Limited job · Live since patch 7.56 · September 8, 2026

Beastmaster

FFXIV's second limited job. Weaken wild beasts, capture them into the Master's Bestiary, and fight alongside them: 50 to collect, three loaded into battlehorns, one on the field at a time.

Start here

Strangers in the Wood

Talk to the Excited Adventurer in New Gridania (X:11.8, Y:13.6). You need a Disciple of War or Magic at level 50, the ARR finale The Ultimate Weapon complete, and Dawntrail registered. Beastmaster then starts you over at level 1 and caps at 50.

Master's Bestiary

All 50 beasts

Where each one is tamed, and the Trick, Tempered Release, and Borrow it brings. Mark the ones you've caught.

The shape of the job

Melee DPS on strength, wielding a one-handed axe with a shield in the off-hand.
Wears armor of Striking (shared with Monk and Samurai), accessories of Slaying.
No class beneath it, no role actions, levels 1 to 50.
Job quests arrive at 1, 8, 18, 30, 40, and 50 as tutorials; actions come from levels, not quests.
FATEs pay bonus experience. Captures and Crucible boards pay too.

Catching beasts

Gauge (30y, usable mounted) reads whether a target can be caught and how likely it is. Capture (10y) marks it with Interest Captured for 120s; kill it while the mark holds and the pact is forged. Both come at level 1.

Odds rise the lower the target's HP and the further below your level it is; anything above your level is immune. In a party every Beastmaster rolls independently, and unlike Blue Mage spells, unsynced parties don't hurt your rate. Forgekin, voidsent, elementals, primals, and spoken can't be tamed.

Kornago gourds skip the fight entirely: buy them with remnants of resilience from the Crucible. That's how you get the duty-locked beasts.

Battlehorns and beast actions

Three battlehorns (levels 1, 10, 20), one beast assigned to each from the Master's Bestiary, one summoned at a time. Swapping mid-fight is fine; in combat a horn's 90s cooldown only starts once that beast leaves the field, and out of combat it's 2s.

Summoning grants One with Nature, and it buys exactly one of two things: Tempered Release, the beast's own signature ability, or Borrow, which hands you an action based on its classification. Trick spends the beast's TP on an instinctual skill. Parting Blow fires Aetheric Burst and sends the beast home.

The Inner Compass

You and your beast hold separate TP gauges, 250 each, filled by auto-attacks and combo weaponskills. At 100 TP either of you can spend it on an instinctual skill; potency scales with the TP spent.

Four affinities sit on the compass: Volant, Rampant, Durant, Eldritch. Two instinctual skills within seven seconds combo. Move clockwise instead of repeating and you complete an intentional combo, Sunstrider or Moonstalker. At 50, a Sunstrider followed by a Moonstalker (or the reverse) completes Universality.

Your combos bank Mastered Instinct, the beast's bank Natural Instinct. Rally and Rallying Cheer spend those stacks to refill the gauges. They're what make five-to-seven combo chains possible.

What Borrow gives you

Borrow (level 22) turns Beast Mode into one action, decided by the summoned beast's classification rather than the beast itself.

Beastkin: Beastskin; Physical damage taken −25%, crit rate +5% for 30s.
Vilekin: Vileskin; Block rate 100% and knockback immunity for 15s; each block feeds TP.
Cloudkin: Cloud Skim; A directional dash, then evasion +5% for 60s.
Seedkin: Seedsower; Nearby enemies deal 10% less damage and take poison for 60s.
Wavekin: Quelling Wave; 30y water damage that strips one buff from the target.
Scalekin: Scaleskin; A magic barrier worth 8% of your max HP for 15s; 85 TP if it is fully absorbed.
Soulkin: Soul Crush; A melee interrupt; 1,000 potency and 100 TP if it lands on a cast.
Ashkin: Scouring Ash; Cleanses one debuff, heals 10% HP, refunds 100 TP.

Crucible of the Unbroken

The job's endgame: a solo, board-shaped roguelike unlocked by Into the Crucible at Beastmaster 30, in the Central Shroud (X:22.9, Y:19.1). You enter from (X:21.9, Y:22.8).

Pick a team against the enemies the Board Layout shows, then work inward to the final boss. You and your beasts have HP that never regenerates on its own; Snarl parks enmity on your beast, Challenge takes it back. Crucible items and beast gear (10 of each, no duplicate gear) carry you between fights; Territory Tokens earned on the board buy feed that buffs your beasts until they rest. None of it leaves the board.

Score pays faded and bright remnants of resilience; the Kornago merchant at (X:21.9, Y:22.6) trades them for gourds and Beastmaster gear upgrades. Beasts you bring gain ranks up to 25, which only matter inside the Crucible.

First Board of the Unbroken: Lv. 30; iL 25+; 10 beasts; Boss: Pas de Seul. Unlocked by Into the Crucible
Second Board of the Unbroken: Lv. 40; iL 35+; 12 beasts; Boss: Loosefrox Inkyjots. Unlocked by Gobsmacked
Third Board of the Unbroken: Lv. 50; iL 82+; 14 beasts; Unlocked by A Beastmaster's Path
First Master's Board: Lv. 50; iL 82+; 12 beasts; Unlocked by Free for All
Second Master's Board: Lv. 50; iL 82+; 15 beasts; Unlocked by Mastery Rematch

Degrees and rankings

Clear the Second Master's Board and finish Blazing Trails to unlock Degrees: three difficulty steps that raise enemy HP and damage in exchange for bigger score bonuses.

Every run is graded on a nine-rank ladder, Apprentice up to Apex and Legendary. SE doesn't publish the thresholds; community score tracking puts Legendary at roughly 17,900 on the Unbroken boards.

Third degree plus the ranking checkbox puts your score on the leaderboard, aggregated per physical data center from your last three attempts per board. Season one is postponed. It was due to open September 24, 2026; on September 17 SE pushed it back, citing balance feedback and open mechanical issues, with no new date. Ranking scores stay hidden in game until one is set. A preseason with rankings closed will follow each season.

Rewards go out by moogle delivery as achievements: the top 300 per data center get Crucible Contender and the Tourmaline Golem mount, the top 100 Running Feral and the title Knight of the Crucible, and first place Beast of the Best and King or Queen of the Crucible. The mount returns in later seasons.

Limited-job rules apply

You can play with other people in preformed or unrestricted parties, but Duty Roulettes are out, as are Eureka, Bozja, the Occult Crescent, Variant and Criterion dungeons, Ultimates, deep dungeons, Stone Sky Sea, squadron missions, the Hall of the Novice, and all PvP. You can only accept Beastmaster job quests and quests open to every class. Retainers can't be Beastmasters either.

Unlike Blue Mage, Beastmaster gets no open-world kill bonus; the experience multiplier is on FATEs.

What comes next, per the lead designer: a level cap raise and more beasts to befriend are planned; anything bigger (a multiplayer Crucible, PvP with familiars) is undecided and waits on how 7.56 lands. Blue Mage's next update is targeted for early 8.x.

Sources: Patch 7.56 notes, the official Beastmaster job guide, the Crucible Rankings page and its September 17 postponement, the September 17 hotfix, the action, trait, and reward tables on the FFXIV wiki (including its community-tracked Crucible scores), and the Famitsu developer interview of September 4, 2026.