It’s patch day, and that means an airdrop of goodies for our Final Fantasy XIV fans out there. We’re going to take a cursory glance at the preliminary patch notes of the incipient Crossroads 7.1 Patch for the Dawntrail expansion.
The first order of business is the ongoing update to the graphics of the game. In 7.0, Square Enix had released a massive update to all the textures of the game to make them compatible with 4K monitors. In this update, we have even more progress on that front as most of the zones of the A Realm Reborn section of the game–the base game–have received an update which has added more detail and changed some of the lighting being displayed.
In one of the examples displayed by SQEX, the region known as The Footfalls in the Western Thanalan zone has added greenrot, more invasive flora, and even a couple extra earthen pillars. Another image shown was of a market stall that has been filled to the brim with various containers and sundries. SQEX seems to be aiming to make the world feel fuller and more detailed with the update to their graphics.
Second on our roster is the newly added Glamour Outfit feature. For anyone not familiar, Glamour is the FFXIV equivalent of WoW’s Transmogrification system. You use it to display your outfit of choice regardless of whatever gear you’re actually using. FFXIV has a storage and application system via the Glamour Dresser which is used to build Glamour Plates. However, each piece stored in the Glamour Dresser takes up space in a limited inventory. This update sees the launch of Glamour Outfits. When gear pieces are part of a full set of gear, players can store the entire set in a manner which only takes one slot in the inventory. This is a boon for people who enjoy the system but find themselves routinely running out of space in their Dressers. The only drawback so far seems to be that a player must acquire all pieces of gear in a set before they can store the items as a single Outfit.
Our third item of review is a familiar one for players of the game. The x.1 patch of any expansion sees the release of the first of the new Alliance Raid series. This expansion will see the game cross with its predecessor FFXI in Echoes of Vana’diel. SQEX has been characteristically quiet about what exactly will feature in this new raid, so you’ll have to play the game to find out. In addition to this is the standard faire of another Expert Dungeon released at the current level cap and the new Unreal trial, which allows players to challenge an older trial at the current level cap as well.
For this patch, we are revisiting the Four Lords story from Stormblood to challenge Byakko. SQEX is also slowly working its way through the backlog of dungeons not part of the Main Scenario Questline to add the ability to use Duty Support, their system for using NPCs to aid a player in completing a dungeon. This patch will have the level 20 dungeon Halatali join the lineup of support-enabled dungeons.
The new Tribal Society quests for this expansion is the Pelupelu. Tribal Society quests are a category of questline that enables players to establish a relationship with a specific society in the game to gain rewards as they aid that society. The Pelupelu were introduced in Dawntrail as an itinerant and trade-focused tribe of short-statured people who players needed to seek in order to complete the main scenario.
Lastly, we have a few changes coming to the combat of the game. There will likely be adjustments to classes across the board as SQEX balances combat at the updated level cap of 100. These balances are never released in the preliminary patch notes, however, and so no info on them will be available until the full patch notes are released after the servers are taken down. We do, however, have a bit of insight into some changes coming to PvP.
SQEX has also announced that hit tracking will be updated so that an effect is produced on the client at the same time as it is produced on the server. At present, there are several abilities which produce a detrimental effect the moment they are applied by a combatant, which causes receiving clients to produce the detriment before the visual effect appears. SQEX has said that most but not all abilities will be updated to use this new hit tracking system.
Regarding the Crystal Conflict series of 5 vs 5 players, SQEX has updated some of the maps so that there are fewer pockets of open space and more areas of enhanced movement. This will allow players to break targeting from enemy combatants by using the increase environmental line-of-sight blocks as well as allow defeated players to rejoin fights further from their home point more quickly.
That’s all from us for this patch. If you’d like to review the preliminary patch notes, you can find them here.
Thanks for reading!
Image: Square Enix
Recent Comments