From Evercold to Switch 2, and everything in between
Back in April, we got our first look into Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Evercold. At that time, the teaser trailer we saw will take the Warrior of Light into a new shard known as the Fourth. Today at Final Fantasy XIV FanFest being held in Berlin, Germany, we got to see the extended trailer with a lot more info and surprises. Have a look below!
As soon as the trailer ended, Yoshi-P came out dressed as the new Bastion Job! I’m not going to lie, I would LOVE to cosplay as this one day! Yoshi-P did say that the shields are too heavy.
Just like the Anaheim announcement, we concluded the Hydaelyn story arc and are starting the next story arc known as the Godless Realms Saga. As we leave behind Eorzea we venture into the Fourth Shard known as the Far Wanderer. So far in FFXIV, we have ventured into two shards. For spoiler purposes, I will not disclose which one. The Fourth has fallen into complete ruin and is ravaged into ever-spreading ice. People of the Fourth have abandoned the land and have taken to the skies to live. There are 5 Realmship cities, and they announced 3 of the 5: Naglfar, Fargarth, and Hringhorni. One of the new player towns is known as Falgathr. 7.56 will shed more light heading towards the upcoming extension on September 8.
If you remember in A Realm Reborn, there is a Garlean named Rhitahtyn sas Arvina who wielded a Dual Shield as his weapon. And in FanFest Anaheim, Yoshi-P wore a shirt with his picture on it.
And now: New Job – Bastion – Dual Shield Tank
Here are the specs for the Bastion Job: Role: Main Tank, in which we hope to learn more about what they mean by Main and Off Tank (as we stand, all the current Tank jobs are considered both Main and Off tanks). Action Mode: Evolved Only, as a new job this make sense because why would you give a new job the current system and then also have the Evolved mode? Main Arm: Skyltborg (Dual Shield) which looks amazing! Starting Level: 90, Starting location: Limsa Lominsa, I was hoping for a more recent location because Limsa already has the Warrior job as its starting point. The interesting part is that part of the kit will also include healing abilities. For their concept, this is what they provided to us:
They will announce the second new job, Physical Range, at the Final Fantasy XIV FanFest in Tokyo, Japan.
Yoshi-P then went into how Main Scenario will work in Evercold. Everyone will start in the same starting area, but after you complete that area, you get to choose (in this case) 3 different areas in any order. Once you complete the 3 areas, you can proceed to the next area. This would make watching FFXIV streamers a bit difficult since everyone will be doing things differently, and it will be hard not to get spoiled.
With this, since players will be heading into these areas at different job levels, that area will auto-balance to the player’s current level for certain area enemies, Fates, and Dungeons. My guess will be mainly Evercold.
Just like in Anaheim, they are touch-based from Daily to Weekly; they are reworking to do dailies from day to day to week to week. This will make it easier for players, like myself, to obtain points in a shorter playtime as opposed to spending hours to get dailies done, if you do them all. What I like the most about this is if I miss points from the previous week I am able to go back and get those done. More information will be available at FanFest Tokyo. They also wanted to make sure everyone understands that “Seasons” does not mean “Season Pass”, and no additional fees. We will also learn more about Evolve and Reborn mode at Tokyo FanFest as development is going well according to Yoshi-P.
Another topic that they mentioned in Anaheim: Action skins are new animation skins for your Warrior of Light that, for the longest time, have been stuck with one animation. Now we have options, starting with teleport!
Type B will be the skin for me! I just love how it looks. I wonder if you can choose which skins you want to use for each job. Like, I want to use Type B for Reaper and Type A for all the healing jobs. With this new system, the FFXIV team can explore bringing back some of the actions that they had to remove since 2.0.
Improved Character creation: Look, I could get into what they are changing, including turning on and off the darkening of the nose for Lalafells and Viera. But we all know what we want to hear: where is my Butt Slider and Long Hair? During this segment of the show, they did a skit where they are playing it off like it’s one big secret, but they are seriously working on it. In all seriousness, the character creation is starting to take shape for what they want to include. It won’t be as extensive as other games like Black Desert Online or other MMOs with far more options for your characters.
They talked about Automatic Travel to quests; in my opinion is a nice feature, and it’s probably something I won’t use often. But I am glad that they are finally putting it into the game.
The current difficulty options for FFXIV are Normal and Savage (I guess they don’t count Extremes), in which 85% of players play Normal and between 14-17% play Savage, and with that there is a huge gap between Normal and Savage. With the New Difficulty, it will help as a stepping stone to go into Savage Raids. Season Gear will be the reward that will gradually upgrade throughout the expansion.
Same-Region Player Matching System: Japan to test it first on Oct 12 and hopefully everyone else soon after. This is further out than I thought it would be. I thought it would be around late Aug/early September. My biggest wishlist for all Regions will be one.
Chocobo Companion Overhaul is something that needed to be done for the LONGEST time. Haven’t really summoned my Chocobo in-game at this point….months? Maybe over a year? – To be able to party up with another player and both players can summon their Chocobo to create a Light Party (4-person party), is HUGE. I love this new feature and cannot wait to use it. Also, overhauling the breeding system is most welcome. Especially if you have to buy Onions from the Marketboard can be expensive. Plans are that this change should happen around 8.1.
Next, and after a slight technical diffculty, they revealed an updated trailer of the Final Fantasy XIV Evecold Evangelion Raid series with Special Guest Artist and Designer, Mahrio Maeda, Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and Mad Max: Fury Road. Unit 01 looks really different, even from the anime. He looks like a certain Diabolos that we faced in the Void Ark raids.
They also announced the newest 8-Player Raid theme, Final Fantasy 7, called Beyond the Lifestream. Final Fantasy 7 Director, Yoshinori Kitase, along with Story, Motomu Toriyama, and the FFXIV Scenario team, Story Supervisor, Kazushige Nojima, and Art Design Supervision, Tetsuya Nomura. This raid will be one of the first to have three difficulties. Just curious how they will incorporate Final Fantasy 7 into the world of the first, as they did with the Dawntrail raid series.
Patch 7.56 will have new MSQ, the release of the new limited Job, Beastmaster. And to continue the Final Fantasy 7 theme, the Gold Saucer from Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be added. Keybound brawler is the new Gold Saucer typing game that will be released on October 28. Get your keyboard ready!!
Final Fantasy 14 is now announced as coming to Switch 2 on August 4, 2026, and pre-Order is available now? soon?
The last thing that got announced today is the Final Fantasy XIV Evercold Collectors Bundle, which would include the Reaper Job Figure, Ethos Metal Keychain, Kottr Mini Plush, Tapestry of the Fourth, Evercold Special Art Box. The in-game items will include a new mount from FFXIII Valhallar Odin, Entreat Crystal Emote, and Crystal Skyltborg for Bastion Job.
The over 3-hour event had a lot of information, and if you have the time to sit down to watch, I highly recommend doing that. Even if you have it in the background to listen. I wanted to learn more about main and off tank stance, the evolved mode for Evercold. The same-region player is being released a bit later than I was hoping for. But as long as they do it correctly, that is all that matters.
Final Fantasy XIV Evercold is scheduled to be released in January 2027. Most likely will have a solid date by FanFest Tokyo.
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