Cosmic Tools Relic Guide and Best Missions for FFXIV

Cosmic Tools are the Crafting and Gathering relic tools available for Dawntrail. These tools are upgraded using content called Cosmic Exploration where these tools are upgraded over a range of stages to become some of the best tools in the game.

For players looking for information about the core mechanics of Cosmic Exploration such as how to unlock, rewards, or further information about game mechanics. Please read our guide!

Cosmic Tools are simply given to you as soon as you enter Sinus Ardorum while unlocking the Cosmic Exploration. Your first tool is given to you from the questline however all other tools can be picked up for free by speaking to Researchingway in Sinus Adorum (21.1, 21.8).

Cosmic Tools have special effects on them. These are:

• All: Completing a stellar mission from start to finish with this tool equipped grants a bonus to earned rewards. Lunar Credit Bonus: +35%
• Crafting: Increases to quality are 1.75 times higher than normal when material condition is Good.
• Miner/Botanist: Increases the chance to trigger Collector's Intuition by 20% when gathering collectables.
• Fishing: Has a chance to reduce the GP cost of Powerful Hookset and Precision Hookset by 50%. (Chance is around 10-15%)

These effects are the exact same as last expansion's relics, with the added Cosmic Exploration-based bonus.

Note: currently these tools have a bug where part of the effect is currently not on the description. This still works however.

The Cosmic Tools currently go up to i720, which is the same as both Scrip Gear and Everseeker's. Cosmic Tools have no meld slots currently, instead they have the equivalent of a CP/GP meld added on as well as the aforementioned special effects.

Cosmic Tools are more than viable at the current endgame and a direct upgrade if your using either Scrip Gear or a cheaper meldset that only has a CP/GP meld on it.

The Cosmic Tools are also best in situations revolving their special effects. This means:

• Crafting: These tools are best when Expert Crafting
• Miner/Botanist: These tools are best at any collectables.
• Fishing: These tools are best in any situation that uses Patience II such as Ocean Fishing

For further information, check out our melding guides!

Upgrading your Cosmic Tools is simple, simply obtain Data which comes in multiple (numbered) types. Data comes from Stellar Missions and completing them will grant you progress towards your current tool.

Every Mission inside the Cosmic Exploration has set data that it can grant you. But when you gain either a Gold or a Silver rating on the mission, you will gain a 5x or 4x multiplier to the respective rewards. Critical Missions do not give you any multipliers however.

A few tools exist to help you know what missions are efficient as well as knowing further information about the mission types. I would suggest checking out:

• Sinus Adorum, a Cosmic Research Helper
• Crafting Spreadsheet with data, macros and relative efficiency
• Gathering Spreadsheet for Breakpoints and Score efficiency
• Fishing Spreadsheet with Hole Data

Did you know that you can reroll Stellar Missions? If you start a mission and then Abandon it, your missions list will change. This is great and allows you to repeatedly refresh your missions until you find something desirable.

This is especially useful on earlier stages of the relic because each mission has set rewards. When you only have I and II data unlocked for example, many missions will not give data so your best bet is to simply abandon them.

Rerolling is also great on classes that have much more efficient missions such as specifically looking for the missions outlined below.

Each upgrade of your Cosmic Tool requires you to gain a lot of data of varying types. Starting with rank I data and then progressing into II, III and so on. As you progress multiple data types are also required.

The great thing is though, your current data (Analysis) does not reset when you upgrade! Furthermore, the more relics you complete, the faster your data acquisition becomes.

As you complete more relics, you begin to gain a buff that makes the next relics much easier to obtain. This starts at +50% and ends at 150%. This is indicated by new text appearing in your Cosmic Research menu.

This means you should always complete 1 relic before moving onto farming the next one!

If you are a player who is either new to the game or simply new to Crafting and Gathering. This relic starts at level 10 alongside you and can be upgraded further as you continue leveling.

If you are leveling you do not need to worry about being optimal with regards to progressing the relic. This is because you will complete each stage much faster than you gain experience points. Simply select missions that give you the data types you currently need and you are set to go!

Be warned - at level 80, you cannot really upgrade to the level 80 tools! This is because you need grade III data, but this is only farmable from the level 90+ missions. You can work around this by using Red Alert's which give all types of data, but they only spawn every ~4.5 hours and do not have multipliers to the data for hitting gold.

The first, and only step currently available for the Cosmic Tool is to go through the leveling process and then upgrading it to i720. To gain further tools, simply speak to Researchingway and they will hand them to you for no extra cost.

You do not need to equip Cosmic Tools to upgrade them! So do not try to use a level 10 tool at level 100.

Further upgrades will be available in patch 7.3X, 7.4X and 7.5X when further planets are added to the Cosmic Exploration.

It is currently recommended to start with crafting first before working on gathering because gathering is often considered slower.

Crafting can be tackled differently depending on both your stats and familiarity with manual/Expert Crafting. Expert Crafting is not required to complete these tools! However, it is more efficient to do the most difficult crafts, but many are impossible to macro. Feel free to check the crafting spreadsheet for macros for all of Cosmic's Crafts.

The 2 recommended missions (names different on each class) give I/III and II/IV data respectively providing you with a clean coverage of all data types. That being said, if you cap some data types you may want to consider changing crafts.

Miner and Botanist have a really efficient Class-B mission called Stellar Repair Materials which gives 9/9/9 of rank I/II/III respectively (or 45 of each when gold).

The best part about this Mission is also the fact that as a result of it being Class-B, it is relatively easy. This means you do not need to spend GP to be able to hit gold meaning it is constantly spammable compared to many of the Class-A missions which require much heavier uses of GP.

This does however leave you without any IV data. Missions such as A-2: Aquatic Resource Research Tanks on Miner or A-2: Lunar Tanning Agents on Botanist grant 21 (105 Gold) and mostly involve crafting and can therefore also be spammed without worrying about GP. Alternatively, you can go for A-1 missions instead but they grant less Data.

To upgrade your fishing Cosmic Tool to i720, there tend to be 3 missions worth aiming for. These are:

• C: Northwestern Water Inspection - I & II
• B: Absolute Specimen - II & III
• A-1: Aquatic Inspection I - III & IV

C and B are located at the same fishing hole making them require 0 downtime and therefore great to constantly repeat/reroll for. These missions also do not require heavy GP spending allowing you to have no downtime on GP either.

The A mission on the other hand isn’t the overall fastest in mission time. However it can be done in 4-5 minutes without spending any GP but even when spending GP, it is not too much so you can continually fish. Some other Class-A missions have a faster mission time, but because you have to stand around waiting for GP, makes them generally worse.