Upcoming Changes to FFXIV in Evercold

The Evercold expansion will release in January 2027 and comes with extensive changes to combat, progression, and content. There will also be quality-of-life changes, expansion updates, and updates to various types of FFXIV content. These changes are aimed at making a game that all players will enjoy for years to come.

In previous expansions, the main scenario quests would have two branching paths in order to alleviate congestion and provide unique experiences for each player progressing through the story. Starting in Evercold, there will be multiple branching paths that players can complete in any order to progress through the story.

In addition, enemies and duties fought in groups in the expansion will have a new feature to them: auto content balancing. Instead of players having their levels synced, the difficulty of the enemy and duty will instead be balanced based on the strength of the group. This will potentially allow players to keep their new skills while doing older content.

To help players quickly get to their quest destination, there will be some function of automatic quest destination movement implemented in Evercold. It is a feature still in development, and is completely optional.

As with all previous expansions, the level cap for all jobs except the limited jobs Blue Mage and Beastmaster will be raised by ten levels, from level 100 to level 110. Minimum specs will update slightly, but there is talk about phasing out PS4 support in a few years.

The current expansion, Dawntrail, introduces a graphical overhaul of the game, making characters and environments look much better. Evercold builds onto the graphical updates by increasing the customization available for player characters.

Evercold will introduce a plethora of customization updates for all players. These include action glamours, job action glamours, and character customization changes.

Character action skins will allow players to receive unique animations for certain general and job actions that can be assigned. These include unique animations for Aetheryte Teleportation, potentially older job actions, and more!

Following up on Dawntrail's graphical update, Evercold will introduce new and improved character creation options. The ones we currently know of are improved colour pickers, customization of facial features, and face paint layering. In addition, certain racial features will be able to be used regardless of face option, such as Miqo'te face paint or Au Ra horns.

In Evercold, the combat will drastically change, evolving from what it currently is to a more fast-paced system with less button bloat. There will be two modes of actions available for players: Reborn, which is what is available currently, and Evolved, which emphasizes job flavour and condenses buttons but introduces new job mechanics. Some jobs will have barely any changes between the two modes, but some will have completely different job mechanics and gauges.

In addition, in the Evolved Mode jobs will have their action acquisition levels adjusted, and the Main and Off Tank roles will be more clearly defined.

With the level cap raise, all non-limited Jobs will receive new actions and traits. In addition, with the new Reborn and Evolved modes jobs can be completely different between the two modes.

Evercold is completely revamping the gear and character progression system. Allagan Tomestones, the system used for endgame gear, may not even exist anymore as the game moves to a weekly-based reward system that unifies item level between jobs. This will come with a Season system that is technically already present inside FFXIV with item level increases every two patches, but not formalized as of yet.

Evercold will introduce updates to ongoing content such as Limited Jobs, Deep Dungeons, Gold Saucer, and other activities. They have made great strides in increasing quality-of-life and enjoyment of these side activities, and will continue to do so.

New PvP updates were announced at the North American Fanfest, though not many details were talked about. New updates will come from the developers at the next two Fanfests, so PvP enjoyers will have to wait a little while longer.