Cosmic Exploration Mech Ops Guide and Rewards in FFXIV

Mech Ops are special FATEs inside of FFXIV's Cosmic Exploration allowing people to enter both on-foot as well as being able to pilot a robot to gain massive score.

A Mech Ops Mission will spawn every 20 minutes unless restricted by a development FATE or Red Alert operation. See below when the next Mech Ops is available:

Sign-Ups for being able to Apply as a Pilot(ride the mecha) are available shortly before the FATE spawns. Furthermore, only 5 people can be selected to be a Pilot every mission.

To become a Pilot for a Mech Ops, Alerot (Mech Ops) at (22.2, 20.5) who can be found near the mech hangers. He will allow you to buy a Pilot Application for 1,000 Lunar Credits.

Once you have a Pilot Application, use the Mech Ops menu in your Exotablet and press "Apply as Pilot" when Sign Ups are available. You will not always be selected, but your chances of selection increase with each fail.

When a Mech Ops is available you can either travel to the location on-foot or speak to Alerot to be teleported to the location.

There are 2 different Mech Ops Directives available. These are:

• Destroy Corrupted Crystals
• Clear Toxic Lunar Spongoi

The first one has you going around destroying crystals using either a drill or Piloting a robot. With players gaining 10 Contribution each time they break or Pilots gaining 50 Contribution.

The second instead has you breaking Spongoi with Pilots driving a vehicle and players using a flamethrower. Players can expect 5 Contribution and Pilots 50 still but the cooldowns on skills is faster for Ground Support.

Players can generally expect to gain a score of around 300-400 but can go as high as 800 depending on both how quickly the FATE progresses and if you get lucky with overlapping resources which are broken at the same time. Pilots can expect around 5000 contribution.

Completing a Mech Ops on-foot gives you a bonus giving you +10 of both Cosmocredits and Lunar Credits for the next 20 missions. This is great for farming additional credits but does not provide any bonuses to XP, Data or Score.

The first way to increase your chances at being a Pilot in Mech Ops Directives is by simply applying every time. While you may often not be selected, it increases your chances of being selected in a future mission.

The other way is by swapping instances if available. Moving to a lower pop instance means less people and therefore a higher chance at getting in the robot.

While there are 5 tiers of Contribution available, only a select few are actually available when being either a Pilot or as Ground Support. Contribution is important for being able to succeed in the Daily Rankings and therefore it is always great to be in the robot.

There are a few rewards available. The first being Credits based on if you Bronze/Silver/Gold the directive. Additionally, for completing the FATE as a Pilot, you will gain a Big Bang Ticket which grants you a better version of Cosmic Fortune. There is also a small chance of gaining a Vacuum Suit Identification Key directly from the mission when completing it as a Pilot.

Big Bang Tickets are on average better than a regular Fortune ticket for the same cost of 1,000 Lunar Credits. This means you should always have a few thousand saved up before spending Lunar Credits directly on Cosmic Fortune.

Credits as Ground Support:

Credits as a Pilot:

Pilots do not gain Lunar Credits.