Tomestones in Plain English

Tomestones are a currency you earn from a wide range of activities—roulettes, dungeons, raids, PvP, and sometimes open-world systems. The point isn’t to force you into one grind. The point is to reward whatever content you already enjoy while giving you predictable gearing progress.

Tomestones solve three common FFXIV pain points:

• Bad luck protection: If the chest piece never drops for you, tomestones still move you forward.
• Alt job gearing: You can gear multiple roles without repeating the same dungeon 50 times.
• Catch-up power: If you return after a break, tomestones are one of the fastest ways to become “duty-ready” again.

Think of tomestones as your “progress guarantee.” Random drops are a bonus. Tomestones are the plan.

The Three Tomestone Types You’ll See

Most of the time, tomestones fall into three practical buckets:

• Evergreen tomestones (Poetics): These stick around long-term and are mainly used to buy older expansion gear and useful materials. Poetics are the “leveling and catch-up” tomestone.
• Uncapped current-era tomestones: These are earned freely with no weekly limit. They’re used for catch-up gear, crafting materials, and transitional gearing.
• Weekly-capped current-era tomestones: These are the “main progression” tomestone, tied to your weekly limit. This is usually your most valuable currency for staying current at the endgame gear curve.

Even if you never remember the names, you can always recognize them by behavior:

• If you can farm it endlessly → uncapped.
• If it stops giving you more that week → capped.
• If it’s used for older expansion sets → Poetics.

Current Tomestones and What They’re For

The names of tomestones rotate across patch cycles, but the structure stays consistent: one is weekly-capped, one is uncapped, and Poetics remains as the legacy/catch-up option.

As of the Dawntrail patch cycle, a common setup has included:

• Allagan Tomestones of Poetics (legacy/catch-up)
• Allagan Tomestones of Mathematics (uncapped in later patches of the cycle)
• Allagan Tomestones of Mnemonics (weekly-capped in the cycle where it’s current)

What matters most isn’t memorizing the names—it’s understanding what each one does in your gearing plan:

• Weekly-capped tomestones are your best “steady power” currency. You want to spend these on the biggest upgrades first, because you can only earn so many per week.
• Uncapped tomestones are your catch-up fuel. They help you raise your average item level quickly, gear alts, and sometimes buy valuable materials.
• Poetics are your leveling backbone. They buy older “best-in-era” sets for previous expansions, which can dramatically smooth leveling from one expansion bracket to the next.

If you’re ever unsure which is which, open your Currency window and look at:

• Which tomestone shows a weekly limit meter
• Which one you can keep earning with no weekly restriction
• Which one is clearly tied to older vendors and older gear sets

Weekly Caps and the 2,000 Carry Limit

Tomestones have two “limits” you need to respect:

• Weekly cap (for the current weekly-capped tomestone): You can only earn a certain number per week.
• Carry limit (for each tomestone type): You can typically hold up to 2,000 of a tomestone at once.

These limits shape your entire strategy:

• If you hit the weekly cap early, you can stop “chasing tomestones” and play what you actually want.
• If you hit the 2,000 carry limit, any extra earned can be wasted—so you should spend before you cap out.

A stress-free habit:

• Check your weekly tomestone meter once per play session and set a simple target: “I want to reach cap this week” or “I want 300 this week.”
• Spend uncapped tomestones when you approach 2,000 so you don’t waste rewards.

Tomestones reward consistency, not marathon grinding. The cap is there to protect you from feeling forced to play nonstop.

Where Tomestones Come From

If you want to farm efficiently, you need to know the “big buckets” of tomestone income:

• Duty Roulette bonuses (daily): The most time-efficient tomestones for most players, because daily bonuses are chunky.
• Endgame dungeons and roulette pools: Repeatable, predictable, and generally stable.
• Raids (normal and alliance) and trials: Often strong if you like boss-focused content.
• PvP daily bonuses: Great for players who want variety or want to avoid dungeon fatigue.
• Hunts and certain open-world systems: Excellent for players who prefer open-world play or want to combine tomestones with upgrade materials.
• Seasonal events (like special tomestone events): These don’t replace regular tomestones, but they can be “bonus value” for cosmetics and collections.

The best approach is not “do everything.” It’s: choose 2–3 sources that match your time and mood, then stop.

The Fastest Tomestone Farming Methods

Efficient tomestone farming usually comes from stacking three concepts:

1. Daily bonuses first
2. Daily roulette bonuses give the biggest “instant progress” per minute. If you’re trying to be efficient, you start here.
3. Short, repeatable content second
4. After daily bonuses, you pick content that:

• pops quickly in queue
• finishes quickly
• gives consistent tomestones

1. Low-friction variety third
2. Variety matters because burnout is the real enemy. A slightly “less optimal” method that you enjoy often beats the “most optimal” method you hate—because you’ll actually keep doing it.

If you want one simple rule:

• Do 1–2 roulettes, then farm a short duty you don’t mind repeating.

That strategy caps most weekly tomestones smoothly over a week without feeling like a grind.

Daily Routine Plans: 15 Minutes, 45 Minutes, 90 Minutes

Here are practical routines you can copy-paste into your real life.

15-Minute Tomestone Plan

Goal: Get meaningful progress even on busy days.

• Run one roulette that gives strong tomestones at your current stage.
• If you get a fast duty, great. If it’s longer, accept it as your “one duty day.”
• Spend tomestones if you’re near the 2,000 carry cap.

If you only have time for one thing, doing one high-value roulette consistently beats sporadic long grind sessions.

45-Minute Tomestone Plan

Goal: Stay caught up steadily.

• Run two roulettes that match your goal (currency-focused at cap, or hybrid if leveling).
• If queues are fast: add one short repeatable duty afterward.
• If queues are slow: queue and do a productive activity while waiting (inventory cleanup, crafting, gathering, maps, etc.).

This plan is the sweet spot for most players because it delivers progress without taking over your day.

90-Minute Tomestone Plan

Goal: Make a big dent in the weekly cap.

• Run your two best roulettes.
• Then do a 30–45 minute farm block of your preferred repeatable content.
• Finish by spending tomestones and updating gear sets so your next session is smooth.

The key is the “farm block.” Pick one duty type and commit for 30–45 minutes instead of bouncing between ten activities.

Queue-Time Hacks for DPS (So You Don’t Lose Hours)

DPS players can absolutely farm tomestones efficiently—you just need to stop treating queue time as dead time.

Best habits:

• Queue first, then do something productive immediately.
• If you’re waiting, run FATEs, do gather loops, craft consumables, clean inventory, or work on a side goal like relic steps.
• Use “Join Party in Progress” when you’re okay with filling an ongoing duty. This can reduce queue time and still counts for roulette completion.
• Pick roulette categories that tend to pop faster.
• Trials and normal raids often feel quicker than long dungeon chains, depending on your region and time of day.
• Play the “role swap” strategy if you enjoy it.
• If you have a tank or healer geared, you can farm tomestones quickly on that role, then spend them on your DPS set. This is one of the most efficient “time-to-tomestones” tricks in the game.

Efficiency isn’t just rewards—it’s also minimizing friction. If queues frustrate you, build a routine that makes waiting feel productive.

Hunts and Open-World Tomestones

If you enjoy open-world gameplay, hunts can be a powerful tomestone companion because they often provide:

• steady tomestone income (depending on the patch cycle and which hunt tiers you do)
• upgrade materials in certain phases of the patch cycle
• extra rewards like seals/currency, which can translate into gear, materia, or other useful items

Open-world tomestone farming is especially attractive if:

• you dislike repeating the same dungeon
• you want to combine tomestones with upgrade materials
• you like social “train” gameplay (large groups moving zone-to-zone)

Practical hunt strategy:

• Treat hunts as a weekly booster, not a daily obligation.
• Use hunts when you’re short on weekly progress or when you’re hunting upgrade items.
• Don’t force hunts if you don’t enjoy them—the best farm is the one you’ll keep doing.

PvP Tomestones: The Best “Different Kind of Grind”

PvP can be a surprisingly efficient way to earn tomestones if you’re willing to do it casually.

Why PvP works well for tomestones:

• It breaks dungeon fatigue.
• Daily PvP challenges can deliver strong rewards.
• You can contribute meaningfully without being a PvP expert by focusing on objectives and staying with your team.

A low-stress PvP approach:

• Do one daily PvP match on days you feel like it.
• Treat it as “bonus tomestones + variety,” not a requirement.
• If PvP stresses you out, skip it—tomestones have many paths.

Raids and Weekly Efficiency

Raids matter for tomestone efficiency in two ways:

1. They’re often fast tomestone sources (boss-focused duties can be quicker than long dungeons).
2. They pair well with tomestone gear progression because raid tokens and tomestone purchases often complement each other.

A smart weekly pattern for players who like raids:

• Use roulettes and repeatable farms to earn tomestones.
• Use normal raid tokens to fill gaps or target specific slots.
• If you do Savage, plan tomestone purchases around what you’re likely to obtain from raid drops.

The most efficient gearing comes from not doubling up on the same slot. If you’re likely to win a raid chest piece this week, spending weekly-capped tomestones on chest first might be inefficient. Tomestones are best when they cover what luck isn’t giving you.

Spending Tomestones Without Regret

Tomestones feel plentiful until you realize the best gear pieces cost a lot—and weekly-capped tomestones are limited. Spending efficiently is where most “caught up” players separate themselves from “always behind” players.

Here are the most important spending principles:

• Spend weekly-capped tomestones on big upgrades first.
• Those are the pieces with the biggest stat budget (and the pieces that take longest to replace).
• Use uncapped tomestones to fix weak slots quickly.
• If your average item level is blocked by one weak ring, uncapped tomestones are perfect for quick repairs to your gear set.
• Don’t buy small upgrades that you’ll replace tomorrow.
• If a patch cycle gives you a clear upgrade path (augments, tokens, raids), don’t waste capped currency on a piece you’ll replace quickly.
• Weapon upgrades are huge, but often have extra requirements.
• In many cycles, tomestone weapons require an additional item or token. Plan ahead so you don’t sit at cap with “almost enough” but missing the extra piece.

The Best Purchase Order for Most Players

If you want a reliable purchase order that works for most jobs and most patch cycles, use this:

1. Weapon (if available and realistically obtainable)
2. If the tomestone weapon is gated behind extra tokens, you may plan this as a “save toward weapon” goal rather than a first purchase.
3. Chest and Legs
4. These typically give large stats for the cost.
5. Head / Hands / Feet
6. Solid upgrades, usually cheaper than chest/legs.
7. Accessories
8. Accessories can be powerful collectively, but each one is a smaller jump than armor pieces.

Two big exceptions:

• If you need to meet a duty’s average item level requirement, accessories can be the fastest way to raise your average quickly.
• If your weakest slot is dramatically behind, fixing the weakest slot first can be smarter than following a strict order.

Efficient spending is not rigid. It’s prioritized. Your goal is the biggest improvement per limited currency.

Gearing Efficiently at Level Cap: The Tomestone Ladder

If you’re freshly at level cap or returning after a break, the “tomestone ladder” is your best friend.

A practical tomestone ladder looks like this:

• Step 1: Become duty-ready
• Use uncapped tomestones (and accessible gear sources like crafted gear or dungeon drops) to reach a stable average item level quickly.
• Step 2: Start weekly-capped tomestone progress
• Do a small daily routine and build toward weekly cap over time.
• Step 3: Replace your biggest weak slots first
• Use weekly-capped purchases to fix chest/legs and plan weapon progress.
• Step 4: Upgrade tomestone gear when augmentation becomes accessible
• Later in a tier, upgrade items become easier to obtain through more casual content. That’s when tomestone gear becomes extremely efficient.
• Step 5: Fill gaps with targeted content
• If one slot refuses to cooperate (bad RNG), tomestones or raid tokens solve it.

The ladder works because it respects reality:

• You can’t gear everything instantly.
• You shouldn’t rely on RNG alone.
• Weekly limits mean planning matters.

Upgrade Paths: How “Augmented” Tomestone Gear Fits In

Many patch cycles include an upgrade system where the base tomestone gear can be augmented into a higher item level version using specific upgrade items.

Why this matters:

• Tomestone gear becomes “double value.”
• You don’t just buy the piece—you upgrade it later and extend its lifespan.
• It’s a smooth catch-up tool.
• Players who don’t raid Savage can still reach strong gear levels by combining weekly tomestones with accessible upgrade sources that appear later in the cycle.
• It changes what you should buy first.
• If you know you can upgrade chest and legs soon, those pieces become even more attractive as early purchases.

Practical augmentation strategy:

• Buy the pieces you know you’ll keep and upgrade.
• Don’t waste capped tomestones on pieces you’ll replace with a raid drop before you ever augment them.
• If you’re not doing Savage, plan your upgrades around the sources you actually enjoy (alliance raids, hunts, or other patch-provided upgrade paths).

The best gearing is always “what you’ll realistically do,” not “what’s theoretically optimal.”

Alt Job Gearing With Tomestones

Tomestones are one of the best systems in the game for gearing alt jobs, but you can waste a lot of time if you try to gear ten jobs at once.

A clean alt job plan:

• Pick one alt job (or one role) as your priority.
• Use your uncapped tomestones to get it duty-ready quickly.
• Use weekly-capped tomestones to raise it to a stable endgame baseline over a few weeks.
• Once that job is stable, move to the next.

If you want to gear multiple jobs efficiently, gear by role:

• Gearing one tank helps all tanks share some gearing logic and makes you comfortable with role-based loot.
• Gearing one healer makes it easier to transition to other healers.
• DPS gear splits more, but you can still reduce clutter by focusing on one DPS role type at a time.

Alt job tomestone spending tip:

• If you’re not sure you’ll stick with a job, don’t spend weekly-capped tomestones on it yet. Gear it with uncapped options first, test the playstyle, then commit.

Poetics: The Best Things to Buy (So You Stop Capping and Wasting Them)

Poetics are the most common “I’m capped and don’t know what to buy” problem. The solution is to treat Poetics as a toolbox:

• Best-in-era leveling gear for older expansions
• Poetics gear sets can make leveling dramatically smoother at expansion breakpoints.
• Relic weapon materials (for older relic journeys)
• If you like collection goals, Poetics often buy materials that remove grind friction.
• Quality-of-life and collection items
• Orchestrion rolls, materials, and other items can turn “wasted Poetics” into something you actually enjoy.

A practical Poetics routine:

• If you’re leveling alts: keep one Poetics set ready for the next expansion bracket you’ll enter.
• If you’re not leveling: spend Poetics on long-term projects (relic materials or collection items) instead of letting them cap and overflow.

Poetics are not “less important.” They’re just a different type of value: they smooth leveling and collections rather than pushing the very latest endgame gear.

Avoiding Waste: Common Tomestone Mistakes

These mistakes are why players farm a lot but still feel behind:

• Capping at 2,000 and wasting tomestones
• Fix: Spend before you hit the cap. Even buying a temporary piece is better than losing currency.
• Buying five accessories first because they’re cheaper
• Fix: Unless you need average item level fast, big pieces usually give better power per limited currency.
• Buying gear you’ll replace immediately
• Fix: Check your realistic upgrade path. If you’re doing weekly raids, don’t double-buy the same slot.
• Farming only one method you hate
• Fix: Mix your sources. The best routine is sustainable.
• Trying to cap weekly tomestones in one day
• Fix: Spread it out. Two short sessions on multiple days often feels easier than one long grind.
• Not planning the weapon requirement
• Fix: If the weapon needs an extra token or item, start that plan early so your tomestones don’t sit unused.

Tomestones reward planning more than raw hours.

Tomestone Plans for Different Player Types

Use the plan that matches your goal, not someone else’s.

Casual Player Plan

Goal: Stay current without chores.

• 2–4 days per week: do 1–2 roulettes you enjoy.
• Spend weekly-capped tomestones on big pieces as you earn them.
• Ignore full weekly cap unless you truly want faster progression.

Returning Player Plan

Goal: Become duty-ready fast.

• Use uncapped tomestones + easy gear sources to raise average item level quickly.
• Then build a weekly routine: one daily roulette + one short farm block once per week.
• Spend weekly-capped tomestones on chest/legs first unless your weakest slot blocks your queue eligibility.

Alt Job Leveler Plan

Goal: Gear multiple jobs without chaos.

• Pick one alt job at a time.
• Use uncapped tomestones to get it duty-ready.
• Use weekly-capped tomestones only after you’re sure you like the job.

Endgame Progression Plan

Goal: Efficient power gains.

• Hit weekly cap most weeks (or close to it).
• Plan purchases around raid drops/tokens.
• Focus on pieces that will be augmented later for extra value.
• Avoid impulse buys that break your upgrade path.

You stay caught up by choosing a plan and repeating it, not by doing everything.

BoostRoom: Faster Tomestone Progress With Less Grind

If tomestones feel confusing—or you keep farming but don’t feel your character getting stronger—BoostRoom can help you turn tomestones into a clear weekly plan that fits your time, your role, and your goals.

BoostRoom can help you:

• Pick the best tomestone farms for your schedule (short sessions vs long sessions)
• Build a weekly cap plan that doesn’t require marathon grinds
• Create a spending order tailored to your job and your current weak slots
• Plan around weapon requirements and upgrade paths so you don’t stall
• Set up an alt job gearing roadmap so you gear multiple roles efficiently without wasting capped currency

The goal is simple: you log in, you do what’s worth it, you see progress, and you still have time left to actually enjoy the game.

FAQ

What are tomestones used for in FFXIV?

Tomestones are exchanged for gear, upgrade materials, and certain items depending on the tomestone type. Weekly-capped tomestones usually buy the strongest predictable gear in a cycle, while Poetics mainly buy older expansion gear and materials.

What’s the difference between Poetics and other tomestones?

Poetics are the legacy tomestone used for older expansion gear and many useful materials. Current-era tomestones rotate each patch cycle, with one typically being weekly-capped for endgame progression.

What is the weekly tomestone cap and why does it exist?

The weekly cap limits how many of the current progression tomestones you can earn in a week. It keeps gearing paced so you don’t feel forced to grind endlessly and helps maintain a steady progression curve.

How do I farm tomestones quickly without burning out?

Do daily roulette bonuses first, then farm one short repeatable duty you don’t mind repeating. Mix in PvP or hunts if you want variety. Consistency beats marathon sessions.

What should I buy first with weekly-capped tomestones?

In most cases: weapon (if realistically obtainable), then chest/legs, then the other armor pieces, then accessories. If you need to raise average item level quickly to enter duties, accessories can be a faster short-term fix.

How do I avoid wasting tomestones at the 2,000 cap?

Spend before you reach 2,000. Buy gear for alts, buy upgrade materials, or convert Poetics into long-term projects. Don’t let currency overflow and disappear.

Are tomestone weapons always the best first upgrade?

Weapons are usually the biggest power gain, but tomestone weapons often require extra items or tokens depending on the patch cycle. Plan for that requirement so you don’t stall.

Can I gear multiple jobs with tomestones efficiently?

Yes, but it’s easiest if you gear one job (or one role) at a time. Use uncapped tomestones for quick entry gearing, then use weekly-capped tomestones once you’re sure the job is a keeper.