Category: Final Fantasy XIV Columns

Merry Christmas! The Starlight Celebration, FFXIV’s festive event, returns for another year. Decorations have been stolen from a town in the black shroud, and one of the witnesses says that they were taken by the trees themselves.

Final Fantasy XIV means a lot to me and my partner. When I was about to study for my postgraduate degree in another city a few hours away, it occurred to us that this would be the first time that she and I would be forced to spend a long time apart from each other after years of living together while I got my diploma.

Tis’ the season to… Well, I guess it’s the season to hurt each other as much as possible. Season 6 of The Feast, FFXIV’s ranked PVP mode, started last week. This one will run until 4.2; interestingly, it’s not running until 4.25, which suggests this will either be a fairly short season, or the gap between now and 4.2 will be pretty long.

FFXIV patch 4.15 took off on Tuesday, bringing the game’s first all-new PVP mode since The Feast. Rival Wings pits two teams of 24 players against each other, along with a host of highly stylised ‘machina’ — vehicles that look like the mechs from the Alexander raid series. I’ve had time to play a few games, and I have to say, in terms of XIV, there’s really nothing like it.

Jump Potions are a relatively new addition to FFXIV, though they aren’t something I’ve covered before. Introduced alongside Stormblood, they’re cash-shop purchases that let you skip much of the game’s levelling process and start straight on one of the expansions.

It’s safe to say that Square Enix knows a thing or two about hard MMO boss fights. Final Fantasy XI, which is still alive and kicking, made news nearly a decade ago for the introduction of an eighteen-hour fight, Absolute Virtue. In more recent times, those who fought Living Liquid’s Savage variant on XIV seem to have formed a loose survivors’ association.

Halloween is here! At least, FFXIV’s stand-in festival, All Saints’ Wake, is. As with previous years, it’s more trick-or-treat than genuine Friday the 13th. But that’s OK! You’ll be paired up with Soga, an Othardian wolfman who’s travelled to Gridania following the liberation of Doma.

Last Tuesday saw the release of The Legend Returns, Stormblood’s first major content update. Patch 4.1 brings a wealth of features including a new 24-man raid, an extreme primal and a continuation of the storyline after the liberation of Ala Mhigo.

It’s here! There’s finally a trailer for FFXIV Patch 4.1, Stormblood’s first major content update. It was released as part of Naoki Yoshida’s monthly Letter from the Producer Live, and shows — among other things — the footage from the 24-man raid, super-savage, and Rival Wings, a brand new PVP mode that lets you fight alongside a Cruise Chaser. It’s like all my namedays came at once!

When Stormblood came out, the very first thing I wrote about was Samurai. New jobs excite me more than anything else, and both SAM and Red Mage have changed FFXIV for the better. It’s been about four months now, and with 4.1 — the first major content patch — coming out on October 10th, I thought now would be a good time to check in with the new additions now the dust has settled and people have (mostly) figured out how jobs are going to play from here on out.