TGS 2024: Final Fantasy XIV Patch 7.1 Is Bringing A Few Interesting Changes To The Game Like "Chaotic Alliance Raids"

Late last night, or early this morning depending on where you’re at, Yoshi-P hosted his third Tokyo Game Show panel of the day, one of two Live Letters highlighting Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming Patch 7.1. For those who are wondering – although you could probably guess this – the patch is slated to drop in mid-November. They didn’t give us the exact date, but at a guess, we’re probably looking at November 19.

When the patch does arrive, it will bring a good bit of new content to the MMORPG with it. Of course, this will include the first batch of post-Dawntrail MSQ content. As is ever their way, nothing was detailed about the new story content, but the XIV Twitter account mentions something about “what decisions divide the road ahead”. Yes, we know. That’s completely helpful. We suppose it does go with the name of the patch: “Crossroads”. Based on the screenshots provided during the stream, it looks like G’raha is sticking around Tural for a bit, which probably means the other Scions are lurking somewhere nearby. It looks like we may not be done with The First Promise, yet.

As for other story-ish content, we got a peek at some screenshots from the first of Dawntrail’s new Allied Society Quest group, the Pelupelu, which will be for combat jobs. We also now know who our first new Custom Delivery quests will be with - Nitowikwe. If you don’t remember them, they’re one of the NPCs associated with the train in Sheshenewezi Springs. Finally, if you’ve completed all your role quests, the follow-up role quests will be available to you as well. That’s for both the combat jobs and the Wachumeqimeqi.

Okay, so, I said “finally”, but there is more story to be had. Specifically, Hildy is back. Patch 7.1 will kick things off with a prologue for Dawntrail’s Hildibrand quests. To be fair, that’s more or less the way with every Hildibrand quest line. Gotta find him before you can get on with the investigation.

Moving on to the non-story stuff. Yoshi-P announced during the stream that going forward the team is adding Duty Support for dungeons that are not part of the MSQ. Score another point for the anti-social leveling gang – or just anyone who doesn’t have time to wait for a queue to pop to get things done. The first of these will be the new dungeon Yuweyawata Field Station, which appears to be somewhere near Heritage Found. It might be another testing area similar to something you’d see from the Allagans.

As with the MSQ duty support, the team will be adding older dungeons retroactively, but it could take a while. It seems the team is hoping Sprouts will use Duty Support (along with tooltips) to learn the game’s mechanics. The way they figure it, it’ll be easier to figure out things like stack markers and spreads by watching the NPCs do it. (Of course, the NPCs like to stand on the tank during tank busters because it doesn’t really hurt them, so we’ll see how that works out.)

For the Alliance Raid enjoyers, there was a peek at the upcoming "Echoes of Vana’Diel" in the form of a couple of screenshots. Once again, they’re trying to not give too much away, but Final Fantasy XI players should know what’s up.

On the topic of Alliance Raids, something completely new is being introduced – Chaotic Alliance Raids. Because apparently whatever we’re doing in Alliance Raids wasn’t chaotic enough. This new type of content was intended to be something along the lines of an Extreme, but apparently they “oopsied” their way into something more along the lines of a Savage. It’s a bit unclear but speculation is that it’s probably just the final boss of the Alliance Raid – in the example shown Cloud of Darkness. This would make sense because if it’s anything like a Savage, working your way through all those bosses would be a lot. We do know that there are no trash mobs.

Of course, the next Unreal Trial --Jade Stoa – and the new Ultimate – Futures Rewritten – were teased as well. The latter won’t drop on day one of the 7.1 update but will be available not long after. A Minstrel’s Ballad version of the fight with Sphene will also be available.

As is generally the case, players can expect PvE job balancing in Patch 7.1. There’s no detail on this, as they’ll be going into it in the second 7.1 PLL. That said, there was some discussion on PvP changes, and it appears that animations are being updated so that they go off in time for the opponent to see them and counter properly. The devs are also adding new PvP actions for every job excluding Viper and Pictomancer. These are some preparatory changes for a big update to Frontline in 7.2.

Steering away from combat altogether, Mahjong is getting some love, even adding voice lines from the Scions.

And finally, housing. Now, if you were waiting for them to tell us how many new slots we’re getting, they didn’t. That’ll probably come in the next PLL. That said, there was other interesting news. They’re TARDISing houses. What that means is that if you have a small house, it can be bigger on the inside. In the future, players will be able to select the interior size of their house – at a cost. Don’t think you can spend 3 mil on a small house and have the interior be large without having to pay for it. What you’ll pay hasn’t been stated, but seeing as how those with existing large houses had to spend a ton of gil and fight to get them, it probably won’t come cheap.

That’s not the only change players can expect in housing either. While this doesn’t apply to the house exterior, players can now choose housing interiors from any housing district region. And, as an added bonus, there’s a new housing interior that removes all the pillars. If nothing else, that should save us some interior housing slots because we don’t have to find creative ways to hide pillars we don’t like.

That’s pretty much it for this Live Letter. As always the full stream is available to watch on YouTube. Keep in mind that as it was done live at TGS, the stream was not translated, which is why we rely on the unofficial Final Fantasy XIV Discord channel to figure out what’s going on. If you want to see a bit of the side commentary, it’s worth a look at the channel.