Dawntrail Officially Announced as Final Fantasy 14’s Fifth Major Expansion
Dawntrail will be Final Fantasy XIV’s fifth major expansion, Square Enix announced today. The new expansion was unveiled during the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest keynote with a trailer featuring a summer vacation theme and multiple new jobs, all coming summer of 2024.
At Final Fantasy Fan Fest 2023, FF14 director Naoki Yoshida (affectionately known as Yoshi-P) took the stage to unveil the new expansion, joyfully declaring he wanted to continue to work on the game “until I die or even afterward.”
Dawntrail’s story is intended to be “the very best summer vacation a hero could possibly have,” in “a sudden change from the ending of Endwalker” and marks the first step into a “new story” for the game. It takes place in the “New World,” known officially as Tural, which lies over the ocean to the far west of Eorzea. There, the Warriors of Light will assist in a rite of succession to determine Tural’s next ruler. The rite involves a contest that eventually takes them to the gates of a “fabled city of gold.” Of course, the Scions will be involved in this, but Yoshi-P warns that the contest may divide the Scions into two factions…
In Tural, players will get access to a new hub city: Tuliyollal, a city with an emphasis on diversity located in a larger region called Yok Tural. It’s not very industrialized, but is inhabited by diverse groups of people focused on living in harmony with nature, and is ruled by Gulool Ja Ja, a two-headed Mamool Ja. The contest at the heart of Dawntrail is to determine who will succeed him.
Dawntrail includes a number of new content features, including new allied tribes such as the Pelupelu, a race that debuted in Final Fantasy X and X-2 who are short, wear bird-like masks, and excel at trade and beverage-making. Additionally, the 7.0 patch will bring the following:
- A level cap increase from level 90 to 100, including new skills for all jobs
- Multiple new jobs: Yoshi-P did not say what these were, but confirmed they would both be DPS roles, one melee and one ranged magical DPS
- New dungeons
- New enemies
- A duty support update
- New gear and recipes
- New lifestyle content
- New variant dungeons
- New raids, including a new Alliance raid that will be “even more Final Fantasy-ish”
- PvP update
And, it sounds like, a lot more, including system updates. 7.0 will also see the game’s first major graphical update. We saw an extensive array of screenshots of everything from environments to characters showing off the upgrade, and it’s pretty significant. As Yoshi-P said, “the NPCs will get a lot prettier,” and…yeah, they are! Another system update involves materials: previously, FF14 had a limit on the number of objects that could be in an area, but that limit has been increased, meaning areas will just generally have more things in them, which means more detail.
The development team is also clearly excited about an update to plants and vegetation, which gives it more detail and density and which will apparently be on full display in Tural’s forests. That said, Yoshi-P pointed out that they cannot increase the number of polygons in the game. “We cannot give any more polygons to the grapes,” he said, referencing a community meme.
All the system updates also means an update to dying clothes, allowing players to apply two dyes to a piece of gear instead of just one, with some limitations. Players can also now equip eyeglasses alongside headgear, and later in the 7.0 expansion will see the limit on housing furnishings increased. Unfortunately, they also mean a slight increase to system requirements.
As he closed his keynote, Yoshi-P announced that Square Enix is preparing, in its 6.5 update, to expand its free trial of Final Fantasy 14 from the end of Heavensward to include all the content in Stormblood, all the way up to the start of Shadowbringers. This means that Final Fantasy 14 enthusiasts will need to adjust their copypasta meme.
And finally, in a surprise announcement at the end of the show, Phil Spencer joined Yoshi-P onstage to announce that the game is finally, finally coming to Xbox consoles.
Dawntrail joins Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker in the line of expansions released for Final Fantasy XIV. The expansions have been lauded for their in-depth storylines, each of which is a roughly 60 to 80 hour RPG on its own. Endwalker was a major success for Final Fantasy XIV, coming at a time when World of Warcraft was suffering a great deal of upheaval. It was so successful, in fact, that Square Enix had to take it off sale to account for the server load.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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