Today Square Enix hosted the 84th Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer Live, providing more details about update 7.1, which will be the first after the launch of the expansion Dawntrail.
As usual, Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida and Global Community Producer Toshio Murouchi provided all the relevant news during the livestreamed event.
Following the brand-new trailer and the announcement that the update will be released on November 12, we got a quick visual recap of what we’re getting with the update and the following incremental patches.
Interestingly, we hear that the new dungeon won’t be as challenging as the ones we faced for the expert roulettes, but there may be some surprises at the third boss.
We then get to see the first gameplay of the Alliance Raid, Echoes of Vana’diel – Jeuno: The First Walk, alongside the first boss. You can watch it below.
Yoshida-san also brought up the usual assets on paper showing the gear we can earn and the ways it can be dyed.
The next feature showcased was the more challenging “Chaotic” version of The Cloud of Darkness alliance raid, which can be accessed via the raid finder and party finder. You need to have completed Dawntrail to participate.
The party composition is 2 tanks, 4 DPS, and 2 healers per party. You can go in with pre-formed alliances of 12 to 24 members. Difficulty and rewards are the same regardless of the number of members and the difficulty is balanced for 24 players.
It’ll reward IL 730 gear, mounts, minions, and hairstyles, and tokens that can be exchanged for rewards. There won’t be any weekly limit on rewards.
Additional tokens will be awarded depending on the number of alliance members that are on their first time trying the duty.
There is also a random limited-time bonus that persists for several hours. Those who enter the duty during this period will enjoy improved drop rates and additional tokens.
Below you can check out a couple of rewards, including 2 mounts.
Moving on to PvP, action execution and hit detection will be updated. Hit detection will be triggered to match visual effects instead of at the time the action is executed. Actions that will feel more responsive with immediate hit detection will be tweaked case by case.
New actions will be added and some will be removed for each job. Black Mage will get a major overhaul and the overall balance will change a lot. Some limit breaks will also be rebalanced including gauge charge time and more.
Frontline and rival wings will be adjusted with changes to damage taken and deal, limit gauge charge time, and machine functionality.
PvP Series 7 will begin and Crystalline Conflict will see map improvements to Cloud Nine and Red Sands. Below you can check out a screenshot comparison.
Ranked matches will also be changed. Rankings will be determined per region and not per data center. Only one data center per region will host ranked matches. For Season 12 they’ll be Gaia for Japan, Chaos for Europe, Primal for North America, and Materia for Oceania.
The datacenters will be rotated each season and only the best-performing character on each service account will be ranked.
The number of ranking slots will also change. We’ll have an overall winner, players ranked from 2 to 100, and then players ranked from 101 to 300.
Oceania will keep the old ranking with 1, 2-30, and 31-100 since it only has one data center.
After a break, Yoshida-san presented the Future Rewritten (Ultimate) raid, including the initial cutscene.
Ultimate raids are getting an update in general. To encourage having unique jobs, when two members of a party have the same job, the limit gauge will no longer passively fill up over time.
Next on the menu is the update to the Hall of the Novice, designed to teach some more advanced mechanics.
We also get to see some more mount rewards.
Group Pose is getting an update with support for fishing animation. Camera controls will also be adjusted to remain oriented to the screen rather than rotating based on the roll angle.
The Glamour Desser is also being tweaked with the ability to store specific combinations of gear as a single slot. It can still projected onto gear or added to glamour plates. This will primarily support level 1 glamours for the moment, and you’ll need to have all the items of the set.
Players will be able to copy settings to another character including hud layout, macros, config settings, and more. This applies to characters on the same account and the same device.
The Daily list will get updated to display up to 10 quests at the same time.
A tilt configuration option has been added to let players decide whether they want your character to be seen tilting while turning or not. It’ll be similar to the tilting added to mounts with 7.0.
Starting with patch 7.1, we’ll also get changes to address character-related feedback following the graphical update. We’ll also get an additional free Fantasia potion.
We then get to see, as a bonus, weapons inspired by the Weapon design contest.
Below you can check out the full calendar of updates of the 7.1X cycle and their contents.
Outfits from War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvious will be sold on the Final Fantasy XIV online store in December.
Speaking of stuff that will be sold, we get the reveal of Dawntrail’s artbook, including an Erenville minion.
Funnily, we also get a collaboration between Final Fantasy XIV and the outdoor gear brand Logos. Pre-orders begin on November 15.
We also get another collaboration between Final Fantasy XIV and the jewelry brand Filibustier, which includes some spiffy bracelets.
One more collaboration is with the hair dye brand Schwarzkopf.
Final Fantasy XIV is currently available for PC, PS5, PS4, and Xbox Series X|S. The new expansion, titled “Dawntrail” was released in early July.
Lately, we also saw interesting screenshots of new features shown at PAX West, and even more images and details were shared a few weeks ago during the Seoul Fan Festival in South Korea.
