Final Fantasy XIV DawnTrail Expansion Announced, Release Set For Summer 2024
This year's Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest started with a bang with the announcement of the game's next expansion: DawnTrail. The new expansion will feature an increased level cap to 100, a major graphical update, new skills, dungeons, story content, and so much more.
DawnTrail is set for release in the summer of 2024 and will mark the beginning of a new journey for both players and the game overall. The current story arc which the game has followed for the past 10 years finally concluded with the Endwalker expansion. Players can look forward to a completely new journey with DawnTrail on an entirely new continent (Tural).
No word on whether this will be the start of a new 10+ year epic or a more self-contained storyline.
Key Features of Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail (7.0):
- Level Cap Increase from 90 to 100 (including for crafters and gatherers)
- 2 New Playable Jobs (melee DPS and a caster DPS). Yoshi-P's T-Shirt during the new job announcements was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt. His shirt is a hint at what the new classes will be. Perhaps Pirate? Artist? Mystic Knight?
- First Major Graphical Update - Improved shadows, high resolution textures, improved materials (metals, woods, etc), and improved foliage & plants. The overall look of the game won't change, but everything should look better. 7.0 Content will get improved materials first, but older content will eventually get updated as well.
- New Dye System - Two dyes per gear piece for additional customization.
- New Gear Type: Eyeglasses - Can be equipped alongside Headgear. These are purely cosmetic. They don't take up armory space either.
- New Skills for all jobs to accomodate higher level cap
- New Story Content - Takes place on an entirely new continent.
- New Dungeons with Duty Support (New non scion characters debuting)
- Tons of new gear and recipes for crafters
- New Lifestyle Content - 6.0 Introduced Island Sanctuaries. 7.0 will introduce something similar
- New Variant Dungeons, Alliance Raids (Starting in 7.1. Will be "more Final Fantasy ish"), New Raid tier, and New Ultimates
- PvP Update - New updates to Crystal Conflict and updates to Frontlines and Rival Wings.
- Blue Mage Updates
- Additional Hildibrand Quests
- New Deep Dungeons / Updates to Existing Deep Dungeons
- Additional Gold Saucer Updates (Confirmed it won't be Blitzball unfortunately)
- Furnishing Limit Increase - This won't be available at the launch of 7.0, but will be included sometime after launch in 7.X.
- Collaborative Editor - Allow players to create & share strategies and class placements for raids in-game. No more linking to third party websites to see strategies.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail 7.0 New Graphics Comparison Trailer:
With the improved visuals in Dawntrail, system requirements are going up for PC players. PS4 players have nothing to worry about though as Square Enix will continue to support the PS4.
Updates Still Coming in 6.X:
- Expanded Free Trial to include Stormblood - Coming with the release of patch 6.5
- Fall Guys Collaboration - Fall Guys style gameplay content coming to the Gold Saucer in 6.5x (Up to 24 player support). Final Fantasy XIV characters are coming to Fall Guys as well on August 22.
Expect additional big announcements on October 21, 2023 from London with the European Fan Fest.
