Soul of the Crafter is an item in Final Fantasy XIV which allows crafters to acquire or exchange crafter soul crystals. These crystals can be used to “specialize” in a certain crafting job, providing them with a unique ability and stat boosts.
XIV has a ton of different professions, and thanks to the game’s convenient job system, you don’t need an army of alts to experience them all.
In fact, if you’re serious about crafting it’s incredibly useful to level all of the Disciples of the Land/Hand jobs up eventually.
It’s a massive time investment, sure.
But it basically means free materials and tons of gil if you play it right.
So, yes, we can be a jack of all trades.
We almost need to be a jack of all trades if we want to be successful.
But much like the combat classes, you’re probably still going to end up with a favorite. Soul of the Crafter is basically a way for you to set your favorite crafting jobs and get a couple of perks out of it.
How Do I Get Soul of the Crafter?
Once you’ve hit level 55 in any Disciple of the Hand job, head to Revenant’s Toll and accept the quest “Beloved of the Builder”.
Lydirlona recognizes your talent as craftsman/woman and thinks you could do with becoming a specialist.
This is a simple trip to Ishgard, delivering a letter to a gentleman named Alderan (nothing to do with the destroyed Star Wars planet, unfortunately).
Once Alderan receives Lydirlona’s recommendation, he’ll hand you three Soul of the Crafter.
As per his instructions, these are used to decide which crafters you want to specialize in.
You can specialize in three crafting jobs at once, so there’s plenty to go around.
Specializing in crafting roles has no detriment to your unspecialized ones, and this decision isn’t permanent.
So don’t stress about the first choice too much.
There’s no hidden recipes behind your specialization, nothing you can miss entirely – so just pick what you’d like most at the time.
Changing is easy and can be done at any time.
What Do I Get From Specializing?
Equipping specialist crystals for your chosen three jobs will enable them to use the action “Careful Observation”, which allows you to do nothing for a step while preserving any actions currently in effect.
It also provides a small stat buff, which honestly, is probably the more worthwhile perk of the two.
You basically want to add these onto the crafting jobs you think you’ll use the most.
Is this an essential part of crafting in XIV? Probably not.
But it doesn’t take any time at all to unlock it, and you get a neat little stat boost out of it.
I Changed My Mind, Can I Specialize In Something Else?
Yes – as long as you have more Souls of the Crafter.
These can be acquired through participation in The Firmament, or with crafters’ Scrips.
While you can collect multiple Souls of the Crafter, you can only carry three specialist crystals at once. Acquiring a new one from Alderan will require you to give up one of the crystals you currently hold.
There is no limit to the amount of times you can switch specialization, as long as you have the Souls to do it!
If you have a bunch of Souls and no desire to swap specialization, you can trade them to Alderan in Ishgard for 480 Yellow Scrips.
It’s probably more useful to have the currency in all honesty, as you really won’t need to swap specialties very often at all.
