Introduction
Final Fantasy XIV works out of the box using wine or proton, but there are some better ways to play the game. This guide will also dive into the use of plugins and ACT(Advanced Combat Tracker), a tool for raiders to get DPS numbers and audio cues during fights.
Launcher
There is a Linux native FOSS launcher for FFXIV(note this is a 3rd party launcher). You can simply install xivlauncher from the AUR. If you have the steam version, make sure you enable the steam service in the launcher. You can set your game path and install the game there.
There are also multiple settings for the game, but I won’t dive into all of them. Know that there is a checkbox to use a Free Trial account under the game settings. If you want to enable Dalamud plugins, enable it from the Dalamud section. You can also have your client auto-login on start so you don’t need to input your info and press login,
Steam Deck
XIVLauncher has a steam deck guide which you can read here, but you can also play the game simply using proton(which is how I do it on the deck).
Wine Version
The wine version built into the launcher is the XIV wine with specific patches for FFXIV and ACT. You can change it under the Wine settings in the launcher. Now, I do not recommend this version if you are playing with an IME such as fcitx-mocz.
I would suggest installing unofficial-wine-xiv-Proton which is based on wine-ge instead of wine-tkg. There has always been issues with the keyboard input freezing when using an IME and wine-tkg, this is not related to FFXIV. That problem is not present under wine-ge. You can find it on github. Simply extract it to your ~/.xlcore.compatibilitytool folder and have it point to the bin directory with an absolute path under Wine Binary Path(Wine settings pane) such as: /home/[usename]/.xlcore/compatibilitytool/beta/unofficial-wine-xiv-Proton8-25-x86_64/bin/.
ACT
ACT does work under Linux. You can get the install script from github. There is a well written guide on the page. If you are not new to ACT, feel free to copy your settings from Windows or wherever you currently play. All your settings will be back in place. You will need to re-install your plugins though. Simply do so by importing the DLLs.
Text to Speech
In order to have text to speech working on Linux you will need the LinuxTTS plugin. It can be found on Valarnin’s guide found on the install page from earlier. You need either espeak or espeak-ng installed. You can then configure the volume and so on from the plugins.
Overlays for DPS Numbers
There are 2 ways of doing.
Hudkit Method (what I am using)
Install the Overlay Plugin as you would on Windows. You can use the overlay of your choice by simply using the overlay’s URL. I personally like Kagerou. You would start a web server in ACT and then you will connect to that webserver using your loopback and port number via hudkit using the following command ./hudkit/webkit/hudkit hudkit/webkit/example.json Essentially we have all our webserver parametres in our json file. Mine looks like this for instance:
{“title”:“example overlay”,“url”:“https://hibiyasleep.github.io/kagerou/overlay/?HOST_PORT=ws://127.0.0.1:10501”,“x”:1921,“y”:437,“width”:500,“height”:277,“hotkey”:“L”}
You can find more details on how to do this on the hudkit github page linked above.
Method 2(Recommended)
Here is the expert from Valarnin’s guide:
Use XIVLauncher with a “browser-based overlay” renderer plugin that works on Linux. The only working plugin at the moment is NextUI. Be sure that you install the XIVLauncher plugin version, not their ACT OverlayPlugin.dll version. In ACT, enable OverlayPlugin.dll, but don’t create any overlays. Instead, enable the “local WSServer” in OverlayPlugin’s settings. Then simply create a viewport in NextUI which loads that local URL.
FFLogs Uploader
FFLogs Uploader as a native Linux version. It is an app image which you can download from their website.
Conclusion
It’s not perfect and requires some tinkering, but the game does run nicely. It’s been a roller-coaster journey for FFXIV on Linux over the years. I have been playing the game on Linux ever since Proton’s original launch. The game has broken a few times, but it has a decently sized Linux community devoted to it. The longest downtime I have seen is about 2 days.
If you have any concerns or questions feel free and I will do my best to help out. Feel free to leave any feedback on how to improve this guide.
See you in Eorzea~