scenario QuestThe Scions of the Seventh Dawn

Retainers are NPCs with customizable race/appearances + names and their primary purpose is to store items or sell items on the Marketboard for you. You can also send Retainers on "ventures" later on after assigning them a class and gear, allowing them to bring you back items, Gil and experience.

Grand Companies

Quest Requirement: Main Scenario QuestThe Company You Keep

Grand Companies are one of the three organizations you choose to join once you reach the quest mentioned above in the MSQ storyline. Each of them represents the three starting city-states: Gridania's The Order of the Twin Adder, Limsa Lominsa's The Maelstrom and Ul'dah's The Immortal Flames. Upon joining the Grand Company of their choice, the player starts with the rank Private Third Class; promotions can be bought using Company Seals.

The player can earn Company Seals by doing item-delivery dailies for the Grand Company or doing Grand Company-based guildleve quests. The services and activities offered through Grand Companies include your first mount (summarized below) and a shop that trades Company Seals for various items. Lastly, you can choose any Grand Company you want of the three and are not permanently locked into the one you choose.

Mounts

Quest Requirement: Feature QuestMy Little Chocobo and Feature QuestMy Feisty Little Chocobo (the latter for combat companions)

Chocobos are the first mounts you receive, obtained from a side-quest once you join a Grand Company of your choice. Chocobos also gain the ability to become combat companions with a level 30 side-quest, fighting alongside you. Using XP earned for them from combat experiences to unlock skills in three different skill trees, you can customize a Chocobo to be a tank, healer or DPS. Healer may be of the most utility, but Chocobo can also be useful being a tank to grab enmity or being a DPS to help kills go faster while in the overworld.

Traveling via a Chocobo mount is 25% faster than running and completion of certain MSQs will provide a further movement-speed buff to the mount's movement speed. There are, however, more mounts than Chocobos, some unlocked via achievements, purchasable on the Marketboard or as a potential reward for running raids/trials. Mounts also gain the ability to fly once you unlock Aether Currents.

Glamour

Quest Requirement: Feature QuestIf I Had a Glamour & Feature QuestAbsolutely Glamourous (the latter for crafting Glamour Prisms)

Glamour is the equivalent of keepsake keys. This can be used to 'glamour' a piece of equipment, allowing you to have the item's appearance put over another piece of gear. Glamour does not affect item stats as it is purely cosmetic. Still, it can only be cast on equipment-level equal to or lower than the selected item to glamour covering an equipped item with a different appearance. Lastly, glamour is not tied to the equipment slot but the item you have equipped.

Enchanting glamour on equipment requires Glamour prism icon1.png  Glamour Prisms and dispelling the enchantment from glamoured equipment requires Glamour dispeller icon1.png  Glamour Dispellers. An optional-side quest also allows you to craft your Glamour Prisms.

Crafting

Crafting in XIV is more complicated than crafting in most games. Crafting's mechanics has several focuses and at a grossly simplified analog, crafting is a process where you have a finite number of allowed actions and you must juggle crafting-item durability, quality and progress within your allotted actions for an item being crafted

Tips and Notes

  • It is recommended to level gathering jobs before or even along with crafting jobs but it is also acceptable to buy materials from the guild vendor early on
  • Retainers can be helpful with crafting so level them properly and be sure to stash any monster drops with them
  • Crafting-oriented gear is not very combat-focused so you won't last long wearing it in a raid or dungeon
  • There are two sources of bonus XP to keep in mind with crafting besides Free Company-related XP buffs:
    • +3% food-buffs (basic foods like orange juice or boiled eggs do fine but end-game food like Chili crab icon1.png  Chili Crab contributes to CP/Control/etc)
    • Company-issue engineering manual icon1.png  Company-issue Engineering Manual (+150% XP boost for 18 hours, halved effect at level 40 or 50 and above, depending on the manual)
  • As an example of how some skills interact, using Innovation.png  Innovation and Great Strides.png  Great Strides will result in the following touch action having an efficiency of base-efficiency x 2.5
  • Trial synthesis can be used to gauge requirements for crafting recipes, find the most efficient action-set in a limited number of steps or test the best set of actions for items you do not wish to fail crafting (thus, too expensive to fail it); trial synthesis can be done as many times as you want and uses up no materials (but as expected, gives no resulting item)
  • The rewarded crafting materials from your level 1 crafting job quest can quickly get your chosen crafting job to level 5 with some materials to spare
  • You can also buy all the materials you need from the guild supplier, at least until you hit past level 15
  • The ability to craft multiple items of one kind in one go is unlocked at crafting level 10 with Quick Synthesis but this can only be done for items you have crafted at least once
  • Crafting job quests that ask for stacks of items do not recognize high-quality items so it is best to convert them into normal-quality items before handing them in
  • Lastly, for those looking to expedite their way towards level 15 or even 30 between the job quests, crafting guildleves give large amounts of XP if you do the ones close to your crafting job's current level (especially if you hand in high-quality items, which doubles the XP received) and the Ixali beast tribe crafting quests also can give large amounts of XP to help with leveling below level 50
  • Therefore, a decent way of leveling a single or all crafting jobs to 30 is to do the job quests as soon as their availability and then do guildleve quests and/or mass quick synthesis in between job quests (if you are below level 20, QS slows down in terms of XP-rates above level 20) when you don't meet the requirement

Benefits to level crafting include:

  • Being able to repair your gear as well as repairing above 100% to 200% with Dark Matter, saving you durability in the long run
  • Culinarians get access to food buffs (which can benefit both duties and other crafting jobs) through their end-game recipes and Alchemists can make medicine
  • For those looking to farm materia, crafting jobs are a decent way as crafting gear reaches max spiritbond very fast
  • You can make your Glamour Prisms and later on, break down gear and items for materials via Desynthesis or slot materia into equipment (materia is mostly for end-game or serious high-level play, however)

Stats

  • Craftsmanship: boosts the power of Synthesis-based Skills
  • Control: boosts the power of Touch-based skills
  • CP: Crafting Points, all crafting skills except for Basic Synthesis and Hasty Touch use CP

Raw numbers don't matter much; you're fine as long as you meet the level requirements in the crafting recipe and its better to go all-in on CP requirements once you have basic Craftmanship and Control requirements covered; thus, CP bonuses from equipment are very valuable However, Control becomes more critical than pure CP late-game

UI

  • Durability: This is for the item you are crafting; if durability hits 0 before Progress completes, you will lose all the materials being used, get no experience and stop crafting unless you have a skill that saves material (there is a meager base chance of some materials not being wasted, around 1-5% or so), durability is reduced by about 10 per action used but some crafting job skills can cut the durability-reduction in half for a set of steps as a temp-buff
  • Quality: Indicates whether an item will become HQ or not; stuff like Chocobo banding or glamour do not need this or even cannot become HQ; quality is, however, important for gear; HQ gear has the "base stats" of the gear, quality becomes more important with higher crafting levels
  • HQ Chance: The chance for a crafted item to become high-quality; this is exponential instead of linear (i.e, a 50% HQ Chance doesn't translate to a literal 50% chance of an HQ production item on completion, except guaranteed if at 100%)
  • Progress: Self-explanatory, craft finishes when the bar for Progress fills all the way and you get the resulting item
  • Condition: Only relevant for advanced crafting, some skills can only be activated or only proc on specific condition types such as Good or Excellent; the condition also affects the efficiency-value received from quality-based skills,; gold is x1.5, excellent is x4 and poor is x0.5 quality. Excellent will always change to Poor; the next action and the chance to become Good or Excellent from normal is based on RNG.

Dailies

Like RuneScape, XIV has an assortment of repeatable daily activities and/or weekly events you can do for your benefit and gain miscellaneous currency, gear, etc. As expected with many XIV's contents, most dailies and weekly activities are locked behind MSQs or optional side-quests. Here are some daily examples, specifically geared to minimize time doing dailies.

Mini Cactpot

A daily event at the Golden Saucer, repeatable up to three times per day. Mini Cactpot is akin to a scratch-off lottery ticket activity where you are given a card with a 3x3 grid of concealed numbers with one number. For each of the three mini cactpot cards claimed, you get to scratch off three digits on the 3x3 grid and then select a row of numbers to claim, whether horizontal, vertical or diagonal. The amount of MGP awarded depends on the total of the row's numerical values: a minimum of 36 MGP and a maximum of 10k MGP as rewards. Given RNG possibilities and averaging values, an average of 540-756 MGP can be won each day assuming RNG doesn't give you poor results.

Grand Company Turn-in

A daily list of items your Grand Company requests to be delivered. Completing them awards XP + Company Seals to spend in your Grand Company.

Hunts

Each Grand Company headquarters has a Hunt Board. Unlocking hunts requires you to spend a total of +50k seals to promote your rank to Second Lieutenant as well as completing two optional side-quests that have you clear two optional dungeons; respectively Dungeon Dzemael Darkhold and Dungeon The Aurum Vale.

Interacting with the Hunt Board lists daily marks as well as a weekly mark that is more difficult but worth more hunt currency. Earned hunt currency can be spent with Hunt Billmasters to buy various gear and misc items such as Aetheryte ticket icon1.png  Aetheryte Tickets.

Beastman Tribe Side-Quests

Daily quests that can be completed for the various beastman tribes found in the game. Completing them offers beastman reputation, Gil, items, experience, potential mounts, minions, merchants, and other exclusive rewards.

Side-Activities and Mini-Games

Hall of the Novice

Hall of the Novice is a level 15 set of instanced tutorial fights that teach roles (tank, DPS, healer) how to play their roles properly. For Tanks, the number of exercises is eight, DPS has seven, and healers have five.

Each completed exercise awards a piece of gear for the player's role in the order of gloves, boots, leggings and a chest-piece but also an all-class ring with completion of the final exercise. Said ring provides +3 to STR/DEX/VIT/INT/MND (and +3 Piety for healers) and +30% EXP gain for any combat-class at or below level 30.

The Gold Saucer

Quest Requirement: Feature QuestIt Could Happen to You

The Gold Saucer is located within Eorzea near Ul'dah and serves as a hub for mini-games and various distractions such as Chocobo Racing, Triple Triad and various "arcade" mini-games that can be played to earn small amounts of MGP. Gold Saucer's name and purpose are based on its inspiration in Final Fantasy VII. Gold Saucer uses MGP MGP (Mauderville Gold Saucer Points) instead of Gil and you can trade Gil in for MGP for up to a limit of 500 MGP, forcing you to earn MGP via other methods such as Trial Triad or arcade games. Lastly, you can trade MGP to a vendor for exclusive prizes/mounts/armor/etc or another vendor who sells misc food/supplies in exchange for Gil.

Activities and mini-games besides the miscellaneous arcade-games include Doman Mahjong, Fashion Report, Lord of Verminion, Chocobo Racing, daily/weekly Cactpot and Triple Triad. Only Triple Triad is explained below because it features elsewhere outside of Gold Saucer unlike most of the activities it offers.

Triple Triad

Quest Requirement: see quest requirement for Gold Saucer

Triple Triad is a mini-game from Final Fantasy VIII. While collecting the cards offers no incentive besides potential extra MGP and a mount for collecting all cards, Triple Triad can be a good activity to break up the pace between questing or raids/dungeons.

Mechanics

Triple Triad is played on a 3x3 board where you and the opponent each have a five-card hand and take turns playing and trying to capture your opponent's cards. All cards have four numbers arranged in a diamond pattern on the bottom-right of the card, signifying the value of that card's west, east, north or south side. A card becomes captured if a card placed opposite to one of its sides has a number higher than the number for that side of the card.

Each NPC challenged has an MGP fee but you will receive a small quantity of MGP if you lose and a larger quantity if you win along with potential cards that can be uncommonly won from NPCs. The drop-chance RNG NPCs have for cards listed in their challenging UI can vary from NPC to NPC, ranging from a typical 1/5 or 1/10 chance or lower, forcing you to play hundreds of matches to get specific cards.

Rules

Each match has two regional rules (resets at 7 AM earth-time, different city-states/etc have different regional rules on reset) and two rules per NPC.

Various rules can shake up gameplay and make matches more interesting and/or challenging, including:

  • All Open: The full five-card deck hand is visible for both players
  • Three Open: Only three cards of each player's hand are visible
  • Sudden Death: Any match that ends in a draw will restart and you will be given a new hand consisting of the cards you captured with cards you still had during the match, Sudden Death can continue until either player wins or until five more SD-draws occur, causing an actual draw to happen instead
  • Random: Your hand will be replaced with five random cards from your entire card list at the start of the match
  • Order: You can only play your hand in the order it appears from left to right
  • Chaos: Like Order but the hand playing order is randomized each turn
  • Reverse: Lower number cards capture higher number cards
  • Swap: One of the cards in your hand is switched with a random opponent card and vice versa and is returned at the end of the match
  • Roulette: Becomes a random rule for each match