In FFXIV, Endtide Aethersand is one of a few unique crafting materials needed to make some particularly useful Level 90 gear. You need it for crafting and gathering equipment: in other words the two “Pactmaker’s” sets. Though even a few of the “Classical” armors used on combat classes make use of Endtide Aethersand as a basic component. This is great for gearing up and making Gil to spend. The question is, where does one get a few of these elusive blue grains? The answer… is surprisingly simple for once. Though we still have a few tips on Endtide Aethersand farming to help you get as much as possible! Just be prepared to do a little fishing.
Endtide Aethersand is actually acquired from two different points in Final Fantasy XIV. Neither of which is necessarily a guaranteed location. Though you can collect from them with no time restrictions. One is found in an actual Endwalker expansion zone. Specifically, you can head to Ultima Thule. The other location takes us back to Stormblood, deep into the Ruby Sea.
“Deep” is the operative word here. You don’t acquire Endtide Aethersand from time-limited Ephemeral Nodes (like other flavors of Aethersand used in Master Recipes). Instead it’s acquired via fishing. This is actually great news if you’re an appropriately leveled Fisher. Endwalker basically recreated FFXIV spearfishing in particular from the ground up with its Patch 6.0 release. It’s no longer quite the underwater equivalent of mining and botany it once was. Instead of wildly spearing your gig at a series of bubbles, you now play an entire minigame to acquire fish at each location. This is what makes it possible to get nearly guaranteed Endtide Aethersand each time you fish; every fish in the spearfishing minigame has a particular appearance that you can target specifically.
Let’s look at the actual fish we need. Just remember that these coordinates are an approximation. Like all fishing holes and gathering sites, the materials spawn in a wide area forming a rough circle. Though you can use the skill “Shark Eye II” to spot the spearfishing nodes in Othard. The fish and their locations are:
- Eehs Forhnesh: Normal Fishing, Ultima Thule (X: 7.4, Y: 22.5)
- Othardian Lumpsucker: Spearfishing, The Ruby Sea (X: 39.5, Y: 31.5)
Eehs Forhnesh is caught via normal fishing using Chimera Worm as the best available bait. It’s also a medium-sized fish (meaning it shows a double exclamation mark “!!” icon when you can reel it). Normal fishing is less predictable than the current version of spearfishing, however, and requires inventory-cluttering bait. As such I don’t prefer it as a farming method for Endtide Aethersand. It’s better for players who don’t like to move around as much, however, and comes with the bonuses you get from normal fishing skills. Spearfishing provides easier visual identification, by contrast, with less waiting around. I actually quite enjoy both types of fishing under different circumstances. Your preferences may vary.
Players who prefer the immediacy of spearfishing can get their sand as quickly as possible by going to Othard. The coordinates shown above put you far to the southeast of the Tamamizu Aetheryte.
Once you’re in position, it’s time to start spearing. Those that haven’t tried the new minigame yet will get an onscreen tutorial telling them what to do. It’s really just a series of quick-time events, though. You press the “Gig” skill as any fish passes over your spear icon at the bottom of the screen. This causes the spear to rise up and snatch the fish in front of it. The downside is that you’re timed. Using Gig will also reduce that time (even if you miss) until finally the Teeming Waters where you spear the fish disappears. At which point you can use Shark Eye II to find the next closest Level 90 Teeming Waters. The nearby Teeming Waters with Othardian Lumpsuckers will always be Level 90, so don’t worry about getting the wrong spot.
That’s the easy part. The trickier element is telling each type of fish apart from one another. Thankfully, there are only six types of fish in this location. Players can easily tell each of them apart by three things: size, speed, and hitbox. The Othardian Lumpsucker is notably of the “medium” variety, so you can completely ignore the large and small fish that swim past.
After that there are just two medium-sized fish to worry about. One is the Othardian Lumpsucker. The other, more common fish is the Righteye Flounder. You want to avoid confusing the two since catching the (relatively useless) flounder will reduce the spearfishing timer for each one you catch. Many players note that the two fish have differently sized hitboxes — the white rectangles at the center of each icon as they swim past. This is one way to tell the two apart.
Maybe I just have worse eyesight than most players, but I cannot see this difference to save my life. At least not in motion. I have a much easier time seeing the difference between their speeds. Righteye Flounders move noticeably faster than the slower Othardian Lumpsucker. Since these are the only two medium-sized fish in this entire region, this makes it very easy to spot the difference between the two. It just might take a second for your eyes to recognize the pattern. From that point forward, though, you can specifically hunt the Othardian Lumpsucker and ignore all other fish completely. This lets you get the maximum time (and chances) per Teeming Waters.
You can also use the skill “Veteran Trade” to raise your chances even higher. Just spear a Righteye Flounder first. It shouldn’t be hard since they’re much more common. Then use Veteran Trade for 200 GP. This will cause the Righteye Flounder to stop spawning at that spot altogether for as long as you’re gathering from it. The only medium-sized fish that will appear, until the timer runs out, will be Othardian Lumpsuckers. The skill “Baited Breath” can also reduce the timer on any spearfishing node, giving you more chances to collect.
Speaking of which, whether you use this or the traditional fishing method, make sure to have the “Collect” skill active. Otherwise any Othardian Lumpsucker or Eehs Forhnesh you catch will be worthless. This is because they’re both collectible fish that must be transformed into Endtide Aethersand via the action “Aetherial Reduction.” This works almost exactly the same as desynthesis. Just with potentially rarer rewards. In the case of fish, it also results in a massive number of Water Crystals and Water Clusters (another crafting necessity).
That’s all there is to it! Keep on fishing and you’ll eventually stock up on Endtide Aethersand faster than you can use it in FFXIV. You can always sell some on the Market Board if you’re in desperate need of Gil, but it might be better used on your own Level 90 crafts first.
