Final Fantasy VI in my Final Fantasy XIV?!? This Has Me Dancing Mad!

Monster Hunter World is out and its consumed my life. But I’ve been too busy playing it to get anything cohesive down to talk about. And I’ve neglected to take any screenshots. So today I’ll instead talk about the MMO I live in, Final Fantasy XIV. They recently updated to patch 4.2 with new story quests, new side quests, a lot of quality of life updates and, like all previous even patches, the new raid tier has been released.

Back in 4.1, we see the aftermath of the Ala Mhigan liberation from Garlean control. We see how Ala Mhigo is slowly advancing with the new leadership and their reactions to the prisoner taken after the war. In this patch, we go back to Doma and catch back up with our friends on the other side of the world. I still have yet to finish the story so I don’t know how good the story is and if it’s actually as interesting as the original expansion story, but I look forward to seeing what unfolds especially after the teases in the trailer.

The quality of life updates made this patch are amazing. They’re adding as much inventory as they’re able. They gave your companion chocobo 70 item slots for use in the open world. It’s not accessible in any instance but it’s reasonable storage for fishing bait, dyes and other things you wouldn’t need immediately like extra glamour. Speaking of glamour, they added the Glamor Dresser in the inn rooms in major cities which you can input glamour items and then from there (and the armoire too) you can create Glamour Plates which you can change your current glamour to as long as you’re in the major cities, residential areas or the Gold Saucer.

Since we’re talking glamour and Gold Saucer, there is a new activity in the Saucer called the Fashion Report. Fashion Report is basically a glamour challenge where players are given a theme and hints and they are to create an outfit that matches as close to possible. It’s a good source of MGP income as you get 10k MGP for participating and 50k MGP for getting more than 80 points in your assessment. The two new dungeons, Hells Lid and Fractal Continuum (Hard), are two excellent additions to the already large collection of 4 man content.

But what about the hard 8 man content? The primal is the first of a series of 4 lords in Othard lore. Byakko, the white tiger, is the new primal this patch and his fight is an active one. It has some interesting new mechanics that definitely require your attention and some mechanics that a few people say is a major waste of time. Other than Byakko, the new tier of the Omega raid, Sigmascape, came out. The last tier, Deltascape, was themed after Final Fantasy V with bosses from that game making an appearance. This time in Sigmascape, we have Final Fantasy VI bosses making an appearance with Kefka himself appearing as the end boss. The raid is excellent. The difficulty is tuned just right for the more midcore crowd and that’s obvious with how quickly the Savage version of the raid was cleared by the top tier players.

Overall this patch is a good one. We have some additional things coming later, such as Eureka and the new relic weapons in a 4.25 patch. There’s a lot more to do and a lot of quality of life that definitely makes this game better and hopefully it all goes up from here. Anyone else play FFXIV? Are you enjoying the patch?