Current Eorzean year.

[Zenglaf]

Hello, i'm working on lore based background stuff for my character and i dont know where to find the actual year in eorzea, the last data I have is the calamity.

How long passed since then? The 5 years is known, but after Arr where are we now?


Bests,
Z

[Cleretic]

It's very nebulous, depending on what timeframe you take. But there's two major camps, from what I can tell.

First, there's the assumption that time has passed in the game at the same rate as in real life, assuming that, for example, there was a few months between patch MSQs, since some do imply time has passed but never give specifics. Going with this, we're at about thirteen years since Dalamud; five years since the Calamity, and then around eight since ARR's 2013 launch.

Or you could take the 'short approach'; that all the MSQ takes place basically bumper-to-bumper, and so only the time stated to have passed has passed. With that, we'd maybe be looking at a year or so since ARR's launch, with most of that actually being in Stormblood (since I believe a timeframe of months is given for the trip from Eorzea to Kugane).

[Anonymoose]

The canon answer is that time passes but it never adds up, it never moves. It is always the 5th Year of the Seventh Umbral Era aka the 1st Year of the Seventh Astral Era. This is equivalent to what would have been 1577 if the Calamity never happened. However, everyone in the game has a blank check to write for how long they think the story took. It's up to you. (Until SE says otherwise, which feels increasingly unlikely after every passing year.)

[Vyrerus]

We know that months pass between certain patch ends, given that one of the House Fortemps Knights says as much at the start of the MSQ, "Promises Kept."

House Fortemps Knight: "Ser Aymeric de Borel, lord speaker of the House of Lords, lord commander of the Temple Knights, and viscount of House Borel, cordially invites Master <Player Character Surname> to dine with him in his estate."

"You seem surprised. The messenger assured me that his lord had broached the subject with you at an earlier date-- when the arrangements for the peace conference were still being finalized..."

"Of course, the intervening moons afforded little opportunity for leisure. But with the happy advent of peace, 'tis plain the lord commander sees no further cause for delay. What say you?"

I mean, correct me if I've erred, but I'd always taken the passage of moons to mean the passing of months (maybe it's merely days or weeks in other languages?).

Of course, just because that's true doesn't mean they ever nailed down just how many months, nor weeks, nor days... it's one of those pesky things that interferes with what's good for business. If they gave us any time scale, having the pubescent characters of Alisaie and Alphinaud demand that they show them age, eventually, and that's bad for character recognition/bonding or whatever.

I think they kind of liked to stake the idea on the long game. Where someone new to the game, even just starting out from level 1, can still finish the whole of the MSQ from getting off the carriage/ship to looking up at the reddening moon in roughly 2~3 months with doing some side stuff and what not. They put the passage of time in for everyone who has to wait, but they don't nail it down so it doesn't feel jarring to someone who's riding through.

Just put the year as 1577+ teehee

[Beddict]

If they gave us any time scale, having the pubescent characters of Alisaie and Alphinaud demand that they show them age, eventually, and that's bad for character recognition/bonding or whatever.

I feel like they still could, assuming the time is reasonable. Elezen don't reach physical maturity until their 20s, and Urianger has this to say at one point:

Aye...'twas not until my twentieth summer that I myself outgrew my boyish proportions...though Moenbryda towered over me nonetheless.

The Twins are 16 at the start of ARR so the devs could totally say three years have passed: one year for ARR, one year for HW, one year for SB, and then ShB largely took place on the First so who cares. At that point, great, the Twins are 19, they haven't hit their growth spurt at all, and it's reasonable for them to still have the same appearance. The devs are never gonna actually do that though, easier to just say it's still the year 1577. Although at this point the year is actually 1 Seventh Astral Era. Is the year 1577 ever actually used in game anywhere, or do people in the FFXIV community just use it out of convenience rather than bouncing between 5 Seventh Umbral Era and 1 Seventh Astral Era? Always wondered about that.

[Cleretic]

Elezen growth spurts are also supposed to be very sudden, so it wouldn't feasibly be a huge plot hole that time has passed and the twins haven't visibly grown.

I'm not someone that really wants the twins to grow, I don't think it does much, but if it happens I want it to be as abrupt as possible. I want it to happen off-screen, halfway through a quest that isn't even about that. REALLY confuse the cutscene-skippers.

[Beddict]

Elezen growth spurts are also supposed to be very sudden

It does sound sudden, yeah. From page 83 of Encyclopedia Eorzea Vol. I where it talks about the physical attributes of Elezen:

With lifespans one- or two-tenths again as a long as their fellow races, their physical maturity is somewhat delayed. It is not uncommon for Wildwood children to look up to their Hyruan friends in their early teens, only to rapidly outstrip them around the age of twenty.

[Veloran]

The Twins are 16 at the start of ARR so the devs could totally say three years have passed: one year for ARR, one year for HW, one year for SB, and then ShB largely took place on the First so who cares.

It's most likely two years for Stormblood. There's literally over a year of just boatrides between then and now.

[WhiteArchmage]

The passage of time is VERY nebulous in the game. They never QUITE commit to time passing or we still being in Year 1 7AE. Quest dialogue will imply weeks if not months happening between quest and quest, but in a manner that they never quite seem to add up to a year (even if, as Veloran pointed out above, logically speaking it should be AT LEAST one year with all the StB travelling, especially when it's mentioned that "The Domans who can teleport got here early", which still means the REST went the overland route). The Rising tip-toes around it but, then again, The Rising is also the one event that tends to drop all pretense of a fourth wall even existing.

I think they should actually commit to "each expansion takes up X amount of time", and I hope 6.1+ offers a significant (or even canonical) time-skip, otherwise it's... gonna be one heck of a year in 7.0...

Edit: I forgot my actual point in there somewhere: basically it was done for new player convenience so they didn't have to keep track of how long it's passed since the start of the game. But it does make for some funny things when looked at after ShB since the Crystal Braves were created and then disbanded in about a week; Ishgard went through a Revolution and upended its entire government in 3 days, rebuilt an entire housing district in days; liberated TWO Imperial controlled city-states in about a month (don't pay attention to the 6-month boat ride each way, you're the WoL and can teleport anytime anywhere, everyone else travels at the speed of plot), and then the First was moving in time MUCH more rapidly than the Source but then just decides not to the second you walk in.

So basically for RP purposes... do what feels best for you, if you want to calculate how long it has realistically been since the Calamity, you're free to do so. If it's been the wildest year of your life, that's canon, too.

[Beddict]

It's most likely two years for Stormblood. There's literally over a year of just boatrides between then and now.

A fast merchant ship with favourable winds can make the trip from Vylbrand to Doma in about two months. Given that we used Carvallain's ship which also has a Garlean ceruleum engine, I imagine we did keep to the two month voyage. Although we do that four times so while I don't think it was quite a year, it was definitely at least eight months. Would give the devs four months to play around with, although that's suuuuper pushing it given the time it likely takes to raise multiple armies, and I ain't even gonna pretend to consider the Xaela of the Azim Steppe flying their Yols from Othard to Ala Mhigo because that will literally break my suspension of disbelief.