Updated For

Dawntrail
Hunts

Frequently Asked Questions

Where Hunts are Tracked and Announced

• Faloop!

Faloop! is a toolkit (website) for FFXIV Hunts that includes a tracker and information on spawning.Faloop also hosts a Discord server for Aether, Dynamis, Crystal, Materia, Chaos, Light, Elemental, Mana, Gaia, and Meteor Data Centers where Hunt Trains are announced.

Additional Guides

As you progress through the game, you may unlock Hunts for each expansion. Each quest will have a blue quest marker.

A Realm Reborn

In order to unlock The Hunt, you must achieve rank Second Lieutenant in your Grand Company.

How to Rank Up in Your Grand Company

First, you must have Grand Companies unlocked, which is part of the Main Scenario quests. You will choose between The Maelstrom, The Order of the Twin Adder, and The Immortal Flames and then complete the subsequent quests for your chosen Grand Company.

To rank up, you must speak to the Personnel Officer of your Grand Company and select "Apply for a promotion." Each rank has different requirements.

When you are first starting out, the easiest way to earn Company Seals is by completing your Hunting Log and completing FATEs in zones from ARR, HW, and STB.

When you get to this point, you may consider completing quests that reward Company Seals. The quest line to unlock the Hard and Extreme versions of Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan grant a few hundred and then a few thousand seals total. That quest line starts with A Recurring Problem. If you bought a story skip, you may start from the quest Primal Nature.

Once you are Sergeant Second Class, congrats! You no longer have to farm FATEs for Company Seals if you don't want to. You now have access to Expert Deliveries, which can be found by talking to the same Personnel Officer NPC. You can very easily earn Company Seals by turning in unneeded gear that you find in Dungeons, Raids- even gear you exchange with Poetics.The quest Shadows Uncast is unlocked upon reaching Sergeant First Class and will be located at your Grand Company as a Blue Quest icon. You will need to complete the dungeon Dzmael Darkhold for the quest.

The quest Gilding the Bilious is unlocked upon reaching Chief Sergeant and will be located at your Grand Company as a Blue Quest icon. You will need to complete the dungeon The Aurum Vale for the quest.

Once you are Second Lieutenant, you may unlock Hunts through the quest Let the Hunt Begin at your Grand Company.

Heavensward

Stormblood

Shadowbringers

Endwalker

Dawntrail

B-Ranks

B-Ranks are for your weekly Hunt Mark Bills. They respawn almost instantly, and are meant to be soloed, so they do not need to be relayed.

B-Ranks have a blue symbol next to their name. They are passive mobs.In ARR, there is 1 per zone.
In HW onwards, there are 2 per zone.

In order to gain credit, you must take a Mark Bill with a specific B-Rank from the Hunt Board. You will not get rewards otherwise. Mark Bills for B-Rank Marks can be done weekly.B-Ranks respawn 5 seconds after being defeated.

A-Ranks

A-Ranks are rarer than B-Ranks because they spawn only every few hours. As long as you have completed your quests to unlock hunts, you will receive rewards for killing A-Ranks. For A-Ranks in the latest expansions, many hunt communities run hunt trains to maximize rewards for many people in a short amount of time.

A-Ranks have a red symbol next to their name. They are aggressive mobs. Once close enough, they will attack you if you are within 11 levels of them.In ARR, there is 1 per zone.
In HW onwards, there are 2 per zone.ARR A-Ranks respawn 3.5 to 4.5 hours after being defeated.
HW onwards A-ranks respawn 4 to 6 hours after being defeated.

S-Ranks

S-Ranks are more powerful, offer more rewards, and take much longer to spawn than A-Ranks. Unlike B-Ranks and A-Ranks which spawn automatically, S-Ranks require a special trigger in order to spawn. The different triggers range from a weather condition or a moon cycle condition, standing on the spawn point with a specific minion out, killing a certain number of overworld mobs, gathering legendary nodes, or discarding an item (or 50) from your inventory.When you enter a zone with an S-Rank spawned, the following system message will display:You sense the presence of a powerful mark...

S-Ranks have a red symbol next to their name. They are aggressive mobs. Once close enough, they will attack you if you are within 11 levels of them. RP walking and flying low is enough to facepull, even if the S-Rank has the sleeping debuff.There is only 1 per zone.Respawn times are usually at least 2 days.

Summary

SS-Rank

Shadowbringers, Endwalker, and Dawntrail S-Ranks have the chance to initiate an event to spawn an SS-Rank. SS-Ranks grant even more rewards than S-Ranks. Upon defeating an S-Rank, the following system message may appear:The minions of an extraordinarily powerful mark are on the hunt for prey...Four "minions" appear on different parts of the map. Once all four minions have been defeated, the SS-Rank will spawn.This event can fail if the minions are not engaged in combat within five minutes, or if a minion "resets." The following system message appears if the event has failed:The minions of an extraordinarily powerful mark have withdrawn...If you have completed the event successfully, the following system message appears, and the SS-Rank has spawned.You sense the presence of a powerful mark...

Scaling

Hunt Marks are scaled to the level of the expansion they are from. For example, a level-100 character can easily solo an ARR A-Rank. Likewise, it's difficult and pointlessly time-consuming for one person to solo a Dawntrail A-Rank or S-Rank.

Hunts drop special currencies that you can use to redeem enticing rewards, such as:

Ever hit a Hunt Mark and wonder why you didn't get all of the rewards listed in Currency and Rewards? Other than being capped on tomes or currency, you could not be getting full credit. Here are some tips to get full credit on Hunts.

Main Methods of Earning Credit in Hunts

How to Use Party Finder

Party Finder is not available to Free-Trial users. In order to view The Hunt tab, you must have hunts unlocked. Find out how to unlock hunts on our How to Unlock Hunts section of the guide.To open the Party Finder window, go to Party > Party Finder.To join a party, navigate to the Hunt tab as shown below, select a party, and click Join Party.

To create a party, click on the yellow button on the bottom-left corner of the Party Finder window that says "Recruit Members." A new window will appear as shown below.Select "The Hunt" in the category dropdown, add a comment about what the Party Finder is for, and click "Recruit Members."

I can't join a party for the hunt train because it's locked to Blue Mage at an Item Level I can't achieve on Blue Mage.

Conductors often "lock" their party finder to have one spot permanently open so that the recruitment shows up in party finder for the duration of the train.This is intentional, so that people who arrive to the train late can see where the train is located when they check party finder.

The way Hunts are handled vary widely between data centers, worlds, and even between players. For the most part, players take effort to share the rewards with others. Here are some common ways in which people achieve this goal.

Relay Linkshells

Many players use Linkshells specifically for relaying Hunts. Those who spawn or find an S-Rank (or are starting a train) can grab a map location flag and send it to the relay Linkshell. Those who receive the relay can then relay it to other Linkshells, and so on. In order to easily send relays, players use macros.You can ask for an invite to a Hunt Linkshell by asking in shout chat at a Hunt.

Pull Time

Many spawners set a "Pull Time" for S-Ranks. The Pull Time (PT) is when everyone attacks the S Rank at the same time. Because S-Ranks die so quickly when there are many people attacking it, attacking it at the same time ensures everyone is ready to hit it and earn credit. It also gives time for people to arrive, especially during times of high zone congestion and world transfer queues.PTs are sometimes in Eorzean Time (ET), and sometimes in Local Time (LT). You can make the in-game clock show either one via Character Configuration > UI Settings > HUD > “Clock Type”. You can also click on the clock on your HUD to toggle types.Not all spawners set a PT, so just go with the flow in that case! Many spawners wait an amount of time for enough people to arrive, sometimes asking if anyone is on the way, and then pull.

Screenshot of System Clock

Hunt Trains

What Are Hunt Trains?
Hunt Trains are player-organized events in which a group of players go to multiple A-Ranks and take them down within a relatively short period of time. The term and methods have evolved over the years and vary between Data Centers and worlds.In recent years, Hunt Trains are usually organized by a Conductor. The Conductor has the location map flags of each A-Rank readily available to direct the crowd to one-by-one. These flags are "scouted" ahead of time.Hunt Trains start at a gathering point such as an Aetheryte in a zone. This location is announced via Linkshells and Discord servers. After waiting some time for people to gather, the Conductor links a map location flag of the first A-Rank in shout chat. Players participating in the train move over to that A-Rank to kill it. Once it has been defeated, the Conductor links the location of the next A-Rank. This keeps going for as many A-Ranks in an expansion.

Why Hunt Trains?
The community organizes Hunt Trains for several reasons:1. A-Ranks in the most recent expansions are powerful, and are intended to be taken on as a group. Hunt Trains give the opportunity for organizing a large group of people to take down the A-Rank and defeat it in a short amount of time. This saves time compared to trying to kill the A-Rank as a solo player or as a small group.2. Usually, participating in a Hunt Train lets players gain rewards rather effortlessly in a reasonable amount of time. It is an easy method of earning current Tomes and hunt currency.3. Not only are Hunt Trains an easy way to earn Tomes and hunt currency, it's also an efficient method of racking up A-Rank kill requirements for Achievements. Achievements can reward you with some of the rarest mounts in the game.

What Expansion A-Ranks do people kill on Trains?
As of Dawntrail, trains for Dawntrail A-Ranks are usually run regularly, especially on major patch drops or on releases of new savage raid tiers.Endwalker and Shadowbringer trains are also run depending on interest, as people aim to complete their Achievements for it.ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood A-Rank trains are rare or nonexistent, as those A-Ranks have such little health to survive very long.So can I kill A-Ranks outside of Trains?
You can do whatever you want within the Terms of Service. Please see the following Final Notes!

Final Notes

Although many players wish to share rewards, please remember that these efforts are player-based and are not built into the game. In other words, The Hunt is a system that exists in the public overworld, so the way in which they are handled is open-ended.Some people do not know what Hunts are, some people make mistakes- never automatically assume someone is being malicious. No one can tell you what to do except the official FFXIV GMs. Keep in mind the Prohibited Activities in Final Fantasy XIV.