Beastmaster is FFXIV's second limited job, a melee DPS that starts at level 1, caps at 50 and arrived with Patch 7.56. You unlock it with a level 50 Disciple of War or Magic that has finished The Ultimate Weapon, then take one quest in New Gridania. This FFXIV Beastmaster job guide covers that unlock, the capture loop and Master's Bestiary, battlehorns and combos, and the Crucible of the Unbroken as it stands after Patch 7.57.
Page updates
October 22, 2026
- Crucible Rankings: Patch 7.57 brought in Season 1 of Crucible Rankings, which begins October 26 and runs to early December.
- Battlehorns and familiars: Patch 7.57 made a familiar ordered to Stay turn to face its target before carrying out Tempered Release or Parting Blow.
How to unlock Beastmaster
Beastmaster requires the Dawntrail expansion registered on your account. It has no base class, begins at level 1, reaches level 50 at most, and rolls on the same gear as monk and samurai.
The unlock quest is Strangers in the Wood, picked up in New Gridania at X:11.8 Y:13.6 from the Excited Adventurer. You need a Disciple of War or Magic at level 50 and completion of the main scenario quest The Ultimate Weapon.
What being a limited job means
Like blue mage, Beastmaster sits outside the normal job structure: it cannot use role actions, it gains more experience from FATEs than other jobs, and it gets no bonus experience from killing open-world enemies.
You can enter duties in preformed or unrestricted parties, but these are closed to the job:
- Duty Roulettes
- Eureka, the Bozjan Southern Front and the Occult Crescent
- Variant and Criterion Dungeons
- Ultimate Raids
- Stone, Sky, Sea
- Squadron Missions
- Deep Dungeons
- PvP, including duels
- Hall of the Novice
You cannot change to Beastmaster after entering an instance. Only Beastmaster job quests and quests open to every job can be taken, and retainers cannot be assigned the job.
Beastmaster quests
- Into the Crucible: unlocks the Crucible at Beastmaster level 30 from the Central Shroud at X:22.9 Y:19.1, after the prerequisite job quest.
- Job quests and the gourd merchant: the merchant's stock widens as you clear job quests.
- Degrees: the three-step challenge mode opens after you clear every board and progress through the job quests.
How to capture beasts
Gauge and Capture are both level 1 actions. Gauge, used at range, tells you whether the beast can be pacted with and how likely the attempt is. Capture marks a target within 10 yalms, and you forge the pact by defeating it while the mark holds.
A beast above your own level cannot be pacted at all, and lowering its remaining HP or widening the level gap in your favour improves the odds. Each Beastmaster at the required level makes an individual roll against the same target while grouped, and for instanced duties Unrestricted Party can be used without reducing catch rates.
Filling the Master's Bestiary
A successful pact adds the familiar to the Master's Bestiary, opened from the main menu under Character. The log holds 50 beasts, and each entry carries that beast's Trick, its Tempered Release, and the Borrow its classification provides. Capturing any qualifying variant of a beast type fills the entry, so it does not have to be one specific monster.
Beasts that live inside duties are the awkward entries for a solo player. The Kornago merchant in the Central Shroud at X:21.9 Y:22.6 sells gourds that forge the pact outright, paid for with remnants of resilience earned in the Crucible, and the range of gourds grows as you finish job quests.
Patch 7.57 fixed dullahans in the North Shroud, Amdapor Keep and The Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) not being affected by Capture, so those entries can now be taken normally.
Where to find beasts
The Bestiary names a zone but not an exact spot, so use these confirmed positions to start the capture half of this FFXIV Beastmaster job guide:
| Beast | Zone | Coordinates |
| Squirrel | Central Shroud | X:22.7 Y:16.4 |
| Lamb | Middle La Noscea | X:22.4 Y:25.3 |
| Pugil | Middle La Noscea | X:20.5 Y:17.8 |
| Opo-opo | North Shroud | X:28.5 Y:24.9 |
| Megalocrab | Middle La Noscea | X:16.3 Y:13.6 |
| Wespe | Central Thanalan | X:16.0 Y:13.0 |
| Mandragora | Middle La Noscea | X:22.5 Y:18.2 |
| Puk | Middle La Noscea | X:20.7 Y:22.4 |
| Flying Trap | Central Shroud | X:23.5 Y:24.7 |
| Raptor | Central Shroud | X:30.1 Y:19.4 |
Cu Sith arrives as part of the unlock quest rather than a capture.
Gourds cover the duty beasts, and some open-world beasts have one as well:
| Price | Beasts |
| 10 Faded Remnants of Resilience | Crab, Drake |
| 15 Faded Remnants of Resilience | Worm |
| 20 Faded Remnants of Resilience | Slime, Dullahan, Antling |
| 30 Faded Remnants of Resilience | Chimera |
| 35 Bright Remnants of Resilience | Hydra, Damselfly, Rotting Goobbue, Zu, Ice Golem, Karlabos |
| 40 Bright Remnants of Resilience | Rafflesia, Behemoth |
Battlehorns and familiars
You assign a familiar to a battlehorn through the subcommand on its icon in the Bestiary, then call it out with a Battlehorn action; only one familiar stands with you at a time. In the open world you carry three beasts this way, while the Crucible uses a roster of ten with three taken into each battle.
Size is set separately from glamour: size changes only on your own screen, glamour is visible to everyone, and each beast's single alternative glamour unlocks at beast rank 25. The text commands /beastsize and /beastpetsize also adjust size.
Patch 7.57 made a familiar ordered to Stay turn to face its target before carrying out Tempered Release or Parting Blow.
Classifications and Borrow
Trick and Tempered Release are each tied to a single beast, while Borrow is determined by classification, meaning beasts sharing a class produce an identical Beast Mode action.
| Classification | Beasts | Beast Mode | Effect |
| Beastkin | 9 | Beastskin | Cuts physical damage taken by 25% and adds 5% critical hit rate |
| Vilekin | 6 | Vileskin | Nullifies most knockback and draw-in and sets block rate to 100% |
| Cloudkin | 6 | Cloud Skim | A directional dash that also raises evasion by 5% |
| Seedkin | 6 | Seedsower | Applies Seeds Sown nearby, cutting enemy damage and adding damage over time |
| Wavekin | 7 | Quelling Wave | Ranged water damage that builds TP, with a bonus for stripping a status |
| Scalekin | 7 | Scaleskin | A magic barrier worth 8% of maximum HP |
| Soulkin | 5 | Soul Crush | A melee interrupt that pays heavily in potency and TP when it lands |
| Ashkin | 4 | Scouring Ash | Removes a detrimental effect from you or a party member, restoring HP and TP |
Beast counts differ by class: Beastkin contains nine, Ashkin just four, and the sole Kinship able to remove a detrimental effect is Scouring Ash from Ashkin. Tempered Release is the other half of the choice: 37 of the 50 do something beyond damage, from shields and buffs to sleep, petrify and resistance drops.
Across five boards, Crucible foes have a damage type drawn from nine options: the six elements, along with blunt, piercing, and slashing. Slashing has the thinnest coverage at four beasts, while lightning and blunt are the commonest tags, on 18 enemies each.
Instinctual combos
Beastmaster and familiar skills build TP, and instinctual skills need at least 100 TP to fire. Both your weaponskills and the familiar's belong to one of four affinities — Volant, Rampant, Durant and Eldritch — and following one instinctual skill with another within seven seconds completes a combo for extra damage.
An intentional combo is the clockwise step on the Inner Compass: Volant into Rampant, Rampant into Durant, Durant into Eldritch, or Eldritch into Volant. These split into Sunstrider and Moonstalker and light the matching side of the compass, and filling the whole compass can trigger a powerful attack. The chain counter under the compass tracks how many skills you have linked, and a longer chain pays more bonus damage.
Affinity does not bar you from a tier: once level 16 is reached, all four colours are covered by your four instinctual weaponskills, meaning affinity chooses the axe you match with a Trick rather than the combo you can access. Volant is the smallest family with 8 beasts, against 15 Rampant.
Beyond the combos, Tempered Release orders a familiar to use its unique attack, and Borrow draws on a familiar to run a separate Beastmaster action.
Crucible of the Unbroken
The Crucible is a Beastmaster-only solo duty framed as a magicked training tool, and you enter it by speaking with the NPC in the Central Shroud at X:21.9 Y:22.8.
You cross a board space by space, each space holding a different encounter, and finish by beating the boss on the innermost space. The board layout shows the enemies you may face and their weaknesses, and you build a team from the Bestiary or take a Recommended Team.
Your HP and your familiars' HP do not regenerate by themselves, so items and spaces are the only healing; a familiar at 0 HP drops out and your own death fails the duty. Snarl makes a familiar hold enmity for you through Cover, while Challenge pulls enmity onto you and removes that Cover.
Ephemeral items work only on the board that granted them and vanish when the run ends. Crucible items can be used while moving or fighting, one arrives at the start of every board and you can carry 10; beast gear gives passive benefits while carried, one piece comes per board and you can hold 10 with no duplicates. Feed raises a familiar's stats up to a per-beast limit, no familiar accepts a duplicate of any feed, and a rest on a campsite wipes what it has eaten.
Patch 7.57 changes
- The Crucible Mode you picked before a board is saved and becomes the default until you log out.
- Familiars are registered to battlehorns automatically when your team is three or fewer, and you can still adjust them by hand.
- The warning prompt when entering an enemy space with an unassigned battlehorn now defaults to No.
- Defeating elite enemies scores 800 instead of 625.
- The Sleepless Survival bonus is worth 1,000 instead of 375.
Crucible rewards and beast ranks
Your score comes from spaces crossed, remaining HP and other factors, with extra bonuses listed under View Bonuses in the board layout. Faded and bright remnants of resilience scale with that score, and the Kornago merchant takes them for gourds or to upgrade Beastmaster-specific gear.
Every familiar that comes along earns experience with your score, and each 100 EXP raises beast rank, adding Strength, Intelligence, Physical Resistance, Magic Resistance and Constitution up to rank 25. Rank 25 on a beast also unlocks its alternative glamour.
Progress can be suspended between spaces and resumed later, but starting a fresh run while suspended data exists erases it, and forfeiting outside battle still pays a score and rewards. Clearing every board and pushing the job quests opens the Degrees, three harder tiers with more enemy HP and damage and larger score bonuses.
Crucible Rankings
Patch 7.57 brought in Season 1 of Crucible Rankings, which begins October 26 and runs to early December. To have a score counted you set the mode to Third Degree and tick the participation box, and scores only record on your Home World and are aggregated per physical data center from your last three attempts on each board.
At the end of a season, the top 300 ranked players on each physical data center receive rewards through the moogle delivery service.
See also: FFXIV Beastmaster Problems: Is It Worth Playing Now? and FFXIV Patch 7.35
Frequently Asked Questions
What gear does Beastmaster use?
It shares gear with monk and samurai. Beastmaster-specific gear is upgraded with remnants of resilience earned in the Crucible.
How do you level Beastmaster?
FATEs are the efficient route: Beastmaster earns more experience from them than other jobs and nothing extra from open-world kills. The job caps at level 50.
