You know, sometimes I think about the fact that we’re nearly halfway into September. With the amount of RPG releases we’re having this season, it has been crazy these past couple of weeks. But time stops for no one.

Welcome back to Unending Horizons, where I’ll be regularly posting my impressions of both new and old content of Final Fantasy XIV. In this edition, we’ll be covering the two main contents of Patch 7.31: The new Cosmic Exploration planet and the second phase of the Phantom Weapons Relic.

Disclaimer: The following article contains spoilers for the Patch 7.31 quests. Reader discretion is advised.

Final Fantasy XIV Patch 7.31 — A New Planet Awaits

So let’s begin with Cosmic Exploration, as it has received a lot of changes, and most of them are really, really good. First, you are now able to ride a mount while on the planet, and the developers have also added a convenient retainer bell. I’ve talked about these previously, but besides that, Phaenna’s missions have been made severely less complicated than usual.

For instance, Red Alerts have been nerfed. You now only need to craft two items in what feel like very easy recipes, and gatherers can get the amount required in a single node if you use your skills correctly. In addition, a new NPC was added, who will transport you right near the place to deliver your supplies. This makes it super convenient, especially since some red alerts will be in faraway places from the main hub, so having a way to easily get to those is great.

As for the server-wide Infrastructure Projects, well…they’re pretty much the same FATEs as the ones from Sinus Ardorum, and for now, they seem to be adjusted properly to not require a lot of people in the instance to complete. Still, time will tell if Square Enix has truly adjusted these to compensate for times when player activity isn’t exactly at its peak.

For the Stellar Tool relic, I was genuinely surprised to learn that there are way fewer steps compared to last time. Previously, you would go from Novice-1 all the way to Novice-9, but after you’ve filled out your gauges, the relic data goes from Intermediate-1 to Intermediate-5. When comparing it to the Gold Thumb’s set, which is the one that was added in Patch 7.3, it essentially works like a weapon that has one CP materia melded onto it.

Of course, as it lacks the necessary slots, you could argue that the relic is a tiny bit worse than performing a pentameld on the new set. But I would actually argue that this relic will serve people on a case-by-case basis, simply because of its ability, which will increase an item’s Quality gauge by 75% when the material condition is Good. When it comes to Expert Recipes, that extra boost will make a huge difference. A shame they don’t really glow at the moment, but oh well. 

The Phantom Weapons’ Second Phase

Our next topic of discussion is the Phantom Weapons Relic. In a previous Beyond Horizons article, I had commented on how I had yet to do even the first phase. However, I made it a task for myself to finally get all the necessary Demiatmas… only to be asked to provide 1500 Allagan Tomestones of Heliometry to finalize it. But once that was taken care of, it was time to begin the second phase!

And it is bizarre, to say the least. There’s just no other way I can describe it. So first, you’ll need five materials. One of them is acquired through an NPC for the eye-watering price of 300,000 Gil, and the second is acquired by spending 600 Bicolor Gemstones. The rest, though? You will have to craft those. 

Yeah, you read that right. The Synthetic Dark Matter Alpha, Beta, and Gamma materials are all recipes that you craft yourself, or, as the game states, acquire from the market board, where players are… needless to say, selling those at a premium. But what surprises me is that these are master recipes, with a requirement attached to them that requires you to completely fill up the Quality gauge, or you’ll fail the craft. Not exactly the easiest thing, but my heart goes out to those who do not have a crafter friend or access to a sufficiently leveled crafter to do those themselves. 

After you’re done acquiring those, you have this behemoth called an Aetherwell Array. Here, you’ll have to do Duty Roulettes to fill four spheres with aether. And according to a friend of mine, this is a grind that can take almost two weeks to conclude. Thankfully, and I do really mean it when I say “thankfully”, this is just for the first relic. Any subsequent ones can be crafted by handing over Allagan Tomestones of Heliometry to the proper NPC, and ta-da, you’re done.

Personally, while I am sort of glad that this relic isn’t as easy as the Endwalker Manderville Relic, it does feel a bit like the development team has no idea what extreme to target at times. I have no qualms with this second step, but the first step is extremely annoying, mostly due to the horrible drop rates that the demiatmas drop. With this step…sure, you will be doing a lot of roulettes, and that can take you one to two hours. But that’s miles better than playing for ten to fifteen hours, only for the game to utterly refuse to give you the items you need.

And I’m not alone in this sentiment. Many of my friends, who are also Savage raiders, have simply decided to bash their heads against the latest Savage duties. Because with those, you can at least be sure that you’re guaranteed to get the weapon you require, especially if you’ve formed a static to properly distribute the rewards.

Final Fantasy XIV Patch 7.31 Walks Even Closer Towards A Better Game

And that’s pretty much all we have to see in Patch 7.31. I do think I’m still feeling the massive content drought, but that’s just a consequence of being caught up with all of your objectives, I feel. All I can do at the moment is just roulettes and hunt trains, as I await the next major patch. The new Cosmic Exploration quality of life improvements were very welcome, and I can’t wait to see what Square Enix has planned for Patch 7.4.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail is available now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.