It turns out that the relatively minor update for Final Fantasy XIV had a bit more in store. During the maintenance period, FFXIV 6.18 patch notes dropped and revealed more than the hotly anticipated data center travel system. There are several PVP Job changes, adjustments to PVP modes, some slight but notable tweaks to the endgame gear grind, and more. You can see all the FFXIV 6.18 patch notes on The Lodestone official site, but here, we’re going to breakdown all the important stuff.
Changes to Earning Endgame Gear and Rewards
As we get closer to Patch 6.2, the current endgame gear grind is getting a bit more lax. In FFXIV Patch 6.18, the rewards system for the Pandaemonium Asphodelos Savage raids is more generous. Clearing any of the four Circles will always reward two gear coffers now, and weekly restrictions on rewards have been removed for gear obtained from those coffers. Additionally, any restrictions on entering the Savage-tier raids has been removed, and players can enter any one of the Circles of the Savage tier once they’re unlocked.
Those who have been clearing the latest 24-player alliance raid, Aglaia, have been gathering up Aglaia Coins as a weekly reward. And thanks to FFXIV 6.18, you can do something really cool with them: you can buy Radiant Roborant with Aglaia Coins. You’ll make the exchange with he same vendor, Nesvaaz in Radz-at-Han (X: 10.6 Y: 10.0). Radiant Roborant is a material used to upgrade Radiant’s weapons (item level 590) to Augmented Radiant’s weapons (item level 600). Be sure to use our FFXIV endgame gear guide for all the details on how to acquire and upgrade these weapons.
Before Patch 6.18, you could only purchase Radiant Roborant with Asphodelos Mythos III (x4), which is reward for clearing The Third Circle (Savage). Finally, players who don’t grind out Savage raids can get their hands on an ilvl 600 weapon.
If you need help with any of the aforementioned content, we have FFXIV guides on all of it below.
- Asphodelos: The First Circle (Savage) Raid Guide
- Asphodelos: The Second Circle (Savage) Raid Guide
- Asphodelos: The Third Circle (Savage) Raid Guide
- Asphodelos: The Fourth Circle (Savage) Raid Guide
- Myths of the Realm: Aglaia Alliance Raid Guide
- FFXIV Endgame Gear Guide
FFXIV 6.18 PVP Jobs Changes
FFXIV PVP continues to get some love with key Job changes. Patch 6.1 completely overhauled how Jobs worked in PVP for the better, but needed some balance adjustments, which we saw in 6.11 and 6.11a. Surprisingly, FFXIV 6.18 has plenty of PVP Job changes, most of which are potency tweaks. However, there are some notable changes that you’ll want to take note of if you’re a PVP player.
Paladin
- Holy Sheltron: Knight’s Resolve effect has been nerfed from 20% to 15% in damage reduction.
Warrior
- Onslaught: Base potency increased from 400 to 500, max potency increased from 4,000 to 5,000.
- Orogeny: Base potency increased from 800 to 1,000, max potency increased from 8,000 to 10,000.
Dark Knight
- Bloodspiller: Base potency increased from 4,000 to 6,000. Action now reaches max potency when at 25% HP or lower (previously 20% or lower).
- Eventide: Base potency increased from 1 to 10,000.
Gunbreaker
- Burst Strike: Potency increased from 6,000 to 7,000.
- Hypervelocity: Normal potency increased from 2,000 to 3,000.
- Junction DPS damage potency increased from 4,000 to 5,000.
- Junction Tank barrier potency increased from 5,000 to 6,000.
- Junction Healer cure potency increased from 3,000 to 4,000.
Ninja
- Seiton Tenchu (Limit Break): Unsealed Seiton Tenchu effect (attacking a second target) duration decreased from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
Machinist
- Blast Charge: Movement speed increase granted when under the effect of Overheated.
Dancer
- Honing Dance: Potency increased from 3,000 to 4,000.
- Reverse Cascade: Potency increased from 5,000 to 6,000.
- Fountainfall: Potency increased from 7, 000 to 8,000.
- Saber Dance: Damage buff effect increased from 5% to 10%.
Black Mage
- Burst: Barrier potency decreased from 16,000 to 12,000.
- Superflare: Umbral Freeze will now afflict targets with status effects for 2 seconds based on number of UF stacks.
- 1 stack: Heavy
- 2 stacks: Bind
- 3 stacks: Deep Freeze
Summoner
- Fester: Base potency increased from 3,000 to 4,000, max potency increase from 6,000 to 8,000.
Astrologian
- Gravity II: Heavy status affect only inflicted on the primary target.
- When used with Double Cast: Bind status affect only inflicted on the primary target.
For more on PVP, check out our Crystalline Conflict guide to help you rack up Ws or use our FFXIV PVP Job tier list to learn more about how each Job works.
Adjustments to FFXIV PVP Modes
Job actions aren’t the only thing changing in PVP. The second season of Crystalline Conflict starts with Patch 6.18. The fast-paced 5-on-5 competitive mode has its own dedicated ranking system, and depending on where you ended up in the ranks, you’ll get some rewards. You can claim for season one rewards from the NPC named Seasonal Quartermaster in the Wolves’ Den Pier (X: 4.9 Y: 5.7). Be sure to claim rewards before the end of season two, which is when Patch 6.2 launches in late August.
For those who play the large-scale PVP mode Frontline, take note of changes to damage modifiers and Limit Break gauges below.
- Damage taken for tank and melee DPS have been changed from -40% to -60%.
- Damage taken for physical ranged DPS, magical ranged DPS, and healer have been changed from -20% to -30%.
- Damage dealt for Summoner, Scholar, and White Mage, have been changed from 0% to -10%.
- New Limit Break gauge rates: First bar fills at 0.75x the normal rate, second bar fills at the normal rate, third bar fills at 1.25x faster. Overall, all bars were adjusted to fill 0.25x slower than before.
If you need a bit more of an incentive to jump into PVP, check out our guides on rewards like the Virtu gear and Tropaios weapons, the Archfiend attire, and the Garo collaboration gear.
Data Center Travel System Debuts
The marquee feature of FFXIV Patch 6.18 is the data center travel system. Players can now venture outside the servers contained on their home data center. First, you must select “Visit Another Data Center” from the character select screen. Then, you need to choose a data center and server as a destination. Once you initiate the transfer process, you must wait until it is complete and cannot back out or do anything else in-game. You must use this same process to return to your original data center and server.
Now, you can party up and play through all of FFXIV‘s content with players from other data centers. All players will get a [Traveler] tag next to their name when visiting.
There are limitations to the system, however. You can only visit data centers in your region. If you’re on a North American data center like Primal, you can visit servers on Aether and Crystal, but not any of the European, Japanese, or Oceania data centers and servers.
All the same in-game restrictions from the world visit system apply to data center travel. This means no access to retainers, housing, joining or starting free companies, among other things. Additionally, you cannot access your cross-world linkshells or free company chats while on visiting another data center. Check out our data center travel guide for a full list of player restrictions.
New FFXIV Servers for European Players
Login congestion and wait times should be less of a problem for European players now that they have four new servers. The Chaos data center has two servers named Sagittarius and Phantom, and the Light data center has Alpha and Raiden. While Japanese players did not get any new servers, they did get a new data center called Meteor. This means a number of servers were shuffled into the new data center, making room on the current ones and helping ease overall congestion. Additional North American servers are planned for later this year.
Several bonuses are available to those who play on the new or preferred servers. Newly created characters get double EXP up to level 80 and 10 Silver Chocobo Feathers for leveling gear. Additionally, players get 1,000,000 Gil for reaching and 15 days of free subscription time for hitting level 30 (once per account).
More on FFXIV and Looking Toward Patch 6.2
There’s a ton of content to look forward to thanks to FFXIV Patch 6.2 launching in late August (either August 23 or August 30). Much of it was detailed in the latest Live Letter stream. We have it covered from all angles, so be sure to read up on the upcoming Hildibrand Relic Weapons, next round of Tribal Quests with the Omicron, brand-new Variant/Criterion Dungeons, and much-anticipated Island Sanctuary.
