FFXIV: How to Unlock the Aloalo Island Variant Dungeon

Exploring a lonely island alongside a biped elephant companion isn’t a bad idea at all, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in the new Aloalo Island Variant Dungeon in FFXIV. Here’s everything you need to know about this new content and how to unlock it.

FFXIV: How to Enter Aloalo Island Variant and Criterion Dungeon

The new instance with multiple endings in FFXIV can be unlocked with Shallow Moon in Old Sharlayan (X:12.0 Y:13.3) through the quest “Stranger From Paradise”. But instead of killing Chaos, we’re heading to a paradisiacal archipelago looking for more treasure, loot, and, of course, new monsters to defeat. Head to Thavnair to continue your inquiry.

After progressing through the quest, you’ll eventually unlock the duty and explore it accompanied by Matsya. In the classical Variant Dungeon fashion, you get three different paths to determine your possible endings, bosses, and rewards. There are 12 different endings and four possible bosses, with one of them being hidden. You’ll always fight two monsters throughout the whole dungeon.

Your objective will always be the same, with your route possibly changing each time you run it. Different actions related to Matsya or the environment will result in different endings, and you’ll get a special reward after completing all of those.

Aloalo Island Variant Dungeon Rewards

Each Personal Spoils chest in the dungeon gets you one Aloalo Potshard, with a maximum of three per run. Potshards can be exchanged with Trisassant in Old Sharlayan (X:11.9 Y:13.3), right next to where you found Shallow Moon, for various different rewards such as hairstyles, emotes, or glamours.

The Personal Spoils can also randomly get you the bosses’ Triple Triad cards, the Giant Leaf Parasol, and the minions Uolosapa and Repulu. Those last two are tradeable and usually go for quite some cash in the Market Board.

Getting all 12 endings also gets you a special mount unique to this Dungeon. This can be achieved either alone or with some friends but still requires at least 12 runs in Aloalo.

The first clear also gets you access to the Criterion version, which works more like a “proper” dungeon. With a more linear structure and a single ending, this is a harder challenge that yields some different prizes such as Mounts to those willing to tackle it.

There’s also a Savage version for Criterion, and that one now finally has some interesting prizes in the form of the Elevated Ester, which lets you augment the Tomestone of Comedy weapons even further. They can now match the Anabaseios raid weapons as the best gear in the game.

And that’s only a portion of the content we got in the 6.51 patch. There’s a lot more to be found here, especially with the Fall Guys collab finally hitting the Saucer.