Final Fantasy 14 Confirms Controversial Endwalker Endgame Activity is Changing in Dawntrail

08.03.2024 - 00:05 / gamerant.com / Naoki Yoshida / Square Enix / Eric Law

Final Fantasy 14 recently confirmed it would be changing how Relic weapons are obtained in Dawntrail. After a controversially simple series of quests in Endwalker, Final Fantasy 14 fans can expect the Dawntrail Relics to be harder to obtain.

Relics are some of the most powerful weapons in their respective expansions. In most cases, obtaining these weapons requires a large amount of time, effort, and resource gathering. However, in Endwalker, Final Fantasy 14 made the Manderville Relic Weapons easy to obtain, with only 1500 of the basic endgame currency required for each step.

In an interview with PLAY magazine, Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida confirmed Relics would be changing in Dawntrail. While he pointed out that the easy Endwalker Relics made it easier for fans who play multiple jobs to gear up their character, he recognized that some preferred the challenging experiences required to unlock previous Relic weapons. “I’m not going to make it exactly the same as it was originally, but I do appreciate that it gives a sense of reward to the players,” Yoshida admitted. “We will have various routes in place in terms of the methods to enhance the weapons.” While he couldn’t give specifics, he made it clear it would not be another straightforward currency grind as it was in Endwalker.

While an easy quest did make the Final Fantasy 14 Manderville Relics convenient to craft, the simplicity of the activity disappointed many fans. Previous Relic quests required players to interact with multiple parts of the game, providing long-term goals and reasons to log in each day. On the converse, the simple and repetitive Relics from Endwalker contributed to the dearth of activities in the expansion’s endgame period.

That said, the old Relic quests were far from perfect. Though fans remember them fondly now, the A Realm Reborn and Heavensward Relics required a mind-numbing amount of grinding to unlock, and the Stormblood and Shadowbringers ones required players to interface with Final Fantasy 14’s Field Operations, which use an entirely different progression system from the main game. It is likely for the best that the Endwalker Relics won’t be exactly the same as these painstaking quests either.

“I’m not going to make it exactly the same as it was originally… We will have various routes in place in terms of the methods to enhance the weapons.”

Either way, fans have a bit of a wait before they learn what the Dawntrail Relics quests are like. Dawntrail itself is set to hit Final Fantasy 14 this summer, but Relic weapons usually come out a patch or two after the expansion. This means players can expect the Dawntrail Relic weapon quest to arrive in late 2024 or early 2025.

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