Airship Guide

[Nyalia]

The main spreadsheet has been updated to allow the new items to be added. Please feel free to go back to using it, if you'd like.

The new items I've heard about are Dinosaur Leather, Wind Silk, Dravanian Mote, Oriental Grass, Potter's Stone, and Unaspected Crystal. (Now if only they added Duskborne Aethersand so we could make grade 3 wheels in sufficient quantities...) I've added the items to every sector temporarily so they appear in the dropdowns. I'll replace that with the actual lists once they are more known.

Also, it seems that Deep Color Crystals can be found in sectors SC02-SC10 with colors alternating as usual, and Deep Color Clusters can be found in sectors SC11-SC22, with the colors alternating as usual. I have added Cassia Logs to SC17-SC22, though they have only been confirmed in SC17 and SC18.

And, airship experience was increased by about 43% across the board, rounded to the nearest multiple of 10, or something like that. Regardless, the exp charts in the main spreadsheet have been updated with the new, correct values (and the old exp values for old log entries have been replaced by static numbers so they don't all come up as wrong).

I've removed Grade 2 materia from the "reported elsewhere" list. It's just so rare, and no one cares about it.


Thanks so much to whomever continued reporting with the spreadsheet despite it being out of date. Those logs were very helpful in figuring out the new exp values and what existing items were added to places where they didn't appear before.


If anyone would like to take over spreadsheet editing for me for accommodating major changes like this, please let me know. I really don't have the time anymore. Being a mom is hard. I really only log in to garden and send out airships these days.

[Nyalia]

Oops, I broke entering data into the sheet by adding too many new items without expanding a table somewhere. This has been corrected. In the future, if you see an issue like that, please use the rightclick->"insert comment" feature to let me know. That sends me an email and shows an alert on the tab. Inserting a note doesn't do either, so I won't notice until I happen to look at the sheet.

Also, do sectors 11, 12, and 13 have Deep Color Crystals or Deep Color Clusters?

[Kyros]

So, I need to ask because I don't see anything about this.

Has anyone noticed some sort of diminishing returns from doing the same mission over and over?

At the start of the Patch cycle I sent out about 2 Airships around sectors 6 and 13 to get Drav Motes. I got about 16 of them in total.

Now that our team has stopped doing Diadem and our last airship got to rank 50, I've been sending all 4 airships out and none of them has brought anything even remotely useful in about 2 weeks.

Every single time one of them comes back it's about the same log: "Violent Turbulence" over and over. Even our two slowest airships with high Retrieval/Survey are coming back almost empty-handed. All we're getting are Crafting Crystals basically.

I was going to call RNG on that for the first week but I haven't noticed a change in trend and I don't remember "Violent Turbulence" being so predominant before.

[Malakai]

So, I need to ask because I don't see anything about this.

Has anyone noticed some sort of diminishing returns from doing the same mission over and over?

I was going to ask if anyone was trying to do a % on obtaining housing/craft items. Before 3.1 patch our airships were bringing back toy schematics, far eastern coins, dusk leather, etc by the truckload. It was like good hauls all the time. Since 3.1 the day after the patch when people reported 6 + 13 + 17 for drav motes. We have sent our airships out repeatedly to farm those sectors. Over 50 trips now and so far only 1 has ever returned with Dravanian Motes. A months time farming those islands and only 5 motes? That's a pretty piss poor RNG % rate to obtain a glamour item. The MB is hardly ever full of them either. And also it's usually always violent/turbulent winds when collecting from the islands.

[Nyalia]

Over 50 trips now and so far only 1 has ever returned with Dravanian Motes. A months time farming those islands and only 5 motes? That's a pretty piss poor RNG % rate to obtain a glamour item.

I've been doing the same, and have zero motes. The drop rates are just absolutely terrible.

And no, the diminishing returns thing isn't a thing, that's just observation bias. Most FCs have found zero motes in the time you found the amount you did. You happened to get lucky twice early on, and then you got the same terrible luck as the rest of us the rest of the time. Putting a pattern to that is silly - it's like winning the jumbo cactpot on day one and then saying that because you never won it again, there must be diminishing returns on winning the jumbo cactpot.

[Jade-Nephrite]

I have a Quick question: If I just want to maximize obtaining Crafting Materia I should just make 1 voyage to Sector 17? If I select just 1 Sector do I have a better chance to obtain those items?

[Nyalia]

I have a Quick question: If I just want to maximize obtaining Crafting Materia I should just make 1 voyage to Sector 17? If I select just 1 Sector do I have a better chance to obtain those items?

No, you have equal chance of finding items in a sector regardless of what other sectors you visit. The sector visits are completely independent and do not affect each other. Hitting just one at a time can be faster than hitting multiple because most sectors are closer to other sectors than home is, and all trips out have a 12 hour fixed initial cost added to them. Also, sector 17 does not have Cunning materia, only Comp and Command IVs (IIIs too of those, but the IIIs are much rarer than the IVs - weird, but don't complain!). Sector 13 has Cunning and Competence IV/III materia. But, irritatingly, 13 and 17 are on opposite sides of the map. Hitting them both with one ship takes a 82 range just for those two, and it's very slow (relatively speaking). With a speed 100 ship, it takes ~48 hours to hit both, while it only takes ~26 hours to hit 13 on its own and ~37 to hit 17 on its own. However, if you want IV materia, those are the only two sectors with crafter IV materia. If that's all you care about, IV materia, then just hit those two sectors if you can. On a freighter-style ship (bronco rigging, invincible hull, tatanora fore/aft castle), it actually takes longer to hit 13->17 than to hit 13 twice on two different trips.

But, it should be noted that sector 7 has grade III crafter materia, as does sector 3. Sector 7 has Cunning and Command, and sector 3 has Competence and Command. Hitting sector 7 and 17 is much quicker than 13 and 17. It's also better to do 7->17 if you care most about Command materia, as 13 doesn't have any. It's worth noting though that the earlier a sector is, the fewer items you seem to get. An optimal yield from sector 3 is like a normal yield from sector 13, or something.

[KogentaStormbringer]

Not sure if this is relevant but i thought it might be intresting. Thanks for the awesome guide btw, it helped me a lot!

FOUR dravanian mote.



And this is the airship... All Bronco parts.

[hqdm]

Not sure if this is relevant but i thought it might be intresting. Thanks for the awesome guide btw, it helped me a lot!

FOUR dravanian mote.



And this is the airship... All Bronco parts.

oh man, that's great news. I'd given up on bronco orz.
At least now we know it's possible, if unlikely.

[kog985]

But maybe the chance will be like... 1% for Broncos? lol