Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter Shows Off Gameplay From Upcoming 7.1 Content

Early this morning, Yoshi-P hosted the 84th Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer Live stream – the second live letter for the MMORPG’s upcoming 7.1 patch. In addition to expanding on the information provided during the last live letter, this one gives us the one thing we know everyone’s been waiting on: a specific release date. If you’re planning on playing the new content the day of, you’ll want to set some time aside on November 12. That’s about a week and a half from now.

Of course, not all of the content shown in today’s stream will be available with the 7.1 launch. For instance, the new ultimate drops with Patch 7.11. Still, there will be plenty to do in that first week dealing with the new MSQ and its dungeon, the Pelupelu society quests, the Jade Stoa Unreal, and – of course – the first part of the Echoes of Vana’diel alliance raid.

Players who completed Pandaemonium can also look forward to some follow-up quests for that. The new custom delivery quests, additional Wachumeqimeqi quests, and new Hildibrand story will all be part of Patch 7.15 – although there will be a Hildy prologue included in 7.1. Additional role quests will drop in Patch 7.16.

A good deal of the information in today’s stream is the same stuff we heard in the last live letter, so we won’t recap that here. That said, there were definitely some interesting tidbits here and there. Probably more importantly to most of you, there was a bit of gameplay shown for the upcoming dungeon, alliance raid, and ultimate. An interesting note on the alliance raid: the dungeon map is also an event map. That means that players will be able to wander it freely and use it as a place to get in some Gposing.

We also saw some of the Chaotic Alliance Raid. (I still argue that Alliance raids are plenty chaotic, but if it’s what people want, who am I to judge?) Because this raid is somewhere between first-floor and second-floor savage, parties are going to differ from those in general alliance raids. Twenty-four people are still required to complete it, but instead of 3 tanks, 15 DPS, and 6 healers, the numbers will be 6/12/6. Yes, parties will be like normal raid parties. There’ll just be three groups. Interestingly, players can go in and practice with fewer people, but they will need at least 12.

As for rewards, the Chaotic Alliance Raid will offer two mounts, as well as minions and hairstyles. Players can also pick up iLevel 730 gear here in addition to tokens. There are no weekly limits on the number of rewards players can obtain either. Due to the difficulty involved in getting 24 people together for this, the dev team also put together a bonus system. A first clear will earn a first-time bonus of additional tokens relative to the number of new people in the duty. In addition, a limited-time bonus of increased drop rates and additional tokens will randomly occur and persist for several hours.

On the PvP front, Yoshi-P showed of reworked maps for Crystalline Conflict’s Cloud Nine and Red Sands. It might be a little difficult to notice the changes in Cloud Nine, but there are more objectives. As for Red Sands, the changes are very obvious.

Another CC change is that with the kickoff of Season 12, rankings will be determined by region rather than data center. Moreover, it looks like data center travel will be required to participate in ranked matches as the devs have decided to hold them on one data center per region, with the data center changing each season. The devs are adjusting the number of placements for rewards accordingly. These changes seem to be steps in a bigger plan as Yoshi-P notes that what he really wants is for players to be able to match from anywhere. He also adds that the devs are working on a matching system for every kind of content, but that’s a “we’ll announce stuff later” thing.

Of course, we got some gameplay for the Futures Rewritten Ultimate. This drops two weeks after Patch 7.1. With the arrival of Futures Rewritten, changes are being made to Ultimates across the board. Going forward, groups will need eight unique jobs for proper limit break generation. As if a group has two people with the same job, limit breaks will no longer passively fill.

The stream also includes peeks at new gear – including the weapon contest winners, changes to the Hall of Novice, Gpose, and more. As always, the entire video can be viewed below. If you want to follow along in English, we once again recommend using the unofficial Final Fantasy XIV discord, whose translations we use for our posts.