The Heat of Battle is a buff available through FFXIV’s Free Company system. It must be activated as a Free Company Action. When activated, it provides a 5% buff to experience gained in battle for 24 hours.
Final Fantasy XIV, like many MMOs, features a guild system that players can use to form organizations.
This Free Company feature is rich with stuff that players can use to their advantage. The Heat of Battle is one example of a Free Company Action – basically a buff that members with the right permissions can activate for every player on the roster.
More specifically, Heat of Battle boosts experience gained from combat by 5%.
The effect lasts for 24 hours, but can be renewed when necessary. So if you’re in charge of what buffs are running in your Free Company, you could have Heat of Battle running perpetually.
Heat of Battle is followed by Heat of Battle II and III, which boost experience by 10% and 15% respectively.
Most of the experience boosting Company Actions have multiple tiers like this too.
If you want to take advantage of the experience bonus that Heat of Battle offers, you’ll need to be a member of a Free Company. There’s no way to get the boost without it.
And as an added bonus, Heat of Battle stacks with all other experience boosting effects.
What Is A Free Company Action?
Free Companies gain access to a number of Actions as they level up.
These actions can perform a number of functions, like reducing teleportation fees, increasing spiritbonding speed, or increasing a specific attribute.
This allows the Free Company to tailor the buffs it offers depending on what it’s focusing on, or what the members need at the time.
Free Company actions aren’t all unlocked at once, either. They’re tied to your Free Company’s rank, which increases as members complete a variety of standard activities out in the game world.
Free Companies start unlocking Actions at rank 5, which shouldn’t take all that long to reach.
Heat of Battle is among the first to unlock, alongside some buffs to crafting experience, reduced teleportation rates, and various other useful increases.
At first, Free Companies can only use one Action at a time.
But once they hit Rank 8 they can run two buffs simultaneously.
Free Companies also unlock a variety of other features to enrich your time in the game.
Probably the most dramatic addition is Company Housing, which allows the Free Company to purchase land where members can build their own rooms.
You don’t need to go through any of the nonsense that usually accompanies purchasing a house.
Just find a Free Company with a house and buy a room!
Granted it’s not cheap, but it’s a hell of a lot easier (and cheaper) than buying an estate yourself.
How Do I Activate A Company Action?
First, you’ll need to purchase the buff you want from your Free Company’s Grand Company headquarters.
This will either be in Limsa Lominsa (Maelstrom), Gridania (Twin Adders) or Ul’dah (Immortal Flames).
You need to speak to the “OIC Quartermaster”, who’ll sell all the buffs you need.
Actions aren’t purchased with gil, either. You’ll use “Free Company Credits” instead.
This is a currency earned by completing standard actions like leveling up, crafting stuff, and completing dungeons and trials with Free Company members.
Once you’ve purchased the Action you want to use, it’ll appear in your Free Company menu. Just click on it to activate it from there.
Depending on your rank within the Free Company you may not have permission to buy or activate Actions.
In that case, you’ll want to (politely) ask someone else to activate the one you’d like.
An Action lasts for 24 hours once activated. But it can be cancelled prematurely if you want to activate something else.
Be aware, though, that Actions are basically consumables.
So you’ll need to buy the Action again if you change your mind.
Which Free Company Actions Are The Best?
This is really subjective.
There is no “best” Free Company action, but Heat of Battle and Reduced Rates tend to be the most broadly useful.
Different groups of players will have different general needs.
And one Free Company may be focused on crafting and gathering, for example, so they’d want to use the actions that increase experience for those tasks.
Or they may want to boost their stats via actions like “In Control” or “What You See” – providing small but useful increases to performance.
None of these actions are totally ground-breaking or game changing. In fact, even the highest level Heat of Battle is a lower buff than experience-boosted accessories like Menphina’s Earring.
Do I Need To Join A Free Company?
To take advantage of Free Company Actions? Yes.
To play and enjoy the game? Not necessarily.
It can be really useful having a team of like-minded players to socialize and play with. But it’s not vital to the Final Fantasy XIV experience.
Regardless of whether or not you’re in a Free Company, you can still enjoy the game!
None of the Free Company Actions are essential to the FFXIV experience. They’re more like nice bonuses you can get for teaming up with other players.
How Do I Buff My Experience Without A FC?
There are plenty of ways to boost your experience gains without joining a Free Company, and most of them will be considerably more potent.
The most direct way at the time of this writing is pre-ordering Endwalker – this will reward you with Menphina’s Earring, an accessory that increases EXP gained by 30% on all jobs below level 80.
The stats on the earring will change and upgrade based on your job’s needs and level, too!
You’ll also take advantage of the Armoury Bonus if you’re leveling a new job that’s below your highest job. This is a flat 100% experience gain until you’re level 70. At that point, it decreases to 50% – which is still a considerably large buff!
Of course, these experience boosting methods both stack with each other and Heat of Battle.
So if you’re super serious about leveling as quickly as possible, it might be worthwhile to join a Free company after all.
