FFXIV Free Company Guide: Housing, Ranks, and Buffs Explained

Free Companies are the player-run guilds of Final Fantasy XIV. Joining one is one of the earliest quality-of-life upgrades you can grab, since they hand out shared storage, a private chat channel, steady experience buffs, and a path to owning a group house. You can only belong to one at a time, and a single Free Company tops out at 512 members, so it pays to know what you're actually signing up for before you commit or spend the gil to start your own crew.

Every FC is tied to one of the three Grand Companies, the Maelstrom, the Order of the Twin Adder, or the Immortal Flames. That mostly decides where you pick up buffs and turn in gear. Beyond that, what the group does is up to the people in it. Some chase endgame raiding, some are just social hangouts, and others exist mainly to hold a house and run a workshop.

Joining or Founding a Free Company

First, the catch. Free Trial players can't join or make a Free Company, you need a full paid account. Once that's sorted, you've got two roads in.

The easy route is joining one that already exists. Square Enix added an official Community Finder on the Lodestone back in patch 5.35, and it lets you filter by world, size, Grand Company, and what the group likes to do. Find one you like, note a member's name, then use the in-game Player Search to track down someone who's online. Click their name, pick "View Company Profile," and hit "Submit Application" if the group is taking new folks.

You can also wander up to an FC's estate (if they own one) and apply right at the placard out front. Or just stand in a major city and shout that you're looking for a group. FCs advertise in city chat all the time, so you'll usually get a few invites within a minute.

Starting your own FC

Founding a crew is a bigger lift but pretty cheap. Here's the checklist:

• Be level 25 or higher on at least one class.
• Have left any previous Free Company at least 24 hours ago.
• Be aligned with a Grand Company, which you earn through the main story.

Head to your Grand Company's headquarters and talk to the OIC administrator to grab a Free Company petition. Fill in a name and a short tag (the letters that show next to members' names), then collect three signatures from other characters on your same world. Those three can be any level, but they can't already be in an FC. Heads up, all three signers become founding members of the group once it's official, though they're free to leave right after.

Turn the petition back in to the OIC administrator and pay a 15,000 gil registration fee. That's it. The group exists now, you're the Master, and everyone gets access to the Company Chest (the shared storage) right away.

One naming note. The Master can change the FC's name by visiting the OIC administrator, but only once every 30 real-world days. The tag, on the other hand, can be swapped as often as you like.

FC Ranks and Permission Settings

A Free Company has 30 ranks as of patch 5.2. It used to be eight, which sounds like a lot until you realize most ranks are just small perks the company earns over time, not jobs people hold. The jobs part comes from the permission system the Master builds on top.

Ranks as permission buckets

Here's how it works. The Master can create custom ranks and set what each one is allowed to do. By default, anyone new who joins gets dropped into a starter rank literally called "Member," and the Master can rename these to whatever fits the group, like Officer, Veteran, or Recruit. A rank is really just a bucket of permissions.

So who gets which powers? That's entirely up to the Master, or whoever they trust with the "Rank Settings" permission. You might give recruiters the right to invite people but not touch the chest. Officers might get full control. Regular members might only be allowed to stash items, not pull them back out.

Company Chest permissions

The chest is where most drama happens, so it deserves a little thought. For each rank you can dial access up or down:

• Full access: deposit and take items, plus pull out gil.
• Items only: take gear and items, but not the cash.
• Deposit only: can put stuff in, can't take anything back out.

A lot of FCs set brand-new members to deposit-only until they've been around a while. It's not paranoia, more like basic housekeeping. Square Enix even put out a notice reminding leaders to check the permission screen before assigning ranks, since new members always land in whatever rank is set as the default.

What each FC rank unlocks

The company earns its own levels just by members playing the game, and each milestone pops open a feature. The big ones:

| FC Rank | What You Unlock | |---------|-----------------| | 1 | Company Chest access | | 2 | Crest customization | | 3 | Chest expands to 3 tabs | | 4 | Gear customization (slap the crest on armor) | | 5 | Company Actions, the buffs | | 6 | Land acquisition, buying a house | | 7 | Full crest customization | | 8 | More action slots + Grade 2 and 3 buffs |

Past that, ranks 10 and 15 add more chest tabs, and ranks 12, 18, and 20 slowly raise the cap on how many buffs you can own at once. The takeaways are simple. Rank 5 is when buffs come online, and rank 6 is when you can buy land.

One quirk worth knowing. The XP needed to push the company up a rank scales with how many members you have, so a bigger FC needs more total credit to rank up. The flip side is that a big active group also generates way more credit, so it more or less evens out.

Earning FC Credits and Leveling Actions

Free Companies run on a currency called Company Credit. It's the fuel for two things at once. It's the XP that ranks the company up, and it's the cash you spend to buy buffs and items. The game tracks your "standing" by the total credit ever earned, so spending it doesn't drop your rank. You can burn through your balance freely and still keep your level.

Credit trickles in passively while members play, but there's one rule. You only earn it on your Home World. Visit another world and your playtime stops counting toward the FC until you're back home.

Where credit comes from

Mostly, you don't have to think about it. Killing mobs, gathering, crafting, running dungeons, doing the main story, finishing guildleves, recruiting, and turning in Allied Society quests all feed the pot. Some of the beefier sources:

• Expert Delivery Missions at your Grand Company. Normal-quality gear hands over 1.5 times its item level in credit, and high-quality gear gives 3 times item level. Dumping old dungeon drops here is a popular credit farm.
• Gathering with Gatherer's Boon. Triggering that proc pays out based on the node's level, from 3 credits at the low end up to 18 credits for level 91 to 100 nodes.
• Crafting high-quality items. Each one yields about 3 plus 0.25 times the recipe level in credit.
• Supply and Provisioning Missions and Grand Company Leves.

The catch is that credit only counts while you're on your Home World, so world-hopping to shop cuts you off from earning. The more people logged in at once, the faster the pot fills, which is why big active FCs seem to swim in credit.

Turning credit into buffs

Once the company hits rank 5, you can spend credit at the OIC Quartermaster in your Grand Company's headquarters to buy Company Actions, those 24-hour buffs everyone in the FC shares. Grade 1 buffs run roughly 1,500 to 3,000 credit each, and the stronger Grade 2 versions (rank 8) cost about 6,000.

You can't just stockpile unlimited buffs. You start with one active buff slot, and rank 8 bumps that to two and unlocks the Grade 2 and Grade 3 buffs. A buff runs for 24 hours, applies to everyone in the group, and you can't stack two of the same kind. So no doubling up on battle XP.

Buying and Customizing FC Housing

This is the part that eats gil. A Free Company house is a status symbol, a hangout spot, a teleport anchor, and a crafting hub all in one, and getting one takes real money and some luck.

The requirements

Before you even look at plots, the company needs to clear a few bars:

• FC rank 6 or higher.
• At least four members in the company.
• You (the buyer) need permission from the FC to purchase and relinquish land.
• You've been a member of this FC for 30 days or more.

There's also a hard rule that one player and one FC can each hold only a single house per world, so you can't stockpile plots.

The lottery

Every plot in the game sells through a lottery now. The old first-come-first-served click rush is gone. The cycle runs 9 real-world days, 5 days to enter, then 4 days for results. To enter, walk up to the placard on an empty plot, pick "Enter Lottery," and hand over the full plot price as a deposit.

If you lose, you get a 100% refund, which you have to claim at that same placard within 90 days. Win, and you finalize the purchase during the results window. Forget to claim a win and you eat a 50% cancellation fee, so set a reminder.

Plot and house prices

The big number. Plot cost depends on size and "grade" (basically how nice the location is), and there's a separate construction permit to actually raise a building.

| Size | Plot Price Range | Construction Permit | |------|------------------|---------------------| | Small (cottage) | 3,000,000 to 3,750,000 gil | 450,000 gil | | Medium (house) | 16,000,000 to 20,000,000 gil | 1,000,000 gil | | Large (mansion) | 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 gil | 3,000,000 gil |

So even a bare-bones small FC house runs around 3.5 million gil before you place a single piece of furniture inside. You get 45 days after buying the land to drop the construction permit, or you lose the plot to reclamation.

There are five residential districts, one per starting region plus two from expansions: the Lavender Beds (Gridania), Mist (Limsa Lominsa), the Goblet (Ul'dah), Shirogane (Stormblood), and Empyreum (Endwalker). Each has 30 wards split into a main half and a subdivision, so plenty of plots exist, though the desirable ones still draw heavy lottery competition.

What an FC house gives you

Beyond the bragging rights, the house comes with stuff a personal place can't match:

• Private Chambers: every member can buy their own room inside for 300,000 gil, up to the 512-member cap.
• Company Workshop: this is where FC crafting happens, including building airships and submersibles that go on voyages for rare loot.
• A Chocobo Stable to train everyone's birds, a Summoning Bell, a mini-aetheryte for fast travel, and garden patches (one for a small, two for a medium, three for a large) for crossbreeding rare seeds.

Customizing the place

The exterior is built from four required parts, the roof, exterior wall, windows, and door, plus up to four optional bits like a fence or roof decoration. When you first build, you pick wood, composite, or stone, and you can swap components and dye them later. Inside, you can redo the wallpaper, flooring, lighting, and (as of patch 7.1) the overall interior layout style.

Two warnings before you commit. One, FC houses get auto-demolished if no member steps inside for 45 days, and if that happens you lose any airships and submersibles too. Two, relocating from one plot to another refunds roughly 15% of the old plot's value, which softens an upgrade but doesn't make it free.

Useful FC Buffs for Leveling and Gathering

This is where the FC pays you back for all that credit you've been banking. Company Actions are 24-hour buffs that cover the whole group, and the leveling and gathering ones are the real workhorses.

The leveling buffs

The star of the show is The Heat of Battle, a straight boost to battle experience. Grade 1 adds 5%, Grade 2 bumps that to 10%, and the crafted Grade 3 version hits 15%. It stacks multiplicatively with the Armoury Bonus you already get for leveling a lower-level class, so the effect is bigger than the raw number suggests. Most active FCs keep Heat of Battle II running around the clock in the first slot.

For the supporting cast:

| Buff | Effect | Grade 1 (Rank 5) | Grade 2 (Rank 8) | |------|--------|------------------|------------------| | The Heat of Battle | +Battle EXP | +5% | +10% | | Earth and Water | +Gathering EXP | +5% | +10% | | Helping Hand | +Crafting EXP | +5% | +10% | | A Man's Best Friend | +Companion (chocobo) EXP | +10% | +15% | | Brave New World | +Stats for low-level combat classes | +10% (under lvl 25) | +5% (under lvl 49) | | Seal Sweetener | +Grand Company seals | +5% | +10% |

If you're grinding a combat job, Heat of Battle II is the obvious pick. Switching to gatherers for an evening? Flip the second slot to Earth and Water II. Crafting a batch of gear? Helping Hand II. Since you can only run two at once, a common habit is leaving Heat of Battle II permanent and rotating the second slot based on what people are doing that day.

Gathering-specific buffs

For pure gatherers, there are also stat buffs rather than XP ones. Live off the Land adds a flat chunk to the Gathering stat (5 at Grade 1, 10 at Grade 2), and What You See does the same for Perception, which raises your chance at high-quality gathers. These don't help you level faster, but they help you pull better materials, and that matters more once you're farming endgame nodes.

Quality-of-life buffs worth grabbing

A couple of buffs aren't about leveling but still save real time. Reduced Rates cuts teleport fees by 20%, and since you teleport constantly in this game, that adds up to a lot of gil over a week. Meat and Mead stretches food buffs an extra five minutes, so you reapply food less often during long sessions. Neither is flashy, but both are the kind of thing you miss when they're switched off.

Grade 3 buffs and Aetherial Wheels

The Grade 3 versions (15% for Heat of Battle, and similar top-tier numbers for the rest) can't be bought from a vendor. You craft them in the Company Workshop using Aetherial Wheels. The upside is they don't burn Company Credit once a wheel is set up, so a maxed-out FC can keep the strongest buffs live basically forever. The downside is the wheels take real time to charge, so you have to plan around them.

The short version. Get the FC to rank 5 so buffs turn on, push it to rank 8 so you can run two at once and unlock the Grade 2 versions, and keep Heat of Battle II going in one slot while you swap the other to whatever the group is doing that day. That single setup covers most of what a Free Company is good for.