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Pagospedia – The Ultimate Guide to Eureka Pagos

Created by Mindari Dalir @ Ultros

Last Updated 8/23/2018 – Patch 4.36 +  8/21/2018 Hotfixes

1) Getting Started – Access to Pagos

In order to unlock Eureka Pagos, you must have completed all of the Eureka Anemos quests.  Which means you must at least be Elemental Level 17.

Once that is completed, there will be a new quest available called And We Shall Call It Pagos

from Rodney (POS X:8.5 Y:14.2 The guy you talk to when accessing Eureka, he’s hard to miss) on the Kugane Docks.  Talk to him and select the appropriate option to enter Eureka Pagos.

Once inside you’ll see Krile standing by the Aetheryte with the Pagos intro quest.  After a brief cutscene, the next quest won’t be available until Elemental Level 21. DON’T FORGET TO ATTUNE TO THE AETHERYTE!!!!

2) Getting Ahead – Progression in Pagos

Similar to Anemos, Pagos involves continuing to raise your Elemental Level.  The new cap is eLvl 35.  However progression here is a little different than it was in Anemos..  There’s still a FATE for every level and two at level 35, but this time the (now revived as of the latest hotfixes) FATE train will not be sufficient alone for getting your relic.  Expect to do a reasonable amount of light farming via EXP chaining as well.

3) Getting Around – Travel in Pagos

Not only is this place much more dangerous than running around Anemos, the environment itself is tricky to deal with.  There’s numerous one-way drop offs and you need to pay attention to what mobs aggro to what things. You will screw it up and miss a FATE.  You will get yourself killed.  It will be your fault.  Take a deep breath, get used to it, and roll with the punches.  It’ll all be ok once you’ve got that shiny new relic stick!

• The Map: https://ffxiv-eureka.com/maps/pagos.png Courtesy of Noranda La’luan (Excalibur) and the Eurekan Explorer’s Discord

In addition to the town, there are three other Aetherytes as well.  The one in the south central of the map can be attuned at level 21, the one in the northwest at level 30, and the one in the northeast at level 32.

Mounts are unlocked at eLvl 35.  Like last time, you must finish the storyline quests to unlock mount riding.

• Mob Aggro

Mob Type	How They Aggro
Ashkin (night spawn only)	Low health (sub 50%)
Elemental Sprites (extreme weathers only)	Casting magic nearby
Frozen Void Dragon (sleeping)	Sound (numpad / to walk)
Most plant monsters	Sound (numpad / to walk)
Val Griffin	True Sight (through NIN hide/etc)
Pretty much everything else	Sight

• One Way Drops

Western Drop– Around X 10, Y 21 by the Pagos Billygoats you’ll see a steep cliff with some ledges on it.  You must carefully drop down onto these from the northwest portion of the map. There are Three separate ledges to drop onto and they do not connect to each other.  Be very, very, very, very careful which one you’re falling onto as it’s a long run back.

The western-most drop leads to a cave with the Crystal Forge inside.  This is important for the Relic portion of Pagos.  There is a sleeping dragon on this path.

The center drop leads to the objective of the eLvl 29 storyline quest as well as the hidden cave to the Lab Minotaur camp and Brothers NM.  There is a Haunt that spawns on this path, beware jumping down at night.

The eastern-most drop is an empty ledge.  Grats, you just got trolled by SE.  At best you just wasted 5+ minutes of running, at worst you just missed the FATE.  And yes, even as a longtime FFXI player I’ve done it too. I did recommend that large drink be alcoholic in nature.

Central Drop- At the south end of the level 31 Happy Bunny FATE there’s a one-way dropoff right to the center of the south part of the map.  Super useful for getting back to the Aetheryte or running to the other Bunny FATE.

Eastern Drop- By the Anubys and Lesser Void Dragon mobs there’s another set of drops similar to the western set.  The west-most of these will take you to a cave where the Eye of Horus and Arch Angra Mainyu spawn, will the east-most will take you to the Louhi FATE area.  Again, beware of ashkin mobs and sleeping dragons at the bottom of these drops.

• Mutations and Adaptations

Many mobs in Pagos have a chance of either Mutating or Adapting.  In both cases, the mob gets MUCH larger and hits MUCH harder, and can also change the abilities of the mob.  Mutations also tend to change the element of the mob, which can lead to your DPS dropping off or your tank getting murdered if they don’t switch element ASAP.

Adapted/Mutated mobs give an EXP bonus as well as an increased chance for light to be rewarded.  Note that Adaptation/Mutation is also a casted ability and can be avoided by a well placed stun on the mob.

4) Getting Rewarded – Pagos Relic Weapons

The meat and potatoes of why we’re all in Eureka. Just like it’s Anemos predecessor, the Pagos weapons are a fairly straightforward affair that will take us through the entirety of our time in Pagos to achieve.

• Unlocking Relic Upgrades: Available at eLvl 25, the Pagos story questline will have Krile send you to speak to our good friend Gerolt on the other side of camp.  At this point Gerolt will give you his Nan’s old rusty tea kettle Aether Kettle and you’ll unlock this cool green meter under the Duty Timer!  He’ll then instruct you to Vitiate some Aether Crystals by collecting Aether from murdering beasties, sticking it in this here kettle, and then taking it to a Crystal Forge, which he doesn’t tell you where it is or how it works.  If it sounds kinda sketchy, that’s because it probably is, but when has Gerolt ever wanted us to do something that was on the up and up?  In fact, looking up the definition of the word “vitiate” makes it sound even sketchier.

• Gathering Aether: Filling the kettle is pretty much Light Farming 4.0.  FATEs in Pagos will always give you a decent amount of light (About 1/6th of a bar), and killing mobs also has a rare chance of giving you a small amount of light (About 1/20th to 1/10th of a bar).  The kettle can hold a max of Nine Vitiated Aether Crystals before it is full, at which point any further will be wasted until you go to the Crystal Forge and convert them into Frosted Protean Crystals.  An incomplete bar will roll over and keep your progress to the next full crystal when using the forge.  

Many groups at 35 will actually chain the sleeping dragons for light, as they are reported to already have a higher chance of dropping it, and mutate/adapt very often for increased light gains.

Don’t get hung up on the text, while “feeble” is the most common it still gives a reasonable amount of light.  You can get higher values of light  but unlike previous relic light farms there doesn’t seem to be any rotating phases where we can do anything to influence what tier of light we get.

• Gathering Pagos Crystals: Here’s your most likely bottleneck.  You need 500 Pagos Crystals in total.  They only come from FATEs, and only if you’re no more than one level below the level of the FATE.  Oh, and the low level fates give like 2-5, the mid level fates give like 9-12.  Even with the updated FATE spawn rates, you’re gonna shoot up to 35 and still be needing a *lot* more of these.  There is currently no way to convert Frosted Protean Crystals into Pagos Crystals either.

• Gathering Louhi Ice: The Pazuzu of the frozen wastes, spawned just like his predecessor via killing ghost mobs in the level 35+ cave.  You’ll need 5 ice total, and this time a Gold only gives two. Minimum three kills, but by now there’s enough 35s trying to spawn him that by the time you’re high enough to get credit it shouldn’t be too hard to get them all.

• Bringing It All Together:  This time the weapon is three steps, and once they’re unlocked at eLvl 25 you can go all the way to the end as soon as you have the materials (still need to be at least 34 for the Louhi Ice though).  If you put materia in your weapon don’t forget to remove it all before you turn it in for an upgrade!

Screenshots: Courtesy of /u/Perishhelix

Eureka Elemental Weapons from ffxiv

Step	Material One	Material Two	Reward
1	5 Frosted Protean Crystal		ilvl 360 weapon
2	10 Frosted Protean Crystal	500 Pagos Crystal	ilvl 365 weapon
3	16 Frosted Protean Crystal	5 Louhi Ice	ilvl 370 weapon

5) Getting Good – A Primer on Grinding Mobs

Now that we’ve established that you’re going to primarily be farming Frosted Protean Crystals  via murdering mobs to build EXP chains, the question becomes how do we do that efficiently?  Thankfully that’s actually pretty simple:

• The Train is (kinda) dead, Long live the Chain?  So the Train is kinda back after the 8/21 hotfixes?  NM exp was greatly boosted and spawn requirements for NMs were adjusted, but there’s still the standard respawn timer for FATEs in the zone, and you’re gonna need a *lot* more light than just what chaining FATEs will give you on the way to 35.  Even with the faster spawns you can easily go 20-30 minutes without seeing an NM spawn and if you’re a lower level it might also be one you can’t feasibly join anyway. If you really want to get through your Pagos progression the best strategy is still to chain mobs between NMs. If people just want to do NMs at first glance it seems to be a viable strategy again, however you’re gonna get hung up not having enough Frosted Protean Crystals unless you do a mix of both EXP chains *and* NM trains.

• Optimal group composition is 1 Tank, 1 Healer, and 6 DPS.  Job synergy is nice, but not mandatory and a group of 6 RDMs can still do just fine.  Some groups also prefer to take two healers to be safe as these mobs hit like absolute trucks and can easily two-shot a tank, but the reduction in DPS makes it a little harder to consistently hit Chain 30.  Tanks should *not* leave their tanking stance or they will get creamed. We’re not in Kansas anymore, a PLD in Sword Oath will get eaten alive here.

• Optimal level spread of players in the group should be no more than two.  This insures that everyone in the group will be both getting good exp AND participating effectively.  Three is tolerable, but EXP really drops off unless you’re hitting the sweet spot of levels and with a three level spread either you won’t be hitting those 30 chains due to low DPS or the people at the top will be getting meh exp per kill (~1.5k pre bonus compared to 3.8k pre bonus.)  If you do have a three level spread, you want the Healer to be the low-man, as eLVL does not affect heals in any way, shape, or form.

The good news for my fellow FFXI vets is that the Mob to Player exp ratio is calculated individually and not based on the highest person in the party.  So when one player dings, it doesn’t tank your experience gains and as they get considerably more effective at killing stuff, technically your exp efficiency went up!  The downside is that people who level out of the effective range of what you’re killing will often leave the group, as their rewards just got cut for the same amount of effort.  Keeping that 2 level party spread just makes it all a much smoother experience as often you’ll all start leveling around the same time and can move on to the next camp together.

• Optimal target mob level is your eLvl +5.  A group of eLvl 21s should be fighting level 26 mobs. Some groups like to do +6, but I find that at +6 unless your whole party has the Fairy buff, the tank is eventually gonna die, your DPS is struggling, and you’re not going to be hitting 30 chains.  Damage vs Mob Level scales considerably with even just one level of difference, an eLvl 20 will still do reasonable damage to a level 25 mob, but it will feel like they’re tickling a level 26 mob and they’ll be doing like 300 damage a hit against a level 27.  The slightly bigger EXP numbers simply aren’t worth the extra struggle, and the extra time for kills and number of broken chains most likely works out to a net negative exp/hour compared to +5s. That being said, if there’s only a couple people in your party who are 6 levels below the mob then go for it.  eLvl +4 is still decent experience as well and the mobs will feel like they’re melting, +3 or less is a waste of time.

• Let the Tank pull!  I know it feels like it, but this is not FFXI.  The BLM trying to be cute pulling a second mob and keeping it slept next to the group is far more likely to get you all killed than shave two seconds off your next chain.  A +5 mob will one-shot anyone who’s not a tank unless you get super lucky with damage variance, you’re losing more DPS in lost uptime dinking around with another mob’s positioning than you’re gaining by trying to help the tank, and when you eventually screw up and die you likely just broke the chain if it’s at 20+.  The Tank should wait until the mob your currently fighting is sub-10% then start moving to pick up the next one. Your DPS should have no problem bursting it down before the new mob does anything meaningfully dangerous.

• The Fairy is Love.  The Fairy is Life.  Back in Anemos nobody cared about the fairy because it doesn’t affect FATE exp rewards.  Here, it’s a Big ‘Effing Deal. It gives a 10% boost to kill exp AND bonus damage. A whole group with the fairy buff will be melting mobs and gaining sweet exp.  When one despawns, another one pops up very shortly after so there’s almost always one up. As long as it’s not totally on the other side of the map, get the fairy buff.  The extra ~5 minutes it takes to walk over and get the buff is more than made up for by the bonus EXP and damage.  (Note: The damage/regen buff CAN be clicked off, the EXP buff cannot.  You must wait for the EXP buff to fully wear off before you can refresh it at a new fairy).

• What about the Challenge Log?  Just like for normal leveling, it’s worth doing!  Good news is if you’re chaining, you’ll easily complete all of the “Kill X elemental” entries without any additional effort.  The other two are a little trickier, while the normal ones count as long as they’re no more than 2 levels below you, Ashkin and Sprites must be at least equal to your level which makes them difficult to solo and most people don’t chain off of them.

Ashkin: This refers to all of the night-only undead mobs.

Sprites: These are the elemental sprites that spawn during extreme weather.

A good tip for completing those two is to go back to Anemos, it still counts and they can be found in predictable places you’re much safer to reach.  Plus if anything goes wrong you can likely get a raise from the FATE train.

• Leave other people’s mobs alone, you’re not helping.  Forget everything you learned about the open world game outside of Eureka, the EXP penalties for other people hitting your tagged mobs are extreme and it actually matters here.  It doesn’t matter who tagged it first, if you even so much as breathe on someone else’s kill you will cut their exp by a massive amount. If your whole party starts wailing on it they’ll likely cut the credit so much that neither party gets anything for it and you just broke their chain.  They’re gonna yell at you. Don’t do it. If you think they’re gonna wipe and they need help, the best thing you can do is let them wipe and raise their healers so they can recover. Seriously, don’t mess with other peoples mobs. Just don’t.

That being said, this is also probably the most community focused piece of open world content we’re ever gonna get.  Be Courteous and others will do the same to you.  Things respawn fast here and each type of mob can generally support no more than three groups farming them at once.  The devs have done a solid job on mob placement here with this in mind, there’s usually at least three solid spots at each mob type for parties to safely stand and pull.  One group really only needs 4 mob spawns to keep the chain up, and if they’re killing fast enough to need more they’re likely better off going to the next level up mob anyway.  I hate that it even has to be said, but trying to muscle other groups out of their spot is a super dick move and please don’t do it. There really is tons of room for everyone in these instances, and fighting over spawns only serves for both parties to get really bad exp.

• A FATE popped, should we stay or should we go?  

Update 8/21 – As of the latest hotfixes, the answer is almost always YES, GO TO THE FATE!!!!

For reference, a full Chain 30 of +5 level mobs gives approximately 150k EXP and takes 20-22 minutes to complete.  FATEs in Pagos give approximately 100k-500k+ each (standard player level adjustments apply.) So a single FATE gives anywhere from a whole chain to multiple worth of EXP!  The only exception are the two Happy Bunny FATEs (Down the Rabbit Hole and Curiouser And Curiouser) that are almost always up, and give no EXP.

Now here’s the catch:  The train being back means that all the negatives of the train have come back with it, and this map is far harder to navigate and far more deadly than Anemos was.  Until you have access to all three Aetherytes, expect to miss most FATEs in the upper regions of the map. It’s a solid 6-8 minute walk from town to either section of the map, and the NM train is rarely ever going to wait that long before pulling.  Plus you still face some pretty steep EXP reductions for FATEs more than one level above you (often to the tune of 150k-250k less exp). This one’s gonna come down to using your best judgement and gauging the attitude of the current NM train players in your instance.  If they’re talking shit in shout and pulling less than a minute after the NM pops, don’t waste your time chasing after FATEs you have no chance of getting to.

• What should I be killing at each level?  There’s multiple types of mobs for each level range and you *can* fight whatever you want, but there’s a preferred camp for each level.  It’s usually whatever mob type spawns the NM for that level. One because yay NMs! Two because NM placeholder mobs cannot mutate or adapt.  While mutation/adaptation guarantees you light for your relic farm and gives bonus EXP, it’s also wildly unpredictable and can totally wreck your chain.  Not only do they get big and do more damage, but they can change element too. Suddenly your DPS is having a pillow fight and your tank is face down in the dirt.  Not great for EXP chains, but there’s a couple levels where you really don’t have a good alternative. See below for a list of the most popular mobs:

Mob Level	Name	Location	Notes
25	Yukinko	X 22, Y 27	NM placeholder
26	Val Mantis	X 25, Y 27	Adaptation
26	Demon of the Incunable	X 25, Y 27	Night only, NM placeholder
27	Blood Demon	X 30, Y 29	NM Placeholder
28	Val Worm	X 33, Y 27	NM Placeholder
29	Zombie Wyvern	X 33, Y 22	Adaptation
30	Blubber Eyes	X 28, Y 21	NM Placeholder
31	Huwasi	X 16, Y 15	NM Placeholder
32	Wandering Opken	X 11, Y 11	NM Placeholder
33	Pagos Billygoat	X 11, Y 19	CLEAVES! NM Placeholder
34	Val Snipper	X 9, Y 15	NM Placeholder
35	Val Minotaur	X 13, Y 19	Hidden cave, NM Placeholder
36	Elder Buffalo	X 26, Y 17	NM Placeholder
37	Lesser Void Dragon	X 30, Y 19	NM Placeholder
38	Pagos Anubys	X 30, Y 20	Mutation
39	Escaped Tyrannosaur	X 35, Y 16	Mutation

6) Getting Good(ies)? – FATEs in the Wasteland

Hey man, naming things is harder than it seems.  FATEs in Pagos are still being researched, but we do have some reasonable preliminary information on how to spawn most of them.

• Your Level +1.  You’ll only get Pagos Crystals and Pagos Lockboxes from FATEs that are no higher than your eLvl +1.  Anything higher will still give you fantastic experience (normal FATE level diminishing returns apply), but none of those sweet, sweet crystals.

• Why didn’t Hakutaku give me Gold?  Hakutaku is a special FATE with a special reward.  Unless you have a Hakutaku Eye Cluster in your inventory, you can only get a max of Silver on this FATE.  Good news is that Silver still gives comparable EXP and crystals/boxes to the other FATES in that level range so it’s still 100% worth doing.  However, having the Eye Cluster earns you a fancy Optical Hat item with Eureka-only stats on it.  Yes, it’s still as fugly as it was in FFXI, but the stats are outrageous.  The Eye Cluster is consumed in the process, so if you want another gold you need to farm another one up.  The Hakutaku Eye Cluster is a crafted item (Level 60 Alchemist, difficulty 956) made out of one of each of the eyes (Wooden, Burning, Earthen, Golden, Damp) that are rare rewards from the Happy Bunny treasure hunts and/or Cold-Warped Lockboxes from the Arch Angra Mainyu FATE.

• Other Cool Rewards!?!?  Similar to the FFXI throwback items from Anemos, King Arthro has a chance to give Speed Belt, Cassie has a chance to give Cassie’s Earrings, and Hadhayosh can give either Behemoth Horns or Pelts which can be traded in for class unrestricted versions of the ARR Behemoth FATE rewards.  Aside from the Hakutaku Eye Cluster guaranteed Optical Hat, all this stuff has super low drop rates.

• Placeholders and Spawn Conditions.  As with Anemos, *most* NMs require a random number of placeholder mobs to be killed before they spawn.  Some also require specific weather conditions to be met. That being said, the devs themselves have stated that there are special spawn conditions for some of them beyond just placeholder mob kills, and I’ve personally witnessed things spawning differently.  For example, my party was the only party killing Lab Minotaurs and the NM spawned on top of us while we were actively fighting a Minotaur, nearly a full minute after our previous kill. I’ve also personally witnessed NMs popping on top of my groups the second a kill was made.  Beware what you read, as there’s a lot of inaccurate information out there claiming to be fact and the bottom line is at the time of this writing we really don’t 100% know spawn conditions for some of these NMs.

See here for an unofficial list of FATE spawn conditions: http://bit.ly/pagosNM

7) Getting Bunnies – What’s The Deal With These Rabbits?

The bunnies are… interesting?  They don’t give EXP/Crystals/Lockboxes, but each time you successfully complete one of these two FATES, you have a chance to be rewarded with a key item that summons a Happy Bunny.  The bunny will lead you on a treasure hunt, ultimately rewarding you with a box full of goodies. Sometimes it’s junk, sometimes it’s valuable crafting materials, sometimes it’s unique Pagos rewards (minions/mounts/lockbox exclusive stuff/etc).

If all you care about is the Relic, then these are totally skippable.  But if you want all the minions/glamour/etc then expect to spend a good deal of time with the Happy Bunnies.

8) Getting Tricky – Tips and Tricks and Known Issues

• Summoners and Astros can break your chain.  At the time of this writing (8/20/18), there are two soul-crushing known bugs.  If a Summoner Pet lands the killing blow on a mob, no experience will be awarded.  Likewise, if an Astrologian gets the killing blow with Earthly Star. It’s unconfirmed whether or not MCH turrets share the same issue, I have not personally seen or heard of it happening but also MCH is the least played class ever so who knows?  UPDATE 8/21/18: This is in the patch notes as being fixed.

• Something Mysterious can break your chain.  Not sure if this was just the above bug before we knew what caused it or what, but chains were mysteriously just breaking.  I will say that in 6+ hours of chaining in Pagos yesterday we did not encounter this once, so either it’s the above and we knew how to avoid it or it was something else that was already hotfixed.  UPDATE 8/21/18: I have not personally seen this happen and have heard no reports of this happening since the hotfixes either.

• We still have crowd control spells for a reason!  Aggro reset leashing is extended in this zone, things will chase you down for what seems like forever.  However, if you put it to sleep or bind it, you can usually safely make it out of range for it to reset before you eat dirt.  Note that some things still are outright immune to bind/sleep, so be careful. This is especially useful on those pesky sleeping dragons, put them to sleep for real and run right past instead of walking!

9) Getting Finished – A Pagos Post-mortem

While I’m admittedly one of the dozen people who actually enjoy Pagos, there’s been enough This Place SUX/This Place ROX debates to choke a horse already and I’m not doing that here.  However, I will ask what I feel is a really important question, which is What are we missing here?  What’s next for Eureka?

The devs finally changed up the content release schedule in Stormblood, and Eureka was delayed twice before it finally hit live servers.  Love it or hate it, it’s clear the dev team put a considerable amount of time and effort into these zones, far beyond previous relic quests that ultimately boiled down to “re-run a bunch of old content thousands and thousands of times.”  This is going to be at least three full, unique zones with unique mechanics, leveling systems, and design/balance issues.  This is absolutely huge as far as content goes. However, Anemos gave us your traditional “Relic as a catch-up” phase of content and I thought the armor set was a really interesting ilvl relevant alternative to grinding out uncapped tomes for players catching up.

Yet here we are in Pagos and there’s no new armor, just new weapons.  Not only that, but they only go up to i370 when the same patch simultaneously unlocked farming gears for the tomestone weapons and Sigmascape Savage gear locks!  We’ve already had 365 Tsukuyomi weapons for months, and this is a ton of grind for what can’t even honestly be considered an alternative to the tomestone weapon.  This thing is gonna get outclassed in a month or two with the next major content patch, so what gives?  I don’t personally believe the dev team is out of touch with their own content release plans, nor do I believe that it was so delayed that they just pushed it out the door anyway, so what’s left is that we as players are missing something here.

They’ve said the next part will have new armor as well as a new weapon, but anyone paying attention to the Eureka storyline also knows that a third and final open world zone is not the end of the Eureka storyline.  There’s still the remnants of the buildings behind the shield to explore as well as what appears to be a Primal locked up inside.  Thematically it also follows the four vile fiends.  Smart money says this is going to cap off with a unique dungeon and a unique trial, but there’s no way they’re going to fully lock content that important behind this much optional content.  The last time they made that mistake was back in ARR with the Manderville trials being required to unlock Trial Roulette, but even that wasn’t anywhere near this level of player time investment.

I dunno where Eureka will be taking us next but I can’t help but feel like we don’t have the full picture in front of us.  Who knows, maybe the next Eureka zone isn’t as far off from release as we’d normally expect. Fanfest announcements should be juicy this year!