How common are soul crystals?

Somewhat inspired by the healer thread, how common are soul crystals?

We know what some are rare, or even effectively unique in the lore (WHM, SCH, BLM) but what about others where the jobs themselves are fairly common? PLD, SAM, NIN, and the like? Does the Ishgardian knighthood issue a job crystal to every new dragoon, or are they rare and saved for special circumstances, leaving the rank and file to the years of training it takes to master a job without a crystal?

While not all jobs are as exclusive as WHM or DRG (at least azure dragoons, not sure if normal dragoons get stones or not in lore), they all seem to be rare. Not impossible to get your hands on for some, but not common.

I don't now of any indication that say ishgard tmeple knights use them. The sultansworn recruited some adventurers to carry on their arts but I dont'[ think they're giving these out like candy.

I'd say they range from 'one of a kind' to 'very rare/hard to get.'

However, we DO know that it's possible to make new stones, as the BLU and MCH job stones are new and don't contain any actual knowledge so it' snot like their creation is a lost art.

Soul Crystals are one of the biggest mysteries in the game for me. On the one hand, some of them are super rare, some are not. And they seem to be very easy to make. No one makes a big deal about you being the person who is essentially acting as a template for the BLU and MCH Soul Crystals. Or even that new blank Soul Crystals somehow happened to be on hand.

For that matter, why do deeds have to be "carved" on them? And who does that anyway? And how does doing that help the next person who has the Soul Crystal?

I think for some they are rare/restricted and others are more meant to help us the players advance a job quick. For WHM only the padjali are allowed to learn the art of White Magic but we get chosen by the elementals to learn the art so in this case it's restricted. For SCH the soul stone holds the fairy itself and without it one can not call upon a fairy for aid but also Nym the very city the art of SCH was founded in has been abandoned and in ruins so I would surmise that there are soul stones somewhere lost in the city with the canse that most had been destroyed after the cities fall, so for SCH rare. Soul stone are also tools to help the user tap into more powerful abilities without hurting themselves as with the case of BLM who need the soul stone or their very being get's burned from the inside.


Sam is different however as there are numerous samurais in the east so I think our use of the soul stone is merely meant for us to have the knowledge of a SAM which is why we start at lv50 and not lv30 like other jobs so I would assume that the stone itself isn't common or needed and we only have one so we aren't forced to start from the beginning. And for MCH we aren't using the stone to tap into the art of MCH we are using it so we may instill our own knowledge into it for future MCH so I think the stone again isn't common or needed but is given out to all those who join the Skysteel Manufactory to show membership and to help future MCH.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Soul Crystals are one of the biggest mysteries in the game for me. On the one hand, some of them are super rare, some are not. And they seem to be very easy to make. No one makes a big deal about you being the person who is essentially acting as a template for the BLU and MCH Soul Crystals. Or even that new blank Soul Crystals somehow happened to be on hand.

For that matter, why do deeds have to be "carved" on them? And who does that anyway? And how does doing that help the next person who has the Soul Crystal?

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I think the carved thing is metaphorical.

Person A corries the stone. Their experiences are 'carved' into it over time.

Person B receives it, and person A's experiences etched into the stone from their travels and experiences then allow person B to learn from person A's experiences faster.

Then person C gets the benefit of A and B.

I don't think anyone consciously carves things into them, more it's a metaphor for the stones absorbing the memories/experiences over time passively.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Soul Crystals are one of the biggest mysteries in the game for me. On the one hand, some of them are super rare, some are not. And they seem to be very easy to make. No one makes a big deal about you being the person who is essentially acting as a template for the BLU and MCH Soul Crystals. Or even that new blank Soul Crystals somehow happened to be on hand.

For that matter, why do deeds have to be "carved" on them? And who does that anyway? And how does doing that help the next person who has the Soul Crystal?

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The flavor text that appears when learning actions from job quests suggests that they store knowledge and pass that knowledge on to future wielders as they grow in strength. Some possess other properties as well- Sultansworn soul crystals apparently become unstable if there isn't a clear hierarchy among wielders decided by strength, the WHM crystal that the WoL inherits contains a fragment of A-Towa-Cant's soul, Scholar soul crystals seemingly act as anchors for their fairies, etc.

It seems to depend.

A lot hinges on just how much a Soul Crystal is required to perform the job in question.

For example, BLM is rare and is necessary to not set fire to your own aether.

PLD is not rare, but still required to use PLD skills (The Sultansworn go around giving the Paladins they train crystals. Technically, we were given 2 different crystals one by whatshisname and the other by the dude in Ul'dah who actually teaches us)

SCH is rare and is required to summon a fairy.

Of course, all this can also be exacerbated by artificial rarity. As in, there might actually exist a bunch more SCH and BLM soul crystals for example, but no-one who has an affinity to unlock the secrets within them has come across them as most people aren't like us and are able to essentially universally apply ourselves to jobs, allowing some of the crystals we handle "Choose us" or react to our presence. While other people aren't so lucky, which is why for example, Martyn was being investigated as a con-man when people he sold Blue Mage crystals to weren't learning any spells. Or why it's extremely abnormal for us to be able to learn White Magic.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

For that matter, why do deeds have to be "carved" on them? And who does that anyway? And how does doing that help the next person who has the Soul Crystal?

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I believe the owner of the crystal carves their deeds on to them. Likely using their own aether.

Most likely, when we do that little animation after a job quest and hold it up with some text about how we're "Empowering our soul" or some such, that's when we're inscribing onto the crystal.

How does it help other users? Well, when they perform deeds, they are more likely to learn a skill that we used. Kind of like when we learn skills from our crystal (As opposed to when our mentor says "I'mma teach you this new skill, you better practice it!")

Having a Job Crystal equipped allows it to "absorb" your knowledge and experience of the job as you progresses through the job. It works the other way around too, so it allows you to absorb the knowledge previous users of that job stone left in it.

Simplified, a Job Crystal accelerates your learning pace - letting you learn the job in a matter of months or years rather than decades, but training and practice is still needed to be able to use the knowledge in the Crystal.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I don't think anyone consciously carves things into them, more it's a metaphor for the stones absorbing the memories/experiences over time passively.

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To be pedantic, the soul crystals are "carefully cut" before use to better facilitate the "capture" of the holder's memories and experiences. So soul crystals are prepared beforehand, rather than someone just picking up a random crystal in the wild and using that as a soul crystal.

Maybe it's better to think of it as a soul-facing GoPro?

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

To be pedantic, the soul crystals are "carefully cut" before use to better facilitate the "capture" of the holder's memories and experiences. So soul crystals are prepared beforehand, rather than someone just picking up a random crystal in the wild and using that as a soul crystal.

Maybe it's better to think of it as a soul-facing GoPro?

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I'm sure there's an involved process. What I mean is that when they say past users memories/experiences are carved into the stones I don't think they mean literally, I think the stone just kind of absorbs those things over time like a sponge, though yes it would have to be specially made to do so.

its a combination of a training manual, virtual teacher, and a storage device, you can learn a trade without them, it just would take years if not decades to learn to the mastery one can with a crystal, the whole carved bit is in reference to the opening cinematic to fft

"a warrior takes sword in hand, clasping a gem to his heart.
engraving vanishing memories into the sword, he places finely honed skills into the stone.
spoken from the sword, handed down from the stone."

hence the reason we need both weapon AND stone to access the abilities within, and cant mix and match a spear with gladiator abilities despite the original dragoon in ff2 wielding a sword, and you see the creation of new 'blank' crystals through mch, the virtual teacher through a certain job, and newly formed 'job for dummies' crystals through blu. thats part of what makes the wol so powerful, is we possess not only the luck to gain many crystals rather quickly, but push our bodies and knowledge so hard that we are forced to learn new abilities and push our limits constantly

as for martyn, selling basically a riddle book to a bunch of people who are barely literate (not stupid, just only literate enough to function in daily life) probably wasnt the best way to go about spreading blue magic even if it was moderately more profitable to sell to the masses than to spend the time being picky about your clientele for more money per sale. that and most people that bought from martyn DIDNT automatically get hydro pump or whatever its called taught to them, they only saw martyn use it BEFORE they got their hands on a crystal... so technically the only attack most of them knew was pimp cane

I think it works somehow like this:

Everything in Eorzea (matter, life, magic, souls, memories...) is somehow related to Aether.

While (nearly) everyone can learn a simple Fire I or a pug-a-list punch (hehehe) without a soul crystal, it takes some special equipment to do things like black magic etc.

Soul crystals stimulate your aether and allow you to perform job actions. The longer you have used the soul crystal of a speciefic job, the more your aether is stimulated to that job and the more abilites are unlocked.

You can only perform job actions while beeing connected to a soul crystal. And you can't be connected to more than one soul crystal at a time.
Like when you want to do an epic Drg jump? Better be connected to your Drg crystal right now. When you loose your soul crystal, or it gets broken (Drk questline) you basically lose access to the job.

Soul crystals don't "teach" you job actions, they just "unlock" them for you. That would explain why we cannot jump into the air with Drg power and start burning our enemies with a barrage of Fire IV's from above. Shadowbringer Trailer kinda kicks my butt here, I know, but it's the best explaination I can think of right now. (also gameplay reasons obviously).

I think they are a symbol of a path. One in which the warrior of light has traveled before, i would think that they are really only as common as the visions or premonitions are among the people of Eorzea. The reason for this being that stones can capture light, that is to say that the "light" of past or present deeds has somehow been absorbed. I have often wondered what an etched deed might look like on a palm sized stone, an I have reached the conclusion that there is nothing there, and it is a supernatural consciousness in the warrior of light that manifests itself within the stone as the light which serves to reassuringly guide the path.
I think it is variable to how perception is made. There are times in the story where it is alluded to the collection of allies, perhaps they are carriers of stones, perhaps not. I like to think that the warrior of light carries only one, and that the act of changing them is assumed to be a shift in consciousness. Although in terms of commonality or rarity, I think it is much like a magicians trick's. While there can be more than one magician or even many magician, each with their kept secrets that have been passed from one to the next or even innovated as new entirely.
As far as the trailers go, where there is often a different job represented. They seem to be symbol of hardship and source of a strengthened will or a type of right place right time deal in which virtuous acts further define the light within the stone itself.

I'd chalk this up to one of those things that require some degree of segregation between gameplay mechanics and lore. From a storytelling perspective, it irks me that a device like a soulstone exists to shortcut the in-game "learning process". To me, it kind of cheapens a character's personal journey of self discovery. Need to learn a complex job that took generations of practitioners to master? No problem! Just pop a soulstone and, voila, you're a grandmaster!

But then again, that's just me, and as others have observed, from a strict lore perspective the soul crystals in FFXIV appear to have varying levels of efficacy, roughly corresponding with how common the jobs are. For the more "common" jobs, like paladins for example, I suspect that the soul crystals do not contain very much in the way of unique knowledge, and are really no more than just badges of identification. It appears to be a similar case for the ninja.

Then there are the extremely rare jobs like scholar, for example, where there is literally only one soul crystal of its kind left in the Seventh Astral Era (Or is there two? I can't remember whether the second scholar soul crystal discovered in the levels 60 to 70 quest line remains intact). In which case, virtually everything that the WoL Scholar knows about his job is derived from the soul crystal, and without it the job literally cannot exist today.

In short, there is no consistency to how the soul crystals work, let alone how common they actually are. Simply put, I believe we're not meant to think too hard about this.

I have a related problem with how crafting is supposed to work in FFXIV. Do crafters actually build their products through physical labour, or is it more like the way Star Trek replicators work? That is, you visualise the object in your head, you release energy from crystals, the aether reacts with your materials, and voila, you have a finished product.

In Final Fantasy 11, it was specifically stated that professional crafters build their stuff through actual labour, while adventurers use crystal synthesis to shortcut the process. It's not actually very clear in FFXIV whether that's also the case. If you go to the guild halls, you'll see crafters perpetually working on creating things. But when it comes to you yourself, the process is completely different and, more crucially, you need crystals to make it work.

I am yet to see any NPC crafter having to use crystals in order to make anything.

Also, does the rarity explain why our squadrons only have class options rather than jobs? Granted they can be made to be an exception but if it's lore related that they don't have them, could some of the explanations provided be the reason for it? Saying that though, Retainers can be given jobs, so i guess that theory goes out of the window eh.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Saying that though, Retainers can be given jobs, so i guess that theory goes out of the window eh.

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That's probably just QoL feature so that retainers aren't locked out of the expansion jobs.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's probably just QoL feature so that retainers aren't locked out of the expansion jobs.

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Also, to allow them to wear gear that is high item level.

Since a lot of that stuff is job restricted (Which annoys me to no end when trying to glam my Recruits with all sorts of cool gear but they can't wear it because it can't be used by mere classes...)

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

I'd chalk this up to one of those things that require some degree of segregation between gameplay mechanics and lore. From a storytelling perspective, it irks me that a device like a soulstone exists to shortcut the in-game "learning process". To me, it kind of cheapens a character's personal journey of self discovery. Need to learn a complex job that took generations of practitioners to master? No problem! Just pop a soulstone and, voila, you're a grandmaster!

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Not necessarily. From what I remember of the 50-60 DRG quests, it's specifically mentioned that Battle Litany is developed by the WoL through further attuning to the crystal; I think most of the StB skills fall under that umbrella, and it's explicitly stated that Passage of Arms was. The wielder also still needs to put in the work to make the crystal resonate with them(Egi creation immediately comes to mind, as does the Soul of the Paladin's hierarchy gimmick) or have knowledge imparted unto them, like Benediction.

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Then there are the extremely rare jobs like scholar, for example, where there is literally only one soul crystal of its kind left in the Seventh Astral Era (Or is there two? I can't remember whether the second scholar soul crystal discovered in the levels 60 to 70 quest line remains intact). In which case, virtually everything that the WoL Scholar knows about his job is derived from the soul crystal, and without it the job literally cannot exist today.

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It's still intact from what I remember, though it disappeared from the story after Lilac's failed summoning. Anyone that didn't have their aether warped somehow should be able to summon Lilac and become a Scholar just fine, though if anyone has the thing it's probably Alka Zolka, Surito Carito, or the tonberry girl whose name I can't remember.

I believe wielders of soul stones medidtate their aether on to soulstones to be granted knowledge after immense training. Since we have the echo, we can bypass this and learn skills and spells in days rather than decades. I think deeds are "aetherically carved" on the stone, not literally carved. This means that since we have the Echo, we can view memories of previous wielders and literally watch them casting high-level spells or using special techniques, from the first-person point of view (like how we watch echo memories of prominent NPCs and we can feel/hear/think the same way they can). Through that, we can glean knowledge of forbidden or forgotten techniques lost to time in days rather than decades of training. I think as we fight stronger monsters and perform heroic tasks, the soul crystals resonate with us, revealing more and more memories. The crystal resonates with us for our 30,35,40,45,50 job quests, but 52-58 it doesn't.

The way I see it:

30-50 the soul crystal reveals techniques to us
52-60 we are inspired by events during our quests and various NPCs to obtain new techniques (like BLM quest, Lalai translates forgotten spells from the Book of Thal/Nal)
61-69 we learn new skills in combat completely on our own (these are not "taught" to us by any means. Now that we've mastered the job somewhat, we can create original techniques.
70 we get a special unique sequence where the soul crystal shimmers in our palm and then we learn our capstone 70 skill.


Additionally, aether is to a soul crystal as electricity is to a microchip. Electricity flows through a microchip, which performs a program, thereby turning the electricity into "work". Aether is channeled into a soul crystal, which allows an egi or fairy to be summoned, or for Blue Magic to be performed. That is to say, these feats can be done without soul crystals (as the first SMN SCH and BLU probably didn't have soul crystals yet) but it required a lifetime of mastery, as well as likely some other form of rudimentary components. A Dragoon's soul crystal might better allow a fledgling dragoon to channel his own stores of aether into wind-aspected aether to be able to jump high, as jumping high is a super-human feat.

Remember Oda-san said the reason Eorzea has not been taken over by Garleans with their Magitek is because Eorzea is a land abundant with Aether and its warriors (not Warriors) are adept at manipulating aether in combat. That means they have Dragoons who can use soulstones to aspect their internal aether to wind to jump 200 feet in the air, Bards who weave aether through their crystal to create powerful songs that rouse their allies and damage their foes, Warriors who draw on ambient aether through their soul crystal to add extra force behind their swings, etc. The soul crystal is the catalyst, the land of Eorzea is abundant with aether, the soul crystal helps tells the aether what to do, along with our own will (motherboard? lol)

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's probably just QoL feature so that retainers aren't locked out of the expansion jobs.

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See I would believe this if retainers with combat jobs actually did something but they pretty much don't and not having the latest expac jobs on them doesn't really make much difference. The squadrons with combat classes see more action in battles than retainers, that's what I was thinking at least you know.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

See I would believe this if retainers with combat jobs actually did something but they pretty much don't and not having the latest expac jobs on them doesn't really make much difference.

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It makes a huge difference if you've been maining expansion jobs and now your class only combat retainers can't get close to the level cap.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

It makes a huge difference if you've been maining expansion jobs and now your class only combat retainers can't get close to the level cap.

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Though what I'm saying is you could just have a retainer keep their (combat) class until max level, and giving them a job (whether it's old or new expac job) isn't going to give them more of advantages over another (combat) class is it? The only limitation would be the actual player level of the class/job in question.

Well it's going off topic a bit, anyway if it's a QoL feature then there isn't a good reason to not extend it to Squadrons (who would actually use the jobs in combat) unless there is a lore reason for them not having crystals, no?

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Though what I'm saying is you could just have a retainer keep their (combat) class until max level, and giving them a job (whether it's old or new expac job) isn't going to give them more of advantages over another (combat) class is it? The only limitation would be the actual player level of the class/job in question.

Well it's going off topic a bit, anyway if it's a QoL feature then there isn't a good reason to not extend it to Squadrons (who would actually use the jobs in combat) unless there is a lore reason for them not having crystals, no?

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Retainers do not have the use of soul crystals either, they instead have this parchment that somehow teaches them the job. I agree that Squadrons should get access to these magical scrolls.

I like how the Soul Crystals somewhat resembled the Zodiac Auracites, but now there are much more than 13, so that trope no longer works.