The Gold Saucer is a bustling casino and game center in Final Fantasy XIV, filled to the brim with mini-games, lotteries, and extravagant rewards for players brave enough to roll the dice. You’ll unlock it by completing a sidequest, but it can’t be accessed on foot – you’ll have to take an airship ride or teleport there.
If you want to get into the Gold Saucer, you’ll first need to pick up the quest “It Could Happen To You” from the Well-Heeled Youth NPC in Ul’dah’s Steps of Nald.
It seems the Youth has come into some good fortune, and he’d like to share it with you. Speaking to him will reward you with a Golden Airship Ticket, which you can use to travel to the Saucer for the very first time.
What Can I Do There?
Kick off your dusty boots, put on your fanciest glamour, and get ready for a big night out.
Traveling through Eorzea isn’t all about saving the world from evil forces (okay, it is mostly about that).
But you’ve got to have an old fashioned good time every now and then, too!
The Manderville Gold Saucer is full of challenge and opportunity, giving players a welcome break from grinding quests and toppling bosses.
There are a series of short side quests designed to show you around the Gold Saucer, giving you a small glimpse at the entertainment on offer.
This place has everything – card games, carnival-style sideshows, fashion competitions, and Chocobo racing. At regular intervals, events will be held in the plaza, and players will usually flock to them in the dozens.
Completing games and participating in events will reward you with Manderville Gold Saucer Points, commonly abbreviated to MGP.
MGP can be used to buy rewards like hairstyles, mounts, and special glamour items.
Even Fenrir, the giant almost mythological wolf that players battle in the post-ARR dungeon Snowcloak, is available to purchase as a mount for a hefty one million MGP.
Gold Saucer rewards can be like the ultimate status symbols in XIV, as the big ones require quite a lot of time to achieve.
Just be sure to attune to the aetheryte before you leave so you can teleport back easily.
Or alternatively, you can reach the Gold Saucer by airship from any of the three starting cities, and Heavensward’s Ishgard once you’ve progressed far enough in the main scenario.
Which Activities Are The Best?
This question has a slightly weird answer, because it’s going to be pretty subjective.
It depends whether you’re looking for entertainment value, or cold, hard MGP.
In terms of profitability, completing the GATEs (Gold Saucer Active Time Events) probably strikes the biggest balance of fun and MGP profit. These events are held three times an hour. Specifically they’re held on the hour, twenty minutes past, and forty minutes past.
And there’s a huge amount of variety within the GATEs.
Leap of Faith is the most common, with a bunch of different map layouts to provide diverse challenges every time.
These are essentially platforming challenges, with masses of players doing their best to reach the end point while collecting Cactuar trophies along the way for bonus MGP.
My personal favorite is Air Force One, an on-rails shooter that flies you through the Gold Saucer, hitting as many targets as possible to score MGP.
There are GATEs that require skill, clever deduction, or sheer dumb luck – basically a wide range of fun diversions that offer something a bit different than the standard FFXIV experience.
Doing the weekly Fashion Report can also net you a fair bit of MGP on a regular basis.
The FFXIV Fashion Report
Every Tuesday, the report’s theme will change.
And you’ll have to assemble an outfit that most closely matches the theme.
Just being involved in the Fashion Report means you’ll be rewarded with 10,000 MGP. But getting a score of 80 or above hands out 50,000 MGP.
Getting that score is actually surprisingly easy.
This Twitter account is a useful resource for the Fashion Report, and you can collaborate and share information with other players around you too!
But if GATEs aren’t your thing, or if you’re just desperate for something to do in the twenty minutes between them, the Gold Saucer has you covered with lots of other games & entertainment.
GATEs and Fashion Reports might offer the most reliable MGP rewards, but there’s plenty more to do.
Triple Triad is Eorzea’s favorite card game, first introduced in Final Fantasy VIII.
You can face off against NPC players to build your deck and win MGP, or square off against other players for fun.
Cards can drop from dungeons and trials, too. So if you get hooked, you can keep building your collection outside of the Saucer.
You can play also Doman Mahjong or breed, train, and eventually race your own Chocobos.
The Gold Saucer also offers a ton of quick-time event-based games which can earn you considerably smaller amounts of MGP per time. These are based on classic arcade machines like Skee-ball, crane games, and strength tests.
These all have charming Final Fantasy-appropriate names, but the goal is basically the same for all of them.
You won’t make millions from these smaller games. But they’re entertaining, and really contribute to the Gold Saucer’s richness as a game center.
And finally, if nothing above has caught your interest, you can even play the lottery.
Yep, seriously – The Gold Saucer offers daily and weekly Cactpots, both with potentially huge rewards.
The Mini Cactpot is essentially a scratchcard you can play three times per day for an increasing MGP cost each time. Depending on the sum of numbers you reveal, you could earn up to 10,000 MGP – so it’s definitely worth giving it a try.
