Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter 82 Recap: A Final Trailer, Mounts, Minions, And Some Amazing Quality Of Life Changes

We’re almost there, gang. In only two weeks, Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail, will kick off in early access. Today, Yoshi-P and Foxclon spent four hours offering players more insight into what’s to come when players embark on their next adventure in the MMORPG. Okay, to be fair, they kind of teased a lot of things, all while refusing to tell us anything specific because they don’t want to spoil things.

They did share a lot of screenshots. We got some of the printouts showing off new gear and a new house, and yes, we even saw some of the minions and mounts. As always, we’ll post the video below, so you can watch it if you like. First, they did drop a new trailer teasing a bit more of the story. It mostly looks like fun times ahead, except for the last bit which seems pretty ominous.

The first portion of the stream was dedicated to showing us more screenshots of the new areas. There are new images for the city of Tuliyollal, the jungle area Yak T’el, that old west-looking area Shaaloani as well as Kozamua’uka, Heritage Found, and Solution Nine. Mostly, it seems the goal was more or less to show off the new graphics, but Yoshi-P did tease a mount that transforms while looking at Solution Nine. As there are vehicles in the image – including two motorcycles – it’s probably fair to assume it’s one of those.

The next section highlighted key characters, but not all of them. Some of the usual suspects are there, as well as the newcomers to the crew: Wuk Lamat and Erenville. Krile gets some love and she will be available in duty support. Thancred and Urianger are apparently “team grownup”, whatever that means.

Then there are the characters we don’t really know. We get a brief introduction to the Dawnservant Gulool Ja Ja and his children Zoral Ja and Koana who are also in competition for the throne. A fourth individual who is not a member of the family, but similar to Gulool Ja Ja in having two heads – and believing that makes him superior to everyone else – is also vying for the throne.

Just to throw additional chaos into the mix, there’s also an “Enigmatic Maiden” who they won’t tell us anything about other than that she will be making an appearance. The Dawntrail Special site has been updated to include information on each of these characters.

From there they got into the usual, expected update changes such as new role quests. As is now the usual, there will be five quest lines, one for each role. The first will be available at level 92. Of course, extra quests will be available for those who complete all the role quests starting after Patch 7.1.

Crafters and gatherers are getting the same treatment: five role quests. Complete them and get additional quests after 7.1. These quests are the Wachumeqimeqi deliveries – not to be confused with the other delivery quests. These will be Dawntrail’s version of the Studium or Crystalline Mean quests.

Of course, there will be job quests for Viper and Pictomancer. The former will cover the history of the Viper while the latter has something to do with Moogles. Mostly they just used the pictures of the Moogles to show off fur textures.

While discussing the new quests, we were also given a peek at one of the new armor sets coming in Dawntrail. The Mad Max fans among us will probably be excited by these.

Small peeks at the dungeons and trials were offered. Yoshi-P did offer some looks at gameplay for the new trial, but it seems he mostly did it to show off the landscape. He did, however, point out a new feature where text now pops up mid-screen to inform players as to what is happening. As not everyone pulls from the same queues and can miss what’s happening peripherally, they think this will assist in keeping party members on the same page.

He also offered a look at one of the arenas in the Arcadion raid – and in the process accidentally revealed the name because it showed up in the duty indicator. If you don’t want to know what it is, we won’t spoil it for you here, but for those who are curious, you now know where to look. That said, it’s definitely a competitive arena with announcers, an audience, and even what looks like advertising. The raid will drop in update 7.01, two weeks after launch. This will be followed by savage in 7.05.

Oh, and yes, he showed off some screenshots of the new treasure dungeon Genote Ja Ja Gural as well. This can also be expected in patch 7.05.

Of course, new raids mean new Tomestones. We’ll start off with the Allagan Tomestone of Aesthetics, and in 7.05, the Allagain Tomestone of Heliometry will be introduced. Of course, that means new gear sets. Two rather different types were highlighted during this section.

Crafters and gatherers get the usual updates as well. In addition, the Fishing Guide will now display the hook type required for each catch.

Now, for an interesting change, the dev team has added a new feature that allows players to hide other players standing around quest-giving NPCs. This isn’t the “hold down X to hide names” feature. Instead, as you walk up to an NPC, the people immediately around it will literally disappear. When you click on that NPC, players in the area that weren’t removed by walking up will disappear as well.

This is an optional setting and you have to turn it on for it to work, so if you prefer seeing everyone there, you still can. Note that this will hide anyone on your friends list who’s standing near the NPC but will not remove party members. The feature is only for quest NPCs and will not remove players standing around the general populace.

Another new feature makes it so that emotes needed to be used in quests are now accessible from the duty list. Rather than having to look for the emote in your massive list, or type it into chat, you can just click the button next to the quests.

Yoshi-P also showed off the new spectacle setup. Glasses have been removed from the regular fashion accessory collection and added to our gear sets – kind of. Don’t expect stats, but do expect to be able to wear your favorite glasses while wearing wings or holding an umbrella. Also, each piece of facewear – as they’re now calling them – will have twelve different color variations and they won’t disappear in combat.

Speaking of wings. We got a peek at the new minions and mounts. While the corn minion is fascinating, we are getting wings as a mount! Actually, we’re getting several sets of wings because that’s the mount theme for the new trials. I tried to get some shots of these, but he was just moving around way too much to really get decent ones.

Finally, the stream ended with general announcements. No. We didn’t get any update on when we’ll be getting more housing slots. Although, we did get a look at a new house style.

The Fantasia update was mentioned again. The companion app is being updated to allow players to assign ventures using kupo nuts or mog coins. Various bits of merchandise were shown off, and they went through the list of upcoming events.

As far as the in-game schedule goes, they did share a new one that begins with early access and runs through the next couple of patches. First, we’ll have the 48-hour downtime – during which Yoshi-P will be reading patch notes, starting at 3 am Pacific time on June 27. The stream will be Japanese only, but chances are good that the XIV Discord channel will be translating it.

Once the patch is ready, they advise downloading as soon as possible as the Windows version of the expansion is 55 GB. With the base game included, you’re looking at XIV taking up over 90 GB on your hard drive. Plan accordingly.

Those on PlayStation 5 need to plan around 75 GB and PlayStation 4 clocks in at 80 GB. They stated that PlayStation is more compressed, so I’m running with the assumption they mean that to be the total file size for the game. Xbox players, they warn, will have to overwrite the whole game and and should expect that to be close to 100 GB.