lliira

Today I made two short trips to a local stream and saw quite a few different kind of birds, partly with the help of binoculars:

Great blue heron wading in the stream
Hawk (red-tailed?)
Green-winged teals
Black-capped chickadees
American robins
A reddish finch (house finch?)
A hummingbird too far away to identify and too quick for me to binocular
A little yellow-and-black bird, probably a goldfinch but it was gone before I got a good look at it.
A tiny bird that I suspect was a golden-crowned kinglet because I think I saw a splash of yellow on its crown but again I didn't get a good look before it was gone.
Some brown sparrow-y birds that I couldn't identify
Plus the city birds I see all the time without going anywhere: pigeons, crows, starlings, gulls (glaucous-winged?)

I also saw some red admiral butterflies and I think I caught a glimpse of a scampering mouse-sized mammal but it got into cover too quickly for me to really see (probably just a mouse).

I'm going to try to put this under category spoilers, so those that don't want to read about a certain thing won't have to. I'm also going to TRY not to use the name of the expansion except for in the first spoiler, but I profusely apologize if I miss editing it out elsewhere.

First: the last announcement which is also a big one: the game will be coming to Switch 2. There's still testing to be done, but it sounds like the anticipated launch date is August of this year.

Second: The free trial is being upgraded to include the entirety of the Shadowbringers expansion. I am SO EXCITED for all my Free Trial friends, because Shadowbringers is +chef's kiss+.

Now, onto the spoilers:

New Expansion name and its theme, plus anticipated release date

Let's start with the Teaser Trailer for the next expansion of the game. Version 8.0 has been named Evercold, and will be bringing us to the 4th reflection come January 2027. Here's the teaser:

Watch on YouTube

We've been told that the Fourth is a world ravaged by ice, but many of the screenshots and concept art we saw suspiciously lacked any such ice--something Producer Naoki Yoshida and his translator Christopher Koji Fox were eager to point out.

Dawntrail was the start of a new story arc for Final Fantasy XIV, and it firmly takes root with Evercold. This arc's theme has now been revealed as the "Godless Realms Saga".

New (non-playable, I think) race

Also teased was a look at one of the new races, a bipedal, short-statured cat-like race. Definitely more cat-like than the existing Mi'qote and Hrothgar. I am pretty sure these are NOT playable at this time, but I was busy taking notes... pretty sure it's just a race we'll meet.

Upgrades to gear progression system

The main theme going forward is "Bringing the game to the next level". They talked about the stagnation of doing the same thing over and over, such as farming tomestones, along with accounting for player feedback and the shifting gameplay styles of today's players and current lifestyes. Their aim is the build on systems they already have, but evolve them into something fresh and exciting.

One of the biggest changes will be to the tomestone system. Currently, it features daily rewards and encourages players to log in daily for max benefit. Going forward, the game will be shifting to a weekly reward system, along with two completely new user interfaces.

In the first interface, you'll get a list of weekly missions to accomplish. These can be duties or other activities in game. Some will only be allowed to run once during that week, such as Main Scenario Quests; other activities will be repeatable. Succeeding in a mission gets you activity points.

The second interface is a new gear upgrade system. Although it wasn't entirely clear from the images and explanations, it sounds like you'll be able to use your activity points in this new interface to upgrade your gear.

There's been feedback from the players over the current tomestone system and feeling left out if a player could not reach the 450 tomestone weekly cap. The developers are taking this into consideration, and may implement the ability to return to the previous week's missions in this new system--provided all missions for the current week have been cleared.

Shift in update release schedule

Also announced: the move to a "Season" system of upgrades. Before anyone panics, this is NOT a new subscription fee, but rather just a way of grouping like content to be released, with the aim of having more frequent updates so there is less of a lull between patches.

Job Leveling & iLevel changes

The job system will also be getting some changes. While there will still be the ability to level all jobs separately (up to the new level 110 cap), there will now be a system where you can "reflect" your highest iLevel gear onto a different job. This means that if want to join a Savage raid but do not have the job you need leveled yet, you'll still be able to go provided you have at least one job at the iLevel requirements. Additionally, this will lessen the need to gear out several jobs, although those options will still be available for players who enjoy doing so.

Action glam, perhaps?

There's also a new "character action skins" system, that sounds like players will be able to choose between different stylized actions for certain abilities. Unfortunately, we have to wait for Berlin's Fan Fest for more info on this. It sounded to me like... glamming your abilities so you can be more flashy, but they really didn't say much about it.

Character Creation Customizations upgrades

Additionally--and to much cheering--upgrades to the character creation customizations were announced, including color pickers for eye color, hair color, and skin tone, as well as shadowing around the eyes and layering of facial paint. There will also be an option to toggle on/off pieces of gear-not the entire piece but a subset of it. An example was shown of heavy armor that had its pauldrons, sash, and skirt removed. Another example showed the Isle Explorer's gear without its backpack.

NEW JOBS!

As expected, two new jobs are coming with this expansion. These will be a tank and a physical ranged DPS, and both are unique to Final Fantasy XIV. No hints of what the DPS might be, but as for the tank: producer Yoshi-P showed off his t-shirt which featured Rhitahtyn, the former enemy who uses two shields.

Battle system changes

Along with the new jobs is an overhaul of the job system in its entirety. They are introducing two new "modes". The 21 non-limited battle jobs available through Dawntrail will have access to the Reborn Mode, which is pretty much the actions and rotations we're used to but with some tweaks. Along with Reborn Mode, they are introducing Evolved Mode, which will simplify button press combinations while featuring the individuality of each job. Reborn and Evolved Mode will be available for the 21 jobs that exist today, and you'll be able to freely switch between modes outside of combat. Starting with this expansion, all new jobs released will only feature Evolved Mode. It was stressed that this mode is NOT to be considered an "easy mode", but will still be challenging to play. Care will be taken so that both modes can freely clear all content, but some content might be easier with one mode or the other.

Quality of Life and other shorter updates

Next, they announced some quality-of-life updates. One goal is to improve player experience in field areas, like more dynamic content so you can truly master those areas - while also working on making sure areas remain stable, aka no issues with too many debuffs crashing the servers. They're also going to add even more guidance to questing, with more info on this coming in Berlin.

Some quicker updates include:

Treasure Hunts, FATEs, and the Hunt are all sticking around with new updates - looking to evolve though to make them more interesting. An example was less FATEs popping in a zone but with more dynamic content for completion.

Instanced Dungeons will number about the same as in past expansions. They showed concept art for four currently in development.

There will be new gear and crafting recipes, as expected.

New threats - some vague concept art was shown, but they stressed they couldn't show us too much because of spoilers.

Theme for the 8-player raid to be released in Berlin

There will be PVP Updates, but not detailed

Duty Support System will be updated in 8.0. People are asking for option to enter dungeons in pairs - more details coming in Berlin

Normal Raid Tiers announcement

Other bigger announcements include a new tier of the 8-person raids. Currently, players clear Normal raids about 85% of the time, and Savage about 20%. The developers feel this is too big a discrepancy, so they will be introducing a third tier falling between Normal and Savage. The goal is to allow more players access to gear progression but still keep the challenge for the hard-core players.

Alliance Raid Theme Announcement

The theme for the Alliance Raids has been announced - it's a crossover with Evangelion, tentatively titled "Ghosts of Desire". Unfortunately I had to go pee during this so I missed most of the info on it. Hey, it was a LONG keynote!

System Requirements

The only system requirements update announced is the phasing out of PlayStation 4 around patch 8.3. We were told we still have two years to save up for a PlayStation 5. The developers worked hard with Sony to make Evercold playable on PS4 at launch, but they are running out of hard disk space for the game, so going forward PlayStation players will need a PS5.

Changes to queueing system and Party Finder

Players will now be matched REGION-WIDE, so folks will no longer be limited to matching on their logical data centers only. So all of North America can be matched with each other. This applies to Party Finder as well.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I think that's everything!