The boys:
https://i.imgur.com/CerKaat.jpegClear Vod:
https://youtu.be/Kpsz-7z_McM (noise warning)
For those of you that haven’t heard of this achievement, it is obtained by clearing the level 70 Thief maps 20 times. The Thief maps themselves are a rare drop from Gazelleskin maps, which are the standard 8man maps from Stormblood. For a very long time most of us wrote this achievement off as impossible. Thief maps were not only a huge pain to farm, but their clear rate is abysmal. Later on the Blue Mage level cap was raised to 70, which opened the door to solo farming Thief maps.
Our group was inspired by a JP lodestone post that detailed 8 JP players grinding out this achievement/title together. It would be awesome if this post gets back to them. Thanks to the announcement of the NA Visit functionality, we were able to find eight people that were all willing to stick out this outrageous grind. Tragically one of our members passed away near the end of the grind. We chose to honor him by finishing out the achievement with his significant other playing his character. Rest in peace Maribelle Morunaude aka Aurida.
Our plan was to try to finish the achievement as efficiently as possible. Some of us had been part of previous groups with the same goal, but all of them fell apart as it was a huge struggle to get people to farm Thief maps. Our first goal was that each member put together 150 Thief maps in order to demonstrate their willingness and commitment to this honestly just outrageous grind. We chose to farm the Thiefs on BLU due to the number of advantages that this method offers. (Find the BLU Solo Guide linked at the bottom for those curious)
It’s a solo grind which means you can make your own schedule. Scheduling 8 people that are all in different Savage and Ultimate statics is a nightmare. Solo frees that up by giving you a ton of freedom.
While pugging Gazelles is viable, it’s also awful. Map pugs often feel like bad party member bingo. You will often run into many of the following: people that don’t have flying in the Stormblood zones, people that don’t roll quickly and therefore prevent the group being able to proceed to the next chamber, people that think it’s ok to take long afks without saying anything, people that can’t find their map even when linked locations to all of the possible spots, people that bring the wrong map. You get the idea. Pugs can be fine but more often than not they get slowed down by one or two jabronis.
A solo BLU can farm maps only slightly slower than a pug. This means that if you can get 8 people solo farming on BLU they would be generating Thief maps at a significantly higher map per hour rate compared to the alternative.
Here is a breakdown of our data. You can find the raw data tracked at the bottom.
Total Maps Maps Since Last Clear
56 56
104 48
155 51
257 102
314 57
494 180
522 28
592 70
641 49
659 18
853 194
1162 309
1207 45
1376 169
1458 82
1478 20
1701 223
1711 10
1812 101
2074 262
Some takeaways from our data:
Our clear rate was an abysmal 0.96%
The worst dry spell was 309 maps with no clear
Each of our members farmed 250+ maps
Peca never cleared once with his 251 maps
We killed the mandragoras in the correct order exactly 0 times
Smirk kept track of raw gil earned inside. In 2074 Thief maps each of us earned 86,645,000 gil
We estimate that it takes about 70min of BLU solo on average to obtain 1 Thief map
Extrapolated napkin math states that it took us 2420 hours to farm the Thief maps
It took us 124 hours of just burning Thief maps to get 20 clears, or about 6.2 hours per clear
This is the most brutal RNG in the game. A huge shout out to the boys for sticking with it til the end. If anyone else wants to become the Luckiest Lady/Lord, check out the links listed below. In there you will find everything you need to know to make it happen. Best of luck to you, you’re gonna need it.
BLU Solo Text Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T57qz5ypl6vjsHikObfmvCrmvMmx3mKbgAuHtZQfVxU/edit by Mal
BLU Solo Video Guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1j6U7vjM9g by Kaylah Coy aka Smirk Thiefs Map Raw Data:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cl9mp3o3DteRSV4YCCFb3uAP6_A2JruO1g1PiRu5sb0/edit#gid=492791033The original JP groups’ post:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/12131474/blog/4347856/Aether Map Discord:
https://discord.gg/paSNBew4 Back when we started our group this discord wasn’t capable of grinding the Luckiest of Ladies, but the folks there have really stepped up and it is likely the only way to get this achievement/title if you don’t want to put your own group together.
