Final Fantasy XIV Online‘s latest patch has arrived. Patch 6.1 is a long-awaited update that introduces Emperyum, the Ishgard housing district, and the official release of housing on Oceanic servers.
What’s in the update?
Included in the release is the Newfound Adventure questline, touted as the next step in the Warrior of Light’s ongoing story. The new Myths of the Realm Alliance raid drew much community interest but is, unfortunately, locked behind progression in Newfound Adventure.
The patch also contained several quality-of-life updates. Players can now see right away if they already own a unique, untradeable item. Previously, players would frequently end up with more than one of these items, and had no other option but to trash them.
The Class Plate menu has been improved so that players can see, at a glance, what Item Level (or ‘ilvl’) each class has. It should now be less crowded and much easier to read.
Final Fantasy XIV‘s Patch 6.1 also includes Adventurer Cards and Portraits. These allow players to communicate their preferences and personality to other plays. This covers things like favourite class, favourite title, common play hours and portraits. They can be set to public, private or friends only, depending on your comfort level. The portrait ability lets players capture their Warrior of Light’s best side and show them off to show everyone else.
Another long-awaited feature was the changes to Cape Westwind, Praetorium and Castrum. Each of the dungeons from A Realm Reborn has been reworked to make them more interesting and streamlined. Connected to this is an expansion of the Trust system. Players can now change the glamours of teammates directly from the menu, and the menu itself is much better organised.
The ARR Trust is called Duty Support. This allows players to complete any dungeon in the A Realm Reborn expansion solo. New players trying to complete older content should find things much easier now.
For those who may be wondering, the Arkasodara tribe quests and Ameliance’s customs delivery quests are not included in this patch. These are expected to release with Patch 6.15 in the near future.
The community response
Almost all of these changes were widely praised by the community, and seen as massive improvements to the game. There is, however, one change that has drawn ire. In Final Fantasy XIV, housing was always separated into wards. The community believed that Patch 6.1 would create a fifty-fifty split between Free Company housing and Private Housing. Instead, only 6 wards, 19-24, are currently reserved for private housing.
There is now a lottery system in play for any potential housing to make it fairer and help decrease housing congestion. But with so many properties put aside for Free Companies, it leaves those have-nots feeling frustrated and cheated.
There is speculation that the coming Island Sanctuary update will cover the need for privately-owned housing in the game, but we won’t know for sure until it drops.
If you currently playing, what are your thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV‘s Patch 6.1? Did you get everything you wanted? How do you feel about the housing situation? Let us know in the comments below.
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