Story/Quests
All players start in Ul'dah regardless of chosen class. Limsa/Gridania starting out quests are not available whatsoever.
Story is effectively the same, some quests streamlined a bit and level pacing is different.
Occasional jigsaw puzzles during some quests where you need to get an item from an NPC to give to others (eg the early quest from Papashan where you hand out pretzels).
Occasionally the quests will place a chocobo for you as the objective that will fly you to the next location, interacting with them requires giving them a gysahl green in a timing-based minigame.
Similarly, occasionally quest NPCs act as direct teleports to other locations, moving you to the required location after speaking to them.
On some occasions when visiting a new safe location, the quest objective will actually get you to interact with the Aetheryte before continuing on to the NPC/whatever else you need to do.
Chocobo's are now unlocked fairly early at Lv7 during a quest where you visit the Immortal Flames to pick up a Chocobo Permit. In line with this change, there is no provided Chocobo Barding available for free until later on when you join a Grand Company and get their barding as you would normally.
The Aether Compass is unlocked around Lv9 when you first visit the area outside Copperbell Mines by the miner who sends you up to get some shards, due to the change to unlocking flight in ARR regions.
Quests with Solo Instances now have minimum Item Level requirements and will not let you enter if you don't meet it.
Combat Levequests have been removed, in line with future expansion content.
MSQ currently stops at the end of Patch 2.0 after The Ultimate Weapon.
World/Regions
There are no physical changes to the world, all maps are the same as the original.
A QoL change in Major Cities is the ability to click and teleport directly to an Aethernet Shard from anywhere. You can use them as your teleport destination when needing to travel back to the city to visit a certain guild or whatever, or within the same city they can be clicked and teleport with no cast time.
UPDATED: As of 23/06/25, the Auto-Pathfinding feature has been removed from the cash shop and made an early story reward, plus mailed out to all current players who have already finished that quest. This is likely a response to it being a major focus of negative reviews. Auto-Pathfinder automatically moves you to quest objectives, including teleporting and using mounts. However, it does not use flight, walks in kind of awkward grid straight lines, and isn't perfect.
UPDATED: Teleporting is free. Home Points have been removed; when dying in a zone, you return to the closest Aetheryte in that area.
Unlocking flight has been reworked to use the Aether Current system from every other expansion, varying from 4 to 8 currents to find. None are locked behind a quest reward, and every region can be completed on first visit with the exception of Western La Noscea due to restricting travel to the Isles of Umbra until a certain MSQ quest; in line with this, two currents are in that area and can't be reached early.
All FATEs have been brought over. FATEs can spawn with higher difficulty and rewards called High Risk and are marked in pink on the map instead of blue. Bicolour Gemstones and Forlorn Maidens have been added, along with new limited time buffs that can appear after killing/collecting objectives that power you up for about 15 seconds. Along with more EXP and gemstones, High Risk FATEs also have the chance to drop coffers containing a random piece of glamour equipment.
Additionally, there is a series of extra objectives to be completed in every FATE, such as getting so many monster kills, defeating the boss, collecting items, and other varied tasks that can be completed over the course of repeating the FATE several times. These unlock extra rewards in the FATEs menu.
FATE rewards are sent out even if you are in a situation where you can't normally receive it, you will be allotted the EXP and items immediately when the FATE ends and a Moogle mails you the details of your rewards if you are unable to be present for the FATE ending notification. This includes leaving the zone, being in menus, and even entering instanced content.
New types of world events have been added. Buried Chests can be found around the regions, with friendly marmots to guide you to them. Performing bands can be encountered and using emotes in their vicinity grant you a buff to EXP Gain and Bicolor Gemstones earned in the area. There is a Goblin Merchant that can be found around the world, and helping him pick up his stuff and returning it will progress a bond level that adds new items to his store.
Details from future content have been included on maps where appropriate, for example the maps for Ishgard and Coerthas Western Highlands can be seen on the full zoomed out Coerthas Region map.
Content wise the game seems to be a weird mix of Patch 2.0 with current day QoL and features. Revenant's Toll is the completed version. Beast Tribe camp locations are all present in the maps. Gold Saucer is available.
Notable features that are actually the opposite, should be present but actually missing, includes The Wolves' Den. The PvP content is currently completely absent and the Ferry NPC can't be interacted with, yet the location is present on the map and even detailed with its Aetheryte, Delivery Moogle, pins, names, etc. Hall of the Novice instances and rewards are also not present in the game. Guildleves aren't present. Lastly, Housing is currently missing. Palace of the Dead is also absent, but despite technically being ARR content it was introduced in HW so that might be why.
Combat Classes/Jobs
Class Quests have been condensed down to Levels 1 through 10 and serve as early content and tutorials along with a source of gear and experience. Completing the Lv10 quest unlocks the associated (Class) Ring as a glamour and makes the Job Stone available. Guild Teleport Tickets have been added to let you get back to your Class Quest NPC immediately upon completing objectives.
Once you get your Job Stone you can not take it off. The Class is effectively gone.
Job Quests remain paced like the original and become available at Lv35 and every fifth level, giving you gear and experience, artifact gear at Lv45/50 and the better recolored version in a coffer as well at Lv50 like normal.
Job Actions have been obviously streamlined and changed while keeping the identity and general playstyle in mind. There are new skills and animations here and there, but otherwise they are built out of familiar elements.
All Jobs have access to a standard action button (the big one with the iconic relic weapon design) that serve as a basic combo. For melee classes it's your basic 1-2-3, with the bonus that at a certain distance it also turns into your ranged attack (eg Warrior's turns into Tomahawk) whereas for mages they serve as a reliable instant cast button to use while moving around.
Another new button is the evasive action button, the one underneath the standard action. This serves as a self-explanatory movement skill that gets you across a short distance quickly and activates Sprint for four seconds. This is available every fifteen seconds. Animations vary, such as dashes or rolls. White Mage gets to float around, kinda cool.
At the Arcanist's Guild, you can pick up the Scholar unlock quest at the reception desk as well and unlock it independently. Alongside this change, Summoner and Scholar no longer share a level.
With Mages, spells are locked in at the end of the cast bar. With this change, casting at an enemy who then dies during the cast time will activate the spell on the next available target instead of interrupting the cast. For healing spells, casting single target heals with no target selected will automatically target the member of your party with the lowest HP.
Crafter Classes
UPDATED: Crafters now have a Job Gauges. These vary by class, some are shared across two, and they replace the Condition mechanic from the original game. u/ifuchen has provided a lot more indepth details about all the different Job Gauges in a comment you can read here.
Material style items like lumber for Carpenter are only made using Quick Synthesis style crafting, waiting for completion with an optional gil cost to skip to the end.
Normal crafts can be made in bulk, having enough materials allows you to craft multiple of an item at once with the same Progress/Quality craft. Completing the item and having certain stat requirements enables an automatic craft for that item.
An option is available in the crafting log above an item to bring up the gil vendor purchases for all the required materials on one screen and you can pick how many of each you want and pay the total cost out.
Gatherer Classes
Pretty much the same but with less buttons.
UPDATED: Fishers show the details of the current fishing spot at the top of the screen, clicking on an entry shows details like recommended bait and the !/!! hook notice to look for. There is also a timer element present on the screen that shows you how many seconds it's been since casting the line.
Dungeons
For the most part, this part of the experience is still the same. I will note some interesting notable changes below. MSQ Dungeons appear to be mostly their Rework designs, whereas optional ones are not, so that lends some weight to the game being based on a late ShB/early EW build.
Poetics are available immediately and can be earned on non-50 jobs., so funds for Lv50 gear can be worked on all the way through your progression. There are two other tomestone tiers at Lv50, Verity that is used to buy Materia and upgrade items, and Genesis that is not yet available (maybe when Coil is out on July 3rd.)
UPDATED: Unrestricted Mode (Undersized) is available for most dungeons in the game already. Duty Support is available for dungeons required for the MSQ. Additionally, there is a new selectable mode called Challenge Mode available for dungeons and trials that disables AOE indicators, mechanic timeline (in high end content), Echo, the use of any potion items, and locks the instance to Minimum iLv. This can only be directly queued for with a pre-made party.
UPDATED: Stone, Sky, Sea for ARR is available after completing MSQ from an NPC in the Quicksand. It is instanced instead of being placed physically in the world (uses the Wolves Den arena) and can be accessed directly from the Duty Finder.
Just as an overall change, optional chests are gone. Also I'll note that I don't 100% remember every single boss mechanic from content this old, I might have missed some in-fight details but for the most part I'm pretty sure I've got everything.
UPDATED: When you wipe to a boss, you are placed right back in front of the boss gate. There is no return option available until the whole team wipes.
Sastasha (Lv10) - No notable changes.
Tam-Tara (Lv10) - The very last part at the end where you would walk past the barricade to a room at the end and unlock it is removed, the barricade just opens when you kill the mobs there. The room is still present, just empty.
Copperbell (Lv10) - Explosive powder pickups are removed.
Halatali (Lv15) - Pre-Rework version. No pulling the chains in the second section.
Toto-Rak (Lv20) - No notable changes.
Haukke (Lv25) - Optional rooms are sealed, no keys. The only room in the basement with anything in it is the last room, and killing the mob there unlocks the boss door as if the key was used. The other part of the top floor is barricaded.
Brayflox (Lv30) - No loot chest after first boss. No reward chests from the Gobbies when rescued.
Qarn (Lv35) - Pre-Rework. Optional rooms later in the dungeon are still there, but the rewards have been removed and the scales before the final boss just opens both doors with no puzzle.. The Doom mechanic and floor pads from the first boss have been added to the final boss.
Cutter's (Lv??) - not in the game lmao
Stone Vigil (Lv40) - No notable changes.
Darkhold - (Lv??) - also just not in the game
Aurum (Lv45) - No notable changes.
Castrum M. (Lv50) - No notable changes. Cutscenes can be skipped if no-one in the party is a first-timer.
Praetorium (Lv50) - No notable changes. Cutscenes can be skipped if no-one in the party is a first-timer.
Labyrinth of the Ancients (Lv50) [video] - Including this here since there's no better section to list it in, and there's definitely some changes. Labyrinth of the Ancients is now a Full Party content type, eight players, and changes have been made to bosses to accommodate this while keeping most of the experience intact. Loot is treated like a normal dungeon and there's no restrictions on rolling for multiple pieces.
Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace appear to be missing too.
Trials
Story Trials are now Full Party content and significantly more involved fights. The primal trio drop weapon coffers with level appropriate gear, plus some other rarer drops like Titan having a minion, or special glamour chests that reward a random piece of glamour gear.
Ifrit (Lv15) [video] - Similar to a Hard Mode, features four nails and a new mechanic will falling aoe markers and meteor markers that drop aoes behind a moving player.
Titan (Lv35) [video] - SIGNIFICANTLY different fight starting out similar, only having one stage of arena breakage, heart phase swapped with an add phase, then the second half of Titan featuring EX mechanics like triple landslides and Ultimate Ultima's version of Upheaval.
Garuda (Lv45) [video] - Like Ifrit, a mix of later difficulties. Summons the sisters for an add phase where Garuda herself becomes untargetable.
Ultima (Lv50) - Porta Decumana is classified as a Dungeon rather than a Trial and is played with a Light Party, and is the same version of the fight currently available in the original game.
Titan HM (Lv50) [video] - Closer to the Extreme version with harder versions of mechanics in phase one, two adds instead of one in the "heart" phase, the jail mechanic added, and so on. This fight (and presumably future high-end content) features a new HUD element showing upcoming mechanics and when they're going to resolve.
Gold Saucer
For the most part it's the same content. Same games, GATEs, etc. Notable changes include;
Downstairs mini-games have new gameplay, generally based on timing touch screen taps. The crane game is mostly the same but bigger with more balls to land on and a bit stricter detection on if you touched it.
Fashion Report has been fully reworked; instead of clues for individual slots, players are shown five NPCs and can view the final score Redolent Rose has given them. Using the theme and these NPCs as a guide, you can make five attempts each week using rental gear to put together the glamour from just Head/Body/Legs/Shoes. Matching the theme adds up to 12 points per slot with another 3 points if you actually own the glamour yourself, making 88 the max score for borrowing gear and up to perfect 100 if you own the outfit you made.
Jumbo Cactpot pays out different reward tiers based on matching numbers in different slots, it does not only pay out from right to left. For example, with the first week's winning number 4526, I got 58,500 MGP from a ticket with 4552, 5,000 MGP from a ticket with 2020, and 2000 MGP from a ticket with 2255, nothing matching.
Winning in GATEs on the Main Stage can unlock up to three extra Jumbo Cactpot ticket purchases in a week.
Leap of Faith appears to be the only major GATE not currently available.
Chocobo Racing/Breeding, Lord of Verminion and Doman Mahjong are currently unavailable.
QoL/Etc
All ten servers act as one data center and share the party finder. Parties and Linkshells are cross-world by default, with only Free Companies being restricted to your server. Notably new to these cross-world features is that the Market Board is shared, showing the seller name and server on each item.
UPDATED: Parties have a built-in opt-in voice chat feature integrated directly into the game. Once you're in a party you'll see the mic and audio toggles (off by default) where you can choose to speak or just listen in.
As well known, Glamour is significantly different where you use Prisms on an item to unlock the glamour version and can freely change what's equipped in glamour slots whenever you want. A lot of old Lv1 items you wouldn't ever use as real gear only comes in glamour versions, as are store outfits, so they just get added directly to your dresser. Dyes are used to unlock colors on individual pieces which can then be freely used afterwards (eg unlocking Dalamud Red on your Evenstar Coat makes it freely available even if you change the colour to something else later). Popular meme aside, not all gear has 16 different dye channels. Most have one or even none. The more layered gear is likely the cash shop items, I can't preview dye on unbought gear so I can't confirm this. 15 Glamour Plates are available, outfits made can be saved to them and then linked to a Job. You can buy more plates with the real money currency.
Certain max level gear has upwards arrow icons that indicate the ability to be upgraded into +1 versions, raising their stats and item level. Currently the Poetics gear has this function, requiring Titan Hearts to upgrade that can drop from Titan HM or bought with Verity tomestones.
Materia are melded onto specific gear slots within a Job, not the piece of gear itself. Any materia melded to your head piece will be swapped over to any other gear in that slot when equipped. The first two slots are guaranteed melds, with the others being 25%, 15% and 10% chances for the remaining three.
Stores (Gil Vendors, GC Seals, MGP, achievement, gemstones, etc etc literally all of them) can be accessed from any location from the menu.
UPDATED: Market Board can be accessed from any location from the menu, with both purchasing and selling available through the menu. There are 12 sale slots available by default and this limit can be doubled if you have purchased the monthly pass.
Levequests dont need to be accepted, just turned in for the result, and can be accessed from any location from the menu. After unlocking Levequests, you get 10 turn-ins every day at morning reset and up to 100 can be stored unused.
GC turn-ins can be, you guessed it, accessed from any location from the menu.
Some collections/completion lists are incentivized with reward milestones. Every so many achievement points, glamour items unlocked, FATE objectives, etc, have additional rewards available from their associated menu.
Inventory is a shared overall limit, with no Armoury Chest split. That means you can have as many or little as any gear type without worrying about fitting it all in the armoury chest or emptty slots being "wasted" storage, but of course the tradeoff is managing it all within the one overall limit. inventory limit can be expanded with items earned from quests, events or the battle pass, or for a gil cost. It starts at 300 items and goes up by 20 each upgrade tier, with the required upgrade item amount going up each time (1, 2, 3, etc). If you use gil for an upgrade step it still increases the required item count for the next step, and vice versa increases the gil cost.
UPDATED: Retainers aren't available, along with any of their functionality like extra storage or ventures. Storage has been rolled into the expandable limit mentioned above. Chocobo Saddlebags are also not in the game.
There are a lot of refreshed or new visuals for certain menus. The materia menu has a kind of dynamic visual where the item is in the middle of a big wheel and the materia rotate around it with focus on the slot you have selected. Triple Triad has moved the board to fill most of the right side of the screen and the left shows the player and opponent clearly, who also now emote based on how the match is going. Lots of other examples.
Daily Quests with extra rewards are doing two leveling roulettes, one trial roulette and one high level roulette (potentially a raid roulette reward will be added too later)
Weekly Quests are more diverse, featuring FATE gold medals, Gold Saucer GATEs, mini-games, Triple Triad, Total Crafts, Total Gathers, GC Turn-ins, Levequests, and Treasure Maps alongside doing 12 Roulettes over the week. These have their own reward track that give out random reward chests, MGP and Gil for getting through them.
As a free-to-play version of FFXIV there is obviously different monetisation aspects different from the original game's Mog Station and Additional Services. Details on what this content is like has been previously detailed here, with details about the Battle Pass here.
Originally Posted by Shialan
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