It’s no secret that one of the most ideal ways to get any resource is by utilizing your Retainer. Though Retainers are typically used as merchants who sell unwanted goods, players will soon want to optimize their retainers to retrieve resources that will provide them with the most Gil.
Now, this won’t be a priority for all players as many will not be interested in the hyper-optimization of the Marketboard, however, whether you hyper-optimize or not, you will always want to send your retainers out on Ventures each day as even the most passive Retainer Ventures can help you make a couple thousand Gil a week.
Although I will not be covering this information in the current article, I have begun preparations for a post that will cover the various types of Retainers and Ventures which a player will want to send their Retainers on depending on what portion of the Market Board they would like to focus on, how much effort they want to put into their retainers and how long they are typically logged into the game.
For now, let’s just focus on all the different ways you can acquire the much-needed Venture Tokens, which will come in handy as each of the currencies and methods used can be used for other valuable resources.
I personally rotate how I get Venture Tokens, since a big part of my playing FFXIV is completing side content that requires old currency. I’m also a bit of a hawk when it comes to the Market Board and will always be on the lookout for whether or not a currency I am passively farming has resources I can sell for a decent price as I typically won’t sell items when the Market crashes and will do something else in the meantime.
Click here for a guide on how to level up your Retainers quickly.
Note: If you have any questions about FFXIV that you want me to cover feel free to leave them in a comment below, you can also ask me while I am streaming on Twitch, YouTube or in our community discord.
WHAT ARE RETAINER VENTURES?
For clarity’s sake, the way we are using the words Retainer Venture today is in regards to the currency or token that a player needs in order to send their retainer out on a Venture.
I must say that it is a bit odd that the FFXIV team decided to simply name these Ventures as the task the Retainers are being sent to complete are called the same thing, but alas here we are.
In order to send your Retainer on a Venture players will either need one or two of these tokens or currency, though players can expect to use dozens of these a day if they can commit to long play sessions or have ways of logging into the game to quickly send their retainer on another Venture and move on.
I recently acquired a third retainer and reset both of my old ones in order to speed test how long it would take to level them all up using different methods so I personally go through about 72 Ventures a day at the moment if I am able to stay logged in for 12 hours. Of course, that time isn’t spent actively playing the game and much of it is me Alt+Tabbing into FFXIV just to send my Retainers out on Ventures but if you are in the same situation as me where you have the luxury as me, you can expect to need at most 48 Venture Tokens a day with 2 Retainers and at the very least 36 if you only have two retainers and are sending them on Ventures every time they are off cooldown.
For a player who only wants to do the bare minimum, you will only need 4 Ventures a day.
IS IT EASY TO GET VENTURE TOKENS AND IS IT WORTH IT?
In my opinion, yes to both of these questions. Chances are a player has more than enough of the currencies needed to purchase Ventures and while I’m personally a min-maxer, hyper optimizer with my Retainers now I wasn’t for 6 years.
It’s obvious that interests will change over your years of playing FFXIV, leading you to come in and out of content and while now I’m very focussed on the Gil-making aspect of the game, since I want to get the 50,000,000 Gil Mounts by the end of 2024, I know for a fact that this will slow down especially when the new expansion hits.
When I was doing the absolute bare minimum with Retainers I never ran out of Venture Tokens and actually didn’t think it was possible to ever run out. At this time I was also making as little as 15,000 Gil a week from my Retainers simply for sending them on a mission a day, though sometimes they would bring home a Minion that cost over a Million Gil which would significantly boost my income. That in particular is mostly possible when a new expansion arises, though a player can also do a bit of research on which Minions come from the Exploration Ventures and see which are selling for the most on the Marketboard currently.
Currently, on my server, at least three of the Minions from Ventures are selling for over 100,000 Gil while the newest one which I sold for 1,000,000 Gil at the time is only selling for 1,000. This changes from expansion to expansion and typically Minions will skyrocket in price if no one is farming that particular Venture.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO GET VENTURES IN FFXIV
The following section will cover every single way a player can obtain Ventures in FFXIV. There is no real reason to optimize how to get this resource, however, this section may encourage you to pick up elements of side content or will help you make more educated decisions about which currency you want to actually spend on the tokens.
A REALM REBORN & HEAVENSWARD BEAST TRIBES
Once upon a time ago when Eorzea was newly discovered and Alphinaud was much more annoying than he is currently, players were introduced to 5 Beast Tribes and later were introduced to 3 more. These include:
The Amalj’aa
The Sylphs
The Kobolds
The Sahagin
The Ixal
The Vanu Vanu
The Vath
The Moogles
Each of the Vendors for these Beast Tribes will trade a single piece of their currency for 1 Venture, which may be worth dumping into if you don’t see yourself using the currency for anything else.
I personally spent most of my early days of FFXIV focussing on maxing out my Beast Tribes, not only was this a great way to efficiently level up all of my jobs. Not to forget, there are also some really cool Mounts that you can get from Beast Tribes.
I personally do not spend my Beast Tribe currency on Ventures and while once upon a time ago I thought it was a decent use of this currency, Endwalker ended up updating some of the rewards you could obtain using these outdated currencies.
At first, I thought it would be alright and it wouldn’t take much time to get these rewards, I forgot just how annoying the old Beast Tribes were as there were a lot of issues with the way they worked. Not to mention, since it had been years since I initially completed them, I had forgotten only the highest-level member of the Beast Tribe would give you the currency. Now, this in the long run isn’t an issue as the lower-quests actually give you Ventures as your reward in a lot of cases.
Would I farm these every day? Honestly, no. But, I would do them daily when I still needed to level up side jobs and was still trying to unlock the Mounts. I would strongly recommend trying to complete as many of the A Real Reborn and Heavensward Beast Tribes a day if you are trying to max out your relationship with them, even if they do not provide you with the biggest relationship Boost.
As this system falls off in the future you will not need to keep doing it, but out of sight, out of mind is my go-to with the older Beast Tribes.
DO YOUR HUNTS
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while you’re probably starting to get tired of me bringing up Hunts all the time, but listen if they weren’t so darn useful I wouldn’t do it so much.
I personally used Hunts as my main source of power levelling on both my alt and my main and was able to get all my jobs up to maximum level within a few months obviously while weaving some other tasks that took very little effort.
Players have some choices when they complete Hunts. They can either complete their daily Hunts at the Hunt Board, Weekly Elite Hunts or can simply kill A-Ranks when they see them.
The choice by far comes down to how much of these currencies you want and need and while I will dive much deeper into this topic in a post I will link here. All you need to know for now is that you will be focussing on two types of currency if you are planning on using Hunts to hire your retainers: Allied Seals and Centurio Seals.
It’s unknown whether or not Sacks of Nuts will be added to this list in the future as there were changes made to what you could purchase with Centurio Seals, however, all types are equally as easy to farm out… ish.
Players can turn in 4 Allied Seals or 4 Centurio Seals in order to get a single Venture. Allied Seals are traded at the Hunt Billmaster that is connected to your Grand Company and the Centurio Seals can only be traded with Ardolain in Foundation (13.1, 11.9) if you are hoping to get Ventures.
Oddly enough, even though there are other NPCs that take Centurio Seals, these cannot be bought from any of them.
I personally go in and out of what I do in order to get these two currencies. When I was levelling I did the majority of the Hunts daily, but as soon as I finished levelling everything I simply focussed on killing A-Ranks or S-Ranks as I saw them or they were called out.
Players can receive Allied Seals from daily and Elite Hunts from A Real Reborn, which I strongly discourage due to the number of spawn points of these mobs, though they can also receive them from killing A-Ranks and S-Ranks from A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and Stormblood areas.
Centurio Seals are gotten from Daily Hunts and Elite Hunts from Heavensward and Stormblood though similarly they can be gotten from A-Ranks or S-Ranks from A Realm Reborn, Heavensward or Stormblood.
The most efficient manner to do these Hunts is by doing the weekly Elite Mobs as they each give you 100 Centurio Seals, meaning 50 Ventures a week.
Otherwise, if players do the daily ones they can get the following amounts daily for completing each full stack:
15 Seals for Level 1
20 Seals for Level 2
75 Seals for Level 3
I personally always have way too many of both types of Seals so I rotate what I will buy with them. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I am achievement-hunting, but even if I wasn’t they are both a great source for a lot of great loot and something I see myself doing for a very long time.
GRAND COMPANY SEALS
The way most players will be getting Ventures is through their Grand Company.
This is by far the most passive way to get your fix of Ventures, however, it tends to also be a gold mine for Gil.
I personally go in and out of the Seal Market as it tends to be the one with the most fluctuation and the one that tanks the most often, so when I need some extra Ventures I tap into my Seals.
It will cost players 200 Seals per Venture, which may seem like a lot, but really isn’t when you realize that one piece of level 80+ Gear is equal to more than 1,500 Seals.
If you have a lot of Tomestones of Poetics and have nothing to do with them you can trade these for level 80 Accessories in The Crystarium to get the most Seals to Poetics ratio, though it will become Radz-at-Han and Old Sharlyean when Dawntrail comes out.
GUILDLEVES/LEVEQUESTS
Similar to Beast Tribes one of the rewards for Levequests are Ventures. Now, I wouldn’t go out of my way looking for these as Levequests are not going to be the best time use for Ventures, but if you are looking to make some extra Gil or simply need to level up side Jobs then this will be a perfect pairing.
Players can get these from all the different tiers of Levequests, so if they want to farm their Challenge Log and get some extra Ventures they can do low-level Levequests in order to save time.
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