How (And Why) To Become A Mentor in Final Fantasy XIV
Final Fantasy XIV makes it easy to accessorize your character, but glamming up your display name requires great responsibility. Those little crowns you see next to certain players’ names indicate that they are Mentors, who are (in theory) experienced players who can show newer players the ropes in Eorzea. It’s a neat status symbol, and that alone may be enough for some to want to get the accolade. But aside from that, is there a point to becoming a Mentor in Final Fantasy XIV?
Well, those who achieve Mentor status do get a few perks. For jobs up to ten levels below the current expansion’s level cap, the biggest of these is an EXP bonus that will apply when a Mentor groups with players who have the New Adventurer (Sprout) or Returner status. (Note that this bonus only activates in preformed parties, so Mentors won’t gain any perks from joining a new player via Duty Roulette.) As well as gaining re-entry into the Novice Network, the chat channel dedicated to helping new players, there are a bunch of other benefits to becoming a Mentor, but believe me when I say you’ll have to work for them. Let’s get into how to become a Mentor.
How to become a Battle Mentor in Final Fantasy XIV
There are two paths you can take to become a Mentor. The more straightforward and significant of these is to become a Battle Mentor, which has the following requirements:
Complete 1,000 dungeons, raids, or trials
Receive 1,500 player commendations
Level a Tank, Healer, and DPS job to the current expansion’s level cap and complete their corresponding role quests.
Make no mistake, this is a hefty grind. However, you’ll clear dungeons and receive player commendations as you play, so you can passively hit these requirements. Leveling three jobs to max level takes time too, but to be fair, if you want to be a decent mentor you’ll need to know the basics of each role.
Once you meet these requirements, you’ll need to talk to The Smith. You can find this NPC inside the Adventurer’s Guild of Gridania, Ul’dah, or Limsa Lominsa.
If you want to achieve Battle Mentor status ASAP, here are some tips to help you out.
1) The first prerequisite is linked to the achievement Dungeon Master. If you want to know how close you are to hitting that milestone, search for that name in the achievement menu to see your progress.
2) If you’ve never played tank or healer roles in Final Fantasy XIV, you should start with level 1 classes so you can learn the ropes. However, if you feel confident and just want to minimize the grind, consider using jobs that have the highest starting level. The “best” jobs in this regard will change as more are added to the game, but typically the last jobs listed in each subsection of the “Classes/Jobs” tab in the Character menu will be your best bets.
3) There’s no guaranteed way to get player commendations, aside from just being good at the game. Speaking anecdotally, tanks and healers typically receive more player commendations. If you’re playing a ranged DPS class, using a limit break in dungeons on especially large groups of enemies tends to garner player commendations as well. Otherwise, just have a good attitude while you play and stick around for a minute after each dungeon to give other players a chance to commend you (if they want to).
How to become a Trade Mentor in Final Fantasy XIV
If becoming a Battle Mentor sounds like too much of a grind, you can opt to become a Trade Mentor instead. To be clear, even if this is a different variety of grind, it’s still a grind. You’ll need to meet the following requirements:
Gather or catch 300 collectibles
Synthesize 100 collectibles
Level at least one gathering class to the current expansion’s level cap
Level at least one crafting class to the current expansion’s level cap
Once again, these requirements require hard work, but a lot of it is work that comes naturally as you play. You’ll want to craft and gather a ton of collectibles after you hit level 50 with any crafter or gatherer, both for experience points and endgame currency. Also, the many Custom Deliveries NPC questlines you can unlock after finishing Heavensward require turning in collectibles. If gathering and crafting bore you to tears, hitting the Trade Mentor requirements will feel like a chore. But if you really enjoy this part of the game, you’ll naturally hit these goals over time, making this a natural choice for a Mentor path.
Like the Battle Mentor requirements, the collectible milestones correspond to the achievements I Collected That 1 and I Made That (Worth Collecting) 1. Check those if you want to see your progress.
Also, yes, Trade Mentors can still get that EXP bonus when grouping up with New Adventurers and Returners. Your crown next to your name will look a little different, though, in case that matters to you.
How to unlock Mentor Roulette
Okay, so you’ve become a Mentor. Now what? Well, if you became a Battle Mentor, you’ll see Mentor Roulette appear in the Duty Roulette. However, you’ll need to clear an enormous number of duties to properly unlock it; way more than any other roulette in the game. While the goalposts for Mentor Roulette change with nearly every major update, your requirements to unlock it will consist of clearing the following:
Every dungeon (excluding those outside the duty finder system, such as deep dungeons or criterion dungeons)
Every normal and hard mode trial
Every extreme trial, excluding those from the current expansion
Every guildhest
Every alliance raid
Every normal mode raid (excluding the Coils of Bahamut)
If you’re a Mentor and you don’t know what you need to clear to unlock Mentor Roulette, your first line of business is what any Final Fantasy XIV player should do: clear the main story. After that, you’ll want to scour every overworld area and check for any lingering quests with a “+” marker, since those lead to unlockables that may involve new dungeons or trials. That’s a big ask for sure, but you’ll want to clear all those quests regardless of the Mentor Roulette.
If you’re still missing requirements, there are two questlines with unique trial battles that players can easily miss. The first is the initial step of the Relic Weapon questline in A Realm Reborn, which contains two unique trials. You’ll clear these as part of the A Relic Reborn quest. The second is the long-running Hildibrand series of quests that begins in A Realm Reborn, which features unique trial battles even in the Stormblood and Endwalker expansions.
Let’s talk about extreme trials in the Mentor Roulette
Mentor Roulette is the only roulette that contains extreme trials, and clearing these is obviously no small feat. Fortunately, Unsynced/Undersized clears still count towards completion, so you can solo many of these by the time you achieve max level. You will need other players to help you clear the higher-level extreme trials, so you’ll need to use the Party Finder or ask players in your Free Company to help you out. Experienced players may want to help just to get your new player bonus.
As a cautionary reminder, you can roll any of these extreme trials once you use Mentor Roulette. And since you’ll have to complete these while level synced in this context, you will need to learn the mechanics of these fights. Anecdotally, the extreme trials you roll will predominantly consist of those from A Realm Reborn, presumably since players learn to use Party Finder or Discord to organize parties once they get into expansion content. So take some time to learn those fights, and accept you’ll really need to coordinate your party in encounters like The Striking Tree (Extreme). That is the responsibility of a Mentor, after all.
What are the benefits and rewards of Mentor Roulette?
On its own, Mentor Roulette only offers a paltry amount of endgame currency that you can earn once a day. You must use a max level class as well, so there’s no EXP to gain here like you’d find in the other roulettes. You can still grab the gear and tomestones you’d normally get from whatever instance you wind up rolling, but that’s it.
The real benefit of running Mentor Roulette comes from the I Hope Mentor Will Notice Me achievements. Each of these achievements after the first comes with a unique reward that you can’t get anywhere else.
Here are all the perks you can get, along with the number of Mentor Roulette clears you need to unlock them:
50: The Mentor title
200: The cosmetic headpiece Expeditioner’s Flyers
500: The Mentor of Mentors title
1,000: The cosmetic headpiece Dragon Monocle
2,000: The unique mount Astrope
Is running Mentor Roulette worth it?
This is a fairly subjective question, since your biggest rewards from Mentor Roulette are cosmetic. The Astrope mount is clearly the prize here; it remains one of the rarest mounts in the game, despite being introduced back in Heavensward. However, clearing Mentor Roulette 2,000 times is a massive grind. To put that number in perspective, if you ran Mentor Roulette daily, it would still take you about five and a half years to get Astrope.
Mentor Roulette is also inherently inconsistent. If you get lucky, you may roll a Guildhest and complete your Mentor Roulette duty in a few minutes. On the other hand, you could bash your head against an extreme trial for 90 minutes, or get one of the lengthy Main Scenario roulette duties. Again, the rewards from Mentor Roulette by themselves are paltry, so you are sacrificing other rewards in the game you could be chasing instead.
This isn’t to say that Mentor Roulette isn’t worth your time. It’s a system that lets experienced players help new adventurers, and the rewards should be seen as a thank you gift for helping out. In other words, if you have fun by lending a helping hand, then go chase those Mentor Roulette achievements. You could complete Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 in the time it’d take to earn Astrope, so I only recommend chasing this one to the most hardcore Final Fantasy XIV fans out there.
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