If you’ve played Final Fantasy XIV for any amount of time, you’re likely all too familiar with the Crystal Alliance raid series — and by too familiar, I mean you’ve spent tens if not hundreds of hours doing those three raids. The age-old frustration of doing Douty Roulletes for experience and, once again, getting dropped into Labyrinth of the Ancient or World of Darkness. Luckily, you’ll have some way to use all that experience very soon, as FFXIV’s 7.1 update will bring a much-requested feature, alliance raids with increased difficulty.
Titled Chaotic Alliance Raids, this will be one of the major new pieces of battle content in patch 7.1, which is titled “Crossroads.” As you might expect, these are harder versions of the game’s current alliance raids — and the first one will feature World of Darkness. It doesn’t sound like Chaotic Raids will feature the entire scenario, but rather specific battles from the raid — but you’ll still have 24 players.
The first one featured in 7.1 will be The Cloud of Darkness (Chaotic) and apparently feature brand new mechanics and unique rewards. During the Letter from the Producer live broadcast at Tokyo Game Show last weekend, Square Enix said the difficulty of these Chaotic alliance raids is tuned closer to Savage-level raids, not Extreme.
The introduction of these Chaotic raids is a pretty exciting feature, breathing some life into a piece of FFXIV’s content that has absolutely grown stagnant over time. Of course, you might still have to play those old raids on roulettes, but now there’s a more exciting alternative to revisit them.
Of course, that’s far from the only thing coming with 7.1, and while we’ll have to wait for the next Live Letter for everything, we got a glimpse at what’s on the way. Releasing sometime in November, 7.1 will continue the main story of Dawntrail, taking place after the expansion and providing more insight on the character Zoraal Ja.
Other battle content includes a new Expert Dungeon called Yuweyawata Field Station, and a new Extreme Trial — The Minstrel’s Ballad: Sphene’s Burden. Arguably the biggest addition, though, is the first instance of the Final Fantasy XI alliance raid series, Echoes of Vana’Diel. The first raid is titled Jeuno: The First Walk, and the art for the patch features both Prishe and the Shadow Lord, so it seems like they’ll factor into the story.
In addition to new story quests, we’ll see the introduction of a host of new sidequests. Here’s what you can expect from those.
- Allied Society Quest featuring the Pelupelu will be introduced — like usual, they have daily quests you can use to level combat jobs from 90-100.
- Custom Deliveries for Nitowikwe, an NPC met during Dawntrail in Shaaloani.
- New capstone Role Quest for anyone who completed all Dawntrail combat job role quests.
- Capstone quest for Wachumeqimeqi Deliveries, for anyone who completed all crafting and gathering quests.
- Inconceivably Further Hildabrand Adventures — taking place in Solution Nine.
Here are some of the new system updates and new features you can expect in 7.1
- Duty Support is starting to be added for dungeons not featured in the main scenario. The first will be Halatali in 7.1.
- Hall of the Novice is introducing a “mechanics boot camp” where you can learn more about visual identifiers like stack markers, etc. Unlocked at level 49.
- PvE jobs are being updated, but details won’t be available until later.
- PvP is getting extensive updates that are supposed to address issues with action execution and hit detection. New job actions added for Pictomancer and Viper, arena improvements for Crystalline Conflict, and balance adjusting for Frontline and Rival Wings.
- Doman Mahjong has a new feature where characters from the Scions of the Seventh Dawn will comment on matches. You can purchase character's voices using MGP at the Gold Saucer.
- Housing update adds new interior design options, including the ability to change the design regardless of your residence's location.
It’s abundantly clear that 7.1 is going to be a pretty massive patch for FFXIV, bringing a wide array of different adjustments and new content. The development team is currently on a schedule of a new patch roughly every 3-4 months, so Crossroads releasing in mid-November is spot on for that. Expect further details at the next Live Letter, which typically happens one or two weeks before the patch itself drops.
