As has been tradition for this promotion cycle, Tokyo’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest event kicked off with an expanded trailer for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail that prominently showed off both of the biggest reveals for this event: the new Pictomancer job, demonstrated by Krile, and female Hrothgar.
Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida announced that the development team is deliberately holding off on announcing a release date to prevent the chance of a delay, as Endwalker was delayed by several weeks a short time before its launch.
A job trailer for the Pictomancer job was shown. Pictomancer will be a Ranged Magical DPS that wields a massive, magical brush and palette, and its attacks feature a variety of colorful paint-themed effects. It was stated that the Final Fantasy XIV Pictomancer has greater capabilities than its Final Fantasy VI counterpart and can paint landscapes in addition to monsters. (Notably, Yoshida was not cosplaying the job, as he felt it would be strange for a man of his age to wear the midriff-bearing job gear, but he brought out a professional female cosplayer to demonstrate the look.)
The job will start at level 80 in Gridania. The concept of the job was to “[work] in the medium of mixed aether, wielding a specialized brush to render their imaginings reality.” The job will feature a mix of slow-casting powers, instant-cast abilities, and spells that can attack and buff allies. Additionally, for German-language players, the job name was retranslated from “Duplikant” to “Piktomant” to avoid the connotation of “duplication” in the MMORPG space. Still, this retranslation will apply to all Final Fantasy games featuring the term from here on out.
The basic premise of Dawntrail was reiterated, with the Warrior of Light traveling to the distant continent of Tural to participate in the selection ritual for its next ruler. The female Hrothgar character from the trailer was named Wuklamat, the daughter of the current ruler of Tural.
Patch 6.55, the final content patch for Endwalker, will be released on January 16, with the usual 24-hour maintenance period. The lengthy maintenance was also explained as necessary as, during the downtime, the entire Japanese Data Center will be migrating to new server equipment in order to facilitate future content and stability. Patch 6.55 will, as usual, contain the final part of the story leading up to Dawntrail, as well as the final update for the Manderville weapon questline.
The remainder of the new map of Eorzea was displayed, featuring the upper half of the Tural continent and revealing that the continent is far larger than the Eorzean continent proper. The story will take players to the continent’s far northern and southern edges, and the plot structure is described as having two “distinct” parts that are separated by the continent’s geography.
The expansive new zones of Dawntrail were shown in a brief trailer, prominently displaying the variety of locations and the enhanced graphics coming in Patch 7.0.
Both natural locations and a massive, modern-looking city were shown off, with the city being called “Solution Nine.” This name is notable as it was also the name of a special attack used by Final Fantasy IX protagonist Zidane. The city was described as “a city of towering facades constructed by an entirely different civilization than that of Tuliyollal.” Following this, a smaller area that looks to be on the outskirts of the city called “Heritage Found” was shown in concept art, along with several other modern areas.
Yoshida confirmed that FATES, The Hunt, Treasure Hunts, and Quest-Synced Sidequests will be returning features. The previously shown dungeons were featured again, along with a new one with a distinctly modern art style from the Solution Nine area.
Krile will debut her Duty Support system in Dawntrail as the Pictomancer job, marking the first time players have seen the character in combat.
The graphical update coming in 7.0 will already be applied to all new gear introduced in this patch, which was shown off with a look at new job gear for the Summoner, Samurai, Sage, Gunbreaker, Machinist, Reaper, Astrologian, and Paladin.
Though they could not announce a follow-up to the Island Sanctuary system at the London event, the team here showed off the scope of the expanded “lifestyle content,” which was named “Cosmic Exploration.” Unlike the Island Sanctuary, this content is intended to work more like the Ishgardian Restoration, where the player base collaborates to reach a shared goal.
Final Fantasy XI’s Shadow Lord concept art was also shared for the new Alliance Raid series, Echoes of Vana’diel. Additional details were announced for future Live Letter presentations.
The regular 8-player raid also received new concept art, looking aesthetically similar to the Solution Nine artwork. The title will be “The Arcadion,” and the implementation will follow the typical pattern of the Savage difficulty being added around a month after the normal raid duties.
Additionally, Dawntrail will introduce a new Ultimate-difficulty raid, themed after the Eden raid series from Shadowbringers, titled “Futures Rewritten (Ultimate).” The raid will be added in Patch 7.1.
The new Limited Job that was previously announced for the “latter half of 7.x” was named Beastmaster, though further details were not shared, and there was no concept art. Bummer.
The “First Graphical Update” was further detailed with new before and after pictures for each race, and it was also announced that each race’s starting gear will be in the first wave of graphical improvements. Additionally, a free Fantasia item will be provided to each player in case their character’s updated appearance no longer matches the vision the player had for them.
The team showed several examples of the increased customization options available with the addition of a second dye channel for each piece of gear.
The long-awaited female Hrothgar race also received a new trailer, with Yoshida reiterating that no additional playable races are planned for the game due to the exponential additional workload required for every new race added. However, Yoshida stated that “it depends on you”, leaving the door open if player demand is high enough.
The Xbox version of Final Fantasy XIV will enter an Open Beta period sometime in February; the current plan is for February 21, but Yoshida stated that the plan could shift several days in either direction.
The Final Fantasy XVI collaboration is planned to begin in April, when the anticipation for Dawntrail reaches “peak hype,” though no other new details were announced about it. Check out our article here.
The preorder information for Dawntrail is not available yet, but Yoshida promised that details would be made public “as soon as we can get them”.
Finally, the full poster keyart for Dawntrail was displayed. It features several new unnamed cast members, along with the Viper version of the Warrior of Light, Erenville, Urianger, Krile, Thancred, and Wuklamat and King Gulool Ja Ja.
There will likely be more details coming in the next “Letter From the Producer LIVE” (commonly known as “Live Letter”) presentation, which will either happen very soon as Patch 6.55 approaches, or possibly in the weeks ahead of the Xbox Open Beta Test in February.
