Basic Cross-World Hunt Guide by Caimie Tsukino

Launched: 2023-1-8 (right before Patch 6.3)

Basic Cross-World Hunt Guide by Caimie Tsukino


"Hunt sucks because I can never get there in time!"
"People early pull, and it's impossible to reach there in time!"
"I keep shouting invite, but nobody invited me to a party! I got almost no reward! Hunt is bad!"

...I have heard about these complaints for YEARS. I just wanna say, although sometimes it's true that there's just not enough time to reach your hunt mark (especially during peak season + peak hours), most of the times the problems can actually be avoided if you just know how to play the hunt game efficiently. In this guide, I documented the way I usually do my hunts. Hopefully it can give people some insights and resolve their problems. It will also be helpful to anyone who's new to the hunt game.

Why should I bother with hunts?
It gives you plenty of different kinds of Allagan Tomestones (poetics, astro, causality etc.), hunt-specific currencies (e.g. nuts, centurio seals, allied seals) and materia (Cracked Anthocluster & Cracked Dendrocluster, which can be exchanged into any kind of Grade 9 & 10 battle materia). In terms of earning weekly Allagan Tomestones, it is actually more time-efficient to do hunts than to do Expert Roulette dungeons. Also, each S rank hunt only last for several minutes anyway, so you don't have to commit to a rigid 20-min to finish a dungeon in order to receive your rewards. On that sense, it's a great way to maximize play time to achieve more.

The drawback of hunts is that you have little control over when the hunt marks are spawned. By contrast, queuing up for a roulette dungeon as a tank or healer is usually guaranteed to begin the run shortly. So if you know you have a good, continuous 20 min to spend, and you would like to begin the play right away, then queuing up for a dungeon would be a better choice.

The hunt-specific currencies can then be exchanged for all kinds of goodies. Nuts can be exchanged for mounts, minions, materia (again), furniture, orchestrion rolls, fashion accessories (such as the Diabolos Wings) etc. Centurio seals / Allied seals can also be exchanged for aetheryte tickets in case you need free teleportation.

Most importantly, every few patches, hunt-specific currencies like Nuts can be used for upgrading your latest tome-gear. E.g. it is expected that in Endwalker Patch 6.3, we should be able to upgrade our Causality tome gear from i620 to i630. This can also be done using the new coin (1 per week) from the newest 24-men raid in Patch 6.3 as well, but the hunts give us an alternative method to perform this upgrade without any weekly limit. (And you can stock up Nuts before the patch, so you can immediately upgrade your gear when the patch is implemented.)

Are hunts locked behind quests?
There are some quests that need to be taken before you can earn nuts from hunts. But otherwise, there are no quests that need to be unlocked. You can simply fly to the destination, and do your hunts in a party.

Prerequisites of doing hunts:
- Unlocked flight for all regions, so you can fly anywhere (this also means completion of the corresponding expansion).
- Ideally have a level 90, so you can maximize rewards.
- To be in some sort of Hunt Linkshells to get fast intel (can be local Hunt LS or Cross-world Hunt LS). If you don't have any, just shout in big cities to ask for invitations. Or if you encounter some hunt trains going on, you can simply shout, and ask to be added to their linkshells.
- You should have your Party Finder (PF) button ready on your hotbar. If you don't, click on "Party" on your menu bar, drag the text of "Party Finder" onto your hotbar to create a button there.

Level 90 B Ranks, A Ranks, S Ranks and SS Ranks
Level 90 hunt marks appear only at Endwalker regions. They give Causality tomes, Astro tomes, Poetics tomes, Cracked Anthocluster & Cracked Dendrocluster (for any kind of grade 9 & 10 battle materia), and Nuts.
- B rank hunt marks are designed to be SOLOABLE. But they don't give any reward unless you pick up a quest from the Hunting Board.
- A rank hunt marks require about a party of a few people. People don't do these alone. Usually, "Hunt Trains" are organized daily, and people kill all Endwalker A ranks at different regions in a single trip. Sometimes, some random people decided to form their own party and take down a single A rank hunt mark. And when the train arrives, the hunt mark will be missing, and they will regard the hunt mark as "sniped" by others.
- S rank hunt marks are designed to be taken down by many parties together. They provide very good rewards within a very short time.
- SS rank hunt marks only appear at a low percentage rate any time when an S rank is taken down. They provide the best reward, including 400 nuts.

Step-by-step guide on how to do a cross-world hunt on S ranks efficiently
Take this as an example. If I received intel from my Hunt LS about an S rank on BALMUNG at Ultima Thules (red circle in picture below)...

Step 1: Immediately get to a big city's aetheryte and initiate a World Transfer. This step takes the longest, so it is important to get this done ASAP. You will see your # in queue (green circle in picture).

Step 2: While waiting for the world-travel queue, click on the coordinate in the intel on the chat box. This opens up the Minimap, and places a flag on there.

Step 3: Switch to any tank jobs, and pop tank stance (This is because tank jobs are toughest to kill. So even if you accidentally ate an attack while landing near the S rank, you will survive and be able to land a hit. Also, tank jobs provide the highest aggro, and aggro = contribution. At the end of a hunt, if the overall contribute from a party is less than certain threshold, then all your party members won't get full reward. By being a tank in tank stance, even if your party has only 2 to 3 people, you still have a better chance of getting full reward... Or even if you fail to get into a party at all, you may still receive medium reward rather than the minimum reward).


Step 4: While the world-travel queue is still ticking, click on your PF button on your hotbar (if you don't have it, please create the button as mentioned in the prerequisites above). Click on the "Hunt" tab (as shown in the pic above), but DON'T join any party yet (because these are local parties on your own home world!). The PF will now remember your choice of the Hunt tab, and next time you open the PF, you will be on this tab immediately. You can now CLOSE the PF, and wait for the world-travel to finish.

Step 5: After arriving at the destination world (e.g. Balmung in this case), your Minimap should still be opened. Immediately click on the aetheryte that's closest to the flag to initiate a teleport.

Step 6: While teleporting in MID-AIR, quickly click on the PF button, and quickly join a party under the Hunt tab. If successful, you will already be IN A PARTY before the teleportation completes. This is important, because if the destination region is "instanced", you will actually be immediately put into the same instance as the rest of your party. This saves a lot of time, because if you're put into the wrong instance, sometimes it may take FOREVER to travel back to the right instance due to congestion, and that will be enough for you to fail your hunt trip.


Step 7: When you have finally arrived at the region of the hunt mark, you will immediately get this sentence in your chatbox: "You sense the presence of a powerful mark". This means you're at the right place (and the right instance if the area has several instances). If there are a lot of people in the area, you may experience a very long duration of black screen to load. But worry not, because you're already in a party. When the black screen finishes loading, jump on your mount, fly to the hunt mark, land, and HIT IT ONCE. As long as you hit the hunt mark ONCE, you will earn FULL PARTY CREDIT. So if the party has sufficient contribution, you will get full credit for the hunt. In the pic above, when I arrived at the S rank, it was less than 30% HP already, but it doesn't matter. All I needed was to land 1 hit.


Step 8: When the S rank dies, you can see that I got 100 Nuts, 100 poetics, 80 aphorism, 30 astronomy, a dendro- and an anthrocluster (grade 9 & 10 materia exchange). Endwalker S ranks basically give 30 of the latest weekly-capped tomestones and 80 of the second type of tomestones without a weekly cap. When I took this screenshot, the two types of tomestones available were Astro & Aphorism. Currently in Patch 6.2, we have Causality & Astro. In later patches, it will become something else and Causality... etc. etc.

When a S rank dies, DO NOT immediately leave or disband party, because there is a small chance that an SS rank will be spawned. Just like this case here in the above pic. You can see in the chat box that a message came up: "The minions of an extraordinarily powerful mark are on the hunt for prey...". People on the chatbox call these "minions" as "ADDS" of the SS rank. These ADDS are basically a few of these special B ranks placed in the area. If all of them are defeated, then the SS rank will appear. IMPORTANT: These special B ranks are VERY STRONG. NEVER engage alone!!! If you engage alone, and you died, the ADD will go away, and the SS rank will fail to be spawned (and a lot of people will blame you for ruining it).


- Showing in the pic above is an SS ADD/Minion in Endwalker, and it's called "Ker Shroud". Please, NEVER engage an add alone! If you fight alone and died, you will ruin the spawning process of the SS rank.


- This is the SS rank in Endwalker. Its name is "Ker".


- Defeating Ker gives plenty of rewards (shown in chatbox of the pic above).


- Here is a better picture of Ker from its front.


Examples of S ranks:

- Sphatika in Thavnair was an absolute killer at the beginning of Endwalker, as demonstrated by the dead people in the pic above. When he casts either "Whiplick" or "Lickwhip", there will be 4x super big cleaves at some directions that are rather difficult to predict. I recommend just get out of range until all 4 cleaves are finished before going back into range.


- Armstrong (yeah, just like Senator Armstrong!) at Garlemald is another S rank who is quite capable of killing people who are not familiar with its mechanics. It spins with a cross-shaped AoE that turns either clockwise or counter-clockwise. The way to do this mech is to either be very far way and completely out of his range, or just stay at melee distance, and walk A LITTLE BIT INTO the previous line of AoE every time after the AoE goes off. And then just keep turning that way.


- Here is a better picture of Armstrong.


- The Ruminator at Mare Lamentorum (the moon) is also another killer... Most people don't understand its mechanics.


- So many deaths! The Ruminator basically shows you a series of "dance moves". When he casts "Chitinous Trace", it will show you either a harmless glowing purple AoE (denoted as "OUT") or a harmless glowing melee circle (denoted as "IN"). After that he will cast either "Chitinous Advance" or "Chitinous Reversal". Chitinous Advance will execute actual deathly AoEs in the order it has previously appeared. E.g. if the dance was "OUT, IN, IN". Then if he casts Chitinous Advance after, he will do deathly AoEs in the order of "OUT, IN, IN". By contrast, if he casts Chitinous Reversal, he will execute the deathly AoEs in the reverse order, which is "IN, IN, OUT". Most people fail the Ruminator mechanics because they thought if the dance is "OUT, IN, IN", then its reversal deathly pattern would be "IN, OUT, OUT". But that's wrong. It merely reverse the ORDER of the AoEs, not flipping them in-vs-out during a reversal! So the real deathly pattern would be "IN, IN, OUT".


- The Narrow-rift is an S rank at Ultima Thules. To avoid his AoEs, you need to pay attention to its animation. When he swings his halo around himself (you see a wonky, shaky halo), it will be a circular melee AoE. When he spins his halo around himself (you see a steady spinning halo), it will be donut AoE around him.

Rewards of Hunts


- There are two Hunt NPCs for Nuts Exchange in Endwalker. One is located at Old Sharlayan (11.9,13.2). The other is at Radz-at-Han (10.5,7.4).



- The Vinegaroon is a mount reward you can earn via any of the 2 Endwalker Nuts exchange NPCs. It costs 3200 Nuts.


- The Hunt NPC for Nuts Exchange in Shadowbringers at located at the Crystarium (9.4,9.6).


- The Forgiven Reticence mount can be purchased with 3200 Nuts from the Shadowbringer Hunt NPC.



- The Centurio Tiger mount is a hunt achievement reward (claimed from your achievement log) that is acquired via defeating 2000 S ranks and 3000 A ranks (from any expansion).



- The Triceratops mount is a hunt achievement reward (claimed from your achievement log) that is acquired via defeating 1000 Shadowbringers S ranks and 2000 Shadowbringers A ranks.
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Other Caimie Tsukino Guides:

FF14 Advanced Crafting Guide by Caimie Tsukino (Re-vamped 2022 for Endwalker):
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/ff14-advanced-crafting-guide-by-caimie-tsukino.39/

Endwalker Expert Recipe Guide by Caimie Tsukino
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/endwalker-expert-recipe-guide-by-caimie-tsukino.223/

Novice Ocean Fishing Guide by Caimie Tsukino
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/novice-ocean-fishing-guide-by-caimie-tsukino.222/

Caimie Tsukino's Guide for Expert Recipes and Skybuilders' Tools:
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/caimie-tsukinos-guide-for-expert-recipes-and-skybuilders-tools.201/

Novice Blue Mage Guide by Caimie Tsukino:
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/novice-blue-mage-guide-by-caimie-tsukino.197/

Bozja Duels Cheesing Guide by Caimie Tsukino
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/bozja-duels-cheesing-guide-by-caimie-tsukino.220/

Novice Guide for Taking Screenshots with Gpose
http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/novice-guide-for-taking-screenshots-with-gpose.221/