The Palace of the Dead is one of the best and easiest ways to quickly level up a secondary class. That being said, it is a terrible place to actually learn how to play your class. The fast-paced nature of the dungeon leaves you with little time to look over all of the new abilities you’ll get and figure out what they do. But if what you need is a way to gain a lot of levels very quickly, this is going to be your go-to.
What is the Palace of the Dead?
The Palace of the Dead is an optional dungeon in FFXIV. You can unlock it with the quest The House That Death Built, which can be taken on in The Roost in New Gridania. You’ll have to have completed the main story quest In a Copper Hell for it to be available.
Unlike the other dungeons or instanced content in this game, the layout is randomized in each run-through. There are 200 floors in the Palace of the Dead, but each section you run through is a total of ten floors each. Nine of the randomized dungeons, followed by a boss. Each set of ten floors will have a 60-minute time limit.
The first 50 floors focus on the story of a familiar face, and if you’re interested in the lore of the Tam-Tara Hard dungeon, then I would suggest running through this content if you haven’t already.
Party Composition
You can enter the PoTD in one of two ways. In a Fixed Party or a Matched Party. A Fixed Party will enter you into the PoTD with whoever is currently in your party at the time. If you’re solo, then you will enter the Palace alone. This is dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend it for people who aren’t used to the PoTD. A Matched Party will throw you into a party with three other people randomly. There’s no set party composition. You can end up with two tanks and two healers; two DPS a tank and a healer; four DPS; or any combination really. It depends on how lucky you are.
A Fixed Party is the only way to proceed past floor 100, assuming that your party doesn’t wipe at any point before Floor 100. If you wipe, you’re going to have to start over from Floor 51, otherwise, you won’t be able to proceed.
Experience and Aetherpool Gear
The Palace uses it’s on leveling and equipment system. Your level will be set to 1 when you enter the Palace, but you will gain experience quickly. By the time you get to floor ten, you’re usually around level 18-20 or so, depending on how much time you spend killing monsters in the dungeon.
Your gear also has its own separate leveling system. Instead of being based on the stats of the gear you were wearing when you walked in, you have Aetherpool Arms and Armour. You start out weak but grow in strength as you find blue and silver chests.
Once your Aetherpool Arms becomes strong enough, you can talk to the Padjal outside to take it out and use it as a weapon in the rest of the game. This isn’t necessarily recommended, but if you need an ilvl 235 or 255 weapon quickly, this is a viable option.
Items
Like leveling, the Palace has its own pool of items you can find in the many treasure chests around the map. Beware, some of these treasure chests may, in fact, be mimics. Mimics are much tougher than they have any right to be, but when killed will drop a real treasure chest in their place. Unless that real treasure chest is another mimic, which can happen.
Assuming you’re not drowning in mimics, treasure chests can be very beneficial to you. It is usually worth the risk of opening them. You can find a plethora of HQ potions and even Phoenix Downs if you’re lucky.
More importantly, you can find Pomanders. Pomanders come in a variety of flavors and have varying degrees of usefulness. You have the Pomanders of Strength or Steel which up your attack/healing potency and defense respectively.
The Pomander of Sight which will reveal the map and any traps on the floor. The Pomander of Safety will remove any traps, which is extremely useful.
There are pomanders that focus on the floor ahead, such as Flight or Affluence which will reduce monsters and increase treasure chests on the next floor respectively.
The Pomanders of Lust and Rage are interesting, as they turn you into a succubus or manticore for a short time. The Pomander of Rage is best used on an exploration floor, and not on a boss. A manticore can instantly kill any monster that it can knock back. If it cannot trigger the knockback effect, the monster will need to be killed normally. A good use of the Pomander of Rage is to pop it at the beginning of the floor and have the manticore sweep the floor for monsters while the others follow behind and pick up any treasure chests they find.
There are pomanders that are far less generally useful. Such as the Pomander of Witching which turns any target in range into a frog, imp, or chicken. And there is the Pomander of Alteration, which will randomly turn a monster into a mandragora or a mimic.
The final items worth worrying about are the Accursed Hoard. The Accursed Hoard can be revealed with the use of a Pomander of Intuition, although you can sometimes discover one by accident without it.
Use of a Pomander of Intuition will mark the spot where the treasure chest will spawn with a gold light. Stand in this spot for a short time, and the chest will appear. You will receive an iron/bronze/silver/gold trimmed sack depending upon how high up in the Palace you are. Taking this to the NPC outside of the Palace for appraisal will grant you a random item. Materia, equipment, fireworks, the pool of what you can receive seems to be very broad. The higher you go in the Palace, the better the pool of items seems to be. The gold trimmed sacks have a small chance of granting you a new mount, the Night Pegasus.
The Actual Palace
There are several things to be wary of while inside the Palace. Like I mentioned before, there are traps. Traps are completely invisible unless a Pomander of Sight has been used, and even then it’s easy to overlook them while surrounded by monsters. Traps have a variety of annoying effects. From simply doing exorbitant amounts of damage to spawning in monsters, to sealing your abilities, to turning you into a frog for a short time. Traps suck.
As you run around the Palace killing monsters, you will eventually be greeted with this message.
This means that you can proceed to the next floor. Your party must stand in the glowing circle until it transports you to the next floor. The Cairn will not transport you if anyone in your party is being targeted by a monster.
You can also activate the Cairn of Return by killing enough monsters. Using the Cairn of return will revive any fallen party members. It’s helpful if your party doesn’t have any healers.
On each floor, there is a chance that you will trigger an Enchantment. Enchantments can be beneficial (granting a buff such as Haste), detrimental (sealing off items or abilities), or simply annoying (stronger enemies). You can remove such enchantments with the Pomander of Serenity if you have one.
What is the Palace of the Dead?
The Palace of the Dead is an optional dungeon in FFXIV. You can unlock it with the quest The House That Death Built, which can be taken on in The Roost in New Gridania. You’ll have to have completed the main story quest In a Copper Hell for it to be available.
Unlike the other dungeons or instanced content in this game, the layout is randomized in each run-through. There are 200 floors in the Palace of the Dead, but each section you run through is a total of ten floors each. Nine of the randomized dungeons, followed by a boss. Each set of ten floors will have a 60-minute time limit.
The first 50 floors focus on the story of a familiar face, and if you’re interested in the lore of the Tam-Tara Hard dungeon, then I would suggest running through this content if you haven’t already.
Party Composition
You can enter the PoTD in one of two ways. In a Fixed Party or a Matched Party. A Fixed Party will enter you into the PoTD with whoever is currently in your party at the time. If you’re solo, then you will enter the Palace alone. This is dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend it for people who aren’t used to the PoTD. A Matched Party will throw you into a party with three other people randomly. There’s no set party composition. You can end up with two tanks and two healers; two DPS a tank and a healer; four DPS; or any combination really. It depends on how lucky you are.
A Fixed Party is the only way to proceed past floor 100, assuming that your party doesn’t wipe at any point before Floor 100. If you wipe, you’re going to have to start over from Floor 51, otherwise, you won’t be able to proceed.
Experience and Aetherpool Gear
The Palace uses it’s on leveling and equipment system. Your level will be set to 1 when you enter the Palace, but you will gain experience quickly. By the time you get to floor ten, you’re usually around level 18-20 or so, depending on how much time you spend killing monsters in the dungeon.
Your gear also has its own separate leveling system. Instead of being based on the stats of the gear you were wearing when you walked in, you have Aetherpool Arms and Armour. You start out weak but grow in strength as you find blue and silver chests.
Once your Aetherpool Arms becomes strong enough, you can talk to the Padjal outside to take it out and use it as a weapon in the rest of the game. This isn’t necessarily recommended, but if you need an ilvl 235 or 255 weapon quickly, this is a viable option.
Items
Like leveling, the Palace has its own pool of items you can find in the many treasure chests around the map. Beware, some of these treasure chests may, in fact, be mimics. Mimics are much tougher than they have any right to be, but when killed will drop a real treasure chest in their place. Unless that real treasure chest is another mimic, which can happen.
Assuming you’re not drowning in mimics, treasure chests can be very beneficial to you. It is usually worth the risk of opening them. You can find a plethora of HQ potions and even Phoenix Downs if you’re lucky.
More importantly, you can find Pomanders. Pomanders come in a variety of flavors and have varying degrees of usefulness. You have the Pomanders of Strength or Steel which up your attack/healing potency and defense respectively.
The Pomander of Sight which will reveal the map and any traps on the floor. The Pomander of Safety will remove any traps, which is extremely useful.
There are pomanders that focus on the floor ahead, such as Flight or Affluence which will reduce monsters and increase treasure chests on the next floor respectively.
The Pomanders of Lust and Rage are interesting, as they turn you into a succubus or manticore for a short time. The Pomander of Rage is best used on an exploration floor, and not on a boss. A manticore can instantly kill any monster that it can knock back. If it cannot trigger the knockback effect, the monster will need to be killed normally. A good use of the Pomander of Rage is to pop it at the beginning of the floor and have the manticore sweep the floor for monsters while the others follow behind and pick up any treasure chests they find.
There are pomanders that are far less generally useful. Such as the Pomander of Witching which turns any target in range into a frog, imp, or chicken. And there is the Pomander of Alteration, which will randomly turn a monster into a mandragora or a mimic.
The final items worth worrying about are the Accursed Hoard. The Accursed Hoard can be revealed with the use of a Pomander of Intuition, although you can sometimes discover one by accident without it.
Use of a Pomander of Intuition will mark the spot where the treasure chest will spawn with a gold light. Stand in this spot for a short time, and the chest will appear. You will receive an iron/bronze/silver/gold trimmed sack depending upon how high up in the Palace you are. Taking this to the NPC outside of the Palace for appraisal will grant you a random item. Materia, equipment, fireworks, the pool of what you can receive seems to be very broad. The higher you go in the Palace, the better the pool of items seems to be. The gold trimmed sacks have a small chance of granting you a new mount, the Night Pegasus.
The Actual Palace
There are several things to be wary of while inside the Palace. Like I mentioned before, there are traps. Traps are completely invisible unless a Pomander of Sight has been used, and even then it’s easy to overlook them while surrounded by monsters. Traps have a variety of annoying effects. From simply doing exorbitant amounts of damage to spawning in monsters, to sealing your abilities, to turning you into a frog for a short time. Traps suck.
As you run around the Palace killing monsters, you will eventually be greeted with this message.
This means that you can proceed to the next floor. Your party must stand in the glowing circle until it transports you to the next floor. The Cairn will not transport you if anyone in your party is being targeted by a monster.
You can also activate the Cairn of Return by killing enough monsters. Using the Cairn of return will revive any fallen party members. It’s helpful if your party doesn’t have any healers.
On each floor, there is a chance that you will trigger an Enchantment. Enchantments can be beneficial (granting a buff such as Haste), detrimental (sealing off items or abilities), or simply annoying (stronger enemies). You can remove such enchantments with the Pomander of Serenity if you have one.