Final Fantasy 14producer and director Naoki Yoshida announced that two previously-revealed changes to the Forked Tower raid will be implemented a month earlier than expected, as players will be able to queue in as a pre-made 48-player alliance starting July 3. Additionally,Final Fantasy 14will change the spawn rate for the auroral mirages' weather effect to happen more frequently, which is needed to enter the Forked Tower.
During the 87th Letter from the Producer LIVE, Yoshida spent the first segment of the broadcast addressingFF14player feedback about the Occult Crescent field operation and Cosmic Exploration.Yoshida noted that changes would be coming in Patch 7.3 to address the feedback, and the update is slated to arrive in early August. Yoshida stated that some of the suggestions players made will carry over into future iterations of the Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration inDawntrail’s remaining patches throughout 2025 and 2026.
However, two of the changes originally slated forFinal Fantasy 14’s 7.3 update will be made sooner than expected.According to a Lodestone post by Yoshida, players can enter the Occult Crescent as a pre-formed alliance of up to 48 players starting July 3. However, the change will require four hours of emergency server maintenance in the early hours of July 3, at 2:00 AM Eastern. The auroral mirages weather effect, which is required to enter the Forked Tower raid, will also spawn sooner than before when a new Occult Crescent instance is created. These two changes will make it easier for players looking to clear the Forked Tower forrewards like the Demon Haul mountto do so.
Yoshida stressed that the changes would not impact Patch 7.3’s early August release, as most of the work onDawntrail’s climactic patchhas been completed. Three additional updates to the Occult Crescent are still slated to launch inFinal Fantasy 14’s upcoming patch. Namely, the amount of sanguine ciphers contributed will be easier to see on the user interface, and auroral mirages will not overlap with critical engagements. Yoshida also listed another change not covered in the 87th Live Letter that will grant pre-formed parties exclusive access to an Occult Crescent instance for a set time before random players can join in.
ThoughFinal Fantasy 14players have expressed their growing discontentwith the current state of the game, the quick turnaround to implement these changes is not a common thing. Only time will tell if the changes are a sign of things to come from Square Enix.
