Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail: New Job, New Dungeons, New Raids Revealed At Fanfest

Final Fantasy XIV Online is not just the most popular MMO on the market, it's also getting a new expansion next summer. Hooray! First details about it are being drip-fed through the game's official conventions, the Fan Festivals (or simply Fanfests), throughout the months.

The first annual Fanfest in Las Vegas back in July featured the reveal of the game's next expansion, Dawntrail. And just this weekend the London Fanfest was held, and its introductory Keynote presentation revealed a plethora of new information on Dawntrail! Here is everything we now know about it.

First New Job in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail: Viper

The showstopper of the event was the reveal of one of the two new Jobs that will be added in the expansion: the Viper! This Job uses twin swords that can be combined into a dual-bladed polearm. Veterans of the Final Fantasy series might be reminded of FF9's protagonist Zidane, and one of his usable weapons did have the alias "The Viper", so it's not a stretch to say that one inspired the other.

But on to the gameplay details. Viper will be a melee DPS job (obviously) that uses Scouting gear, meaning that Ninja will have to share all its currently exclusive gear with its new little sibling. Which glamour enthusiasts everywhere are delighted about, I'm sure! This also implies that it will be similarly fragile in combat like Ninja, but that's a problem for your healers to figure out, right?

As for how it actually plays, we obviously don't have any skill descriptions or anything of the sort to go off of yet. But based on the Job's description, the trailer and similar jobs that are already in the game I can make some educated guesses: It seems to have a dual-sword stance and a polearm stance that it can switch between, and since the polearm attacks look more powerful they will likely cost some kind of job-specific resource. A different job resource is probably needed to enter the powered-up state shown in the trailer.

So far, Viper looks very similar to Reaper, the melee DPS Job introduced in Endwalker. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried that it'll end up being too formulaic. But I also have a weakness for dual-wielding, so I'm willing to give the Job a chance either way.

The other new Job to be introduced in Dawntrail, a new magical ranged DPS, wasn't shown at all. The game's most recent Patch 6.5 "Growing Light" dropped some heavy hints towards Green Mage, but it seems like we'll just have to wait until Tokyo Fanfest in January for confirmation.

New Limited Job Announced

In other Job-related news, a new Limited Job will be introduced in Dawntrail! To recap, Limited Jobs are special jobs with unique abilities and progression systems, but have a lower level cap and can't do the vast majority of FFXIV's instanced PvE content without a preformed group. So far, the only Limited Job in the game is Blue Mage, but apparently that will change at some point during Dawntrail's patch cycle.

The Keynote didn't reveal what this new Limited Job will be, but it has been long-standing community consensus that if a new Limited Job were to be added to the game it should be Beastmaster. Whether the developers agree or if they decided to go with something entirely different won't be clear until the Job's official reveal, which will likely happen at Tokyo Fanfest in January.

New Areas: Kozama'Uka And Shaaloani

Dawntrail will, of course, also introduce about 6 new areas to the game, most of them located in the main location of the expansion's story, the continent of Tural. Two more of those areas were revealed at London Fanfest: Kozama'Uka and Shaaloani.

Kozama'Uka is a tropical region to the south of the region's hub city, featuring giant waterfalls and a cultural melting pot of many different peoples, including what seems to be a regional variant of Dravania's Goblins. Meanwhile, Shaaloani is the more immediately interesting of the two regions. It's reminiscent of gold rush-era Texas at first glance, colonial-style buildings and all. However, it also features a mysterious structure in the skies above it that the developers apparently deemed too spoiler-y to show pre-release.

What role these areas will play in the expansion's story is still mostly unknown, but personally I'm itching to explore fantasy Texas already!

New Dungeons

The Keynote also gave us some glimpses of the dungeons that will be a part of Dawntrail's main scenario. Highlights include a jungle cruise, a cliffside covered by strange glowing corals and a massive structure reminiscent of the inside of a PC. Not much more than early screenshots and concept art were shown (these dungeons are likely still early in development), but lore enthusiasts are already wondering how any of it fits into FFXIV's world.

New Alliance Raid Series: Echoes of Vana'diel

Fans of the other Final Fantasy MMO, Final Fantasy XI, get a special treat in Dawntrail: The expansion's 24-man Alliance raid series will be a crossover between the two MMOs, called Echoes of Vana'diel! Expect to see many familiar faces, environments, bosses and, of course, gear rewards from FFXI in this raid series. Technically there had already been a crossover between the two games before in the form of a limited-time quest, but evidently the developers of both games felt that FFXI deserved something more special for its 20th anniversary.

If you know nothing about FFXI and want to familiarize yourself with it before Echoes of Vana'diel is released, or if you're feeling nostalgic for the game, it's actually still running, receives regular updates and has a relatively active playerbase to this day! Just be warned that the core game has aged about as well as its official website's layout suggests.

And that is all that was revealed about Dawntrail at London Fanfest 2023! If you were hoping for more information on the second new Job or the new 8-man raid series you'll have to be patient until the next Fanfest in Tokyo on January 7th 2024.