These unspoiled nodes appear twice every 24 hours of in-game time, and last for two hours. An hour of Eorzea Time is two minutes and fifty-five seconds of real time, so the window is short – you’ll need to prepare if you want to find these nodes in time. Gathering in XIV is a strange beast. It can be rocket fuelled at times, launching through levels and challenges at breakneck pace. Other times, it seems to slow down to a crawl, and progress feels so hard to come by. Part of this is because gathering is such a rich activity in comparison to other MMOs: There’s so many different facets to it in FFXIV beyond just grinding out materials. Don’t get me wrong, there’s going to be plenty of grinding for materials. But there’s a lot of other facets to take into consideration too. If you want to level your gathering job in the most efficient way, you’ll want to educate yourself on unspoiled nodes. These gathering locations appear on a schedule, based on Eorzea Time rather than real world time. That means if you want a chance at gathering from them, you can’t just rely on luck. Sure, you might just happen to be flying through an area on your gathering job at the same time one appears. But that’s not exactly a recipe for consistent success.
So How Do I Find Unspoiled Nodes?
Well, first things first: You’ll want to make sure you have your “Truth of Forest” (Botany) or “Truth of Mountain” skill active. This is a toggle, so it’s not like you’ll have to keep refreshing it when it runs out. It’s good practice to have it active all of the time. Once an unspoiled node becomes active, you’ll get a notification and a map marker leading you to it. I’d also recommend changing your time display from local (LT) to Eorzea (ET). This is easily done – just click on the time to change it to ET. Without this simple step, you won’t be able to see the time that unspoiled nodes adhere to, so it’s pretty important. You can read up on the nodes’ scheduled appearances here, along with a ton of extra resources to help you get the most out of crafting. A more comprehensive companion for unspoiled node farming is FFXIV Clock. This pretty much shows you every unspoiled node in the game, when it appears, and what you can gather from it. You can even set filters, track specific nodes, and set alerts, along with conveniently viewing Eorzea time wherever you are.
What Do I Get From Unspoiled Nodes?
Unspoiled nodes will provide you with rare materials, some of which will sell for considerable chunks of gil – especially at higher levels. This is really where the meat of your money-making capacity as a gatherer will come from. So if you want to profit from your Disciple of the Land job, you want to get on top of unspoiled nodes as a priority. There is another benefit to unspoiled nodes, though: Once you start gathering beyond level 50, you can gather Collectables. These items are unsellable, so they don’t have any use in making gil. But for leveling your gatherer they’re an absolute game-changer. Instead of grinding the same materials for hours and doing your best to get High Quality items, you can now run between nodes, gathering Collectables. You’ll unlock two skills at level 50 which make this possible – Collector’s Glove and Methodical Appraisal. This is like a mini-game within a mini-game. You’ll find a node and use Collector’s Glove to discover if it can provide you with a collectible. If it does, you can increase the collectability by using Methodical Appraisal. This is where the typical crafting/gathering balancing game comes into play. The more you appraise the item, the more valuable it becomes. But performing appraisal actions increases the item’s wear, and if wear reaches the maximum, you’ll get nothing at all. Eventually you’ll unlock even more ways to increase collectability. I recommend following a guide like this very closely if you want to make leveling your gatherer as easy as possible. More unspoiled nodes will unlock as you level. These will give you access to new materials, and more valuable collectibles. As a quick note, it is possible to obtain a collectable from any node, but specific ones only appear within set unspoiled nodes.
What Do I Do Once I Have My Collectables?
As we’ve previously covered, Collectables can’t be sold – to vendors or other players. What they can be used for, however, is massive amounts of experience. You’ll want to head to the Collectable Appraiser in Mor Dhona to start with. Here you can view all the Collectables that are eligible for turn-in. Once you’ve got an idea of what you need to be looking for, reference that with your node schedule and go get the item. You basically want to work your unspoiled node gathering schedule into your regular playtime as neatly as possible. So get your collectables, then grind out materials, grabbing other unspoiled nodes as you go, rinse and repeat until you’re level eighty. That’s a pretty simple way to put it. But the process remains more or less the same for a while. Handing in Collectables also rewards you with Scrips. At first, you’ll be earning Yellow Scrips. Later on you’ll get White Scrips too, and both of these can be used at Scrip Exchanges across the world for items and gear to improve your gatherer. This is essentially the endgame of gathering. So let’s just run through all that in a few quick sentences here, with all of our resources in one place: Unlock Truth of Mountain/Forest at level 46, which allows detection of unspoiled nodes. You can then search these nodes for rare materials. At level 50, you’ll learn two skills which allow you to appraise collectables from nodes. At this point, you’ll want to start making use of FFXIV Clock to track your nodes and when they appear. Grind out materials in the time between your unspoiled nodes, and make sure to grab the collectables you can to earn Scrips and a significant experience boost. And follow a guide (like the one linked above) to make sure you’re gathering the most efficient and valuable materials for your time!
