Final Fantasy XIV had its latest update, Patch 6.18, go live on July 5 following a 24-hour maintenance period. The game was offline for its duration for the implementation of data center travel and new servers, which required the lengthy downtime. Just a week later, FFXIV maintenance is back. Thankfully, it’s not as long this time around. FFXIV will be offline for Patch 6.18 hotfixes starting on July 12 at 11:00 p.m. PT and finishing on July 13 at 3:00 a.m. PT.
The FFXIV team hasn’t explicitly stated what the hotfixes are for, but it seems to be related to the features relevant to Patch 6.18, namely data center travel. It’s been rough going for the new feature; the game has had trouble keeping up with player demand for data center travel since going live. FFXIV was getting up to 15,000 requests per minute and servers had issues on day one. The feature was temporarily suspended but seems to have stabilized. With regards to that, players should be aware that data center travel will be suspended 30 minutes before the maintenance period (July 12 at 10:30 p.m. PT).
If you haven’t been keeping up, the new data center travel system lets players visit servers on other data centers within their region. For example, those of us on any server in the Primal data center could visit any server on Aether or Crystal. We have a whole guide on restrictions and how to use the data center travel system.
Surprisingly, FFXIV Patch 6.18 brought other notable features. One minor, but impactful change was the ability to earn Radiant Roborant with Aglaia Coins. This lets players get some of the best weapons currently in FFXIV without having to clear and grind out the latest Savage raids. There were also a slew of Job changes for PVP, further improving balance in competitive multiplayer. Additional tweaks were made to the PVP mode Frontline with changes to damage modifiers and Limit Break gauges. And European players were treated to new servers on both of their data centers, making more room for players and helping server congestion. We have it all summarized in our FFXIV Patch 6.18 breakdown.
If you’re looking for something to during FFXIV maintenance, check out our coverage on what’s coming soon. We have a full breakdown of the latest Live Letter; this covered a bunch of new FFXIV content in the upcoming Patch 6.2 update slated for late August 2022. Brand new features like Island Sanctuary, Variant/Criterion dungeons, Hildibrand relic weapons, and the Omicron tribal quests have us excited.
