XIV has tons of content at this point. Veteran players have probably forgotten about half of the available dungeons and trials that don’t come up in your standard Duty Roulette, and grinding out the same old end game dungeons can get a little tiring. Wondrous Tails is essentially a way of mixing up your usual routine, completing a randomized set of challenges to fill out what’s basically a bingo card. Once you’ve completed your card, you can hand it in for a number of potential rewards. It breaks up the grind for veteran players, and potentially encourages more player population in lower level dungeons. To understand the point of Second Chance points, we’ll cover the essentials of Wondrous Tails: where to start it, how to complete it, and what it rewards you with.
How Do I Start Wondrous Tails?
Head to Khloe Aliapoh in Idyllshire – you’ll need to be at least level 60 for this and have completed a decent amount of the Heavensward post patches. Khloe will hand you a Wondrous Tails journal and ask you to fill it with stories of your adventures. Every week you’ll be presented with a random list of sixteen duties to complete – but you only need to complete nine of these to hand the journal in. Completing a duty will add a seal to the journal. You have four lines of four, and your goal is basically to try and fill as many of these lines as possible. They count horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. As the seals are placed randomly upon duty completion, there’s no guarantee you’ll fill out the grid in the best possible way. The Wondrous Tails activity will reset at Tuesday, 1:00 AM, but you’ll have the entire following week to hand in your journal. If you hand it in after the reset, you can immediately pick the current journal up from Khloe.
So Where Do Second Chance Points Come In?
So, you want to get the best rewards every week (naturally). But the random nature of the Wondrous Tails grid means you might not be able to fill three lines every week. Second Chance points give you a little bit more flexibility when it comes to completing your weekly journal. You’ll earn them when you complete a duty in which at least one member receives the first time completion bonus. You can hold a total of nine Second Chance points at once, and spend them on Retries or Shuffles to help with your journal completion. Retries cost one Second Chance point, and enable you to replay a duty from the journal you’ve already completed that week for another seal. So if you’ve got an awkward set of dungeons on any given week, you can basically use a Retry to play the same one multiple times for seals. Retries can make completing your journal much easier – duties like raids from the Crystal Tower or Rabanastre can appear in the Wondrous Tails, and these can be a bit of a pain to queue for depending on your role. Shuffles are your second option for spending Second Chance points. A Shuffle costs two points, and can be used when you’re at seven seals to rearrange them into an optimum position. Using a Shuffle at the right time means you only really have to get lucky with your last two seals to receive a three line reward – the highest possible amount of completed lines.
What Do I Get From Completing Wondrous Tails?
Potential rewards will vary based on the amount of lines you’ve completed. But Khloe will always give you a baseline reward just for handing the journal in, so it’s never a waste of time. There are technically two different versions of Wondrous Tails – more rewards get added when the journal is picked up For collecting nine seals, you’ll receive roughly half a bar of experience (so try not to hand it in on a level capped character) and a choice of the following rewards:
Timeworn Zonureskin Map 1 Allagan Platinum Piece (Worth 10,000 gil) 500 Tomestones of Poetics 100 Tomestones of Phantasmagoria (Completed at level 80)
Khloe will also offer you Materia as a potential reward, but I’d say that basically all the other options here are infinitely more useful (Materia can just be purchased for gil). For completing one line, the following rewards will be available:
Wind-up Estinien, Wind-up Khloe, Dress-up Thancred (minions) MGP Gold Card (Worth 30,000 Manderville Gold Saucer Points) 50 Tomestones of Allegory Khloe’s Bronze Certificate of Commendation
The Gold Card is well worth it in this tier – the Gold Saucer has some fantastic unique rewards, and 30K is a decent chunk of time saved! And for completing two lines, the following rewards will be available:
Wind-up Zhloe (minion), Stuffed Khloe (furniture) 2 MGP Platinum Cards (Worth 100,000 Gold Saucer Points in total) 500 Tomestones of Phantasmagoria Khloe’s Silver Certificate of Commendation
Then for completing three lines (the maximum), the following rewards will be available:
3x Khloe’s Silver Certificate of Commendation Khloe’s Gold Certificate of Commendation 20x MGP Platinum Cards (Worth one million Gold Saucer points, which saves potentially weeks of gaming time)
The Certificates of Commendation can be handed in for varying levels of Materia reward. But as you can see from the spread of rewards on offer here, there’s basically something for everyone. So no matter how you play FFXIV, completing Wondrous Tails every now and then is well worth your time.
