Airship Guide

[BonzaiFerroni]

Walkthrough

So you and your company just finished building your airship, and you want to know what is in store? This section lays out a rough outline of the progress you will make and offers a few tips along the way. Company airships are a new and exciting part of Eorzea and we are learning new things every day. Take everything here with a grain of salt and don't hesitate to try things differently, it is the only way we will learn more \o/

Ranks 1 ~ 4: On a Wing and a Prayer
Name your airship something catchy and send her off into the wild blue yonder! You will have a limited number of sectors you can visit, but you'll have a chance to unlock more each trip. When planning trips to multiple sectors, try different flight paths to reduce your overall time. Take a look at your flight log and notice the pattern (for more detailed information, check out the Interpreting the Voyage Log section!). Consider adding your data to the rest of ours so we can learn more, and share any observations/speculations/musings by replying to this post.

Important items

• Vivianite from sectors 1 and 2. You'll need these to build Garlond Steel, an important material for crafting your Invincible-type parts that you'll be able to start using at Rank 5. You only need 27 for your first part. Each airship part will need 27 vivianite (9 garlond steel) from here on! Don't worry about finding them all up front, you will have an additional airship to help you with that later on.
• Bamboo Weave from sectors 1 and 2. You will use these to unlock some of the airship prototypes. You'll need 6 for Prototype II (Invincible) and 18 total to have enough for all the prototypes.
• Red Moko Grass from sectors 3 and 4. Similar to vivianite, this will become important for crafting some of the Enterprise-type parts.
• Coke and Darksteel Ore: Although these are not items you'll get with your airship, your company would be wise to start hoarding these in large quantities as they will be needed to craft more parts!

Ranks 5 ~ 14: I'm Invincible! (Or a loony)
At rank 5 you will have your first chance to upgrade one of your parts. It is wise to upgrade parts one at a time as they become available rather than wait to upgrade all at once. At rank 5 you'll have 16 capacity which is enough to upgrade one part.

So... which part should you upgrade? There's no easy answer at the moment, some people believe surveillance is important in order to unlock sectors and progress faster. Some would recommend upgrading a part that will let you get EXP and rank up faster (Aftcastle, Hull, Rigging). At ranks 7 and again at 10 you will have enough airframe capacity to upgrade additional parts! Because it is a long road to rank 15, I recommend upgrading at least 1 or 2 of your bronco parts.

It is important not to neglect sector 5 in your trips, because that will ultimately unlock sector 7 which is important for later progress!

Important Items

• Balsa Wood Scraps from sectors 3 and 4. This is another item that you'll need to unlock airship prototypes. You'll need 10 for Prototype III (Enterprise) and 14 total to have enough for all the prototypes.
• The "Deep" crystal set from sectors 5 (Red) 6 (Green) and 7 (Blue). You can use these to craft Aetherial Wheels. You'll probably be visiting these sectors anyway for the EXP, so why not?

Ranks 15 ~ 24: Lali-ho! Let's build the Enterprise
Upon reaching rank 15 you'll have access to Enterprise-type parts. Decisions about parts will start to become more complex. Should you finish building your invincible parts or skip to enterprise? As before, you will not be able to upgrade them all immediately, but will have the opportunity as rank-ups increase your airframe capacity. At rank 18 you will have capacity for three invincible parts and one enterprise part.

At around rank 17 you'll be able to visit sector 7, which is important for unlocking sector 8. If you haven't unlocked sector 7 try visiting sector 5 again. Upon rank 20 and visiting sector 8, you'll gain access to your 2nd airship!

From here on out, the "important items" pattern will stay consistent with what you've already seen. For each tier of airship, there will be an item that unlocks the prototype (e.g., Balsa Wood Lumber, Synthetic Fiber) and also an item that is necessary to craft the materials (e.g., Vivianite, Red Moko Grass). If you review the sector info tables, you will see which sectors give each one of these items.

Most of the time you should find yourself with plenty of airship parts crafting items without having to make special trips, the one exception might be with Vivianite, since garlond steel is used in nearly every part after bronco. The easy solution is to just include sectors 1 or 2 in your trips if you find yourself running low! They are right next to your home base so they are on the way for pretty much any voyage.

Rank 25 and beyond: East or West?
By now you already have a sense of how everything works, and there won't be any major surprises from here on out. When your airship reaches rank 50, you'll start to measure your progression in how many sectors you've unlocked. Unlocking sectors can take a bit of patience, as you may have already discovered. It is all about luck and perseverance.

When your flagship reaches rank 50, it might be time to change your strategy from maximize exp to maximize chances to unlock new sectors. At present, we don't know whether any specific stat is important, and it is starting to seem unlikely. The only sure-fire way to improve your odds is to take more trips! You can outfit your flagship with the best rigging you have and consider sending it out on short voyages to only sectors that have a potential to unlock new sectors. Sometimes you might be able to hit more than one sector with potential in a single trip (e.g., a trip from 11-15 to have a chance to unlock both 14 and 19), and other times it might be best to make single-sector voyages.

An interesting choice you can make is whether you want to take the eastern path of sectors or the western path. Take a look at the graphic below:

As you can see, there are two distinct sector chains, one that begins with 11 in the west and another that begins with 10 in the east. It is up to you whether you want to tackle both at once or pick one. The advantage to going east is that you will find a new airship upon reaching sector 18. The advantage to going west isn't quite clear yet, no one has fully explored it! There is an advantage to making progress on both routes, the sectors closer to the middle are near enough that you can visit a sector from each route in a single voyage, giving you twice the potential to unlock new sectors.

Alternative Approach: The Minimalist Workshop
Through experimentation, we've discovered that it is possible to make steady progress at least up through sector 11 using only the original bronco airship parts. For those who don't have the luxury of being able to come up with materials for parts easily, and especially for those who are running very small or solo FCs, this means they won't have to invest in every set of parts along the way.

If you plan to eventually use all four airships and have the most flexibility in airship configurations at higher levels, it is still really handy to make each set of parts as they become available. For example, right around when you discover your 2nd airship, you be able to use all four invincible parts making your old bronco parts available for your new ship. This trend will continue for your 3rd and 4th airships.

But if you are happy with just a single airship, you can make steady progress and make very few parts along the way. For sector 17 and beyond you will need at least an Enterprise forecastle, since 90 surveillance is the minimum requirement. However, that seems to be the only minimum requirement that we've encountered so far. It may just be possible to discover all 24 sectors with only the original bronco parts and an enterprise forecastle. I'll be testing this idea, stay tuned!



Interpreting the voyage log

Reading the voyage log is a great way to know which component to upgrade next. At the top you will find your rating, your base EXP, and your EXP bonus. You will also see the items gathered during the voyage. The Flight Log is the really interesting part. Each sector you will encounter 1-2 "nodes" that your airship will extract items from. The pattern will look like this (I've added notes):

Sea of Clouds - Sector 06 reached. Commencing Survey.
Experiencing high winds. Airship surveillance levels unaffected, but exploratory capability may be slightly hindered.

This seems to influence your "surveillance level", which influences whether you can gather items. Possible conditions:
-None = No penalty.
-High winds = Slightly hindered.
-Turbulence = Significantly hindered.

High-quality deep green crystals discovered. Commencing extraction.

Some items appear to be more rare than others. This line tells you whether that is the case. The chances may be influenced by a specific stat (surveillance, favor). Possible conditions:
_______________ discovered.
High-quality _____________ discovered.
Several high-quality _____________ discovered.

High retrieval levels results in above-average extraction yield.

Extraction results can be: Normal, High, Optimal, ???

3 deep green crystals retrieved!
Additional anomalies detected. Continuing exploration.

If your surveillance level for a given sector remains sufficient, you will gather an additional item. If this is the case, the above log pattern will repeat.

Survey of Sea of Clouds - Sector 06 complete. SS Rubber Ducky performance rated as satisfactory.

Performance rating for a sector seems to be the average of extraction ratings.
-Abysmal (normal): +0% exp
-Substandard (normal-high) +50% exp
-Satisfactory (high) +100%
-Decent (high-optimal) +150% exp
-???

Community Resources
There are other great sources of airship information out there, here are just a few that have come to my attention! If you know of any others, please share \o/

Tools and Spreadsheets

• FFXIV Airship Logs - Database - Maintained by Nyalia, this is the official data spreadsheet of this guide. It has many other features, including a Ship Builder and Trip Planner. (more information below in her post!)
• FFXIV Airship Logs - Quick Reference - Another of Nyalia's spreadhsheets, has a trip planner and a shipbuilder, among other things (previously part of the database spreadsheet).
• FFXIV Airship Logs - Analysis - Probably uninteresting to most people, this is where we will run our analyses on the database.
• Workshop by Opercival Aurora of Cactuar - A complete list of materials for each workshop project, including airship parts and other crafts. Just save a copy to your own Google Drive and use it to keep track!
• FFXIV Airship Parts by Mystic Spirit of Phoenix - Similar to the above, this is a great reference for materials required for each airship part.
• FFXIV Airship Components by Daleria Duskweaver of Zalera - Very useful if you want to build multiple parts in a single session! After making a copy on your own google drive, use this spreadsheet to automatically generate a list of all the materials needed for multiple parts.
• Route Planning Tool by the Pom Exploration Team - "This planner can map out the flight distance, return time, ceruleum tank costs, and Airship requirements for trips between 1-5 islands up to Sector 19. We're still working out a few kinks with sharing it, but we're open to more feedback and ideas too!"
• Airship Calculator - Display all the materials you need to build those airship parts!
• Airship Components Calculator - By Arstas and Soleillante - This is a unique tool that will let you select which airship parts you currently own and minimum stat values and will output combinations of parts to fit to your ships and maximize stats!

Other Guides

• Mithrie's Introduction to Airships and the Workshop (YouTube) - As always, an excellent video from Mithrie that gives an introduction to the workshop and using airships. (Note: When building airship parts in the workshop, I do not believe HQ materials affect your chance of getting quality gains, its the only minor tidbit I'd add)
• FFXIV Wiki - Free Company Airships - A wiki with some of the same basic information that you might find in this guide, including a list of items per sector.
• FFXIV Heavensward: Free Company Airship Guide by Aywren - A simple guide with visuals that covers building your first airship and sending her off on her maiden voyage! \o/
• FFXIV Airship Guide by Z’an Tia of Midgardsormr - You'll find a helpful FAQ that covers introductory information and a complete list of parts for each component.

Discussion

• Bluegartr Forum - FC Airship General - Another great source for airship-related discussion!