Skysteel Tools are the first iteration of Crafting & Gathering relics added at level 80 in the FFXIV expansion Shadowbringers. These main-hand tools have five upgrades — each increasing the overall stats of that tool for their respective classes.
These were previously the best tools of the expansion at level 80, but are also time-consuming to obtain with how easy it now is to level beyond them. Instead, these tools are now mainly used cosmetically as glamour. You may be familiar with this due to how relics for combat classes have been in the past.
The Skysteel Tools progress through the following stages. Click on each for their respective guides!
- Skysteel (Below!)
- Skysteel Tools Home Page
- Skysteel +1
- Dragonsung
- Augmented Dragonsung
- Skysung
- Skybuilders’
All of these steps are available to all eight crafting classes and all three gathering classes. Crafting and Gathering classes will, however, have different objectives to complete and different items to obtain depending on each class.
To obtain your crafting relics, you first need to craft regular items — later followed by collectables and even expert crafting items. The latter of which must be exchanged at certain levels of “collectability” to fill progress on your questline. At level 90, though, most of these steps are very simple. A lot of the grind has been alleviated due to players having access to much higher stats now.
Gathering, on the other hand, still requires a similar level of grind as it did at level 80. It will require you to gather both normal and “hidden” items, as well as collectables in later stages.
How To Unlock Skysteel Tools
There is one prerequisite to unlock the questline for Skysteel Tools: you need to have unlocked access to a special area in Ishgard called The Firmament. You may have already unlocked this if you have access to The Ishgardian Restoration.
If not, you simply need to complete the quest “Towards the Firmament” which only requires the level 60 MSQ “Litany of Peace.” You most likely already have that done, though, if your crafting or gathering classes are level 80 and above.
The first quest to begin your Skysteel adventure starts with “Mislaid Plans” by speaking to Neillemard in Foundation (X: 7.9, Y: 10.6). This then takes you over to the Skysteel Manufactory (which is also the home of the Machinist Guild) to obtain your first tool for free for simply finishing the quest!
Your first tool is given as the item “Skysteel Prototype Coffer.” Since it is a coffer, be careful. When you use this item it will automatically become the tool for the class you currently have active. This isn’t too important, though, as all of these tools in their first form are easy to obtain.
How Do I Unlock Additional Skysteel Tools?
Once you complete the aforementioned quest for your first tool you will be given the ability to purchase other base tools from Denys inside the Skysteel Manufactory. Additional tools are 80k gil apiece, costing you a total of 800k gil. This is the only stage that requires you to directly spend money and there are no other upfront costs afterwards.
Other upgrades in this questline can benefit from spending gil to purchase crafting materials and make scrip farming easier, but it’s by no means a requirement. If you do not have enough funds to initially purchase these tools a few hours of selling gear, materia, or running treasure maps should give you plenty.
Using Skysteel Tools as Glamour
Any of these tools can be stored in your Glamour Dresser for future use and even have replica versions which can be purchased from Denys inside the Skysteel Manufactory for 1k gil apiece. There are replicas for the Dragonsung, Skysung and Skybuilders’ stages of the tools. Other stages do not have any changes to their model, however, and so never received replica versions.
The Skybuilders’ replica cannot be dyed but is instead a glowing tool. The Skysung stage looks the same as Skybuilders’, but without the glow. You can dye these ones instead. Dragonsung looks similar but with slight changes to its look and design.
And those are the very basics to unlock your set of Skybuilders’ Tools! If you want some tips for how to complete the next stages of these questlines, we have a series of guides for those which you can check out by starting here with our Skysteel Tool +1 guide.
