Airship Guide

In my experience upgrading the forecastle for more surveillance really helps to discover new sectors. With the best forecastle you can equip I've nearly one shotted all the sectors past like 10 or 11.

Finally unlocked sector 8, my airship leveled in ranks from 10 to 41 though before managed to unlock both sector 7 and sector 8. I always tried to have the highest amount of favor and surveillance possible as each airship component set got unlocked and crafted. I am not sure how many trips in total it took but I generally ranked up another level after each trip (sometimes every 2 trips). As a guess I think it took like around two dozen 17-47 hour voyages to unlock sector 7 then another half dozen for sector 8. I actually had good luck with the early sectors from 1-6 and which unlocked one every few trips but unlocking 7 took forever and 8 took a while too.

I currently have sectors 1-8 unlocked plus 11 and 13. If my luck changes maybe I will unlock 14 within this current voyage too. I have sent my ship to sectors 8 (to gain access to another airship and also trying to unlock sector 9), 11 (to hopefully unlock sector 14) and 13 (trying to unlock sector 15) with my current 47 hour voyage. If does unlock 14 in this trip it will grant me quite a quick succession of the 2nd and 3rd airship which would be nice. Now I just have to wait for it to get back from sector 8 so can finally start on my second ship. I assume there is no RNG involved in the unlocking of the ship when visit sector 8 and the unlock is 100% guaranteed with a single voyage?

Yes, once you visit a sector that unlocks a new airship, the ship will always unlock

Acquired a faded copy of Engage from Sector 18.

Edit: Just realized it's the Diadem's bgm.

I am trying to plan out 4 final builds for ships but struggling to decide on parts for each

The sectors which interest me are 3, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 17, 22, 24 (maybe 15 and 19 sometimes).

I want to maximize the materia amount collected in a quick succession travel time wise. Speed is less important than quantity though. No major importance towards the rare items at the moment since there is so few actual useful rare items (vastly too much duplication and too few unique loots in general) plus most are very cheap to already buy on MB instead. I have little to no interest in the workshop items since I have unlocked most current workshop recipes already.

I have no real need for crystal farming either since I am extremely well stocked on all types. How would you spread those sectors I mentioned above across your 4 ships if was in my position and what ship part combinations would you use on those ships based on what I said above? If you cant help with what I am asking maybe you could let me know what sectors you generally go for, how they are spread across your own ships and what ship builds you use for all 4?

Regardless of sector, I've had the best luck (which at this point is still iffy) on the Inv/Bronc/Vilt/Ody ship. It's slow with max surveillance and can't hit many sectors at once, but it can snag quite a few items when it does. Everything about these ships is rng though, so you'll still be getting plenty of all the stuff you don't want. As for the sectors I go for, that generally depends on what the FC is after. Just work your way from the take off point outwards on the map to each of the sectors you want to hit that are close together and see what you can manage to squeeze in.

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Originally Posted by Dezwaan

I've been sending two ships out to sectors 19 & 21 since 3.2. One ship is fast and can only hit one sector, the other hits both sectors but takes much longer.

Does anyone have any anecdotal, circumstantial, or otherwise evidence that helps to unlock sectors aside from RNG? Is the Survey required slightly higher or is there a minuscule higher chance to unlock sectors by having other players send the ships out?

It's been >100 days trying to unlock two sectors... At this point after sacrificing all Lala's I've seen I'm willing to try anything...

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Just like to state that I've still been trying and haven't had luck. I'm about to give up and think the whole internet is just lying to me.

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Originally Posted by Dezwaan

Just like to state that I've still been trying and haven't had luck. I'm about to give up and think the whole internet is just lying to me.

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I find it better to try and unlock one sector at a time and send both ships to that one only. Otherwise every so many days you are losing out on a full attempt at a sector.

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Originally Posted by Dezwaan

Just like to state that I've still been trying and haven't had luck. I'm about to give up and think the whole internet is just lying to me.

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What's the surveillance on both ships? You could try getting one ship hopped up on surv/speed and see if that helps any. Unfortunately the only info we have is from trial & error (and rng, always rng) as no official explanation of the airship functionality/sector discovery was ever given to my knowledge.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

Regardless of sector, I've had the best luck (which at this point is still iffy) on the Inv/Bronc/Vilt/Ody ship.

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A lot of the sites and guides (links) which are mentioned at the start of this thread have no mention of the Vilt airship build, the calculator pages/links also do not cover it so not sure how to work that one into my potential build setups.