Current Timeline of Events from 2.0 On

So the timeline of events in the game always interests me, and let's be honest, the 'ever expanding bubble of one year' is the weakest argument ever made, especially since it directly conflicts with several other sources about travel times.

As such, I think it can be said that the timeline of events, more or less, can be contained within a 3 year period, perhaps a little less, but no smaller than 2 years.

Year 1: Realm Reborn and Heavensward
This is the one that is the 'stretchiest' in many ways, the events of Realm Reborn likely took several months, but we know for a fact Heavensward must have played out over some time between 3 and 9 months, because a woman you encounter during the questlines goes from pregnant with child but not showing to having given birth to that child.

Year 2: Stormblood
By far the biggest hurdle to the idea of 'everything in the main quest happens within one year's time', due to the travel times between Othard and Aldenard. Even if we assume airship travel is significantly faster, airship travel was not safe until the later patches when the Garlean Empire began to fracture and fragment, so we're looking at a several months trip both ways by ship, and you definitely, in the story, took one trip yourself by boat.

Year 3: Shadowbringers and Endwalker
Of all of the expansions, these are by far the most flexible. Endwalker involves a place where time dialation effects are occuring, and so what might have taken weeks, months, even years in the First could have, and probably were, only bare weeks in the Source. For Endwalker, by far the most globe trotting of the expansions with how much and how far the player goes, the distances involved are all covered by air or by magical teleportation, with the sole exception of the march into Garlemald itself, which was ostensibly done via well maintained garlean roads between the capital and through some of their most developed, but by that point, least defended lands, as all of the armies in those regions had pulled back to take part in the civil war, thus leaving a big gaping hole through while anyone could travel relatively unopposed.

Anybody got bits or bobs to add to this theory?

I should note that I hold basically two perspectives on this.

From a roleplaying perspective, it's generally just a safe and smart idea to assume that every expansion takes as long as it took to transpire in-game, and travel time takes as long as is narratively appropriate for our characters. So yes, about ten years have passed at this point.

But from a straight-up 'the story as it's given to us' perspective, the expansions go, from shortest to longest...
Shadowbringers: No significant confirmed travel times, and during the events of the story the Source is a 1:1 flow of time with the Source. It probably took a while, but also there weren't any off-screen time jumps. Genuinely, a major unknown to confirm here that would alter things is 'how long does the WoL sleep', because that actually accounts for a lot of time passing.
A Realm Reborn: Again, no major travel gaps, but ARR clearly took quite a while and has a lot of events in it. Probably took longer than Shadowbringers even if it also probably transpired mostly as we saw.
Heavensward: I believe there's mention that at least one of the airship trips in HW took quite some time, but I haven't reviewed it in a while. The pregnant woman's also fairly big as a detail.
Endwalker: Between the boat trip to Sharlayan and the journey to Garlemald, we've got two significant trips; no timeframe was mentioned for either, but looking at the map says they couldn't have been small.
Stormblood: If you don't think it's hilarious that Stormblood is the longest expansion chronologically, mostly because of boat trips, we have a fundamental comedic disagreement. By all logic this took months, plausibly longer than a year, although the length was probably front-loaded since the reason we went through Sirensong was because of the Garlean-controlled seas; since that was a problem we actively solved, chances are the Othardians' trip to Ala Mhigo was shorter than our own trip to Kugane.

But also, it's definitely been less than a year. Nashu told us that, and she would know!

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

But also, it's definitely been less than a year. Nashu told us that, and she would know!

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While I adore and love Nashu, I also simply do not trust her judgement on anything that isn't actively associated with a current mystery. (Also did she say it had been a year since we revived everyone's favorite inspector? Or has it been a year since we last SAW each other)

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

a woman you encounter during the questlines goes from pregnant with child but not showing to having given birth to that child.

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I think the 'not-showing'-'showing' part is a bit of a stretch, because they simply don't have models for pregnant women. While I'm sure a length of time has passed, I don't think you can gauge how long has passed based on fetus development.

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

so we're looking at a several months trip both ways by ship.

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Do we have a source that states it takes 'several months'? I'd be onboard with 'several weeks', but I think months sounds a bit much. I wouldn't be all that surprised if they claimed it only took a week or two to get to Othard either.

Also baring in mind, during the Stormblood patches with the war wit Garlemald at Ghimlyt. We teleport over to lend our aid, while Doma sends it's troops by sea. These troops do eventually reach the front and join the fight, but we are not told that this fight has been going on for several months. So I'm guessing 'about a week' seems the most sensible.
It may be half-way around the world, but I don't think we can assume the world is just as big as Earth.

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

So the timeline of events in the game always interests me, and let's be honest, the 'ever expanding bubble of one year' is the weakest argument ever made, especially since it directly conflicts with several other sources about travel times.

As such, I think it can be said that the timeline of events, more or less, can be contained within a 3 year period, perhaps a little less, but no smaller than 2 years.

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Three years is a reasonable estimate, but we don't have enough evidence to actually nail down a timeline. More than one year, probably no more than 5-6 years is about all we can say for sure.
Can't be much more than 6 years, or the twins (Alphinaud and Alisaie) would have grown to their adult height by now.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Do we have a source that states it takes 'several months'? I'd be onboard with 'several weeks', but I think months sounds a bit much. I wouldn't be all that surprised if they claimed it only took a week or two to get to Othard either.

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The lore book itself says from Limsa Lominsa it’s 2 months to Doma and 2 weeks to Old Sharlayan.

Carvallain said he could make it a bit faster, but Hingashi is also further away than Doma and our ship got dragged off its original course.

Yugiri was at sea for “many moons” before making it to Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

It may be half-way around the world, but I don't think we can assume the world is just as big as Earth.

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There’s nothing in-game that says it’s smaller. If the planet was smaller and also had less mass, that would affect things from how objects move and the size and shape of mountains.

It’s easier to assume that the planet is the same size as Earth and that writers have no sense of scale than the alternative.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The lore book itself says from Limsa Lominsa it’s 2 months to Doma and 2 weeks to Old Sharlayan.

Carvallain said he could make it a bit faster, but Hingashi is also further away than Doma and our ship got dragged off its original course.

Yugiri was at sea for “many moons” before making it to Eorzea.




There’s nothing in-game that says it’s smaller. If the planet was smaller and also had less mass, that would affect things from how objects move and the size and shape of mountains.

It’s easier to assume that the planet is the same size as Earth and that writers have no sense of scale than the alternative.

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That poses a problem for the Doman troops reaching Ghimlyt then doesn't it? Are we supposed to be fending off the Garleans for months?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

That poses a problem for the Doman troops reaching Ghimlyt then doesn't it? Are we supposed to be fending off the Garleans for months?

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The writers obviously just ignored it for the sake of the narrative. The writers also make it out to be that we're all in a time bubble so they're not paying exact attention to the lore at all times and as frustrating as it is to people super into lore, they will ignore it for the story. For better or worse, FFXIV isn't that type of story where everything is chained by the lore. They can, will, and have ignore or just make up lore to keep the story going.

But the lore book itself states that it's 2 months from Doma and that's the highest authority we have on the matter. If you REALLY want to look at everything that happens in the game under a magnifying glass, then I guess they did hold the Garleans off for months. If you're writing RP or fan fiction and are serious about the lore, it's going to be 2 months.

It makes no sense to ignore or write off what little we do have of lore to propose off-the-wall ideas such as "the world is tiny but somehow still has the same mass as Earth" when there's nothing to suggest that except that parts of the writing don't line up.


And if you're looking at the twins as a measuring stick and are super serious about calculating time despite the fact that the writers aren't, then they can never be older than their teens because there's an Elezen who is confirmed 20 years old and uses the adult Elezen model.

Ultimately nothing in the game is going to match exactly to timelines suggested in dialogue because the writers aren't writing the story that way. It's nice for a bit of fun of trying to figure stuff out but if you spend any more thought on it, it's going to make your head hurt.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Do we have a source that states it takes 'several months'? I'd be onboard with 'several weeks', but I think months sounds a bit much. I wouldn't be all that surprised if they claimed it only took a week or two to get to Othard either.

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IIRC, in one of those early SB quests were we told something along the lines of "it usually takes three months to get to Kugane, but with my secret magitek engine I can do it in one."

To play devil's advocate about the boat trips, Carvallain has a ceruleum engine on his ship.

This, in essence, makes it similar to a modern day sailing ship in terms of travel time.

The average speed of a modern merchant ship is anywhere from 12 to 20 knots, and we're talking the big honkin' metal ships. Carvallain's is made of wood. Without the engine and just the sails, it should travel roughly 4 to 5 knots.

A speed of 4 to 5 knots gets you about 120 miles a day(193 KM).

We can't actually fill in the variables we don't know. Like, how strong is Carvallain's ship's engine? How many malms are between Limsa Lominsa and Kugane? What is the wing flapping velocity of an unladen colibri? But we can do some real world analogues to see if our, "it took several months theory" holds up.

First we'll average the lowest speeds Carvallain's ship could go at, and put it at averaging 8 knots. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that he turned the engine on when the wind was against the ship.

Next we'll take a real world distance. The UK to Japan is 4172 Nautical Miles. At a speed of 8 knots it would take a ship roughly 21.73 days to get there. You might think, "Hey, the crew has to sleep!" But ships don't stop just because the crew does. And crews on ships rotate, so ships travel constantly throughout the night and day.

This means it's actually less than a month and a half to go from Limsa to Kugane, assuming they're similarly far apart as the UK and Japan. Which honestly, nothing in FFXIV has given me reason to think that they'd be further, but for arguments sake, let's say they were twice as far apart as the UK and Japan.

A one way trip then, at 8 knots, takes 43.46 days. So anyway you slice it, it really didn't take that long.

dont forget our little deture with the evil demon kraken thingy. also we have to take into account how much the wood the ship is made of can handle so that would impact the speed to an extent.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

IIRC, in one of those early SB quests were we told something along the lines of "it usually takes three months to get to Kugane, but with my secret magitek engine I can do it in one."

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I was looking for that quote before when I was making an earlier post because I thought I remembered that too, but I can't find anything on it on the websites that have the actual quest dialogue and all I can find on the internet is other people referring to it as fact.

What I did find is that by the time they were at the Sirensong Sea, they did not fire up their hidden ceruleum engines yet and that Alisae somehow knew about them. That seems to be the first mention I can find of them. Does anyone remember where and when Carvallain himself brings it up as making it speedier? This is going to bug me now because I swear I remember something about the journey being faster and I wonder if it was another thing made up that spread around and everyone started believing.

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Alisaie: Well, why not fire up the ceruleum engines you have hidden below?
Carvallain: An excellent suggestion based on knowledge you should not have. Alas, our engines appear to be malfunctioning for reasons that escape my engineers at present...

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Other than the 2 months voyage to Doma that is in the lore book, the only other things I can find on the length of the voyage are descriptions from multiple characters about getting provisions for a long voyage and the Sirensong Sea description that says "lengthy voyage to the Far East".

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

To play devil's advocate about the boat trips, Carvallain has a ceruleum engine on his ship.

This, in essence, makes it similar to a modern day sailing ship in terms of travel time.

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I don't think he'd have the fuel to use it for the whole time and the quest dialogue suggests he didn't even have them on for at least half the voyage.

Funny enough, I found that out from a post of yours when I was trying to find the Carvallain quote I was looking for:

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Just wanna point out that it's explicitly stated that Carvallain's boat has a clandestine Ceruleum engine. He didn't use it until after the Sirensong Sea, at least to the knowledge of the player, but Alisaie sure as heck figured out it was there and questioned the fuck outta that dandy boy about it.

Realistically if you wanted to conserve fuel, but get where you're going quick, then you could use the Ceruleum engine when the wind was against you or wasn't with you. I have no idea if the sea around Thavnair has still winds except in/right after the monsoon season in India, but the Sirensong Sea was what, somewhat around that point but a bit southy south?

In the real world it took a European sailing ship about a full year to reach the Dutch East Indies, what with sailing around the horn of Africa and all, and then hitting the still winds in the Indian Ocean. We've no Africa analogue in FFXIV, so we can take out 6 months there, assume Ceruleum engine use for half the trip... and I'd say that gets the trip for our WoL down to about 2~3 months.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I was looking for that quote before when I was making an earlier post because I thought I remembered that too, but I can't find anything on it on the websites that have the actual quest dialogue and all I can find on the internet is other people referring to it as fact.

What I did find is that by the time they were at the Sirensong Sea, they did not fire up their hidden ceruleum engines yet and that Alisae somehow knew about them. That seems to be the first mention I can find of them. Does anyone remember where and when Carvallain himself brings it up as making it speedier? This is going to bug me now because I swear I remember something about the journey being faster and I wonder if it was another thing made up that spread around and everyone started believing.


Other than the 2 months voyage to Doma that is in the lore book, the only other things I can find on the length of the voyage are descriptions from multiple characters about getting provisions for a long voyage and the Sirensong Sea description that says "lengthy voyage to the Far East".




I don't think he'd have the fuel to use it for the whole time and the quest dialogue suggests he didn't even have them on for at least half the voyage.

Funny enough, I found that out from a post of yours when I was trying to find the Carvallain quote I was looking for:

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Yeah, that's why I averaged the traveling speed down to 8 knots. If he could have it on the whole time, I'd have used 12 knots for the calc.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Yeah, that's why I averaged the traveling speed down to 8 knots. If he could have it on the whole time, I'd have used 12 knots for the calc.

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I still feel like 12 is still very generous for an old-style tall sailing ship that's retrofitted for an onboard engine. We don't know what the output is of a ceruleum engine, but early steamships topped out at 10 knots and had an average speed of between 8 and 9 knots.

If we can find the quote of how long it was expected to take vs how long Carvallain said it would, that would give us our average speed.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I still feel like 12 is still very generous for an old-style tall sailing ship that's retrofitted for an onboard engine. We don't know what the output is of a ceruleum engine, but early steamships topped out at 10 knots and had an average speed of between 8 and 9 knots.

If we can find the quote of how long it was expected to take vs how long Carvallain said it would, that would give us our average speed.

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I don't feel like it was generous at all. Carvallain refers to having, "engineers." It's also a world wherein magic exists, and Alisaie makes the claim when you run into the Sirensong Sea that, "It could be another "spice trader" employing magicks to stop our ship and steal our cargo."

If there's magic in our magical world strong enough to stop a ship, then there's magic enough to make a ship go even faster. Real world reference was hot channel conditions, in other words.

But as far as Carvallain mentioning any amount of time versus distance, I can find none. There's none in the lead up to getting on his ship, and none after getting off it. I did miss one optional talk without him before accepting the next MSQ quest from Alphinaud though, but I doubt it'd contain anything concrete either.

Part of the issue with discussing the time bubble is that they are always so very shy about mentioning time or distance.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I don't feel like it was generous at all. Carvallain refers to having, "engineers." It's also a world wherein magic exists, and Alisaie makes the claim when you run into the Sirensong Sea that, "It could be another "spice trader" employing magicks to stop our ship and steal our cargo."

If there's magic in our magical world strong enough to stop a ship, then there's magic enough to make a ship go even faster. Real world reference was hot channel conditions, in other words.

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Every ship with an engine is going to have an engineer, but that doesn't magically make it go faster. Even if "magic that actively makes your ship faster" was more than something that you just made up, the fact remains that we are already given a time already of how long it takes to get from Limsa Lominsa to Doma for everyone else. We're not told of mages who are actively channeling spells to boost the ship and if it was a thing you'd think everyone would be doing it.

A magitek engine would help going against the wind or the current, but it won't necessarily boost a ship to lightning speeds (comparatively) if it wasn't designed for it to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Part of the issue with discussing the time bubble is that they are always so very shy about mentioning time or distance.

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It's so that they can avoid discussions like the one we're having. GRR Martin even said the same thing:

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The reason I am never specific about dates and distances is precisely so that people won't sit down and do this sort of thing.

My suggestion would be to put away the ruler and the stopwatch, and just enjoy the story.

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Ultimately we have no context for distances or hull speeds or currents or weather maps so taking "UK to Japan" distance from our world and applying A LOT of guesswork on when they are and aren't turning on an engine we never even see doesn't give us anything to go off of. All we have a reference for is one line from the EE.


For everything else, the writers have no need to correctly calculate time and have written the plot completely ignoring it. Like I said before, this could be a fun exercise, but you're looking into something with more care than the writers did so trying to be super serious about it won't lead to any satisfaction and no one's going to agree on the same things.

My memory wants to place the Carvallain mentioning it around the time Tataru is blackmailing him. When there's talk about how you're supposed to report everything you get from a ship you pirated to the Yellow Jackets, but on occasion when it comes to having pirated Garlean ships someone might not notice you not mentioning a whole engine. Speaking of wooden ships are we all assuming that they are all late 1700s if not mid 1800 wooden ships? As early wooden ship models would have needed to take longer.

At this point we're bound by two unavoidable realities:

1: Game content is still in the same bubble, we have very recent references to the Calamity still being five years ago.

2: Every player who attempts to make a timeline will do so based on what feels right to them, meaning that - while everyone agrees we've spent more than a year in the game - no one agrees on how much more.

That's where I stop thinking about it any deeper than that; it's not worth it. Every player gets a blank check and should confidently cash that in for whatever they want.

Personally, I also divide each patch's content into however long there is until the next patch. It feels natural to my brain and, more importantly, probably feels natural to the developers as well.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

it won't lead to any satisfaction and no one's going to agree on the same things.

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Putting more thought into the game, its story, and its world is what we do here. It's pretty much 9/10 fans.

Coming at me or anyone really with a, "You're taking it too seriously bro." Is more or less a reductive insult.

Especially since you're taking it entirely seriously(heck, you're more serious than me imo) in a different direction. Operating under the assumption that I wouldn't be satisfied with merely sharing the knowledge of what travel on a sailing ship is like, what the timespan for the real world locations and travels are like as well.

What satisfies you, Mikko? Whatever it is, it's certainly not what satisfies me.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Coming at me or anyone really with a, "You're taking it too seriously bro." Is more or less a reductive insult.

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I’m not coming at you with anything nor was that directed at you and I think you misunderstood the text of my post.

It was a general “this is an exercise in futility”.


What I was trying to say was:

For everything else (as in the rest of the thread’s main topic and not just ships), you can dig as much as you want, but when it’s with something that the writers deliberately did not give us enough information on, you’re not going to find any satisfying answers and not everyone’s going to agree with it.