Start the hype train: We’re only days away from Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. For those who might not know, Heavensward is the highly anticipated expansion to one of the biggest underdog stories in gaming, and in the spirit of E3 Square Enix has graced us with details surrounding what we can expect during Early Access.
The notes are pretty hefty and can be viewed here, but I’ve done you the favour by pulling the details that veterans – or at the very least, me – will find the most exciting. If you’re not a veteran or you’re waiting until Heavensward to sink your teeth in, don’t sweat it! We’ll have some coverage throughout Early Access starts to help those on the fence determine if they want to finally invest some time into the game.
Without further ado, here are three points we are incredibly excited for:
Soldiery is gone, and Poetics has taken its place
End-game currencies, as one might expect, have been dramatically overhauled for 3.0. Because of this, Soldiery has become a legend that you’ll be telling your grandchildren about someday.
This one is super exciting for me, because – unlike my friends – I actually like the look of Ironworks gear over the Soldiery gear. As you might expect with the level cap increasing to 60 from 50, the desire for soldiery has disappeared. Because of this, any Soldiery you might acquire from duties has been replaced by Poetics.
Want 120 Poetics for completing the Main Scenario duty finder? You got it. You might even get more if there’s a new player in the group. While some might think that this will dilute the value of Poetics, it isn’t the end of the world. It’s important for those who might want to gear one of their side-classes, but don’t have a lot of Poetics to hand out.
Any Soldiery you might have remaining can be exchanged for Poetics once the patch drops. It should also be noted that a new currency has been added, and it is called Allagan Tomestone of Law. We’re excited to see what kind of gear we can pick up with Law once the patch drops.
Duty Finder has been totally revamped
Have you been working on your Zodiac weapons and you think to yourself, “It would be awesome if I could solo Sastasha by myself in order to finish this book.” Today is your lucky day! Or at least Friday is. Duty Finder settings have been added and contain two key features: Participation requirements and loot rules.
With participation requirements, players have the option to ignore the duty requirement in order to start the dungeon or trial immediately. By doing this, the game ignores the item sync and role requirements, and lets you get into the action right away. This will let a level 50 run a low level dungeon for the item they are looking for, and quickly return into the end game. No more waiting in that endless DPS queue. It should be noted that players will not be able to earn experience in this mode, so you can’t use it to boost your friends!
Loot rules are also a welcoming feature. By using loot rules, the party leader has a few options: Normal loot options, greed only, or lootmaster. Normal loot options is pretty self-explanatory, and greed makes it so that party members can only roll greed. Lootmaster is pretty cool, as it gives the party leader the opportunity to choose who obtains what loot. This will be really good for Free Companies, as it gives the leader the ability to help his or her members.
Crafting Specialist system has been introduced
Disciple of the Hand has always been an interesting avenue because of its depth at high levels, and thanks to Heavensward that isn’t changing any time soon. With patch 3.0, Square Enix has added the Soul of the Crafter.
Similar to the souls that turn battlecraft classes into jobs, the Soul of the Crafter will give a DoH class access to special abilities that “will give access to unique actions that allow for more efficient and higher-quality synthesis for that class.” However, the number of crafting souls that a player can carry has been set to three, which means Free Companies will have to rely on a network of specialized crafters in order to obtain every recipe.
One thing that is unclear for the moment, is whether this prevents a player from leveling all of their crafting classes. For myself in particular, I find it useful to have a wide range of crafting classes in order to maximize on my profits. It will be interesting to see what happens with crafting classes over the next few weeks.
And much, much more!
As I said earlier, the patch notes are incredibly hefty. It looks like there’s going to be room for a lot of work over the next few weeks, and that makes me very excited. If you made it this far and you still haven’t played enough of the base game to know what all of this means, don’t worry! We will be covering more Heavensward content over the next few days, including a guide for new players.
Stay tuned!
Source: The Lodestone
