Guide to Island Sanctuaries in FFXIV

Island Sanctuary is solo content where each player unlocks their own unique island to gather materials, hunt and farm creatures, grow crops, let your minions run wild and play the stock market all to ultimately unlock new items and cosmetics while upgrading your island.

Island Sanctuary is intended to be relaxing casual side content with primarily solo gameplay where no experience as a crafting or gathering class is required. You can however have up to 15 friends on your island at any time.

Your island uses a separate experience system called Sanctuary Rank which stops at rank 20 and provides new upgrades and gameplay mechanics with each rank up. These will be discussed in detail in the leveling page of the guide.

At first, players have a series of quests called visions. These are essentially the tutorial as well as a reminder of your progression. Initially, this will explain to you the key mechanics also detailed further into the guide.

You can gain access to your island by firstly finishing the main scenario quest "Endwalker" and from there speak to the Clueless Crier located in Old Sharlayan(X:11.9, Y:11.0) which is close to the aetherite.

From there you can travel to your island in the future by speaking to Baldin in Lower La Noscea(24.9, 34.8) which is also close to the teleport. There is no way for you to directly teleport into your island.

Players below level 90 can visit a friend, party member or FC members island assuming they have completed the level 50 quest "The Ultimate Weapon".

Other activities such as crafting using island resources and gathering on the island can not be performed while on another players island, it is entirely a social visit.

The IsleKeep Index is a hud icon specific to your island and is one of the main things you interact with to do anything on the island such as gathering, farming and hunting.

You have nine modes available while on your island which do different things and allow you to interreact with the island in different ways, these are:

Mode	What it does
Normal	Default state, allows you to click on animals and minions without any other interaction.
Gather	Allows you to gather from nodes around the map, gather materials daily from your animals and gather crops that have grown.
Sow	Select a seed and grow using your farm land.
Water	Allows you to water your plants every 6 hours unless it rains.
Cull	Allows you to remove crops you have started to grow but are not complete.
Feed	Select a food and feed your animals to increase its mood and food.
Pet	Pet your animals, they love it. (No benefits to mood)
Beckon	Call your animals close to you. (Nice for screenshots)
Capture	Select your capture device of choice and capture small, medium or large animals on the island.

As mentioned, pet and beckon only have cosmetic effects. Sow and Capture require you to craft specific items and use those to grow crops and capture critters.

Your Island Inventory allows you to see how many of each item you have with a cap of 999 per item and makes it much easier to collect every item and to know what you are missing. It is completely separate from your regular inventory and can only be accessed inside your island.

These are split into Materials (gatherable and expeditions), Produce (farming), Stock Stores (animal food, restraints and leavings) and Tools (crafting log). More details on what items are here can be found in their relevant sections of the guide.

Your crafting log allows you to craft a collection of items as long as you have the materials required. Tools and mammet tools can only be crafted once and are for progression. Items such as animal food and restraints can be crafted multiple times.

Your gathering log shows you rough areas where items can be found once gathered the first time. More gathering information cab be found under "Gathering Materials On Your Island".

Manage Hideaway allows you to see what facilities and landmarks you currently have alongside being able to easily check what materials they need to be upgraded so you know when your gathering is complete.

Material allocation may seem empty at first but once your workshop has been developed and is in use it will show you what materials you currently need for the cycle (day), season (week) and current and next season.

These both make it easier to know what materials you need while outside of your base and will help you avoid backtracking.

Manage minions is one of the features many players have been looking forward to and allows you to place up to 40 minions around your base.

The base is split into sub areas such as each section of your pasture, the beach and so on. There are no limits on how many minions you can place out of the 40 in each sub area meaning all 40 minions can be on the beach for example.

If you wanted to you could even thematically pick certain minions according to the areas of your island without further restrictions such as animal minions in the pasture, scions working the farm.

Different minions will have a line they say, some fit the minion, others are references and some are memes.

Cowries are your main currencies used on the island, sometimes referred to as scrips by players due to crafting scrips. Islander's Cowries are obtained by selling gatherable materials and are used mainly for materia.

Seafarer's Cowries are used for a much wider range of things. Most importantly Seafarer's Cowries are used to upgrade farms, pastures, expeditions and unlock new areas of the base, so do not spend them on cosmetics while progressing. They are then after used for a range of minions, mounts and items inside your cabin.

Seafarer's Cowries are obtained mainly from optimising your workshop crafts.

Gathering materials on your island is a fairly straightforward process, simply switch to gathering mode and select a node and the items will appear in your inventory. As you increase your rank you will unlock more tools and therefore more items.

These tools will allow you to gather additional items from the nodes. Many of these items when unlocked are used in future crafts so always gather some when you hit a new rank.

Gathering is also one of your main sources of experience alongside the workshop after around rank 6 and at 10 experience per node you will gain a lot of items. Many of these can be sold for Islander's Cowries which do not have much value but can give materia and cordials.

For more information on gathering such as node locations, best farming spots, and what items are unlocked with each rank and tool check out the guide below:

On your island you can craft using the crafting log to make a range of tools required for progression, feed for your animals and restraints to capture wild animals for your pasture.

Compared to crafting out of the island and even other features of the sanctuary, crafting is a relatively simplistic feature simply requiring you to press craft and be done. You can also bulk craft stackable items like the feed and restraints but the tools are a one time craft.

Crafting the tools gives a significant amount of experience saving you some time alongside being used to unlock and upgrade. Feed and restraints only give small amounts of xp each craft but are a nice bit of extra xp while you gather.

Now that the core mechanics have been explained it is time to talk about leveling. Leveling in island sanctuary is a bit of a grind if you allow it to be, rank 4 comes easily through the tutorial and the next few ranks are easy enough as you explore and gather materials. You also gain experience from farming, hunting and crafting in the workshop.

Progression and how you handle your currency can be very important due to time gates on upgrading your buildings and knowing what you gain at each rank can help you plan your leveling and manage your resources.

For more detailed advice on how to progress at each rank, how to unlock specific things, what you gain at each rank and our best advice on upgrades check out the guide below.

Constructing buildings is incredibly important for your island giving you the ability to increase your Seafarer's Cowries and obtain new materials. There are a range of plots you can use to place down workshops, granaries and landmarks.

While granaries provide materials and workshops craft using those materials, landmarks instead provide the benefits of increasing your maximum groove which provides additional seafarers cowries when you craft in the workshop.

There are more landmarks available than plots allowing you to customize your island further and give you choices. Several of these landmarks are obtained via crafting outside of your island.

Several Landmarks are only available from obtaining permits on your island by handing in materials you can purchase off of the market board or by crafting expert crafts. Expert crafting is a much more difficult form of crafting which can not be easily bypassed with macros and instead requires a good understanding of the unique conditions.

The Island Cabin is the main building, shop and base of operations to start off your sanctuary even housing furniture for you and your visitors. There is even an orchestrion for you to play any collected tracks.

As you upgrade your cabin, using the logboard will allow you to customize your cabin to look like the previous stages or let you change the paths, slopes and grounds of your base to various different aesthetics.

Additionally, upgrading your cabin unlocks the ability to upgrade your pastures and farms by another level making it very important for the overall progression of things.

Your workshop is one of your most important buildings on the sanctuary and making use of it is vital for upgrading your island and obtaining Seafarer's Cowries as well as Felicitous Tokens in later ranks.

Every day has a set schedule where you can plan what handicrafts you want the mammets to create and sell. To make the most of this you need to consider this weeks popularity, the supply for the day(which can change during the day) and the categories each item has to chain them together and obtain efficiency bonuses.

For more detailed information including how to optimise your workshop and what each feature means, please read below:

felicitous Favors are a mechanic added to the workshop which is unlocked at the end of your progression. This provides you with specific handicrafts to aim for in exchange for Felicitous Tokens.

These tokens can then be used to purchase mounts and even a lockbox providing random items.

The granary is the other main building alongside the workshop that you can create. This allows you to send mammets on expeditions every day at your daily reset to obtain normal resources and more importantly, rare resources which you can only obtain from here.

These rare resources are the best crafts for Seafarer's Cowries using the workshop and some of these resources are also required to upgrade your granary and workshop to its third tier.

For further information such as what each expedition can offer and how best to use your Granary please read:

Throughout the island there are a range of critters available for you to gather for your pasture. These animals can then be fed and have their moods improved. There are even secret rare critters you can obtain with specific spawn time and weather conditions.

Different creatures have different sizes and therefore require different restraints unlocked through ranking your island up. Inside the pasture each day after reset they will offer one or two items for you to craft in your workshop.

For information on how best to set up your pasture, what materials you can obtain and how to upgrade and automate the pasture. Please check out the guide below:

Farming on your island is a lot simpler than farming in housing plots, there is no crossbreeding or anything of the like. Each seed also takes two days to grow real time and does not relate to daily reset like the other systems.

These seeds need to be watered unless it is raining but aside from that you will gain 5 crops per plot when grown. These crops can be used to feed your animals in the pasture to improve their mood more than normally possible and can be used to craft worthwhile masterworks in the workshop.

For information on the best crops to grow, how to upgrade the farm and more please continue reading the following: