Airship Guide

Voidrake on 14 as well.

Some confirmations here :

Secteur 18 : New Orchestrion Scroll Engage
Secteur 11 : Althyk lavander seeds

I am not sure what is going on. We are new to this whole airship thing. We built our airship using the frugal freighter build. Sent it to sector 19, after a SIXTY hour trip. ALL it came back with, is ONE Deep-blue cluster....ONE....nothing else.

Oh and teh report said it was an "Average" Yield

Sounds like some bad luck, but I don't think I've had one of the heavier yield flyers come back with that little. As long as the surveillance and retrieval are high you should be getting better yield. I'd double check the ship's stats (view airship status via the flight control panel in the workshop) and make sure the correct parts went in. If so then give it another try. Perhaps you just got a very bad roll of the dice.

"Additional Anomalies detected... But lost"

I wasnt sure if this was a new airship message or not. Can someone confirm?

I have a strange suspicion that this entire system has been reworked. The addition of low level trash to the loot tables of all sectors and the seemingly stealth nerfed materia yields lead me to believe they weren't happy with the previous output.

That and the fact they added a "Script/Token Sink" to the splendors vendor. Seems moving forward, SE wants us to get our materia from scrips/spiritbonding (work for it) instead of from airships.

http://imgur.com/hsfWG9Z

I really wish they'd add new item/materia achievements if their intent is to funnel people towards spiritbonding, it's just a little bit more dull grinding stuff without some meaningless number to work towards.

Not pleased with the low level junk either way though. Minium has fringe use in carbonweave stuff iirc, but not so much any of it needed to be flooded to this degree since it's still a 200gc seal mat, and adding to high-end airship ventures is just kind of insulting. At least you can use birch branches in lvl 60 gc turn-ins zz. The fuck am I supposed to do with silver ore / electrum ore? It's not even worth the retainer slot to try selling it. Oh boy I can craft hardsilver nuggets at higher base cost than just buying it from the Vath npc.

If they wanted to include more "not-materia" fail-states I mean, there's always deep-color clusters, crafting crystals/clusters, even mats that are ACTUALLY RELEVANT TO THE CURRENT TIER like lumythrite sand or aurum regis sand.

My alt's FC airship brought back 3 of the Engage scrolls.

http://i.imgur.com/Z4jmdto.png

Sector 22 drops deepeye tears now.

Sector 17 has Silver Ore, Sector 20 has Mythrite Sand. Screenshots below. Also, is there anyone maintaining this guide or are we gonna have to make our own updated chart?

http://imgur.com/a/oGU0m

Airships can't get Grade V gather/craft materias? Or the Guide haven't been update yet?

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Originally Posted by Ronyx

Airships can't get Grade V gather/craft materias? Or the Guide haven't been update yet?

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No one has reported those being obtained, so I doubt they can get it.

Airships are Dead.

After almost 2 weeks worth of testing, with a very large sample size, I have come to the conclusion that airships are no longer a viable source of materia or relevant crafting materials.

This is coming from someone who used to love this system. I'm now spending more money on repair materials and ceruleum tanks than any actual profit or usable items they may bring back. I literally can't see any reason to continue sending them out on voyages with the crap they are returning with.

Need materia for those shiney new ironworks sets? Don't bother sending ships to sector 13 and 17 unless you want to bathe in silver ore and earth crystals. That best in slot airship build you spent months crafting and raising funds for; Sorry stats don't mean a thing anymore when the loot tables are so bad and that capped retrieval still results in less than x5 materia 90% of the time. Have crafting and gathering members in your large FC that need help with melds and can't afford materia? Tough luck, tell them to go spiritbond.

SE has nerfed this system to the ground without telling us, and has devalued all of the hard work FCs have put into leveling and customizing their airships. If you didn't capitalize on the high value items and materia before patch 3.3, sadly your SOL.

I almost wonder if this was done to discourage people from buying up additional housing just for airships? Been having some pretty poor loot myself. Getting a lot for tier 3 materia lately that I only make a profit off of because people keep putting it on the mb for less than vendor cost.

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Originally Posted by PROBOUND

Have crafting and gathering members in your large FC that need help with melds and can't afford materia? Tough luck, tell them to go spiritbond.

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Or do Ixal dailies because the last few you open up now give tier 4 crafting/gathering materia. It's only a few per day, but you don't have to spirit bond.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

Or do Ixal dailies because the last few you open up now give tier 4 crafting/gathering materia. It's only a few per day, but you don't have to spirit bond.

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If you think about it, those materias add up faster than what you get from airships, and you get a slight variety.

It's kind of unfortunate. :/

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Originally Posted by PROBOUND

Airships are Dead.

After almost 2 weeks worth of testing, with a very large sample size, I have come to the conclusion that airships are no longer a viable source of materia or relevant crafting materials.

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Not true, I did quick check and some of the materials still sell for millions and many others just short of that. As long as you have invested the time and gil into having the ships capable of going to those sectors and retrieving them...then despite having RNG involved it doesn't cost much more by that stage to farm them and make a decent amount of profit. Just like leveling a retainer is not a worthless activity despite RNG involved and most of the stuff being less valuable. Some of the things they bring back will be and if put in time and effort to get to the stage where can farm them then it is worth doing.

If you were only doing it for materia then yes the value of them is less now because there are more ways to obtain T4's and now T5's are easier to gain...however T4 gathering and crafting materia is still worth farming and even the generic T4's can be converted into other more valuable T4's or some times T5.

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Originally Posted by Suirieko

If you think about it, those materias add up faster than what you get from airships, and you get a slight variety.

It's kind of unfortunate. :/

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Your coming at it from the wrong angle. Think more along the lines of gaining many more in addition to the amount gain from beastman tribes. You can gain 12 from beastman tribes a day, much more if combine that with airship voyages. It's is not one or the other, it is both together that is how should think about it. As far as I am concerned granting materia from beastman tribes benefited doing the tribes but it did not detract from airship gained ones. It just added to the amount can obtain which is a good thing, especially since I almost always convert T4's to T5's anyways so the more T4's I get then the better the chances of more T5's.

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

Your coming at it from the wrong angle. Think more along the lines of gaining many more in addition to the amount gain from beastman tribes. You can gain 12 from beastman tribes a day, much more if combine that with airship voyages.

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Are you saying you can get 12 crafting/gathering T4 materia a day? How are you doing this from beast tribes? I see us only get 3 a day.

I do not know what other people are doing. But we just got our "frugal freighter" airship back from its THIRD 60 hour trip to sector 19. It has not opened up sector 20 in these three trips. And teh last voyage. Above average yield....SEVENTEEN, that's right. 17 HQ Gold Sand!!! The previous two trips, with average yields. Brought back CRAP! What is even worse. Is our second airship, which is nothing but bronco parts. Are bringing back more variety of loot from teh lower sectors than this "beast" of a ship.

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Originally Posted by PROBOUND

Airships are Dead.

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same here, Only trash from sector 13+17 since 3.3, silver ore and other useless crap

they nerfed it really hard

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Originally Posted by MeridaQ

Are you saying you can get 12 crafting/gathering T4 materia a day? How are you doing this from beast tribes? I see us only get 3 a day.

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I never said got 12 DoH/DoL ones from beastman tribes. I collect as many T4's of 'all types' as possible including from airships and beastman tribes plus fish deysnths then convert them all north of black bush station into quite often DoH/DoL T4's and sometimes T5's. The fact can gain additional T4's from airships is a good thing in my opinion alongside those from beastman tribes and those from gathering/deysnths plus soulbind conversions.

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

I never said got 12 DoH/DoL ones from beastman tribes.

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Okay that is what I thought you meant but I was double checking. Also the loss of airships as being useful is not supplemented with beast tribe tier 4s. Yes we can go and spirit bind whole sets of gear to convert, but the problem lies in the fact that we are losing a reason to use airships for materia and losing their viability overall because of this. Why would SE want to make this fall out of favor is the question. I have airships going out all the time to try and get materia to supplement my FC's melding. Just today we lost 45 CP 4's to the 5th slot of one of the new Ironworks (it still isn't pentamelded). With the low retrieval on materia in combination with RNG there is no way for the ten crafters in the FC to be able to meld fully. (they all spirtibond, MB, and Ixal) So I don't see the reason in the nerf.

While not a huge haul, and potentially not available due to other concerns, do not forget that you can get up to 18 per week (9 crafting, 9 gathering) through the red tokens. That won't be a huge windfall the way that Airships used to be, but if you have no other use for your red scrip, they are better than nothing.

Don't really know about you guys, but even if it's less often than before i still get between 12-30 lvl IV materias regularly. So still worth it for me.

Not sure if it's been said already, seeing as this thread has a 101 pages by now (wow!), but when my FC moved from a medium house to a mansion, we found that the actual crafting unlocks (house glamours, ship parts building, etc) of our workshop remained unlocked. The only thing we lost destroying and rebuilding the workshop was the unlocked airships slots, their progress/rank and their sector unlocks.

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Originally Posted by Valenth

Not sure if it's been said already, seeing as this thread has a 101 pages by now (wow!), but when my FC moved from a medium house to a mansion, we found that the actual crafting unlocks (house glamours, ship parts building, etc) of our workshop remained unlocked. The only thing we lost destroying and rebuilding the workshop was the unlocked airships slots, their progress/rank and their sector unlocks.

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Wow, so airships gear and progress are wiped to zero, but you can still have all the recipes unlocked to build things at the crafting station? That is useful information. Thanks!

Sector 4 - Fine Alumen

Can anyone confirm that sectors 11, 13, and 15 drop deep-color crystals and clusters? I've been sending a ship there for weeks trying to get materials for aetherial wheels and gotten plenty of everything listed on their drop tables except those crystals and clusters.

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Originally Posted by Lago

Can anyone confirm that sectors 11, 13, and 15 drop deep-color crystals and clusters? I've been sending a ship there for weeks trying to get materials for aetherial wheels and gotten plenty of everything listed on their drop tables except those crystals and clusters.

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Got deep red crystals on one of the ships last voyages from sector 11 and 3 deep green clusters from another ship that hit sector 15, so yes they still drop there.

edit: Checked the 3rd ship that goes out and it got 9 deep green clusters from 15 as well.

Great, thank you. Just a bad run of luck for me, then.

Since no one updates the loot table anymore, then I have made my own with information from here and the newly reported items.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1485770991

Is there any chance this'll be updated for 3.3? The song Engaged is from Sector 19.

Unlocking sector 7 is really doing my head in, my first airship is now rank 25+ and has visited sector 5 over a dozen times ever since it hit rank 10 it has gone to sector 5 in every exploratory venture so far since unlocked 5 itself...yet it has only unlocked 6 and still not 7 from sector 5. I just hope when does finally unlock 7 it won't take this long for unlocking sector 8 too. How long did it take everyone else to unlock sector 7 (how many trips to sector 5)?

I believe unlocking sectors is a purely random thing. Based previous posts there's a belief that Surveillance helps but its a weak link. I think you've just had some uncommonly bad luck. Go sacrifice a few dozen lalas and see if it helps.

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Originally Posted by MysticSpirit

Since no one updates the loot table anymore, then I have made my own with information from here and the newly reported items.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1485770991

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Thank you for sharing this.

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Originally Posted by Valenth

Not sure if it's been said already... but when my FC moved from a medium house to a mansion, we found that the actual crafting unlocks (house glamours, ship parts building, etc) of our workshop remained unlocked. The only thing we lost destroying and rebuilding the workshop was the unlocked airships slots, their progress/rank and their sector unlocks.

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We recently moved too, but we lost nearly all our recipes and have to unlock them again. All we had unlocked was the Bronco airship, the merchant wall skins and the first upgrade of the Aetherial wheel stand.
So, did something go wrong for us, or did you just benefit from a very lucky glitch?

I'd be interested to hear how other people fared when they moved.

Heya, new to the Airship system here, been using your guide throughout for my FC's Airships. Thanks for the effort jotting it down here guys.

I would like to ask a question here though, if I may,

According to the sector route, sector 14 is unlocked by going in to sector 11 vs. the RNG it has, Does it only unlock sector 14 if I'm going to only and ONLY sector 11?

or can I chain route to, let's say 1-6-11, can I still unlock sector 14 that way?

Yes, unlocking through a sector doesn't require you to go just to that sector. You can do the 1-6-11 trip and be fine, only limitation is that you'll do it faster of course if you just hit the 1 sector, but it may not be enough of an increase in speed to be worth it to you.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Yes, unlocking through a sector doesn't require you to go just to that sector. You can do the 1-6-11 trip and be fine, only limitation is that you'll do it faster of course if you just hit the 1 sector, but it may not be enough of an increase in speed to be worth it to you.

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Thank you! Yeah, I think moving to more area is worth the extra time unless situation needs it otherwise.

I am not having good luck with airship sector unlocks, I may end up unlocking and being able to visit sector 14 before sector 8 at the current rate. My question is will airship 3 unlock from sector 14 even if have not unlocked and visited sector 8 for airship 2 and essentially the sector 14 airship becoming airship 2...then when unlock sector 8 and visit it the airship unlock from that one becoming airship 3? Or will the sector 14 airship unlock only after unlocked the sector 8 airship?

Yes, as soon as a ship actually visits sector 14 you'll have another ship unlocked. I know it's frustrating when there's so little info on the functionality and rng is taking its sweet time siding with you. It gives you that feeling like there's something you're doing wrong, but you're not. You have no control over the unlocks, so take a deep breath and just check back with your ships whenever they return.