Goblins have been spotted roaming the wilds of Eos in Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire. With this new monster comes a new boost mechanic in the form of Halloween Boosts. In this article we will provide info on the new monster type and the new boosts, as well as strategy considerations based on the recent monster changes.
Goblins!
Goblins have been introduced to the world map, bringing with them a new piece of gear: the Bottomless Bag.
This is an excellent piece of gathering gear, and as an accessory you can have up to 3 of them with stacking effects. It is also boosted by the Multiplier I skills in the recent Crafting Research release due to being a level 12 piece of gear.
As with all gear, the effects of the Bottomless Bag are only added if you include your hero in the march. Follow all of the normal defense precautions and do not gather with your hero when offline if there are higher-level players about.
Level 4 and higher goblins drop research scrolls, building plans and Noctis medals much like higher-level behemoths. They also drop chests that include Souls, which are tied to a new boost mechanic.
Halloween Soul Boosts
The Soul items that drop from Goblins and Goblin-events activate a new boost type: Halloween Boosts.
This is a new boost type. The Halloween boosts do not need to be manually activated; they will activate when you reach a threshold of Souls collected, which appears to be 10 souls of the same type. The boosts include warrior boosts, economic boosts and monster-hunting boosts. The boosts get better the more souls you collect. Much better; at hundreds of souls collecting you will be seeing warriors buffed by +25% or more in all stats, thousands of extra MP and even a City Assault boost.
A meta-game consideration of these boosts is that warriors are going to be stronger for many players for the rest of the month. Those playing defensively may want to stock up on mages for the remainder of October as a potential counter.
Overall Monster Changes
With the addition of goblins, no new monsters other than goblins and behemoths are currently spawning. It is unknown if this is a permanent change at this time, but for now it means that noxious daggers are only craftable with pre-existing materials. Winged assassin mats were already rare; practically speaking pieces of the gear already required chests short of incredible luck.
This change is a benefit for goblin hunters, however. The goblin kill events are easier to complete, and since goblins are likely to only be available through halloween this gives more players a chance to complete a decent-quality Bottomless Bag.
One other side-effect is the impact on loyalty gathering: goblins and behemoths both have nearly three times the MP requirements of the original monsters (Flan, Shieldshears and Garula) but drop only double the loyalty on average. This makes the MP Max and MP regen skills in the Hero research tree much more important than they were before, as well as having a good set of Hunter gear.
Pro-Tip: Despite the lairs saying they provide Sentinel mats, Behemoths and Behemoth lairs have also been observed dropping hunter mats, including the Sahagin scale rare as seen in the screenshot below. So don’t stress too hard about the disappearance of Shieldshears if you don’t have a good Hunter set yet.
Conclusion
The goblin boosts are an intriguing new addition to the game; longer-term but still temporary, and have the potential to become significantly powerful over time as you collect more of an item. It will be interesting to see if this mechanic is explored further in the future.
Meanwhile, the removal of the monsters other than behemoth and goblins is definitely a blow to daily loyalty collection. Again, it is strongly recommended that you work towards gold hunter gear and maxed hero research if you do not have those already.
