How common are soul crystals?

[Astarotha]

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

[Kreyd]

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).

[Rodger]

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.

[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!

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.

[Kurando]

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.

[Brightamethyst]

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

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

[Kalise]

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

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...)

[Daralii]

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!

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.

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.

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.

[Jonnycbad]

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)

[Kurando]

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

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.