Expert with 90 tomestones if you count the dungeon completion itself, Level 80 with 35, and Normal Raid with 20 would give you 145 tomestones a day for what could be only an hour of work if your.
Move over, Phantasmagoria. Tomestones of Allegory are the new endgame Tomestone you’ll be using to gear up your level 80 Jobs. In this post I’ll go over what you should prioritize buying, and how to efficiently earn your weekly Allegory. You’re limited to earning just 450 per week, and you can only hold up to 2,000 of these Tomestones at a time.
As mentioned, there is a cap on how much of the highest tier Tomestone you can earn per week. This is to prevent players from burning themselves out in the first week of release, doing everything as fast as they can and then putting the game down for 2 or 3 months.
The weekly cap will be removed in a future patch, at which time another type of Tomestone will come out and become the new time-gated currency. The previous Tomestone does still have some value, so if you’re sitting on a boatload of them, check out how to spend your Phantasmagoria.
First let’s talk about how you should be earning your Allegory. There are a few different activities that reward these Tomestones, but you need to be on a level 80 Job for each of them.
This is my preferred method to earn my weekly 450 Tomestones of Allegory. If you play FFXIV every day, or almost every day, it’s by far the most time efficient way to do it. Simply run an Expert Roulette (requires average item level 440) any five days of the week and you’re all set. That’s about 2.5 hours of play time per week, and you’ll also be earning some nice dungeon loot to Desynthesize or turn in for lots of Grand Company Seals.
For other Roulettes, you’ll need to make sure you’re on a level 80 Job to earn the Allegory bonus.
Roulette | Allegory |
Expert | 40 (+50) |
Level 80 Dungeons | 15 |
Levelling | 20 |
Trials | 15 |
Main Scenario | 50 |
Alliance Raids | 50 |
Normal Raids | 20 |
Mentor | 10 |
Frontline | 20 (+20) |
Let’s say you don’t play every day and need a quicker three day setup that will get you your Allegory. Do an Expert and Alliance Roulette, and any Eden’s Verse Normal fight. That should still only be about 1-1.5 hours each day for 3 days, and you can earn some tokens from the Eden’s Verse fights to gear up a secondary Job. Don’t forget about your weekly token from E8N (Eden’s Verse: Refulgence), too.
If you haven’t had a chance to play all week, or if you’re so gung ho you just need to get all your Allegory right away, here’s the best way to use Roulettes to get 450 Tomestones of Allegory in one day. It is not for the faint of heart. Run the Level 80 Dungeon, Levelling, Trials, Main Scenario, Alliance Raid, and Normal Raid Roulettes. Then run the Expert Roulette five times. You’ll only get the bonus the first time, but all of the Expert dungeons give you 50 Allegory on their own, so it’s still an easy way to queue for all of them and farm those Tomestones.
The current tier of the Eden Raid is called Eden’s Verse, and the normal versions of the fights are run regularly by people trying to collect their tokens for i480 gear. You can always jump in a queue for any or all of them and earn 10 Allegory per clear. I usually queue for all of them and then drop whichever ones I’ve already earned loot on. This way I’m working simultaneously on gearing up my main Job and a second one.
If you’re able to clear the Savage versions of Eden’s Verse, that’s 30 Allegory per fight. Just getting your weekly clears will give you 120 which is a significant portion of your Allegory.
If you’ve got the most recent Trial, Cinder Drift (Extreme) on farm, then you can earn 13 Tomestones per clear. It’s not going to get you the full 450 unless you really sink a lot of time into it. However, If you know you’re going to be farming the fight that week for weapon tokens, you can skip one or two Roulettes and still make your weekly cap.
Other Extreme Trials besides the current High-End Duty will give slightly fewer Tomestones of Allegory: 10 for Hades Extreme and 8 for Titania and Innocence. At least they’re worth something if you’re still farming those Trials for their mounts.
I haven’t seen a lot of Treasure Hunting parties in Party Finder, but if you can rustle up a few friends or strangers for a couple hours, you can rack up quite a lot of Tomestones (both Allegory and others). This is a pretty chill way to hang out with friends on a voice call since the content doesn’t require so much focus, and it’s fun to get those Treasure dungeon fakeouts and bonus games. Definitely worth considering if you’re tired of the Expert Roulette grind.
Shadowbringers Hunt trains are fun and commonly done by trains. Join and keep an eye on your server’s Linkshells for Hunts, and help call out Elite Marks when you see them. You need a few more people than your small Treasure Hunting group, so it’s more popular among random players.
It’s still a pretty relaxed activity, maybe somewhere between an Expert dungeon and Treasure Hunting. This has definitely got more variety though because of all the different Elite Marks. That makes it yet another alternative to help break up the monotony if you’re getting bored of the same weekly routine.
Assuming you don’t need to level any Jobs from 70 to 80, you may want to use the Pixie Quests for a few Tomestones of Allegory instead. These quests are actually worth 5 each for a daily total of 15. It’s not much, but it’s something to do while waiting for a queue.
You’ll still be earning the Pixie currency Fae Fancies that you can spend on VII and VIII Materia, or some cute cosmetics for your player housing. It’s always good to have a stock of these for when you need to meld or remeld you gear each tier.
Obviously you’re going to be spending your Allegory on equipment. Specifically, the i490 Crystarium set from Aymark <Tomestone Exchange> in Eulmore [10.3, 11.8]. Which pieces to buy first depends largely on what other equipment you already have, and how much, if any, of the Eden’s Verse Savage gear (Edenchoir set) you’re able to get.
If you won’t be clearing the Savage fights this tier, then you’re going to want a complete set of Crystarium gear and work on augmenting that to i500. This takes a total of 12 weeks earning the full weekly amount of Allegory. Remember you can always craft or buy i480 HQ Neo-Ishgardian gear to fill in gaps while you wait for Tomestones.
The most important piece for all Jobs is the Weapon, since it has both your weapon damage stat and the highest individual amount of your main attribute stat. However, in addition to the required 1000 Tomestones of Allegory (which you exchange for Mowen’s Tokens through Aymark <Tomestone Exchange>), you also need seven Blades of Golden Antiquity, which drop from E8N once per week. This puts a timegate on buying your Weapon, so you will have time to buy a couple of other items first.
I recommend buying the Body and Legs equipment first, prioritizing them depending on which one is a bigger boost over what you’re already wearing. You should also be able to afford either the Head, Hands, or Feet slot before you need to start saving for your Weapon. After those pieces, you’ll need to save everything you earn in order to get your Weapon as soon as you have your seventh weekly Blade Token.
From there you can fill in the rest of your set with the rest of the left side and the Waist and Accessories. You’ll want to eventually grab two of the Crystarium Rings and wear one augmented (i500) and one un-augmented (i490), since they are unique items.
If you’ll be doing as much Savage as you can, your BiS (Best in-Slot) equipment will be a mix of the Crystarium set and the Edenchoir set. You can check the individual Job channels on The Balance Discord. They’ll be under the (job)_resources channel, and depending on those mentors’ preferred format, you may find a link to Ariyala, Etro, or an image such as the one below.
Since Edenchoir Weapons are a higher item level than Crystarium Weapons, they’re pretty much guaranteed to be part of your BiS, but I still recommend working towards the Crystarium Weapon on the way there. The reason is that you’re not guaranteed to get the Edenchoir Weapon until you’ve cleared E8S eight times. This could very easily take a lot longer depending on the speed of your progression.
If you’re working towards full BiS, you’ll be able to afford ‘wasting’ the 1000 Allegory since you won’t need to spend it on other slots anyway, which will be using Edenchoir gear. On top of that, you might get lucky and have your Edenchoir Weapon drop before you need to spend the Allegory on the Crystarium Weapon, in which case you haven’t wasted any Tomestones.
Obviously if you’ve got one of these handy BiS lists from the mentors at The Balance, you’ll only want to spend Allegory on those pieces that fit into your final equipment set goals, and work on filling the other slots with Savage gear bit by bit.
You should still prioritize Crystarium pieces in the order: Body/Legs > Head/Hands/Feet > Waist/Accessories in order to have the biggest impact on your stats. For the biggest impact on your average item level (if for some reason you’re too low to enter specific content), go in reverse order to fill as many cheap slots as you can with high ilvl gear.
Tomestones of Allegory follow pretty much the same routine you’re used to with endgame Tomestones. Don’t forget about doing Eden’s Verse: Refulgence each week so you can get your hands on that Crystarium Weapon.
There are lots of activities you can choose from to hit your weekly cap of Allegory, so I’m curious which ones do you typically prefer? Let me know in the comments.
FFXIV is filled with so many dungeons, trials, and other duties that there are probably some you’ve forgotten all about. Khloe Aliapoh’s Wondrous Tails give you a reason to mix up your usual routine, or even to revisit some old content. Depending on how well you weave these tales of adventure into your journal, you’ll get to pick from many possible prizes each week.
All you need to unlock Wondrous Tails is a level 60 character and access to Idyllshire, which occurs late in the Heavensward MSQ. Then you can pick up the sidequest ‘Keeping Up with the Aliapohs‘. Every week you can go see Khloe in Idyllshire to pick up a Wondrous Tails journal. She’ll ask you to fill out the journal with stories of your adventures and then return it to her. The way this is done is by completing duties from a list of options, semi-randomized each week. There are 16 duties listed on the lefthand side of the book, and you’ll need to complete 9 of them.
For each duty you complete, a seal will be added at random to the grid on the righthand side of the journal. Once 9 seals have been placed, their layout may or may not form a number of full lines on the grid. These are lines of four seals horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. It’s basically a bingo-style game to see how many rewards you win, but you’ll always win something. Turn in your completed journal by the listed deadline and you’ll get to select your prize(s).
Below your grid of duties is a Second Chance button, showing your remaining Second Chance Points. These are earned by completing a duty where any party member had a first time bonus. You’re capped at 9 points and you can spend these on Retries or Shuffles.
A Retry (1 point) means you cross off a duty you haven’t yet completed (at random) and reactivate a selected duty you’ve already completed that week. Basically this lets you get multiple seals from the same duty, and can be useful if you only have a few duties on the list you actually want to do. Retries can make your tasks more convenient if you play them right.
A Shuffle (2 points) can be used if you currently have between three and seven seals on the grid. It will rearrange the seals at random, so if your grid looks like you’re unlikely to complete any full lines, using one or more Shuffles can improve your shot at a bigger prize.
Ideally you want your seals to land in such a way that it’s possible to complete three lines. There are 24 possible patterns that result in the biggest prize, so if your seven seals land in a way that accommodates any of them, definitely keep them. In order to get three lines you’ll need one horizontal line, one vertical line, one diagonal line, and three points of intersection. It’s a long shot, but aiming for those combinations will still maximize your potential prizes.
Try not to let your Second Chance Points go to waste. If your seven seals aren’t placed well and you’re sitting on nine points, just Shuffle them. I usually stop if they arrange themselves in a guaranteed single line, or if they conform to one of the 24 three line patterns.
Turning your completed (9 seal) journal in to Khloe will reward you with bonuses depending on the layout of your seals. There are four tiers of rewards based on how lucky you get, and you’ll receive one item of your choice from each tier you qualify for. For example, If your seals make two full lines then you’ll get to pick one item each from the ‘9 Seals’, ‘1 Line’, and ‘2 Lines’ lists. As long as you earn 9 seals you’ll win something from the first tier.
Note that you can turn in your completed journal during the following week after you accept it. If you do so, you can then accept the current week’s journal from Khloe immediately. I find this leniency to be really convenient if I get a bit lax about doing enough of my specific duties on a particular week. This allows players to catch up if they fall behind. You can always check the deadline of your journal at the top of your Wondrous Tails window. The deadline is at weekly reset time, which falls on Tuesdays.
There are actually two versions of Khloe’s Wondrous Tails journal. There’s one for players who have reached at least level 80, and one for those who haven’t. This is because reward options get added, which include high level equipment, high level materia, and the two endgame tomestones: Phantasmagoria and Allegory.
In addition to the other 9 Seals rewards, you’ll always be awarded half of your current level’s worth of experience for the Job you turn the journal in on. This is a significant amount, so I recommend trying not to hand it in while you’re on a level 80 Job. You’ll get more benefit the higher level your Job is though, because half a bar is easy to get at low levels, but not so easy in the 70s.
500 Tomestones of Poetics – This could save you a decent amount of time running roulettes. Poetics are currently especially valuable because of the Shadowbringers Relic Weapons. 1000 Poetics is enough to get one weapon.
Timeworn Zonureskin Map – These can be sold for varying amounts of gil (often greater than the Allagan piece) or used to participate in Treasure Hunting parties for the chance at more loot.
Allagan Platinum Piece (10,000 gil) – This is a good amount of gil for low effort, and can actually be used to buy some of the other stuff in this category (materia, crafting materials). It’s like getting cash instead of a gift card.
100 Tomestones of Phantasmagoria– It might be worth it if there’s no Allagan piece being offered. You can buy a few endgame crafting materials to sell, or some i460-470 Deepshadow equipment if that glamour catches your eye.
3 Mhachi Demimatter (noncombat materia V)– While this isn’t the worst option, you can also buy materia for gil. It could be worth it depending on your server’s market, and if you’re trying to cheaply overmeld your crafters or gatherers.
6 Mhachi Matter (combat materia V) = Definitely the most useless option. Grade V materia is kind of pointless for overmelding combat gear when the game throws grade VIIs at you.
Dress-up Thancred (minion)
Wind-up Estinien (minion)
Wind-up Khloe (minion)
Khloe’s Bronze Certificate of Commendation – Trade this for a couple of endgame materia tokens to use or sell on the marketboard.
MGP Gold Card (30,000 MGP) – If you’ve got your eye on a mount or outfit from the Gold Saucer, every bit of MGP helps get you there. This is like completing many successful GATEs all at once.
50 Tomestones of Allegory – Not worth it at all. You can easily reach your weekly cap in other ways, so this will probably be worth absolutely nothing.
Wind-up Zhloe (minion)
Stuffed Khloe (tabletop)
500 Tomestones of Phantasmagoria – If you’re interested in playing the marketboard, this pile of tomestones can buy a lot of crafting materials to sell. Personally I would go for the certificate or MGP card below because they’re simpler to deal with.
Khloe’s Silver Certificate of Commendation – This nets you several tokens to exchange for grade VII or VIII materia.
2 MGP Platinum Cards (100,000 MGP total) – This will go a long way towards that item you’ve got your eye on at the Gold Saucer prize counter.
3 Khloe’s Silver Certificates of Commendation – You can exchange these for a mix of noncombat and combat materia, or go all in on whichever one you need a lot of.
Khloe’s Gold Certificate of Commendation – You can grab a bunch of expensive endgame materia with this certificate. Especially valuable are the Stellacrystals and Planicrystals which you’ll trade for noncombat materia.
20 MGP Platinum Cards (1,000,000 MGP total) – Save yourself a LOT of time by picking up this stack of cards. You’ll be well on your way to owning the biggest cosmetic prizes available at the Gold Saucer.
Some weeks you may need to go out of your way to tackle your assigned duties. Is it worth it? Well, that depends on what you could reap as your reward. There are always three options in every tier, so there’s a very high chance you’ll get something of use to you, no matter your goals in the game.
Try to get as many unique duties finished before using any retries. Retries use up valuable second chance points, which could instead be put towards reshuffles to maximize your chances at higher tier rewards. Considering you only need to complete 9 out of 16 entries, it’s totally possible to finish your journal for the week without retrying any duties.
If you are going to use a retry, you should still try to check off any quick and easy duties first. If your retry crosses something simple off the list before you do it yourself, you’ve basically wasted a retry. If something’s very quick and easy (like a level 50 extreme trial), or you know you’re going to get to it at some point during the week (like a level 80 dungeon), make sure it’s crossed off before retrying another duty.
Dungeons (Levelling) – These top row duties are broken into expansion categories, so 1-49 might be on your list, or 51-59, etc. If you have a Job you’re currently levelling up, you can try to get lucky throughout the week with Levelling Roulettes. Otherwise, to complete this quickly, queue for one or more dungeons in your category’s range directly, and do so on a Tank or Healer during your server’s prime time.
You’re less likely to have a bad group if you cover one of these important roles, and if you pick the lower end of the range (because people are less likely to be undergeared). For example if I’m trying to cross off 61-69 Dungeons, I might switch to my Warrior and queue for the level 61, 63, and 65 dungeons.
You could also queue up for many of these dungeons solo. NPC party members are available by using the Trust system (level 71-79 dungeons) or by leading your Squadron in a Command Mission.
Dungeons (50, 60, 70) – These categories and the levelling categories will make up three of your top row duties every week. The same advice applies as the levelling dungeons above. You could do your Level 50/60/70 Roulette throughout the week and hope you land in the appropriate duties. Or, you might just do a multi-queue as a Tank or Healer for several dungeons that fall in your assigned category.
Dungeons (80) – I believe this is always included in your journal, since I check it off every week (sometimes more than once). This is probably the best duty to use retries on in a pinch, since you know you’re going to complete it if you do the Expert Roulette or the Level 80 Dungeon Roulette. This is super time efficient; it’s basically a free seal since most players do these roulettes anyway. Just try to complete some other easy duties before you spend a retry.
Alliance Raids – These duties can take either a bit of luck or a bit of patience if you’re intent on checking them off in your journal. Choosing a Job at a low enough level can ensure you only qualify for the level 50 Alliance Raids for example, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the one out of three you’re looking for. I usually still try to get this done via roulettes because the bonus experience and tomestones are useful anyway.
If you are going to queue for the Alliance Raid Roulette, it’s possible to manipulate your available raids by lowering your average item level. If you needed to get World of Darkness, you could lower your item level to below 175 so you no longer meet the requirements for the level 60 set of Alliance Raids. The way this is usually done is by unequipping items to lower the average item level, then equipping them again after the duty pops. Remember that this will never guarantee you get the duty you want, it will only skew you down towards the lower level ones.
Your alternative is to queue for the raid directly, which may take some time, especially if it’s a level 70 raid. Try to queue during prime time and pick an in need role, which for Alliance Raids is usually Healer or DPS.
The Binding Coil of Bahamut – There’s always one of these turns in your journal, and to be honest I always skip it. While you can unsync and outlevel the content, some of it is just weird and not straightforward (Turn 3 anyone?) Not all of it can be done solo anyway, and you’d have to find a group in the Party Finder. Not worth the time in my opinion.
Normal Raids – There will be two of these duties each week; one level 60 raid and one level 70. It’s unlikely that you’ll get these specific duties in your Normal Raid Roulette, because the pool is so large. Try switching to a role that’s frequently in need for raids, such as Tank or Healer. Then queue up for both your listed raids at once. Normal raids are already short duties, and this will considerably speed up the longest part – the queue.
Deep Dungeons – This square will be either a Treasure Hunting dungeon (your choice of Aquapolis, Lyhe Ghiah, etc.) or Palace of the Dead / Heaven on High. A run of PotD or HoH is really quick, and can give a DPS Job some experience without waiting in a long queue. Lyhe Ghiah can actually get you a lot of seals in a short time if you join a Treasure Hunting party and use retries. It’s not the best use of second chance points, but it’s an option.
Extreme Trials (Lv. 50) – There will be three of these in your journal every week, and all can be soloed pretty easily if you have a Job at max level.
Extreme Trials (Lv. 60/70) – There will be two of these in your journal every week. They usually require a visit to Party Finder to find other players who are farming mounts, so these are often skipped over.
PvP – Every week you’ll have a PvP seal, and it will be Frontline, Rival Wings, or The Feast. I usually skip it, but if it’s Frontline then I might just queue for the daily bonus at prime time and pick up some Wolf Marks. If PvP is your passion this might be an easy seal for your journal every week.
The seals I always grab every week (because they’re the most time efficient) are the Level 80 Dungeon, Level 60 and 70 Normal Raids, and all three Level 50 Extreme Trials. This accounts for 6/9 seals, and the other three I get from a combination of dungeons and alliance raids from roulettes, or a Treasure Hunting dungeon if I see a Party Finder listing on the weekend. I rarely need to spend a retry, but if I do it’s on the Level 80 Dungeon.
While I was levelling, I used to think that Wondrous Tails took way too much time. It turns out I just didn’t know how to go about it efficiently, and just how useful some of the rewards could be, even for high level players. I hope you’ve learned a bit more about how to get the most out of these weekly journals. Let me know in the comments, what are your go-to duties to cross off the list?