The year is almost over, and we now have officially arrived at the first ever Post-Dawntrail content update patch for Final Fantasy XIV Online. As someone who only started playing the game last year, it’s been a wild ride full of story twists and turns, and the madman that is Naoki Yoshida keeps pumping out content for the game. After playing the new Crossroads patch, my thoughts just kept overflowing, so here we go.
The Familial Bonds and their Origins
As is custom with every post-patch, Patch 7.1 adds a continuation to the Main Scenario Quests. Without getting too much into spoilers, all I can say is that these quests feature a heavy focus on the familial bonds of certain characters such as Koana, and perhaps what’s going to be the most important aspect that will be folded into the future Patch 7.2 and 7.3: the aftermath of our battles in Living Memory. Just what will become of Heritage Found, and its city, Solution Nine?
This is the first time I’m actually experiencing the post-expansion patches as they come, and I have to say, I can compare this feeling to when you’re watching an ongoing anime series, with the only difference being that instead of having to wait a week for the new episode to be aired…this time you’re waiting roughly three months. And it is a feeling like no other, that I don’t think you get to experience fairly often.
The new dungeon, the Yuneyawata Field Station, felt like it was straight out of a horror movie, and I just imagine the amount of G-posing that will take place in future Halloween contests. The mechanics of each of the bosses inside this dungeon were fairly simple to solve, but the final boss is certainly no slouch, with mechanics that are easy to ness up and before you know it, you are dead on the ground.
Final Fantasy XIV Meets Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI is more than just a mainline Final Fantasy game. It also marks the first-ever time Square Enix has made their foray into the online multiplayer genre, so the bar was high when it was announced that Dawntrail’s Alliance Raid series would be a direct inspiration from it. And believe me when I say it: this is a challenging raid. But not in the sense that it is too hard and unfair, but it’s genuinely a fun experience from beginning to end.
As you warp around various locations, there are a lot of references that Final Fantasy XI players will be able to catch on almost instantly, and it also provides a window into how the 2002 MMO looked, from the recreation of the main lobby to even the memos scattered across the many dungeons, and not to mention the bosses, which masterfully translate the quirks from Final Fantasy XI into Final Fantasy XIV.
When Dawntrail first released, there was—and well, technically there still is—many haters going on about how the expansion has been made severely more difficult. But as time went on, it became clear that it’s not that it’s not trying to be the Dark Souls of MMOs. Rather, it just wants to stop hand-holding the player, and expecting them to keep on learning and trying, even if it means the boss will literally and figuratively wipe the floor with them at first.
While it took me and my two friends over an hour, constantly wiping at several bosses, we still had a lot of fun figuring out the mechanics of this particular raid. And considering this is just the first out of three, I am sure there is a lot more of Vana’diel that meets the eye, which makes me excited to learn more when we get the second part of this Alliance Raid sometime in Patch 7.3.
Major Changes to Some Jobs
Being an MMO, Final Fantasy XIV’s jobs are always subject to player feedback, with constant balance and quality of life adjustments. And Patch 7.1 is no different. There are many changes, but I want to talk about a few major ones that stood out to me in particular. Starting with the Gunbreaker class, its invulnerability skill, Superbollide, no longer reduces your HP to just 1, and instead, downs you to exactly half.
Among the Tank invulnerability skills, Superbollide in particular was perhaps very infamous as a “panic button”, where you pretty much had to very clearly convey to your healer that you’re about to use it. But now, this is no longer an issue. It does make me wonder what exactly prompted this change all of a sudden, but it’s reassuring to know that my healer won’t get suddenly jumpscared in the event I do have to use it.
The second change involves the Healer jobs. Scholar and Sage had their MP costs reduced by 10% to assist in MP management, and the Esuna skill is now an instant cast as opposed to 2 seconds. That might seem like a small change, but in higher-end content, such as Ultimate Raids, Esuna is quite literally a must-have in your hotbar. I’ve talked to some friends who have done such content in the past, and they commented that there were times where you’re supposed to cast Esuna so often that if they miss the timing by even a second, the party is instantly wiped, and the run is effectively scrapped.
And finally, we have some changes to certain DPS jobs. One of the changes involves the Black Mage. In Patch 7.0, the job already had a pretty substantial change, adding a skill that allowed you to move your Ley Lines. However, the Ley Lines are now a charged action that can be used a total of two times, completely upsetting the Black Mage rotation players know. Furthermore, Ninja mains rejoice, as you no longer need to stand still while under the effect of Ten Chi Jin.
Quality of Life Improvements
While I will admit that crafting and gathering may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as an avid crafter myself, I simply can’t ignore the quality of life improvements that we got on the crafting side. One of the improvements involves the Custom Delivery set of quests. NPCs whose Trust you already maxed had a chance of sometimes requesting “bonus” items that would offer more crafter/gatherer scrips.
However, which NPC is offering the bonus and for which class was always random, and you had to basically go through the list one by one just to find which of them were giving out the bonus for the given week. However, in Patch 7.1, this has been changed to now show which NPCs are asking for bonus items, and in which category, which is easily viewable from a glance.
Another great change is that the Crafter’s Log and the Gatherer’s Log now allow you to filter out recipes you have already crafted at least once. This is particularly useful for when you’re aiming for the specific achievements that require you to craft certain items, or if you’re not sure on which item you’ve yet to craft among the thousands of recipes the game has.
Next, the portrait system has also seen an update. If the gear shown in a saved instant portrait differs from what you have equipped after updating or swapping gear sets, you can now update your instant portrait instantly, without it automatically reverting to the straight-faced DMV photo, as the community often called it. This is a great change, because it was always a pain to have to go to the Portraits screen, and then have to redo it from scratch just because you updated a single piece of gear.
New Custom Delivery NPC and Role Quest Finale
A few weeks after the release of Patch 7.1, which is internally referred to as Patch 7.15, two new things have been added that I’ve been personally excited for. The first addition is a new member to the Custom Deliveries list of NPCs. In Tuliyollal, you can now accept a quest that will take you to Shaaolani to help the railroad company run by Wawlika and Nitowikwe, who are looking for an experienced artisan to help procure the necessary materials in order to tackle the company’s two major projects. While it will certainly take me a while to max out her bond and progress in the story line, I am quite excited to see how will this story unfold.
The second thing also pertains to crafters and gatherers…yes, I’m sorry, I’m just way too much of a crafter/gatherer lover, I think you can sumrise that by now, but I digress. If you happen to have cleared all of the Wachumeqimeqi Delivery role quests in Tuliyollal, the Pelupelu NPC Ropli will have a new quest for you.
Similar to previous quests, this serves as a sort of ending to the storyline, culminating into showing you what your hard work has done to help the city. You’re also gifted with something at the end. But I’m going to be frank, this gift is…possibly the worst one I’ve ever seen, but I’m going to keep that a secret to those who wish to find out for themselves. Ah well, at least the cutscene is worth watching.
Streamlining Duty Support Dungeons
Patch 7.1 introduced an update to the Duty Support system, which is what players use for when they do not want to utilize the Duty Finder to match up with other players. Ever since Patch 6.5, all main scenario dungeons and the 4-player trials could all be done through the feature, with any dungeons that were added after its introduction getting added on the same day of their release. However, there was a certain subset of dungeons that did not have support for the feature, such as Halatali or The Aurum Vale.
Granted, these dungeons are considered “side quests”, and aren’t really necessary to do in order to progress in the Main Scenario Quest, if that’s your focus. But according to the development team, the plan is to add the functionality to those optional dungeons. This is great, but there’s one issue: older dungeons, especially in A Realm Reborn, will require a lot of changes to their overall flow so that it was even possible to do them in that feature.
Together with Final Weapon staff Gambit, we both queued up into this new version of Halatali, and immediately noticed the changes that were done. The dungeon itself feels a lot faster to go through, but you’d never really notice it, because these changes are so subtle, and unless you were actively seeking out for them, they’re easy to miss.
The Hype is Real for Patch 7.2
I cannot wait to see what does the Final Fantasy XIV team have planned for future Post-Dawntrail patches like this one. From the mention the crazy things that are happening in the Main Scenario Quest, and all the things that they promised…that’s the beauty of Final Fantasy XIV’s update cycle I suppose!
Being able to experience an expansion’s release followed by its post-patches is a new feeling that I think I don’t get to experience rather often, and one that I have been so far, meeting with high expectations, and I’m pleased to say that they have been met.
