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A White Mage's Guide: Tomestones and the House of Splendors

If You're sub-50, you won't have to worry too much about this yet. But for those of you just cresting that beautiful 5-0, you've probably heard about and been confunded by Tomestones. What are they? Why do they keep changing? Who's this Rowena person everyone's terrified of?

Well, look no further.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Bane of your existence.

Rowena runs the House of Splendors, and end-game, high-end shop from which you buy gear, weaponry, items, and so forth. however, Rowena doesn't deal in gil; instead, she deals in those enigmatic tomestones that you'll start collecting once you've reached level 50.

These are Tomestones; they're accessed by clicking Ctrl+C to open your currencies window, under 'battle'. These are collected automatically when you run dungeons after reaching level 50. Tomestones of Poetics, the base level, are earned with any post 50 dungeon or roulettes run under level 80. The next three are on a roatation; the second one (under poetics) is the 2nd-high end; you earn it at level 80 by running roulettes or level 80 dungeons. The Third is the Highest tier you can currently get; it's earned the same way as the previous, but you're capped at earning 450 of them per week. Each set of tomestones can purchase a different set of gear or items.

Notice that I never gave them names? Well, that's because they rotate out whenever a post-MSQ patch is released. (Or rather, every other one.) The 'discontinued' tomestone you see was the previous 2nd-high end. So when a new patch hits, a new tomestone is released. The high-end becomes the 2nd-high end, and the 2nd-high end is discontinued and its purchaseables switch to poetics. If you happen to have any of the discontinued ones, you can trade them in for an item that will give you an equivalent you can spend.

Rowena's got her claws in almost every corner of Eorzea and beyond. Practically speaking, it means she's not hard to find. She's got representatives in every major city, and in certain end-game areas for each expansion pack. They're represented by a blue bag on the map for the sundries girls, usually near the aetherytes. The full suites of the House of Splendors are going to be in the endgame areas.

The Girls in Gridania, Ul'Dah, and Limsa, and Mor donuts Dhona will all sell level 50 gear, regardless of what class or you currently are. The girl in Ishgard and Idyllshire will sell level 60 gear, and so on. The sundries girls will only sell items you can buy with tomestones, and there's a reason this is important.

The House of Splendors deals in a LOT more than just tomestones. You'll find random items from raids, fates, and events that you may not know what to do with. Chances are, you can spend them at the House of Splendors. Odin's Mantle, for example; you get it from a Fate that spawns randomly in any of the Black Shroud areas. You can trade it in Mor Dhona for gear, a sword, or a barding. However, you can only do this in Mor Dhona; each end-game area will deal with different 'rare' items you can only gather in that particular expansion.

The items you are most likely to collect come from the 8-man raids that were introduced in Heavensward. You'll get one for completing any of the raids, but the item will differ depending on which of the 12 in the raid series you do. You can trade these in at the Splendors house in the relevant area (which I'm avoiding naming all of them for spoilers reasons) to get a different selection of high-end gear from the normal tomestones. There's a different selection of items that you get from the savage version of the raids that will let you purchase the augmented item (which is dyeable).

It's important to note that, unless you're a glamour fiend, you don't need to save any of these special 'raid' commodities until you reach the current end-game. (As of This writing, that would be Shadowbringers Post-game.) Whatever the high-end Poetics armor/weapons are will always be the 'top' gear over anything else available. A recent patch even removed the normal versions of these poetics gears; you can only purchase the augmented ones now. So for ARR, that would be the Augmented Ironworks gear, for Heavensward it's the Augmented Shire Gear, and so on.

This being said, the Augmented gear will usually last 5-6 levels into the next leveling segment; if you play your cards right (and only do certain roulettes) you can make the armor last until it's time to buy the next set. (We don't recommend this for progressing through MSQ, though; usually the level 65-67 dungeons purposefully have a skill/damage boost to prevent people from coasting through on lower-leveled gear. This tip is more for leveling subsequent classes)

I do want to add this, just to explain how tomestones work once you DO reach the endgame. In addition to straight armor and gear, you can buy items. You can use these to buy crafted armors and glamor sets. I have an example of a piece of armor you can use the highlighted material to get. Again, unless you're a glamour fiend you won't be messing with these too much until the endgame. whatever the 'top' tier of armor is changes with the patch, alternating between crafted gear and gear available from tomestones or raids. Unless you want to be a savage/ultimate tier raider, you won't miss much if your gear lags a bit behind.

Crafters and Gatherers aren't excluded from this, either! The House of Splendors has a separate set of currencies for each that can be used to buy equally high-end gear and tools. These are called scrips. They break down in a similar way to the tomestones, and rotate out, though on a less frequent basis.

Editor's note: The Skybuilders scrips are from a separate event called the Firmament Restoration and are not associated with the House of Splendors in any way.

Earning Scrips is a different process from earning Tomestones, one that you don't even fully start until you reach Heavensward. To earn scrips, you need to complete turn-ins similar to your Grand Company. Unlike the GC, though, the 'collectablity' of the item dictates how much XP or Scrips you get in exchange. (Functionally, the rarity replaces the 'HQ' meter when you're crafting.) These 'collectibles' are separate recipes within your crafting menu.

90% of Crafting/Gathering scrips is going to be the same as tomestones; earn currency, trade for loot. There are, however, two extra things to know about Scrips. The first is that there used to be a LOT more items you could trade in for scrips. As the game expands these processes tend to get streamlined. To prevent old players getting completely screwed over after a 2-year break, there is a vendor in Idyllshire that will trade a lot of these items for Blue tokens. You can get these with Yellow Scrips too, and this is the other extra thing to know.

Crafters can learn 'expert recipes' and gatherers can learn about 'unhidden' nodes, but only through books purchased through the House of Splendors. Crafters purchase their books with scrips, but Gatherers need to use the blue gatherer's tokens. They aren't super necessary for progression, but they DO allow you to gather rare items for that high-end crafted gear, and are worth grinding out.

Probably the best thing you can buy with your scrips if you're still leveling a crafter or gatherer is the manuals; these are one-use items that provide a 2-hour buff to your XP gain as that class, up until a certain point. After that, you can buy materia, orch rolls, and lots of other sundry little goodies. Or materia.

And... that should be everything! Best of luck with your dealings with Rowena, and see you around Eorzea!