FFXIV The Path Infernal: Event guide, rewards, and how to defeat the Infernal Shadow

From a Torgal pup minion, a Torgal mount, and orchestrion rolls of iconic songs, Final Fantasy XIV’s special crossover collaboration with Final Fantasy XVI offers a ton of rewards featuring iconic elements of the latest entry in the franchise. 

This event runs from April 2 to May 8—after which the rewards will no longer be available—so make sure to complete the quest chain before the deadline for a chance at having Clive Rosfield’s outfit in your Glamour Dresser.

Unlike a majority of FFXIV’s limited-time seasonal events, however, The Path Infernal won’t be a one-and-done deal of chasing down NPC dialogue and completing one or two seasonal FATEs. You’ll probably want to duck out of any long or important duty queues while accompanying Clive through the world of Eorzea. Here’s what to expect going in.

Where to start the FFXVI crossover event in FFXIV

A Land on Fire is the first quest, and you can pick it up in Ul’Dah from the Neophyte Adventurer. You’ll find him standing across the street from the Immortal Flames headquarters, at the base of the steps leading south.

If you’ve played the most recent crossover event—A Nocturne for Heroes, featuring Final Fantasy XV’s protagonist—you’ll know to expect a much more detailed questline that ends with a thematic boss fight in a solo instance. The Path Infernal proceeds along a nearly identical track, though you’ll be completing minigames instead of having to wait for a FATE partway through the event. 

If you haven’t reached level 50 and completed The Ultimate Weapon—in essence, finished the main storyline of A Realm Reborn and seen the credits roll at least once—this quest won’t be available. The good news is that crossover events tend to come back at least once or twice in the following years: You won’t be missing your chance forever if you don’t want to blaze through the Main Story Quests by May 8.

Stepping in to guide you through the rest of the questline will be the Wandering Minstrel, director and producer Naoki Yoshida’s self-insert character. Knowing that Yoshida is also the producer of FFXVI makes for some funny meta-moments in the cutscenes, but you can skip a majority of them to speed things up.

The first two quests are fairly straightforward, with the quest objectives guiding you through Ul’Dah, Thanalan, and then finally, Gridania. As with most FFXIV story quests, it’s a lot of talking punctuated by some simple minigames and tasks you might recognize from Stormblood and Endwalker (or be encountering for the first time, if you haven’t reached those expansions yet).

Just follow along using the journal to confirm quest markers, and you’ll find yourself completing Pain to Recall and starting The Path Infernal, the final quest. From there, you’ll be directed to Apkallu Falls and into a solo boss encounter against the Infernal Shadow.

How to beat the Infernal Shadow in Final Fantasy XIV’s The Path Infernal crossover event

Transported into Clive’s mind via the Wandering Minstrel, you’ll be facing off against the Infernal Shadow, FFXVI’s incarnation of Ifrit. While all minor solo duties are designed to be easily clearable on any job, this encounter in particular is slightly movement-heavy, so casters beware.

Once you load into the instance and finish watching the intro cutscene, the game will provide a small tutorial on the two duty actions you’ll need to use. They’re pretty straightforward, for the most part: Rising Flames is a simple free attack, while Dodge is a timed maneuver that’ll get you out of normally unavoidable damage. If you successfully Dodge an attack, the button will turn into Precision Strike, which is another powerful attack you can unleash for free.

What the game doesn’t tell you is that both Rising Flames and Precision Strike do damage in the quadruple digits as opposed to the triple digits of your base actions, making it very important to use them as much as possible. Rising Flames has a 30-second cooldown, and you should be aiming to press it the moment it becomes available to ensure as many uses as you can fit into the battle. Additionally, Precision Strike is only available for five seconds after Dodging, so try to use it right away.

Another important detail is that both actions are gap-closers, so be mindful of any AoEs between yourself and the boss before executing them. Furthermore, you can avoid any telegraphed AoE with Dodge, not just the arena-wide ones. The caveat is that the game won’t provide helpful timers for the avoidable AoEs, and you’ll have to estimate the correct window by watching Clive and attempting it at your own peril.

The battle consists of roughly four informal phases divided by distinctive mechanics. The first is just a general exercise in evading telegraphed attacks while keeping your cooldowns rolling and getting used to the Dodge mechanic. Follow the on-screen instructions, keep out of the orange AoEs as usual, and you should whittle him down to the next phase. The only attacks you need to watch out for are:

• Spreading Fire: A point-blank circular AoE followed by a wide donut. Dodge the first, then walk into his hitbox to dodge the second. 
• Smoldering Claw and Tail Strike: Extremely wide conal AoEs from his front and back respectively. 
• Crimson Rush: A very wide AoE charge attack. It covers a big area depending on where he’s charging to, but you should have enough time to get out of the affected zone. 

Because the boss will usually cast Tail Strike right after Crimson Rush, you should already be heading towards the end of his rush so you can quickly move out of the very wide cone covering most of the arena. Alternatively, use any gap closers to get to safety or try to Dodge it at the last second. 

At the end of this phase, the boss will cast Crimson Streak, a series of four Crimson Rushes back to back. Stand next to his feet just outside of the very beginning of the first charge, then walk into it once he charges. 

The second phase begins with the boss casting Fetters on Clive and immobilizing him. Shortly after, you’ll see a shining marker with a prompt to “Defend Clive.” If you’ve played through Stormblood, you’ll recognize this mechanic from the fight against Susano—the key difference is that you have to click the prompt instead of just walking into it. 

Once the boss attacks, you’ll have to complete a fairly forgiving button mash quick time event to free yourself and Clive. The fight will mostly proceed with recycled attacks from the first phase, with another button mash prompt before the next phase begins. 

After taking a certain amount of damage, the boss becomes untargetable and summons four Infernal Swords across the arena. They function identically to the Infernal Nails mechanic in FFXIV’s normal Ifrit encounters: Your goal is to whittle all four swords down before the boss’s counter reaches 100, all while dodging the AoEs that pop up all over the arena. 

Defeat the swords, and you’ll be treated to an unavoidable cast of Hellfire before you move into the fourth and final leg of the fight. The boss will repeatedly cast an attack sequence titled Fiery Rampage until you’re able to defeat him. The AoE telegraph timings get a little tighter here, so be ready to move or hit the Dodge button.

The first cast of Fiery Rampage is a simple right-left pair of half-arena cleaves, followed by a very wide point-blank circular AoE, then an arena-wide attack that you can Dodge. Subsequent casts will have additional circular AoEs dotting the arena at the same time, which can get pretty frantic for casters: The best thing to do here is to prioritize dodging and use as many Rising Flames or Precision Strikes as you can until the boss is dead.

If you’re finding that you’re having trouble completing the fight, try some higher-level food buffs or upgrade your equipment. This fight’s maximum synced Item Level is 110, which is higher than a lot of the regular level 50 gear you’ll acquire through MSQ rewards and crafting. Ideally, you should be picking up the IL 120 Ironworks gear from Mor Dhona—however, if you don’t have enough Tomestones of Poetics to buy more than a few pieces, remember that picking up Samurai or Red Mage will net you a free coffer of IL 115 gear. 

Collecting the rewards for The Infernal Path event in Final Fantasy XIV

After completing the battle and following along with the rest of the quest objectives, you’ll find yourself rewarded with the Torgal Whistle, the Torgal Pup minion, and the Metian Attire Coffer, which contains Clive’s outfit. But that’s not everything the event has to offer; head on over to the Gold Saucer to check out the selection of orchestrion rolls from FFXVI’s soundtrack. 

You’ll find them listed under Prize Exchange IV offered by the Gold Saucer Attendant behind the counter. The orchestrion rolls are 20,000 MGP each for a total of 200,000 MGP if you want them all. If you’re more of a Triple Triad player than an orchestrion roll collector, you can circle around the counter to the Triple Triad Trader and pick up the Clive Rosfield card for another 200,000 MGP.

There seems to be no discount for the card as was the case with the Noctis card, which was 10,000 MGP at the time of the FFXV crossover event. You have until May 8 to grind out enough MGP, so make sure to take advantage of the weekly Gold Saucer Challenges, Fashion Report, Cactpot tickets, and daily Mini Cactpot scratch-offs while the rewards are still available.