With each expansion released for Final Fantasy 14, the world of Eorzea gets bigger and bigger. Heavensward added flight, allowing mounts to take to the skies. This added verticality made areas more engaging to explore and allowed the developers to add beautiful floating islands.
Then came Stormblood, which added diving. This ability allows you to dive underwater and explore the depths. This ability is not only important to the story multiple times throughout the stories of Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but it's heavily used in side quests and by the various gatherer disciplines.
How To Unlock Diving
As long as you're making progress in the main story quests of Final Fantasy 14, it is impossible to miss out on the ability to dive. It turns up rather early in Stormblood and is used frequently from then on.
In Soroban We Trust is the name of the quest that rewards you with the ability to dive, and it is a Level 63 story quest located in Tamamizu, in The Ruby Sea area. It's a simple quest that simply involves speaking with Alisaie and then speaking with Lyse. In addition to the ability to dive, you will receive the Water Flip emote, which can only be used underwater. You will also receive your choice of optional reward — the options include Level 62 weapons for Gunbreakers and Dancers, and some Savage Might materia.
Once you learn how to dive, you may want to start the nearby quest A New Fishing Ex-spear-ience, which will reward you with the ability to go Spearfishing. Note, however, that your Fisher level must be 61 or over in order to equip a Spearfishing Gig. This is another quick quest that simply involves speaking to a Kojin.
How To Dive
In order to dive, you must be swimming in a body of water that is deep enough, such as the ocean of The Ruby Sea or the massive lake in the Azim Steppe. You cannot dive in any areas released before Stormblood. While swimming, you simply need to press whichever button you have set to descending as if you were riding on a flying mount. The default descent buttons are as follows:
- PC: Press CTRL + Spacebar
- PlayStation: The circle button
- Xbox: The B button
Alternatively, you can simply summon a mount capable of flying and dive by flying into the water. You can use flying mounts underwater, which is useful as they're a lot faster than the default swimming speed. Note that just like on land, you will have to dismount to interact with NPCs or gathering nodes.