FINAL FANTASY XIV Online News

How Final Fantasy XIV kept us clubbing through lockdown

For many of us, the first few months of lockdown are a distant haze of Zoom calls, forced quizzing, and desperate attempts to create a functional working space in a tiny flat. Time ticked away slowly, and it wasn't long before people started to crave real social interaction.

Multiplayer games have helped to fill that void, providing social spaces where players can escape the monotony of their daily routines. Some players have gone a few steps further, creating their own virtual nightclubs in Final Fantasy XIV.

Endless Nights, a group that hosts huge events and parties in the world of Eorzea, has paved the way for players to keep clubbing and partying through a time of confusion, frustration, and isolation. The Tavern is its main event, a casual bar setting with in-house bards providing the beats and role-playing staff ensuring an authentic nightlife experience. Endless Nights' other core event, The Afterparty, is designated as a strictly adult venue, intended "to provide patrons with the darker and more passionate side of nightlife".

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Final Fantasy 14 patch 5.5 will finally mark gathering areas on your map

The preliminary notes for Final Fantasy 14 patch 5.5 have been posted by Square Enix, and one change in particular should make the MMORPG game that much more pleasant overall. Gathering areas will now be specifically marked on your in-game map, removing the need for third party resources.

The addition is listed in the items sections, where it's written that players can now see where a particular item can be found on any given area through the gathering log. "Selecting the location of a given item in the gathering log will display the map for that area," reads the text. "A circle indicating the general location where said item may be gathered will also be displayed."

This comes as a relief to players of the fantasy game. Until now, the information available for items and resources only included the region or sector, forcing you to just start exploring when you arrived in the hopes of eventually finding what you need. Players often used wikis and other sites that were maintained by community members to learn more specific locations. Now it'll be all in-game, no more alt-tabbing to and fro for those gathering sessions.

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Patch 5.5 Notes (Preliminary)

Patch 5.5 brings a multitude of additions and refinements to the realm. Adventurers of every persuasion are sure to find something to enjoy in this exciting new update.

* Additional features will be implemented in future updates:
Further main scenario quests, Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr, and Resistance weapon upgrades are scheduled to be released in Patch 5.55.
Patch 5.5 will be arriving on Tuesday, April 13!

Read the preliminary patch notes on The Lodestone here.

FFXIV devs bring back old hairstyle, internet explodes

Final Fantasy XIV is once again making it rain for fans of extremely anime hair - and even as a fledgling FFXIV player, I'm confident in saying that everyone in this game is a fan of extremely anime hair. The rainmaker hairstyle is coming back, and players are very excited. Like, frighteningly excited.

For context, the rainmaker hairstyle was originally made available as part of the annual Make It Rain event. As near as I can tell - the specifics of this are poorly documented - rainmaker hair was available in the normal course of the event in 2017, and was then made available through the event shop in 2018. Starting with the 2019 Make It Rain event, however, rainmaker was gone. And unlike many event items, it was never made available in the real-money Mog Station store.

That's why it came as a pleasant surprise when the official FFXIV Twitter account announced that the rainmaker hair will return with the launch of patch 5.5, as a prize at the Gold Saucer. At last, the lengthy nightmare that bore so many Reddit posts is coming to a close.

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FFXIV director hits Twitch to share his coffee cookie recipe and drink wine

Just when I thought Final Fantasy XIV's director and producer Naoki Yoshida couldn't get any cooler, he goes and pours himself a glass of wine and starts hosting a cooking show on Twitch. Yes, Yoshi-P went full suburban mom this week, and he is clearly living his best life. If you want in on this incredible lifestyle, he's even shared his coffee cookie recipe with the world.

These are based on FFXIV's coffee biscuits, but the stream title has a cookie pun (and maybe a reference to the oft-forgotten NES puzzler Yoshi's Cookie?) so I'm going with the Americanism here. The stream itself is fully in Japanese, but the FFXIV Discord has gone and translated the whole thing, so you can make your own version of Yoshida's cookies.

While I understand about as much Japanese as any casual anime viewer, the stream is still delightful, especially with its occasional breaks into an in-game kitchen to really sell the whole cooking show vibe.

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