Gates

Gates are mini duties within the Gold Saucer that appear every twenty minutes. Participation is unlimited, however registration times and rewards depend heavily on what kind of Gate is happening and how good you are at it.

Which Gate is happening is decided randomly, however some Gates can only appear at certain times. Here’s a quick overview:

You can find NPCs called “Gate Keeper” all around the Gold Saucer, whom you can always ask what the next Gate will be and where. They will also teleport you instantly to the place of registration of the upcoming or currently ongoing Gate if you wish so.

Air Force One

Air Force One has a registration time of 10 minutes. You can register by talking to the Senor Sabotender at Round Square. The Gate itself is not timed however it follows a fixed path over the duration of 2-3 minutes. It is an instanced duty, therefore you can’t participate in it if you are already in queue for a duty or in a party.

The Gate itself is a shooter ride. You board a little airplane which will automatically fly along a set path through the Gold Saucer interior. During your flight, you will see multiple targets come up. Your goal is to shoot as many of the targets as you can before they either vanish or you fly past them. Each target will give you a different amount of points when hit: Bronze will give you 50 points, blue gives 100 points and golden gives a whopping 300 points. However there will also be red targets which give you 20 minus points, so be careful not to hit them. The maximum amount of points you can get are 5.000 points for hitting every non-red target.

The amount of MGP you’ll receive at the end depends on your score as follows:

Any Way the Wind Blows

Any Way the Wind Blows is a Gate that has a short registration time of about 2 minutes. You can find the NPC in question close to the main stage at Event Square. This Gate is not instanced, therefore you can participate in it even while being queued for duty or in a party. However you won’t get a reward if you join a duty before the Gate ends.

The Gate itself is heavily luck based. Typhon is a ghost-like monster that will appear in the middle of the stage. As long as he is on stage, you can freely move about. However he will vanish shortly after and you will become unable to move. Typhon will then reappear together with random AoEs. If you’re standing in an AoE, it will throw you off the stage and you will fail the Gate. You still earn a consolation reward of MGP though.

In total there are 5 rounds to this Gate, with a few seconds of time to reposition yourself after each round. The Gate counts as successfully won if you manage to avoid all AoEs in all rounds. Everything before that counts as failed although the MGP rewards will become bigger with each round you stayed in the game. If you manage to get through all 5 rounds, you get a whopping 7.500 MGP reward! Since there is no way to estimate where the AoEs will appear, this Gate is completely luck-based, however the user /u/mcstronghuge on the ffxiv subreddit once did some nice visuals regarding the safest spots to stand in to potentially last the longest in the Gate.

Cliffhanger

Cliffhanger is an open Gate with no registration limit. As long as the Gate is going on – which is 10 minutes – you can register and participate, however if you register late, you will only have as much time left as the Gate will still go. There are two possible places for this Gate which will be either Round Square or Wonder Square. Since this is an open Gate, you can participate in it even if you are queuing for a duty or in a party, however there will be no reward if you join a duty before accomplishing the goal of the Gate. If you finish the Gate in time, you will receive 3.000 MGP as reward.

The Gate itself is an obstacle course. The course itself is either the mountain in Round Square or the hanging decoration in Wonder Square. In both cases you have to maneuver the course via Jump’n’Run to reach the top where you have to interact with a little chocobo chick to rescue it. However the whole course is riddled with bombs falling down and exploding after a few seconds. If you are too close to a bomb when it explodes, it will knock you back from the center of the explosion, potentially throwing you down the course.

You can try as many times as you want and as long as there is still time remaining for the Gate. If you completely fall off, just talk with the quest NPC again and he will teleport you back to the start of the course. 

Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith has a registration time of 8 minutes. You can register by talking to the Senor Sabotender at Round Square. The Gate itself is timed to 10 minutes and will end automatically upon the timer running out. It is an instanced duty, therefore you can’t participate in it if you are already in queue for a duty. However you can join with a party as long as ever party member is within the Gold Saucer vicinities.

The Gate itself is an obstacle course like Cliffhanger. There are three possible map types: One is called “The Fall of Belah’dia” which goes along a giant wall, the second one is called “The Falling City of Nym” which features a lot of floating islands and the third one is “Sylphstep” which features multiple routes and goes horizontally as well as vertically making it the most elaborate course so far.

Similar to Cliffhanger you have to reach the goal point of the map to successfully complete it. In Belah’dia it is on the palms of the giant statue as one of the highest points of the map (see screenshot above). In the City of Nym and Sylphstep it will be on the very last island that can be reached. Missing a jump most often results in having to start over from the beginning, so be careful of your steps! 

Furthermore, while reaching the goal point is the requirement for the Gate to count as successfully completed, the amount of MGP rewarded is based on two factors:

If you reached the goal point before the time ran out, you will receive 2.000 MGP. If the time runs out before you reach the goal point, you receive 100 MGP. However throughout the course you can collect little cactuar figurines which will further boost the MGP received at the end. It is possible to make a run to the goal point and then try to get all cactuars afterwards to make sure you get the completion reward, however most cactuar will be on your way to the goal anyway, so it is advised to collect them as you go.

There are three types of cactuars, each having a different amount scattered throughout the map and each kind worth a different amount of MGP. Here is a quick overview:

In short, getting all the cactuars and reaching the goal point in time will earn you 4.000 MGP.
My advice though would be to go for all bronze and silver cactuars on your way, reach the goal point and then go for the golden cactuar as that one is usually in one of the most difficult spots of the map and failing even slightly will make you repeat the course from the starting point again, potentially voiding you of the goal point if you took too much time to get there.

The Slice is Right

The Slice is Right is a Gate that has a short registration time of about 2 minutes. You can find the NPC in question close to the main stage at Event Square. This Gate is not instanced, therefore you can participate in it even while being queued for duty or in a party. However you won’t get a reward if you join a duty before the Gate ends.

The gate itself is made up of multiple rounds of different challenges. Only if you manage to reach the very end of the Gate will it count as successfully completed. Failing at even one point, will result in getting knocked off the stage and therefore failing the Gate. Your rewards are heavily based on how far you managed to get within the Gate – with 5.000 MGP being the reward for completing it – and if you managed to snatch any additional MGP during the different stages.

The very first step of the Gate will be the arrival of the Samurai Yojimbo. He will summon a few bamboo poles and cut them. For a very short time you will be able to see how he cut the bamboo and from there it is your task to estimate a safe spot to stand to not get hit by any falling bamboo. If you get hit by a bamboo (AoE), you will fail the Gate. In total he will summon bamboo three times before moving on to the next stage.
If the bamboo got cut horizontally, it will fall down to both sides in a straight AoE line. If it got cut once diagonally it will slightly fall in a straight line to the side it was cut to (if the cut from top to bottom goes from left to right, it will fall to the right). If the bamboo got cut multiple times it will fall in a large circle AoE.
Clearing this stage will net you 1.000 MGP.

In the next stage he will throw a few heaps of money on the stage and then summon his dog. The dog will then target a random heap of money and jump there, knocking off anyone who stood too close to that heap. He will repeat this until he hits all the heaps. During all of that, it is possible to collect an additional 1.000 MGP from any of those heaps. However this will come with a big risk as it needs time to collect MGP and in that time, the dog could hit your heap and throw you off. Also note that once you successfully collected MGP from a heap, the heap will vanish from your sight. However, the location will still be targeted by the dog, so stay clear of that place even if no money is visible anymore!

After that Yojimbo will once again summon bamboo multiple times although the amount of bamboo at once will be more than in stage 1, making it trickier to avoid all of them.
If you have successfully avoided all bamboo you will earn an additional 2.000 MGP and move on to stage 4.

This stage might be the hardest stage to get through as this one relies heavily on RNG. Yojimbo will summon a giant heap of money on one point and the dog on another point. The both will be hidden under giant baskets with a third empty basket joining the group. The baskets will shuffle faster and faster and at some point they will shuffle faster than can be followed with the eye, making it impossible to estimate where the safe baskets will stop. Once the baskets are set in their locations, you have a few seconds to decide in which of the three sections you want to stay. The empty basket and the money basket are safe, while the dog basket will knock you off. Furthermore, if you stand where the money basket lands and you collect from that heap it will double the amount of MGP you earned so far (including the additional MGP from stage 2).

The fifth and final stage will once again be with bamboo poles and once again have more bamboo poles than prior stages, making it even harder. However the principle is the same, so try your best to avoid the AoEs and if you manage that, you’ll earn an additional 2.000 MGP.
In total the end reward for a successful completion of this Gate is therefore between 5.000 MGP (for simply getting through all rounds while playing it safe) and 12.000 MGP (if you got two heaps in stage 2 and the money basket in stage 4).