Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Announced
Today, after having to cancel all of its planned in-person Fan Festivals for Final Fantasy XIV over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Square Enix broadcasted their FFXIV Announcement Showcase.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker has been announced with a Fall 2021 release.
New key art shows the Warrior of Light as a Paladin, and gives a nod to the imagery from version 1.0. You can see just how far the character has come.
New Jobs
Sage
Role: Healer
Weapon: Nouliths
Required Class: None
Starting Level 70
Job quest is located in Limsa Lominsa
Concept:
- A barrier type healer. With 6.0, Sage and Scholar will be barrier type healers, and White Mage and Astrologian will be “pure” healers.
- Uses aether to manipulate nouliths in combat.
- Able to temporarily augment their own magic abilities.
Melee DPS
We’ll have to wait to see the details for the second and final job of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, however we have been told that it will be a Melee DPS. It will be revealed in May. Yoshida “got hot” during the presentation and changed his shirt. What kind of clue could it be?
Story
The story of Endwalker will be the end of the 10 year arc involving Zodiark and Hydaelyn.
This of course, doesn’t mean that they’ll be shutting down the game once this story is complete. In Patch 6.1, it will start an entirely new adventure that takes place after the Zodiark and Hydaelyn adventure.
What were the final days that brought the mighty ancients to their knees? To uncover myriad secrets- of Hydaelyn, Zodiark, and deeper mysteries still- the Warrior of Light embarks on a journey to the moon. The long-awaited conclusion to the tale of gods light and dark.
- What brought about the final days?
- What became of Hydaelyn and Zodiark?
- What will be the Garlean Empire’s fate?
- What is Zenos and Fandiel’s aim?
- What is to be found on the moon?
Features
- The level cap will be increased to level 90
New Areas
Thavnair
Radz-at-Han
Radz-at-Han, in Thavnair, will be comparable in size to Eulmore from Shadowbringers. There will be a second, larger town as well announced in the future.
Garlemald
What happened to Garlemald? What where the Warrior of Light find there? There’s a deep, and intricate story related to this area.
New Tribes
The Arkasodara tribe of the Matanga
More tribes will be announced at a later day. Yoshida did mention that we might get a tribe on the moon.
New Threats
Anima
The original designer of Anima from FFX is on the FFXIV team and actually recreated it for Endwalker.
New Dungeons
Raid
Pandaemonium
A new, original Final Fantasy story.
Alliance Raid
It will be a completely original raid (not a crossover) and will focus on a piece of Eorzean lore that has been a mystery for a long time.
New small-scale PVP mode
New PVP content that feels more casual and immersive by removing role restrictions. They want to make the matching easier than before. There will be a new type of reward system for this.
Side Quests
Role quests. Crafter & Gatherer quests
The four categories for the role quests introduced in Shadowbringers will be expanded into five: Tank, Healer, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, Magic DPS.
New gear and recipes
Trust system update
Estinien
Why would Estinien join the group of Scions? Look forward to Patch 5.5 to find out more!
There will be other changes to the Trust System announced in the future including new duties for companions to take part in.
Gold Saucer Update
New content coming to the Gold Saucer.. something big… for all players… but they can’t say much now so please look forward too it
Island Sanctuary
This will be content that any player can take part in. You might, for example do something like raising animals and cultivating the land and then selling the fruits of your labors. Maybe you can let your minions roam free.
New Residential District: Ishgard
The area will be opened and available to look at when 6.0 launches to get an idea of where the plots are. The plots will be purchasable in 6.1.
Battle System Adjustments
Downscaling values
Why?
- Calculations causing overflow, resulting in bugs
- Calculations for enmity reaching their limits
- Flying text becoming lengthy
- Enemy HP is becoming monstrously high
- The highest HP pool for bosses in Patch 5.5 was 440,000,000
How?
- The difference in values used from levels 51-80 will be reduced
- Maximum damage per attack will be reduced
- Experience points will also be reduced
- Enemy HP and damage dealt will be reduced
- *Yoshida stated that damage dealt numbers will decrease by about 80% or 1/5
Removing belts
- Belts will no longer be equippable starting with Patch 6.0
- Equipped belts will be given to Calamity Salvagers for safekeeping
- Belts will no longer be obtainable via duties and item exchanges
- *you should remove materia from belts prior to 6.0
- The 35 slots allocated to belts in the armoury chest will be reallocated
- 15 slots added to both primary weapons and rings for a total of 50 slots in each
- The remaining give slots will be held in reserve
Data Center Travel
This will allow players to move to other data centers to party up with their friends. There will be restrictions similar to that of world visitation. More details will be announced in the future.
PlayStation 5
- 4k Resolution Support
- Faster loading times
- Significantly improved frame rate
There will be 4k and 2k modes depending on if players want to focus on resolution or frame rate. Improvements will be made to the PS5 version over a series of patches.
The PlayStation 5 version of Final Fantasy XIV will be a free upgrade for those that currently have the game registered on PlayStation 4.
The beta for PlayStation 5 will begin on April 13, which is also said to be the date of the next patch.
Fan Fest
Two days of Fan Festival type content are planned for May 14 and 15 (for those in North America). They are hoping to have live performances as well. Because of third party affiliates, there’s a chance that the stream, which will be free, may not be archived.
If you want to buy something related to the Digital Fan Festival, there will be a new Lunar Whale mount, based on Yoshitaka Amano’s original design. This will be the game’s first 8-person mount.
Three minions from Final Fantasy IV will be available as well. All of these will be available to purchase the first day of the event.
New artwork for Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker by Yoshitaka Amano was also shown off at the end of the stream.
In case all of this news wasn’t enough to get you excited about Final Fantasy XIV, later tonight there will also be a Letter from the Producver LIVE that will give us a first look at Patch 5.5. After that, Naoki Yoshida has told us that they’re planning a digital Fan Festival in May later this year.
You must be logged in to post a comment.