We Final Fantasy XIV players are eagerly awaiting the next major update, and a Live Letter to cover it in-depth is coming soon. Though there are already details on FFXIV Patch 6.1 and even Patch 6.2, the Live Letter from February gave us hints as to what’s to come for the rest of the post-Endwalker patch cycle. Here, we’ll sum up what we know so far about Patch 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
The big new feature with Patch 6.3 will be the third Deep Dungeon. The previous Deep Dungeons, which were Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High, were implemented in a patch after A Realm Reborn and Stormblood, respectively. This new one keeps up that cadence. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida first mentioned this new Deep Dungeon during a Q&A session at FanFest in Korea last month. While we don’t have any specifics on its features or place within the FFXIV world, we can expect it to be similar to previous ones. If you’re not familiar with Deep Dungeons, they’re instances with continuous floors to clear, some roguelike elements, and unique twists to gameplay elements (and they’re good for leveling up alternate Jobs).
Patch 6.2 will introduce the new Island Sanctuary content, and Patch 6.3 will provide an update to it. Since we haven’t seen much of this new feature, it’s hard to tell what this update entails. However, we do know Island Sanctuary is a separate type of content where you can cultivate your own land and raise animals Harvest Moon-style for a change of pace.
As for other additions, Patch 6.3 will bring the second instance for the Myths of the Realm 24-player alliance raid series. We’re still awaiting the first leg of this raid series, which comes with Patch 6.1, but we do know it’s themed around The Twelve, the gods of FFXIV‘s world. Perhaps we’ll get some major lore drops amid some wild raid mechanics.
In case you missed the news, the FFXIV team is retrofitting older main story dungeons with the Trust system. This will allow you to run those instances alongside AI-controlled party members. Patch 6.3 will pick up where 6.2 leaves off and continue with these updates by adding the Trust system for the rest of the Heavensward MSQ dungeons.
Additionally, a fifth Ultimate raid will be introduced around Patch 6.3. Ultimate-level raids are some of the most difficult content FFXIV — these combine the intensity of Savage raids and turn them into a series of consecutive fights that players have to finish in one try. Patch 6.11 will contain the fourth Ultimate called the Dragonsong’s Reprise, which is themed around battles from Heavensward. Who knows what this fifth one will be!
Information on Patch 6.4 and 6.5 was lumped together as it’s probably a little early to go deep into the content updates (we expect these patches to come out throughout 2023 anyway). However, there were still some notable details in the Live Letter.
Both patches combined will finish the implementation of the Trust system for all Stormblood MSQ dungeons. This will make it possible to go through most of FFXIV‘s main story as a solo player — eight-player trials will still require a party of real players. Yoshida-san said the FFXIV team may consider adding the Trust system to trial boss fights in Patch 7.0 or later.
The brand-new addition of Criterion dungeons is coming with Patch 6.2. These are instances for up to four players that will have variable difficulty for added challenge. With Patch 6.4 and 6.5, we’ll get two additional Criterion dungeons — though not much else is known about this content type for now.
There will also be an additional zone added to Island Sanctuary within these patches, a notable Gold Saucer update, and, of course, the conclusion to the Pandaemonium raid series in 6.4 and Myths of the Realm alliance raid series in 6.5. And to all my fellow Blue Mages: there’s still hope — while there’s no definitive update to speak of yet, Yoshida-san said the team is looking to expand the Job in some form.
We’ll be sure to update this story whenever we get more information on all these FFXIV patches. An important thing to note is that the FFXIV team is extending their content update cadence a bit — major patches are scheduled to launch at around four-month intervals now. With Patch 6.1 set for April, you can estimate Patch 6.2 coming out in August, and perhaps 6.3 in December 2022 or January 2023 (and the rest spread across 2023).
If you want to look even further into the future, you can check out our breakdown of FFXIV Patch 7.0’s planned graphical overhaul that includes preview screenshots of the new character models, environments, and grass textures. And may we suggest getting into in-game fashion? We recently talked to experts in the Gposing and glamour community to show off how they do it.
