The Diadem Unlock and Leveling Guide

The Diadem is a unique zone exclusively for Gathering classes as part of the Ishgardian Restoration. This content has you traveling around various islands to gather resources and to build up your Aetherial Augur which can then be used to defeat enemies for more materials.

To unlock The Diadem you simply need to speak to Aurvael inside of The Firmament at (11,14) with The Firmament being unlocked as part of the Ishgardian Restoration.

To then enter The Diadem, simply speak to Aurvael again to queue for an instance.

When entering The Diadem, you will notice that the entire area is floating islands. The aim is to circle around the entire map looking for nodes to gather from. These items can then be "approved" by speaking to Flotpassant, who is right beside Aurvael before you enter The Diadem.

Nodes inside of The Diadem are grouped into "chains", this means that only after hitting the first node will the second node appear and so on. Generally speaking, there are 2 chains per island which at times can overlap but all you need to do is to rotate throughout all of the upper islands.

A map of these node locations alongside monster drops can be seen below.

This is a map created by a user on Reddit who made several detailed maps for each phase of the restoration.

Once you enter the Diadem, you will circle around looking for nodes to then gather items from, with the aim of "approving" these items once exchanged with Flotpassant. Items must be approved in bulk and approving these items grants the player with Skybuilder's Scrips as well as ability to craft with these items. Items that have not been approvided cannot be used in crafting.

Every 10 minutes inside of The Diadem the weather will change. This rotates between normal weather and "Umbral" weathers with Umbral weathers corresponding to a specific element and also spawn a unique node on the outer islands. These weathers are:

• Umbral Flare
• Umbral Levin
• Umbral Tempest
• Umbral Duststorm

The weather itself is tied to each specific instance and can therefore not be calculated or known ahead of time. Umbral weathers are also the only ways for specific gatherable items to be available so these nodes are important.

While at first the items inside the nodes might appear random, they are in fact not. These nodes spawn in chains of nodes, only the first item in the chain is visible to the player until you clear that node and move on to the next in the chain. That being said, the Ubral weather nodes themselves can be considered random due to you never knowing what weather will appear next

The Aetheromatic Augur is essentially a "Limit Break" for Gathering classes inside of The Diadem. A 5-level Limit Break bar appears as a new HuD icon while inside of The Diadem and at each level can be used to defeat enemies to obtain the materials.

Enemy drops inside of the Diadem are the same items that you would gain from gathering at nodes, but in larger quantities.

Leveling inside the Diadem is a relatively easy but grindy task, often offering more experience than regular open world leveling, while also needing less gear, making it a relaxing method to level. As mentioned previously, you are unable to farm specific items outside of using the Aetheromatic Augur, meaning you just want to grab the relevant item to your level.

This means for leveling, you simply want to repeatedly cycle around the islands following the maps above and gathering from nodes to gain experience points.

At level 80 and above in The Diadem, alongside gathering materials to use, you also gain points, known as your Skyward Score, which are used in several achievements offering rewards such as titles, minions, and a mount at 500,000 Skyward Score on all classes.

Mining and Botany is going to take a long time to hit 500,000 score on each class, so you want to make sure to optimize it as much as possible by hitting the stat breakpoints on the nodes.

As for the farming itself, you want to constantly be on the move and, at times, swapping between chains where nodes group close together to hit more nodes faster. The most important thing though is to ignore the weather nodes because they are often out of the way to go for and barely offer extra points, making it not worth it. If you wanted to be super optimal, you would also discard materials as you go, because you will very easily run out of inventory space, even with the 999 stack cap, and end up being unable to sell all of those materials. Try to save plenty for crafting achievements if you are also aiming for those.

For fishing, the best fish for points is Grade 4 Artisanal Skybuilders' Lightning Chaser, which requires you to mooch Ghost Faerie, is a '!!!' tug, and has a 16-32 second time window. During Umbral Levin, you can also go for Grade 4 Artisanal Skybuilders' Meganeuras.