After a brief period of maintenance, Patch 7.21 Final Fantasy XIV is now available. And with it comes what is perhaps one of the few pieces of content I’ve been eagerly awaiting. Welcome back to Unending Horizons, where I’ll be regularly posting my impressions of both new and old content of Final Fantasy XIV. Today, we’ll be covering the main content of Patch 7.21: Cosmic Exploration, a crafter/gatherer-oriented content, which is something I really enjoy.

It has been a while since I’ve seen content that was geared towards crafters and gatherers specifically, other than the allied society quests and the custom delivery NPCs. If you wanted to level up those classes, you would usually tackle the Ishgard Restoration reworked quests from 5.0, which brings me to the question: How does Cosmic Exploration compare?

Disclaimer: The following article may contain spoilers of the new Cosmic Exploration quests.

To Space We Go!

To access Cosmic Exploration, the requirements are pretty simple. All you need is to have either a Disciple of Land or Disciple of Hand class at LV 10, and have completed the “Endwalker” Main Scenario Quest. Once those requirements are met, players are able to talk to Namingway on Old Sharlayan and be escorted to the moon base.

Craft or Gather to Develop

Upon your first arrival at the moon base, you’ll be given an exotablet with a selection of missions. These start at D-rank, graded at level 10. For the Disciples of Hand, the mission you select will provide you with all the necessary materials, and crystals are not required, so you won’t need to worry about spending your own resources. Your only limit, of course, is just how well your crafters are handled to make these items.

As for the Disciples of Land, their quests flow rather similarly to the gatherer levequests. You’re tasked to find certain collectables, or sometimes a certain quantity of items, which are stored on your Cosmopouch. Each quest will grade your performance differently on a certain factor. It is strongly recommended to check the quest text on the exotablet to see what skills you must use in order to get a high enough score to get a Gold rating.

Upon clearing those missions, you’ll be rewarded with Cosmocredits and Lunar Credits, which can be exchanged for various rewards. There are a variety of items to choose from, including crafter and gatherer materia, as well as glamour item sets. You can also spend 1000 Lunar Credits for a chance to spin the Cosmo Fortune roulette, where you have a chance to obtain an exclusive mount.

Increase Your Rank

Upon meeting certain conditions, such as clearing enough missions with Gold ratings, you’ll be able to get tougher missions. These can go up to rank A, divided into A-1, A-2, and A-3. And seriously, those missions are no slouch. I thought my crafters were decent enough to handle these recipes, but all my syntheses ended in failure at first. And I’m certainly not alone, as many players have reported the same.

In what I can only assume is to make players engage with the crafting system more, the same item recipe can have differing durabilities, and some missions are way more strict in how they score your points. This does mean that if you decide to create a macro to help easen the process, it might not be 100% reliable compared to the currently available macros for Ishgard Restoration. This is especially true with the Expert Recipes, which cycle through many more “states” than your typical regular recipe, so there’s a tiny bit of RNG involved.

All Hands on Deck

Periodically, mech operation directives will sound out, which consist of missions that players must collaborate together to complete the mission within a given time limit. By spending 1000 Lunar Credits, you can also purchase a Pilot Application ticket from Alerot and submit for a chance to pilot a large mech in these quests. The only problem is that only up to five players can be selected to become pilots, and currently, with so many people applying for it, more often than not, you’ll get a message saying your application was not accepted.

Another mechanic is the Red Alerts, where critical missions will appear on your exotablet for 20 minutes, and will task crafters and gatherers to deliver as many items as quickly as possible to two drop-off points. These missions can give a lot of Lunar Credits in the process, and are very hectic. Currently, Red Alerts seem to happen roughly every 4 hours, and that did not stop players from creating in-game linkshells and even Discord server role pings to let others know when a Red Alert is about to happen in their specific World.

World-Based Progress

As more stellar missions are completed, the more the moon base will expand. This progress is shared across all players of a given World, with the Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone even having a dedicated section detailing everyone’s progress. As of the time of writing, my Home World, Adamantoise, has reached the sixth rank of the development phase, so the base looks very much developed compared to after the update came out. However, this does mean that if you’re only starting Cosmic Exploration now, you won’t get to see the base grow in real time, which I did find to be a bit of a shame.

Don’t get me wrong. You can always view cutscenes featuring with a fly-by camera of how the base looked before through the Infrastructure Index on your exotablet, and you can even read the Loporrit crew’s log on the base’s development through that menu as well. But still, I think it would’ve been nice if the instance visuals could change based on a player’s own progress, so they can experience the moon base change in real time, or at the very least, don’t feel like they’re missing out on it.

Improvements Compared to Ishgard Restoration

As someone who already had my gatherers and crafters on the maximum level, I had to reach out to a few friends who had yet to increase their levels, and overall, I’ve seen them obtain upwards of 2 million EXP with each mission, with some even getting one whole level in each mission. The jury’s still out on whether this will become the new best way for you to level up your crafters and gatherers, but Cosmic Exploration solves one major gripe I had with the Ishgard Restoration.

In order to craft the special recipes there, you had to go gather the materials yourself, process them at the NPC, and then use those to craft the recipes for each individual class. Buying them from the market board was possible, but that got alarmingly costly quickly. Thankfully, you never have to spend a single gil inside this zone. While there are higher-rank missions that expect you to go gather materials, then use them to craft the recipe, those are exclusively reserved for level 100, so you won’t even need to worry about them in your leveling journey.

With that said, I would also not completely dismiss Ishgard Restoration. Because you are required to have cleared the Endwalker expansion to even access this content, if you’re perhaps experiencing the game through the free trial, then this content is simply locked off behind a paywall, which makes Ishgard Restoration still a very accessible and compelling way to get your hands on crafting and gathering.

Cosmic Tool Research

With the release of Cosmic Exploration, we now have the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail set of crafter and gatherer tools, fittingly named the Cosmic Tools. How they work is pretty simple: Alongside your usual Cosmocredits and Lunar Credits rewards, you will also earn points towards the research level of the tool. Once you have enough analysis points accumulated, Researchway will give you that tool’s next step.

My favorite part about this relic is that analysis is accumulated even when you’re not using the tool, unlike past relics, which required the player to gather and craft with them equipped. Furthermore, completing one, three, and five relics respectively will grant three 50% EXP bonuses that stack on top of each other, up to a staggering 150% EXP bonus from your sixth relic onwards, making the grind much more doable.

Currently, the tools can become as strong as an Everseeker tool with a +8 CP materia, which isn’t too bad. They don’t have that signature relic shine…for now. But Square Enix has already announced that they’ll be expanding Cosmic Exploration with more planets to explore sometime in a future Patch 7.X, which means we’ll see many more missions, and most likely, this will also come with an advancement on the tools to become much stronger in the future.

Cosmic Exploration Is Really Fun

While it’s only been a few days since, I have been thoroughly enjoying Cosmic Exploration. It really feels like Square Enix took on the already-great Ishgard Restoration, but greatly improved it. And we’re not even done yet, for there are many other planets that will be added in future patches.

I understand that this might not be the content for players who aren’t too fond of the crafting and gathering mechanics, but the team isn’t finished just yet with Patch 7.2. Tune in next month, when we talk about Patch 7.25 and the new Field Exploration zone, Occult Crescent.