INFO

Much of the skimmed info was just reiterating what was seen in Anaheim and Berlin. For the latter, see notes on the Berlin FanFest Keynote.

Trailer

Release Times

• Early access 2027-02-19
• Full access 2027-02-23
• Pre-order 2026-11-04

New Jobs

Phys. Ranged DPS: Zephyr

• High fantasy theme
• Evolved Mode only
• Weapon: Crossbow
• Distinctive Features: Party support; evasion, highly mobile
• Story Origin: Northwest Ilsabard mountains; works in tandem with a Nephele, an arcane bird of prey

Story

• The Realmships have been flying for 500 years.
• Featured characters:
  • Alphinaud and Estinien: familiar scions
  • Visna: a mysterious young zephyr from Naglfar
  • Baldr: a bastion from Hringhorni, and the leader of this Realmship
  • Lagertha: the first mate (second-in-command) of Naglfar; also goes by the name ‘Rimeblood’
  • Halmarut and Calyx: Winterers with somewhat mysterious motives, with Halmarut the Ascian having past connections to the Fourth

Regions

Sessrymnir, Realmship of Earth

• Focus on agriculture and mining

Skidbladnir, Realmship of Wind

• Wind incorporated into everyday life (of course)
• Caetra work here at the airship drydocks, and their home village resides here as well.

Town: Hjartadunur

• The second expansion player town.
• Each ship has evolved separately from the others due to contact being prohibited by the Brands; the difference between this town and Fargarth showcases that well.

Dungeons

• Secret boss preview: Lenneth?

New Races

Filion (?)

• A race that appears comparable to mammets for the Fourth

Game Design

Weekly Activity

• Moving from daily activity to reach weekly goals, to simply moving to weekly activity, giving more flexibility for your schedule
• Customizable ‘Adventurer Activity’ screen.
• Activity is earned from playing standard content, with some weekly goals also giving points.
• Rewards are earned as activity levels reach milestones.
• You can earn activity from prior weeks.

Battle System

• Whenever you change jobs, you have the ability to switch modes as well.
• Extremely long Evolved Mode ‘Producer Live Letter’ coming…

Armoury System Update

• The system for syncing your best IL across jobs is called Item Level Link.
• Item Level Link can only apply to characters that have reached the (baseline? current?) IL cap.

Character Creation Options

• Contact lens-like choices for changing iris color, etc.

Public Field Improvement

• Coming soon: Re-mounting after interacting with NPCs or objects from atop a mount.
• Various cash mounts currently improve movement speed when you don’t have a riding map; now, owning any of those mounts grants the first enhanced level of mount speed to all mounts.

8.0 Content

Alliance Raid Structure

• Prior alliance raids have been linearly structured: four bosses with trash between each, and a higher time commitment.
• Alliance raids after Evercold will be split into two, containing two sets of trash and two bosses each.
• You can choose to immediately queue for the second half after completing the first.
• This also makes chasing specific items rather less time consuming.
• Looking into possibly changing prior raids to do the same thing.

8-Player Alliance Raids (Savage)

• 8-player versions of the raids released alongside at savage difficulty
• Focused on the bosses
• Difficulty will be on par with a ‘Floor Three’ savage tier
• Rewards: Raid gear upgrade materials

Gauntlet of Power

• 4-player Dungeon Boss Rush; queue or premade.
• Up to five bosses, voting to continue or leave
• Focused on both short and long session play, taking advantage of auto-scaling.
• Available to players across levels 51-110 with auto-balancing, meaning job actions are not restricted.
• Over 200 bosses in the pool, restricted to those everyone has seen.
• No info on rewards yet. Further info coming in a Live Letter.
• Available at launch for those who have completed the Stormblood MSQ.

8-Player Raids: Beyond the Lifestream

• First tier is named ‘Fated Collision’.
• Normal difficulty releasing in 8.01; Savage, 8.05; and one week after Savage, Fierce, the intermediate difficulty.
  • Fierce difficulty is lower than Savage, but seeing mechanics here could contain spoilers or hints for how to beat the Savage fight. This avoids spoiling the Savage fight for world first races.
• Release schedules may change in future as player feedback rolls in.

Alliance Raids: Ghosts of Desire (Evangelion Crossover)

Gearing

Seasonal Gear

Seasonal Gear is for all players, and is obtained by activity level in a season.

• Earn activity points; at milestones, acquire tokens to exchange for a category of seasonal gear. This unlocks the tier for all jobs. (Unclear how further selections/exchanges work.)
• Gear can be selected at any time from a season menu rather than a vendor.
• Each of these pieces of gear has two materia slots, and Tcan have their IL raised once during the season:
  • On even patches, earn an augment once per week from the 8-player fierce raids (the new intermediate tier)
  • On odd patches, earn augments unlimitedly from 8-player fierce raids, or one per week from the (current patch? season?) normal trials.

Raid Gear

Raid Gear is for high-end players, and is obtained in 8-player Savage Raids.

• Exchange tokens are now a guaranteed drop; no more rolling.
• Tokens are exchanged on that same seasonal panel.
  • Each slot’s tokens come from a specific floor.
• Secondary attributes of raid gear can be edited immediately.
  • Raid gear doesn’t come with materia slots, and the attributes may be adjusted to the same capacity as a fully-slotted piece of gear.
• Each of these pieces of gear can have their IL raised twice during the season.
  • Additionally, it can have materia slots unlocked using items earned from seasonal activity, up to 3 advanced materia slots. These will have higher rates of melding success.
  • On even patches, earn a first-tier augment once per week per floor from 8-player savage raids
  • On odd patches, earn unlimited first-tier augments from 8-player savage raids.
  • On odd patches, earn a second-tier augment from 8-player savage alliance raids once per week, and combine with crafted materials.
• When a job’s armor set is completely upgraded, it is considered ‘perfected’ and the weapon is granted a special visual effect; these effects are layered and can be toggled.

Misc. Updates

Outfits

• Feature toggling is added to much of the new gear, including shorter collars, light fixtures on Mining gear, etc.

Duty Support Updates

• Empty slots in any party can be filled with support members for light and full duties.

Chocobo Rework

• Updates start in 8.1

PvP

• Two new jobs, adjustments to old jobs
• ‘Hall of the Novice’ for teaching PvP
• ‘Large-scale Content Update’
• ‘Various System Updates’
• So… updates, in general. We’ll see in due time what these mean.

Housing

• Coming starting 8.1
• Housing interior can now be sized independently of housing exterior and plot size
• Furnishing interface overhaul, including freedom to place furnishings in mid-air
• Expanding plot availability

Collector’s Bundle

• Physical
• Digital

Pre-order Bonus