GamerEscape

During today’s Letter from the Producer LIVE, it was confirmed that Final Fantasy XIV Patch 4.5 A Requiem for Heroes Part 1 will launch January 8th.

The Stormblood patch series will go up to Patch 4.58. Patch 4.55 will arrive in February, with 4.56 (Part 2) arriving in late March.

Among the new features spread across Patch 4.5 are the things we’ve already heard about such as the new Main Scenario Quests, the Ghimlyt Dark dungeon, Seiryu, final chapter of Return to Ivalice and more. The Stormblood Beastmen Tribe quests will also come together in Patch 4.56

It was revealed that Blue Mage will be available on January 15th, one week after Patch 4.5 so that players can focus on enjoying the story before diving head first into the new Job.

Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida discussed the new content, saying that the Ghimlyt Dark is well made and includes a lot of details and NPCs. Additionally, Yoshida-san admitted to shedding tears not once, but twice during their development of this chapter of Return to Ivalice. He encouraged people to remove their Esc keys from their keyboards so that they won’t be able to skip the cutscenes.

For those awaiting the next installment of Eureka, Hydatos will be included in 4.55. Yoshida-san urges players not to worry too much about the sub stats on their current relic weapons and says that after you complete Hydatos, you’ll be able to change them. Also at the timing of Patch 4.55, Eureka Pagos will receive some nerfs.

The Biggest surprise of the Live Letter came during the Gold Saucer segment where it was revealed that the new mini-game wasn’t Blitzball or snow boarding, but Doman Mahjong. Players can choose to play either NPCs over three difficulty settings, or use the Duty Finder to challenge three other players. There will be rankings as well for those looking to get serious about Doman Mahjong. For those unfamiliar with the game, there will be an NPC that can explain the rules. Doman Mahjong will also be included in the Challenge Log.

Yoshida explained that he has been spending a lot of time playing Poker in Red Dead Redemption and he wanted to give Final Fantasy XIV players a chance to play something like that in the game. Unfortunately, Poker wasn’t able to happen because of the different laws in different territories, so they came up with Doman Mahjong instead.

Additionally, we got our first look at Air Force One, an on rails shooter that will appear as a G.A.T.E inside of the Gold Saucer. As you follow the predetermined path, you have to shoot the targets. The targets have different point values as dictated by the stars on them, and if you shoot any of the bombs that are moving around the screen, your overall score will take a hit. A max score for a game of Air Force One is 5000.

Additionally, there will be new Gold Saucer rewards added over the remainder of the 4.x series, including a new mount that could very well replace Fenrir as the most expensive MGP item.

Housing will see some adjustments and new items as well. Items that can be interacted with will be altered so that they don’t disappear on the screen. Additionally, the arrows that appear over them (indicating they can be interacted with) will only appear now once you move close to them. New furniture items were also shown, including a new fish tank set based off of a battle with a certain Primal…

One of the hottest topics in the community right now, the Data Center expansion, will occur during patch 4.57. Yoshida-san explained that they need to stress test the servers and see just how many players a single world can handle. He mentioned that there’s a system in place that will prioritize the residents of that world over those that are there visiting.

Machinist, Monk, and White Mage will all see adjustments during Patch 4.5. Ability strength for these jobs will be increased. However, because of the dramatic changes that all of the jobs will undergo during the move to Shadowbringers, it’s possible that these numbers could be lowered with the new expansion. It was also mentioned that the mechanics of Machinist will be changed in 5.0.

Yoshida spent a few minutes playing around with the brand new trial, The Wreath of Snakes, where players will battle it out with Seiryu. Yoshida noted that the arena appeared to be a bit high up… hopefully those railings around the edge stay in place! Yoshida also commented on the design of Seiryu, stating that they decided to go with a snake design because of the amount of dragons the team had already included for Heavensward.

Yoshida-san spent the majority of the second half of the broadcast playing around on Blue Mage. He’s gone to great lengths already to explain how the job will work, and while we’ve heard a lot of what he said already, he did include some new information about the games’ first Limited Job.

Blue Mage will have a Job Quest every 5 levels. These will have an NPC requiring you to obtain a specific ability. These abilities, can be learned solo or in a party and don’t require you to be hit with the attack- you simply need to have enmity on the monster, and for it to use the ability. You then have a percentage chance to learn the ability. Yoshida said during the stream that there’s a 30% chance to learn Bad Breath, and a 20% chance to learn Sardine Toss (the percentages are attributed to each monster and does not change based on things like party size). Yoshida of course, got both of these on his first attempt.

It was also mentioned that the Blue Mage’s staff isn’t as important to the job as the armor and accessories are. Because this is a caster, INT will be its main stat, and it will have a bigger impact than it does on other jobs.

Once a spell is learned, it will be marked with a green dot inside of the Spellbook, and from there you can set it as one of your 24 actions. You’ll also be able to save up to five different action configurations for your Blue Mage.

Yoshida also gave us a closer look at the Blue Mage’s Masked Carnivale, demonstrating how the menus work and how you can determine what abilities will be best for each fight.

After showing off Blue Mage, Yoshida switched over to show off some of the additions to Gpose. Players will now have the ability to manually focus their shots, enable a “wet” effect on characters, and open their emote menu from within Gpose. There will also be a confirmation window that appears now when exiting the mode.

Lastly, we got a live demonstration of the new transparency settings coming up the user interface. Recommended settings for the transparency of various UI elements will be shown in the menu and no.

They ended the stream with announcements, most of which are specific to Japan such as the collaboration with Deuxzero to do Final Fantasy XIV Wedding Plans, or Limit Break flavored LAWSON’s chicken (if you look closely, you can see Soken has found a rare nugget with the meteor logo).

However it was revealed that there will be a new Final Fantasy XIV Piano Collections CD coming out in the coming months, and we got our first look at an upcoming Alpha figurine.

Tune into our Twitch channel tomorrow at Noon PT as we go over all of the Patch 4.5 information on Aetheryte Radio.