Savage content is Final Fantasy XIV’s top tier, and as such it delivers big rewards. Savage Loot is delivered in coffers rather than individual pieces as normal in Shadowbringers, which allows every player to have a solid chance of getting an upgrade.
Upgrading your gear for any type of raiding can be a chore to say the least.
First you’ve got to hit the minimum item level requirements for the raid itself, but that’s the appetizer for a whole new course of frustration. Progressing beyond that minimum ilvl floor means actually clearing the content on a reliable basis, being lucky enough to have the one item you need drop, and then hoping nobody else in the party rolls need on it too.
It’s frustrating. And that’s putting it gently (I usually use a ton more “f-words” to describe my gearing experience).
Savage Loot is mostly delivered in the form of coffers, and if you’re not familiar with them already, they’re basically an item that contains a piece of gear.
You don’t know exactly what the gear will be until you open it.
But it’s always going to be relevant to your currently played job.
This means everyone in the party has an equal chance of getting the gear they need every week.
This is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over the usual system, which would see players completing some extremely tough content for no rewards at all. Maybe the gear you needed dropped, but you lost the roll. Maybe nothing dropped for you at all.
Now, as gear is delivered through coffer drops, everyone has an equal chance to roll need on a drop and get something good out of it – regardless of the role/job they’re currently playing.
It’s a much fairer system.
It might seem a bit daunting since now everyone can roll on everything – but you’ll be grateful for the changes by the end.
What Else Is Different About Savage Loot?
You’ve only got one chance at Savage Loot per raid wing a week.
So if you’re clearing your way through Eden’s Gate on Savage, you’ve got one roll each for Resurrection, Descent, Inundation, and Sepulture.
If you don’t win your roll, you don’t get any loot, and won’t be able to until the following weekly reset.
This is much more brutal than the normal version, which lets you re-run the content until you’ve had your guaranteed weekly piece of loot.
You also have to clear the wings to make use of all your chances at loot.
If you go straight to Inundation one week, you’ll lose out on loot chances for all the wings that precede it.
So if you want to make the absolute most out of your Savage raiding, do them in order!
The party will be penalized if anyone within it has already cleared the fight that week.
If between one and four players have already beaten the wing, you’ll only get one treasure chest.
For five or more, there won’t be any chests at all, but you’ll still get your weekly Apocrypha.
What’s Apocrypha, And How Can I Use It?
Clearing a fight for the first time each week will reward you directly with an Apocrypha book. These can be saved up and summarily exchanged with Yhal Yal in Eulmore for a guaranteed piece of loot.
This basically means that even if you have completely rotten luck with your rolls, you’re still going to be rewarded with an upgrade for all that time you’ve poured into Savage raiding.
Buying your new gear through Apocrypha will take longer than just getting lucky with a roll.
But obviously we can’t count on that all the time.
Savage raiding in XIV can be quite a taxing experience.
It requires a lot of invested time, both individually and as a group.
If you weren’t guaranteed some new loot for your time playing at this level, it’d be easy to become discouraged – so the Apocrypha system counterbalances that.
If you play raid wings out of order and skip your loot chances for the earlier wings, you’ll skip your weekly Apocrypha from that floor too – so bear that in mind.
