Greetings, Warriors of Light! Final Fantasy XIV‘s last Fan Festival before Evercold has begun! Notably, the long-awaited keynote has just wrapped up and we’re happy to provide a summary of all the big changes.
The broadcasts are available both on YouTube and Twitch. Scrub through the VOD to rewatch any sections you’re particularly interested in! Thank you as always to Koji Fox for the live English translations!
Evercold Full Trailer & Release Dates
The keynote kicked off with Evercold’s full trailer! Enjoy the closer looks at Visna, the Realmships, the wordly threats, and a suspiciously familiar icy character!
The early access and release dates have finally been confirmed: February 19th, 2027, and February 23rd, 2027 respectively. While the release date has been pushed back from the projected January release, they wanted to ensure the expansion and many new systems deliver on their promises of quality. As such, the release date needed to be pushed back about three weeks.
Furthermore, the expansion pre-orders will be available soon! Keep an eye out on November 4th, 2026 when sales open! Learn more about the Collector’s Bundles in our separate article.
New Physical Ranged Job, Zephyr!
Finally, we can put a name to the new physical ranged job: Zephyr! Similar to the new tank job Bastion, the Zephyr starts off at level 90 and can only be played in Evolved Mode. Players keen on grabbing their first crossbow may do so in Gridania! Dominate the battlefield alongside your summoned arcane companion, known as a Nephele.
Make sure to check our Zephyr article for more information!
Evercold’s New Characters & Areas
New Characters
Assuming players have caught up on the available Main Scenario Quests, we already know that the Scions joining us on our foray into the Fourth are Alphinaud and Estinien.
However, most players are likely more excited to learn more about the residents of the Fourth. Our first companion is the crossbow-wielding Zephyr, Visna from Naglfar, Realmship of Water. We’ve only just been introduced to this mischievous character in the MSQ so there is plenty more to learn about her!
From the trailer, we also saw the fearsome Bastion holding the frontline against a hoard of assailants. Introducing Baldr, the leader and foreman of Hringhorni, Realmship of Fire.
Next, Lagertha is Naglfar’s First Mate and second in command. She also goes by the moniker Rime Blood. She bears a striking resemblance to our late Shiva-wielding companion. Could she be the Fourth’s reflection of Ysayle?
Lastly, we’ve already been thoroughly acquainted with the Winterers Halmarut and Calyx. However, we expect to learn much more of their story and of the other Winterer said to already be working in the Fourth.
New Areas
Previously, past fan festivals have already showcased Naglfar, Realmship of Water, and Hringhorni, Realmship of Fire. This time, we got a preview of Sessrymnir, the Realmship of Earth. Explore both the above-ground agricultural areas and the below-ground mining-focused caves. We’re told there will also be large-scale complex magic rituals. That doesn’t sound ominous at all.
Next, we previewed Skiðblaðnir, the Realmship of Wind. This vessel is an excellent place to learn about airship building, and to meet the the cute Köttr and their adorable home village.
Finally, we have a video showcasing more locales from the Fourth. YoshiP encourages players to take the time during or after completing the MSQ to closely inspect these areas and witness the different cultural details. The second player town, Hjartadunur, and another friendly race, the Fylgjur, made an appearance in the video.
As a side note, jump puzzle enjoyers can expect to be well fed this expansion. Upon hearing the feedback from Dawntrail’s jumping challenges, they’ll be increasing the difficulty in Evercold and will perhaps be the hardest jumping challenge yet!
Evercold Main Scenario Quest Branches
As a recap from the Berlin Fan Festival Keynote, the Main Scenario Quest in Evercold will include a branching narrative. Players will be able to experience portions of the story in a different order from each other. Also, NPCs can have different dialogue according to your progress in the story.
For the dungeons in these branching areas, the Auto Content Balancing feature will be employed. The players’ level, gear, and enemy levels will be balanced to accommodate players reaching that point in the story at different times.
System Changes
Adventurer Activity System, Changing From Daily To Weekly
The Adventurer Activity system has been refined and changes to the user interface are just about finished. Within the UI, the background balcony area will change depending on your character’s current location.
To earn Activity Points, players can complete Standard Missions, that are repeatable and award points each time these are completed. As a reminder, players can catch up on missed points from the previous week.
The expansion patches will be bundled together into seasons, two patches each. Don’t be afraid of the word ‘season’! There will be no season passes and no additional fees!
Combat Revamp: Reborn Mode & Evolved Mode
At this moment, the base implementation for Evolved Mode for all jobs has been completed. They’re now focused on adjusting action potency, recast timers, and more. Players will be able to easily swap between Reborn and Evolved modes.
A Live Letter with Mr. Prime that will provide an exhaustive overview of every job’s Evolved Mode is planned for the future. Please look forward to it!
Shared Item Level – Armoury System Update
While players still need to level each jobs individually, players will be able to share their highest average item level with all of your max leveled jobs! The feature will be called Item Level Link and should alleviate the stress and headache of gearing multiple jobs.
Action Skins
The Berlin fan festival introduced the new Action Skins that will allow players to customize the visual effects and animations of certain actions. These can be obtained as rewards and while they will be initially limited, more actions and skin variations are on the horizon!
Character Customization Updates
As a reminder, the character customization is finally getting some love! Players will soon be able to utilize a variety of new tools to ensure their Warrior of Light is unique. In Patch 8.0, we can expect the color picker for Eye, Hair, and Skin Tone, improved customization for Eyes and Lips, addition of Eye shadow, and face paint layering.
Later on, Patch 8.1 will include the previously showcased racial feature toggles and a ‘colored contacts‘ feature to allow easier iris colour customization. The list of changes are expected to increase over time.
A future Live Letter will be showcasing these tools and then a benchmark will be available in early December that will include the new character customization features.
Field Area & Quality Of Life Changes
Large-scale area-encompassing content, tentatively named World Raids, are expected later in Patch 8.x. Work on these are still in progress and more details will arrive in the future.
In terms of upcoming Quality of Life, the Auto Move feature to quest areas/objectives is a work in progress. Considering there is a lot of pathing information that needs to be inputted there is no release date as of yet.
However, hopefully coming in Patch 8.0, an Auto Remount feature is in the works. Players will automatically saddle back onto their mounts after speaking with Quest NPCs or harvesting gathering nodes, with some exceptions. For example, players may not remount if the NPC teleports the player somewhere else.
Finally, players who own any of the motorcycles that increase the ground travel speed of mounts may rejoice! Possessing any of those three mounts will unlock the increased movement speed for all mounts. Travel swiftly through your adventures freely on your chosen mount!
Battle System Changes
Fierce Difficulty
The difficulty between Normal and Savage now has a name, the Fierce difficulty! This serves as a bridge for players that want to challenge themselves above the Normal difficulty but aren’t quite ready to step into Savage. This difficulty provides rewards that can be used toward gear progression, detailed further below.
Alliance Raid Restructuring
Currently, the Alliance Raid structure is an alternating cycle of trash mobs and bosses. These raids can very time consuming, especially if wipes occur! As such, players may avoid queueing for these raids again in the interest of saving time which results in long player matching issues.
To help combat this, Evercold and future alliance raids will be cut in half and will be two separate duties. Reward drops will remain similar, so players can choose whichever half drops their desired item.
New to Evercold, an 8-player Savage version of alliance raids will be released alongside the 24-player regular difficulty alliance raids. Odd patches now have content for high difficulty players! The difficulty will be around 3rd floor of Savage fights and the gear requirement and balancing will assume progress from even patches. These raids will reward players with upgrade materials for their gear as well!
Gauntlet of Power
Ready to launch with Evercold, the Gauntlet of Power arrives! It is a new instanced dungeon that will use the Auto Content Balancing feature. Party members can have significantly different levels which opens up more opportunities to play with friends at various levels. The instance is a 4-player Boss Rush, up to 5 bosses and players can vote to continue after each round. As such, there is no pressure to sink a lot of time in it and players a free to spend however much time they want.
Players will face randomly selected foes from a pool of over 200 bosses. New bosses will progressively be added to the pool. Newer players won’t need to fear spoilers because bosses will only be chosen from instances that all players have already completed.
The days of spamming Palace of the Dead may be over. This instance should be great for leveling alt jobs! Currently, there are no details on rewards yet but we can expect more details from a future Live Letter!
Gear Acquisition & Upgrades
Evercold’s new Adventurer Activity and gear system features two types of gear that can be upgraded: Seasonal Gear and Raid Gear.
Seasonal Gear
Seasonal gear can be easily obtained and is for the everyday players. Players can raise their activity level to progress this gear set that is shared across all jobs. They can easily obtain and exchange for this gear from within the new UI, circumventing speaking with an NPC altogether.
The item level for seasonal gear is upgraded once per season using Optimization Items. Depending on the season’s patch, these upgrade items are initially time-gated (even patches) but eventually become easier to obtain (odd patches).
Raid Gear
Meanwhile, Raid Gear is obtained from the 8-player savage raids. At long last, the days of prioritizing loot for the DPS will be behind us as raid coffers will be awarded to each participating player. This gear’s Secondary Attributes can be freely changed. Since those editable stats will be maxed out, the gear will initially not possess materia slots.
The item level for raid gear can be raised twice in a season and materia slots can be unlocked to allow for advanced materia melding, or overmelding. Success chances will be much higher so blowing up hundreds of materia at once shouldn’t happen too often. An item from activity level rewards will be required to unlock the 3 Advanced Materia slots. Similar to Seasonal gear, obtaining these upgrade items will be easier as the season progresses.
Finally, fully upgrading a complete set of gear adds unique graphical effects to its weapon and players can select one of three effects! Look forward to future Live Letter for more details!
Other Changes Coming in Evercold
Same-Region Player Matching is already implemented for the Japan Data Centers and they have received a lot of feedback. After they’ve ironed out the bugs, NA/EU tests begin November 10th, and China’s tests begin December 1st.
Toggling artifact gear accessories or decorations on and off. For example, scarves or a Gunbreaker’s cartridge belt. Alternatively, adjusting the Viper’s collar length to account for characters with long hair.
Duty Support will be able to support multiple players queueing together! Queue with a friend or multiple friends for supported dungeons and trials.
Chocobo Companion Overhaul planned to start in Patch 8.1.
Enjoy a walkthrough of the upcoming new Dungeons with the following video!
We’ve also got some PvP updates on the horizon! In Patch 8.0, the two new jobs will be included and current jobs will be adjusted.
Excitingly, planned for Patch 8.1, a PvP Hall of the Novice will be introduced to teach PvP newbies everything they need to know! Also, a big Large-Scale Content Update will be on the way. Keep an eye out for other system updates like knock-down animations and ways to reduce taunting from other players.
Housing Updates
The upcoming Housing Updates are slated for Patch 8.1 and will be focused on three main goals and features. First, the long awaited Interior Area Size change is coming! Enjoy a Large interior despite having a Small house! However, these come with a gil fee, with no specifics as of now.
Second, a major overhaul of the Housing Interface to allow, for example, midair furnishing placement. They’re really looking to open the creative floodgates for all players!
Finally, there will be an increased the number of plots. They’re exploring options such as creating new smaller areas, splitting areas, or creating hidden areas. While they’re closing in on their final solution, the budget for this endeavor has already been allocated. Fingers crossed that more players can own houses soon!
FFVII Raid Release Schedule
The FFVII collab 8-player raid series, Beyond the Lifestream, will first release in Patch 8.01. As usual, the Savage tier releases after a short delay, and then Fierce will be launched one week after Savage. In order to avoid interfering with the Savage world race and because Fierce may include hints to the mechanic changes for Savage, this delay was deemed necessary. The schedule remains tentative schedule and can be adjusted for future releases as needed.
Evangelion Alliance Raid Series
The Alliance raid series, Ghosts of Desire made in collaboration with Evangelion, has a new preview video. More reveals to come as Patch 8.1 approaches!
I hope you’re as excited for Evercold as I am! As always, keep an eye out for more FFXIV news here on Icy Veins!