Gathering collectable guide By I’nanghal Shikhu(Shikhu#3190) with help from Hiems Whiterock and The Balance discord: https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv Updated to 5.4. Overview Skills, bonuses and the UI explained Levelling rotations Lv80 rotation Ephemeral nodes explained Fishing Overview: This guide will explain how to gather collectables during levelling and at endgame. It will cover rotations that you can use based on what gear you have, and allow you to tailor your approach regardless of your stats. While many players find Ishgard to be a main focus for DoL classes, the experience and items gained are mainly limited towards supporting DoH. Collectables, as an alternate source of experience gain, overshadow both Ishgard and Leves by providing scrips which allow the player to easily progress towards endgame content through Folklore Tomes that unlock Legendary nodes, Cordials, Equipment and Materia. To unlock collectables you must first complete the main story quest called “The Better Half” which is a level 50 quest near the start of the Heavensward expansion. Afterwards you need to complete the sidequest “Inscrutable Tastes” from the NPC Morgayne at x10, y10 in Foundation(Ishgard). Each Collectable Appraiser also has a quest required to unlock the scrip exchange for that expansion. This is just a small quest close to the NPC. As of 5.4 there has been an overhaul to gathering collectables, skills have changed, been removed and new effects added. Collectables are now their own items similar to crafting, check your gathering log to find them and their locations. They now have their own tab! Node locations and timings are also different to what they used to be, it's ideal to use an alarm site such as Teamcraft or Garlandtools to easily find this information. Here is a link to an album of the rotations: https://imgur.com/a/8WuJ8aP This is a link to a comparison of various rotations at endgame and their effectiveness Skills, bonuses and the collectable UI explained: There are various skills and bonuses which are exclusive to gathering collectables, some cost GP, some only have a random chance to happen and they all do various things so its important to know how they work. This is an example of the collectable UI that appears when you gather collectables, it is very clean and responsive. If you hover over the skills it will actually show you your future collectability rating depending on what skill you hover over which makes it great to do calculations as you gather! The first part of the menu in blue are your primary actions. These are the buttons you will be pressing the most. They include your Integrity which is how many hits the node has, Scour which is your default hit, does the ‘default’ rating which caps at 200 before buffs, Brazen which gives you a random rating between 50%-150% of Scour, Meticulous which does 75% of scour but also has a chance to give you an extra hit(integrity) at a cap of 25% and finally the collect button. All of these scale off of your gathering stat. After that is the red box called secondary actions & bonuses. There is only 1 skill that you can press which is called Scrutiny, this costs 200GP per use and increases your collectability rating based on your perception up to a cap of +250 as seen in the image. One bonus is called Intuition Rate which when using one of the 3 main skills in the blue box, gives you a chance to gain 100 extra collectability at a cap of 40% based on your perception. The other bonus is Collector’s Standard, this has a random chance to proc after using one of the 3 main skills and buffs Brazen and Meticulous to 100% instead of 50% and 75%. Using these procs right and making the most out of them is key to effective collectables! The yellow tab, estimate calculations simply changes what values are shown on the skills and gathering UI to help you do quick math while gathering which is incredibly handy. Levelling rotations: Gear isn't too important while levelling as the perception requirements to hit a working rotation are quite low. Because you level so quickly its not worth getting higher stats to then replace your gear so quickly. You need 600 collectable rating at a minimum. Low stat(Scour is below 200): 0GP: Scout > Scour > Scour. Replace Scour with Meticulous If Collector’s Standard procs Guaranteed T1 on untimed nodes chance at T2 400GP: Scrutiny > Scour > Scrutiny > Scour > Scour > Replace Scour with Meticulous If Collector’s Standard procs. Guaranteed tier 1, chance at tier 2 If your gear is good enough to get 200 on Scour(that is the cap) and +250 on Scrutiny then use the lv80 rotation below. Its not at all worth grinding out gear to hit it. Lv80 rotation: Congratulations on making it! Now you’re lv80 it becomes much more important to have relevant gear, it is much easier to also have 800 GP which while isnt needed on 1 node specifically, helps you a lot when gathering from multiple nodes with good routing. Many rotations will be based on the ability Meticulous because of the chance it gives you to gain extra yield! At this stage however, reaching the caps for this should be easy enough. Scrutiny + Meticulous > Scrutiny + Meticulous > |Quality Check|: If Collectability = 800 AND Collector's Standard is not active > Scour > Collect If Collectability = 800 AND Collector's Standard is active > Meticulous > Collect If Collectability >= 850 > Meticulous > Collect If Collectability = 1,000 > Collect Use Ageless Words/Solid Reason for extra yield on scrip nodes. This rotation mathematically gives you great results, the math has been linked above. Honestly with the new overhaul it looks like all rotations are incredibly similar in how much they can give you, having variations of about 0.1 items on average. The Solid Reason/Ageless Words is only useful for scrips depending on your route and spare GP. Ephemeral nodes explained: Ephemeral nodes spawn items to be gathered as collectables. Their only purpose is to be reduced using the skill Aetherial Reduction to give aethersands which are used in many endgame crafts. It is the gathering version of desynthesis, but only works on collectables you gather from ephemeral nodes. The higher your collectability rating, the more sand and HQ sand you will receive. Depending on our rating, you will receive crystals,clusters and aethersands. At 1000 rating you will receive a bonus which increases how many items you can get. At 1000 rating you still have the chance to get only crystals/ clusters, however, as it only gives you the opportunity for aethersands, not guarantees it. Aetherial Reduction is unlocked with the level 56 quest “No Longer a Collectable” which you can find by speaking to Lydirlona in Mor Dhona x22, y6. This also requires the main story quest “The Better Half” which is lv50 that you would have finished when unlocking collectables.. As with other nodes, such as the Legendary nodes unlocked from Folklore Tomes, they have a set time window they can spawn in, however, you can respawn these nodes within that time because they appear in groups of 3.. So you may need to use skills such as Lay of the Land afterwards to find the spawn point of the next one. . If you have 400 GP or above, use the Lv80 rotation. If you have less than 400 GP, use this 0GP rotation to go around and gather from nodes. You still will gain collectables but it will be below 1000 rating. Scour > Scour/Meticulous with Collector’s Standard proc > Collect 2-3 items. It does not seem like the chance you get from having a higher rating is worth going for on 0GP and that yield will be more effective. Fishing: Fishing uses unique skills that are far from the ones that MIN/BTN have. The collectability rating of the fish depends on the size of the fish relative to what the normal size of the fish would be. A small fish such as an Icepick isn't necessarily going to be easier to get a higher rating on, coupled with the fact it’s an annoying fish to get anyway. Fishers instead need to make sure they are in the right time/weather conditions and using the right bait (information that can be found on sites such as https://en.ff14angler.com/index.php? and https://ff14fish.carbuncleplushy.com/ ) alongside their skills to make the most of things. To ensure a higher collectability rating, using Patience/Patience 2 is going to be a big benefit when aiming to catch collectable fish. The skill increases the chance of landing a HQ fish, and since HQ fish are bigger in size, it translates to a better rating. Using Identical Cast on the more stubborn fish can also be a great use of GP, however the skill Double Hook will not get you 2 collectables. With spearfishing, instead of the right bait you have to use the right gig, the skill Identical Gig works the same as Identical Cast. There are two differences to gathering Collectables using Spearfishing. The first is that because they are available all the time they have a minor penalty of only being able to be Aetherially Reduced into less sands than a normal ephemeral, The second is that Identical Gig lasts for the entire Spearfishing node. If you are fortunate enough to get a Collectable fish on the first spearfishing attempt, Identical Gig will continue to return you the same fish until the node is depleted. Identical Cast is one use only.
