Dungeon, trial and raid drops that are actually worth gil

Quick answer: Older dungeons, trials, and raids can be run solo or unsynced to farm tradeable loot — mounts, minions, orchestrion rolls, and materials that still sell. The gil comes from duties whose drops remain in demand, so check an item's real sale price before farming, and note that some content can't be unsynced. Rank duties by what their drops are worth now.

Old content is the most under-farmed gil source in Final Fantasy XIV. Duties you outgrew years ago still drop minions, orchestrion rolls, materials and glamour that players are still buying — and at current levels you can walk through most of them alone, at speed, keeping everything that drops.

Why old duties pay

Every drop that's tradeable has a supply problem: the only people generating it are the handful still running content nobody is queueing for. Demand, meanwhile, never really stops — new players, returning players, and collectors all want the same minions and rolls. Thin supply plus steady demand is the whole trade.

The practical advantage is that you can enter old duties unsynced, which strips the level restriction and lets a current-level character clear a four-player dungeon solo in a few minutes. No party to split loot with, no queue, and you can do it while half-watching something else.

What's tradeable and what isn't

This is where most farming plans die. A rough rule:

• Usually tradeable: minions, orchestrion rolls, crafting materials, dyes, older gear, and most coffer contents from past expansions.
• Never tradeable: current-tier raid gear and tokens, anything bound on pickup, and most rewards tied to progression.
• It depends: mounts — some are freely sellable and extremely valuable, others are bound. Check before you commit to a hundred runs.

Our Drops by Location tool only shows drops that can actually be sold. It covers 244 duties — 101 dungeons, 57 trials and 86 raids — and every duty whose drops are entirely untradeable is simply left out, so nothing on the list is a dead end.

How to value a run

The instinct is to look at the most expensive item in a loot table and multiply. That's how people end up farming a trial forty times for something that has sold twice this month.

Two adjustments make the number real:

• Price by recent sales, not by the cheapest listing. Listings are polluted in both directions — gil-capped troll listings at the top, panic dumps at the bottom. What the item has recently sold for is the only honest figure.
• Weight by drop rate and by how fast you clear. A 200,000 gil minion at a rare drop rate, in a duty you clear in four minutes, can easily lose to a pile of common materials.

Picking a duty

• Favour short clears. Gil per hour is the metric, and a compact dungeon you finish in three minutes beats a sprawling one with better drops.
• Check for gates. Some duties can't be entered unsynced or solo, and some trials have mechanics that don't care how overlevelled you are.
• Prefer several decent items over one jackpot. A broad loot table pays you something every run; a single rare drop pays you nothing for a long time and then a lot, which is much harder to sustain.
• Watch the fashion cycle. Glamour and minion prices move when a content creator or a patch puts something back in the spotlight. Re-check before a long grind.

Don't forget the junk

The untradeable gear filling your bags on the way through isn't worthless. It's Grand Company Expert Delivery fodder, or desynthesis material. A farming run that also fills a seal balance is earning twice, and both conversions are things you'd otherwise pay gil for.

Related tools

Put this into practice with live market-board prices for your world:

• Duty drops
• Mob farming
• Gathering profits

See what each duty drops → Gil without crafting →

XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.