Final Fantasy XIV – Island Sanctuary 101

The Island Sanctuary is finally here! But what do now? But don't you worry! ESTNN has you covered in this quick guide on the Island Sanctuary.

Welcome to the Island Sanctuary, your very own resort where you can either relax in or give in to your capitalistic urges.

The Itch for Expansion

Yes like many other farming sims this is not actually relaxing there are bottlenecks to fix and you'll find yourself always running out of something. It's beautiful and a great time sink. The only problem is most of what you'll get out of here isn't exactly translatable into Gil. So you're either in it for the rewards, or really just to kill time.

Not me though. If there is a virtual coin to be made even if it's only going towards my next set of crafting gear I'm all game. I've spent the better part of a week with the new Island Sanctuary, grasped its secrets, and am now revealing them to you. We'll start from the start and walk you through the entire process and give you some pointers along the way. Do keep in mind you can also skip ahead a little if you're willing to grind away your soul but this is going to be a more casual progression grind.

Once you start getting set up, make sure to always prioritize expanding your base over getting the rewards fast. Of course, you can save up a little and go for that hairstyle or glamour you desperately want but spending money early will get you ahead. So start seeing all the seafarer's cowries you'll be earning as an investment first — not currency. You can also earn 2000 cowries every week by just completing the weekly challenges.

Starting Construction

Now you can set up your cozy cabin and build your first pasture and fields we should start working towards building ourselves a workshop. Make sure to max out your number of workshops first, you can always relocate them for free so don't worry about things looking a little ugly for a while. The more workshops we have working, the more experience points and cowries we're generating — and we want to get to Island Sanctuary rank 10 as soon as possible without spending too much time grinding out materials.

Granaries are great for passively farming materials and getting those rare drops early, but they are a little useless for progression at the start. Having an extra workshop that generates cowries and experience points is worth more than getting materials once a day. So prioritize them afterward. That being said you always want to work towards expanding your base of operations by either making more places for more buildings or expanding your various ventures. Those come in quite hefty but are worth it in the long run.

You can build a windmill, a tree fort, or a bathhouse on set locations for a boost in experience points. They take a long time to construct and boost your workshop's capability outside of looking pretty, but they have their own slots so you don't have to worry about them taking up the place of something more useful.

But do keep in mind that you have to interact with the sign in front of a newly constructed or renovated building for it to be flagged as completed. So make sure to complete construction before 10 AM (GMT) to avoid any layover or lost profits.

Plant care for Beginners

I know what you'll be asking now, what animals do I need to make the most money? What plants do I grow to make even more? The answer might actually be a little more disappointing than you might figure. Yes, we could go for the most efficient way possible, and we're gonna get to that later.

The most simple answer is.. grow and raise whatever you like. It comes with a few caveats but you always have a lot of options to make a profit from what you're producing. What should be important however is that you grow at least two different types of produce. That will allow you to craft the highest tier of food for animals, why is that important? Because happy animals produce twice the goods which in turn are a lot more worth than selling the grown fruits and veggies on their own. Later you can upgrade those up to 20 slots of fruit you can grow separately.

So here is the pro gamer tip to maximize your plant growth. In the early stages with only 5 rows available to you, you want to split them up. Each row will grow 5 fruits or veggies every two days if you water them sufficiently. Something you want to do once or twice a day. We dedicate 4 rows to two types of vegetables with a small animal pasture you might even get away with one row per type. We do this so we can grow enough to craft the Premium Island Greenfeed which needs 2 of 2 types of veggies to be crafted. It takes two days to grow them and the craft produces 3 units of feed.

Adjust that depending on the number of animals you have and you'll never run out of high-quality food for them. Keep in mind the most important law of cut-throat capitalism, always produce just as much as you need. Anything else is a wasted asset. As we expand your veggie empire, I suggest you rotate between all the available seeds and craft food with what you don't plan to use on the workshop. Once you've upgraded your pasture fully, I suggest growing all types of plants at the same time so you're always flexible.

The Basics of Animal Care

Luckily, animal care in the Island Sanctuary is very straightforward. Just feed them once a day with the highest quality food available and you can reap the rewards the next day. You can later upgrade your pasture to hold up to 20 animals at the same time and the ability to catch larger ones will be available as you rank up. Capturing is pretty straight forward so we won't get into that here. And I also couldn't determine if the rare animals give any bonus outside of looking different. But what animals should go for then?

Well, animals that are well fed and absolutely in love with you for it will drop two items every day at 10 AM GMT or one item if their mood is low. That 10 AM time window is important because the mood the animal is in at exactly that point seems to determine the number of drops your animal will drop. So keep that in mind. Other than that, many animals will have crossovers in drops so there are 20 spots at the end. As of writing I only know that there are 9 different types of droppings, so to optimize you want to produce at least 3 of each of those droppings per day to be flexible.

But that's really up to you, again we're talking about what could be very small bonuses here and you can always sell the droppings you're not using for some extra pocket money instead.

The Workshop

Here is the heart of your operation. The holy grail of your Island Sanctuary and the master we all obey. Much like the market board in Final Fantasy XIV and the stock market in real life, we have to obey the holiest of laws — supply, and demand. But here is all you need to know in order to keep your workshop going smoothly. First, you want to talk to the Tactful Taskmaster and check the Isleworks Agenda. You'll notice that you can only produce on 5 days of the week. But don't worry you can use those two days to get ahead of farming materials. Great right? It never ends.

First, we want to review the Supply and Demand in that menu. Here we can see the entire market and how it'll react with all its modifiers. And don't be scared, it looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. This sheet should change every week, so there is technically no set formula to make the maximum cash, and it's different for every player. But we can still game the system regardless.

We want to look for products that are popular, nonexistent supplied with skyrocketing demand. This is where we make the most cash of course that perfect storm of materials that we can chain together endlessly. That I why I told you to spread out for production as much as possible. But to get a head start in the market, you want to set up your seasons. I would recommend making either the first or the first two days off so you have enough time to prepare. The supply and demand is the only thing that gets reset with new values with the weekly reset of Final Fantasy XIV's servers.

Now let's talk shop, depending on the number of sights you've to build, your groove will cap out at certain intervals. Groove is a kind of modifier that'll affect the experience and cowrie gain of your workshop. You can build up that modifier over the week to cap out that bonus, but you still want to chain crafts anyways. So on the first day, you want to pick as many of the small 4-hour crafts as possible and chain them together. You chain them together by crafting two products of the same type. Many of those products will usually fall within two types so only the supply of materials is important.

So at the start, you should avoid crafting anything that requires rare materials or animal droppings you haven't secured. If you max out that bonus on the first day, you'll profit from it for the rest of the week, so focus on getting that bonus first before thinking about big profits. For the rest of the week, we can set up the workshop depending on market demands. Since popularity only changes the next week, we can plan ahead very relaxed. This is also why I banged on about earlier that a constant production of all materials is so important.

Now we set up our workshop schedule with as many high-profit crafts as possible and make sure we have enough materials. It's only important that you have those materials before they're actually needed for crafting so don't worry if you don't have that copper yet that you'll need in two days. It's also worth making sure not to overproduce a certain item. Pay attention to the shift in the markets as the days go on and adjust your production accordingly and spread yourself out. And make sure to always craft the product with the biggest profit margin once you have the bonus secured.

The Granary

The Granary exists to make your life a little easier. Here you can commission your friendly helpers to go out and do your dirty work for a little fee. Do however keep in mind that you'll have to collect the materials collected after the set number of days at 10 AM GMT. While the Granary largely exists to reduce your time spend farming for items, it is also vital to reach the final stages of both the Granary and the Workshop renovations so don't sleep on them either.

Afterword

That is pretty much all the wisdom I can and will impart to you in order to become an industrial island owner Tataru would be proud of. Petting your animals might be useless but it's good for the soul. And most importantly, keep it calm and keep it easy. This is not a race, it's a marathon. There are some really nifty, very enticing rewards to obtain and we all want that achievement for being the greatest capitalist of all the lands. (Remember, if you're not greedy like me, or simply don't have the time, pay your mammets to do most of the legwork for you.)

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