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| Liz Maas |
And a FanFest coming to a city near you! Well sort of.
06.14.14 - 2:50 PM
During E3, Square Enix hosted a second Letter from the Producer Live at its booth, this time focused on mostly Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's patch 2.3, Defenders of Eorzea,, as well as brief details on the upcoming Fan Festivals. We got a brief look at the Ramuh battle, called The Striking Tree (producer Naoki Yoshida's poor lalafell black mage didn't last long), the new Crystal Tower, and a look at rogue/ninja gear all the way up to high allagan weapons.
Yoshida started off the stream by showing the new PvP content, Frontline. These battles will take about half an hour and host up to 72 players, with three groups of 24 divided up between the three Grand Companies (Maelstrom, Immortal Flames, Order of the Twin Adder). Frontline will be easy for players to get into even if they have not participated in A Realm Reborn's PvP before - currently, the only PvP content is 4v4 in the Wolves' Den. Unlike 4v4 however, which requires one melee DPS, one ranged, one healer and one tank, there are no job requirements in Frontline and you can even switch jobs at outposts. Monsters will also be present, but will only have a slight effect on the battle. Rewards will be similar to those in the Wolves' Den (such as wolf marks), plus war mounts and Allagan tomestones of soldiery.
To the delight of many, Chocobo raising is also being introduced, and yes, this will tie in to your companion chocobo. Chocobos can be raised by setting up a stable in your free company garden. You do need a free company house for this, and for now you can only raise one chocobo at a time. In 2.35, chocobos can 're-grow' their features and their feathers can be re-coloured to any of the dye colors available in-game. It will be possible to break rank and level your companion past level 10, and so you will have more points to allocate into skills.
While personal housing will be introduced later, players will be able to purchase a personal room in their free company house for 300,000 gil. These will be extra rooms slightly larger than the main floor of a small home (there's lots of room to craft), and furnishings will not count towards the furnishing restrictions in the main house, but, obviously, you can only use indoor items.
Yoshida also showed the next portion of Crystal Tower, called Syrcus Tower. From what was shown, it feels like you are actually ascending a crystal tower. The setup will be similar to Labyrinth of the Ancients, where 24 players will queue in alliances of 8, and there is still no option to queue as a group of 24 (yet). Gear will be item level 100 armor, and unidentified Allagan tomestones will also have a 30% drop rate - currently, these only drop in the Second Coil of Bahamut. The team will later add oil and sands of time drops to Syrcus Tower, which can be used to upgrade 'weathered' weapons, armor and accessories. The loot rules for Syrcus will be one item win per week, similar to the Labyrinth upon its release, and the difficulty will be similar so that players can 'enjoy' the dungeon.
As it has been quite popular among players, the rather amusing Hildibrand questline will continue in 2.3. Unfortunately, for players like me who wanted an Extreme Mode of his battle, Gilgamesh will not be making a return quite yet. Yoshida also mentioned that despite requests for voice-overs in this quest line, with its humor it is hard to have the right voices, but they would look into it. The Hildibrand story will, however, involve another fun battle.
The last set of beast tribe quests to be added will be the Ixali tribe, which will be different than the existing beast tribe quests and have a focus on crafting. However, we won't be seeing this content until patch 2.35. As for 2.3, we can expect more side story quests, crafted accessories above item level 70 and, of course, new endgame dungeons such as Stone Vigil Hard Mode and Hullbreaker Isle.
Patch 2.3 has been dated for a July 8th release.
The dates for the game's first set of Fan Festivals were also announced:
- Las Vegas - Rio Hotel & Casino, October 18th & 19th
- London - October 25th, Tobacco Dock
- Tokyo - December 20th, 21st, Tokyo Big Sight
Square Enix also plans to release an Eorzea Collection 2014 magazine July 15th for 2100 yen ($20.49 US). The rather thick magazine includes all gear & housing items up to 2.3, and show us all gear on all types of characters.
Be sure to check out our recap of the first E3 live letter here, and our gallery below for the newest screens and artwork of all the upcoming content!
