Complete Faux Hollows FFXIV guide – how to unlock Unreal Trials and rewards

If you’re looking for a challenge while playing Final Fantasy XIV, but you’re not quite ready to dive into Savage prog yet, Unreal Trials offers a great middle-ground while giving you a chance to earn unique (and rare) rewards through Faux Hollows. Here’s everything you need to know to get started.

What are Unreal Trials

Unreal Trials are, essentially, past-expansion Trials re-imagined and brought into line with the current day difficulty of Extreme Trials. They were first introduced during patch 5.3 and so far, we’ve seen everything from Shiva to Zurvan. 

The current Unreal Trial is The Singularity Reactor (Unreal) which sees us once again facing off against King Thordan. 

How to unlock Faux Hollows and Unreal Trials

The good news is that to do these two things, you only really need to do one. Once you unlock Faux Hollows, you automatically have access to Unreal Trials. 

Before you can unlock Faux Hollows, there are a few requirements that need to be met:

• Complete the level 80 MSQ quest called “Shadowbringers”
• Complete the level 60 sidequest called “Keeping Up with the Aliapohs
• Have at least one level-capped Disciple of War or Magic Job

Once you’ve met these requirements, head to Idyllshire and talk to the Painfully Ishgardian Man (X7.0 Y5.9). He will give you a quest called “Fantastic Mr. Faux”, which is very easy to complete and simply involves you speaking with the Faux Commander. (I’d recommend not skipping this cutscene, as it’s one of the few that have made me belly laugh.)

Once you’ve spoken to the Faux Commander, you’ll have access to the Unreal Trial and his unique board game — Faux Hollows

How to play Faux Hollows

In order to play Faux Hollows, you have to complete the Unreal Trial first. You can run the Unreal Trial as many times as you like, but you only have one opportunity per week to play Faux Hollows. The reset time for Faux Hollows is 1 am PT every Tuesday. You can queue for the Unreal Trial using Duty Finder, so you don’t need to go to Idyllshire to begin the fight.

Once you’ve successfully defeated the boss, head to Idyllshire and talk to the Faux Commander (X5.7 Y6.1). 

Be warned: Once you begin your game of Faux Hollows you cannot back out of it – you must play until your chances are used up. 

Now, if you’ve ever played Battleship, you have some idea of what’s needed from you during Faux Hollows. It’s, in the most basic of terms, a card-flipping game where you try to reveal images that are hidden within a 36-tile board. 

You have 11 attempts to find these pictures and you must find the entire picture in order to receive the reward associated with it. There are four images to find in total, but not all of them are always present on the board:

Solving Faux Hollows

Whenever you open up a new game of Faux Hollows, take your time and inspect the board. There will always be a few tiles that are blocked off, and the images will not appear where there is a tile blocked off. 

Finding the Dual Blades and obtaining a Retelling should always be your top priority; a Retelling will allow you to play Faux Hollows again and if you fail to find the Dual Blades during your game, you will have to wait another week to play again. Once you’ve found the Dual Blades, what you do with your remaining moves is up to you. 

Collecting Faux Leaves is a game of longevity and risk. Sure, you can use up all of your moves in a search for the elusive Faux Commander, but considering how long you have to wait between games, it might be better to play it safe and hedge your bets on either the Coffer or the Gift Box. 

There are community-made resources, like this one by Fyrin Niyuun, which claim to help with solving the Faux Hollows puzzle.

Faux Hollow rewards

To exchange your amassed Faux Leaves for unique rewards, talk to the Faux Commander in his usual spot in Idyllshire

Here’s the full list of obtainable rewards and how many Leaves you need for each: