Everything’s coming up Blue Mage. Blue Mage has always been an odd, lonely little job. It wasn’t added with the beginning of any expansion. Unlike the post-launch jobs, you have to start at Level 1, and unlike every other job, its maximum level is 70. You learn actions by throwing yourself at specific enemies, which is an arduous process. Blue Mages can’t even complete the main scenario quests.
You only play Blue Mage if you want to go through the job’s specific flavor of self-flagellation.
That is until the recent Moogle Treasure Trove event. The in-game celebration sees players revisiting older content, including The Praetorium, Baelsar’s Wall, The Binding Coil of Bahamut, and the Omega raids, in order to win special Irregular Tomestones. These tomestones can be traded in for a special event item — the exclusive Inferno Jacket — and other mounts, items, and Orchestrion Rolls that you can normally gain through running old content. The Moogle Treasure Trove began on Tuesday and will stretch until the launch of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker.
Players want to maximize their 30 days of play, so they’ve taken to crunching the numbers and figuring out the most efficient way to farm Irregular Tomestones. The Praetorium awards 10 tomestones, the most available for any one instance, but it’s also the longest activity available in the event. With a strong veteran party, The Binding Coil of Bahamut – Turn 2 is an efficient use of your time, awarding three tomestones for a few minutes of effort. PVP is also a decent grind because you get five tomestones for a win and three for a loss.
How Blue Mages Farm Those Tomestones
One of the best ways to grind however is with a Blue Mage. As part of the event, the Job can tackle four dungeons — The Aetherochemical Research Facility, Baelsar’s Wall, Ala Mhigo, and the Ghimlyt Dark — for four Irregular Tomestones a pop. Parties of Blue Mages can even take on the rest of the dungeons in the event, while a group of Blue Mages plus any tank can make short work of The Binding Coil of Bahamut – Turn 2.
For the Blue Mages, you have to be at least level 50, which is a bit of a grind in the first place Then you need to have specific actions unlocked: Missile or Level 5 Death, Whistle, Moonflute, and Final Sting. Use Missile or Level 5 Death on everything that’s not the boss, plus a combination of Whistle, Moonflute, and Final Sting from every Blue Mage to kill the boss itself. The tank is just there as insurance; they clean up any errant problems that arise. Rinse and repeat! People have even worked out how to do it as a party of Blue Mages alone.
That’s a few minutes per run of Turn 2 at three tomestones a pop. That’s 34 runs for the special event jacket (or a sustained total of two hours and 50 minutes). Each of the mounts is 30 Irregular Tomestones, meaning you only need to do 10 runs for each — totaling just under an hour. And that’s if you did it all in a single day; you have time to spread that out over an entire month.
We All Love Blue Mages Again
This has made Blue Mage the Job de jure at the moment. The memes are coming in hot and heavy, some mentioning the Blue Mage action Self-Destruct, which kills the player while dealing a ton of damage. For one sweet day, the Blue Mage is the cool kid again. It’s even got folks acknowledging that Blue Mage might be too powerful, which is why it could never be allowed to reach whatever the maximum level cap is like “normal” Jobs.
Honestly, I don’t have a Blue Mage leveled at the moment. Though this almost makes me want to grind it out to see how it goes. The Job was a winner during the last Moogle event as well and should be in future iterations. In fact, any event that allows you to use Blue Mage is usually easier with the Job. At the very least, maybe I can find a party of Blues that needs me as a tank. I really just want the jacket, y’all…
Of course, the main purpose of the event is to get veteran players running key leveling and story content prior to Endwalker. In the Live Letter from the Producer back in May, lead Endwalker writer Natsuko Ishikawa said that players should probably complete the Binding Coil of Bahamut and Omegascape raids in preparation for the new main scenario. (A similar thing happened for the Crystal Tower raid for the Shadowbringers main storyline.) So seeing Omegascape and Binding Coil on the list for the Moogle Treasure Trove is unsurprising.
Speaking of the upcoming expansion, FFXIV: Endwalker is coming to PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on Nov. 23, 2021. Early Access begins on November 19 for those that pre-ordered, however. Be sure to check out all of our preview coverage related to Final Fantasy XIV in the run-up to the launch of The Linkshell, our Final Fantasy XIV vertical coming soon! A small bit of that coverage can be found in the links below.
You can also check out the rest of our coverage of the media tour:
- Tank Changes and All New Job Actions to Level 90
- Healer Changes and All New Job Actions to Level 90
- Melee DPS Changes and All New Job Actions to Level 90
- Ranged/Magic DPS Changes and All New Job Actions to Level 90
- Tour of the New Zones — A Walkthrough of Old Sharlayan, Garlemald, and Thavnair
- An Interview with Director Naoki Yoshida on the Last Decade of FFXIV
