Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Patch 7.4 – Into the Mist
In my past Final Fantasy XIV reviews, I’ve often been a little more critical of the fourth patch following an expansion. Coming off of the second climax in the third patch, the story in the fourth patch slows down as the game starts laying the groundwork for the next expansion. This can sometimes mean that side content like the conclusion of the 8-man raid series garners more interest and excitement than the main story. While Dawntrail’s patch 7.4, Into the Mist, doesn’t entirely shrug off this precedent, it’s more engaging than other similarly situated patches thanks to the character focus of its narrative and a healthy helping of nostalgia.
With the immediate crisis in Alexandria resolved, Into the Mist sees our heroes turn their attention to the mysterious key that has been at the center of recent events. After seeing off a few companions, the rest decide to make a risky journey to the surface of the Ninth to learn what happened to Alexandria’s closest neighbor, Treno. If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy IX, this whole sequence will put a smile on your face. Of course, the entire Alexandrian plot line is heavily inspired by Square Enix’s final PS1 entry in the series, but there’s still something special about getting to see another well-known locale adapted into Final Fantasy XIV. And it’s not just the sights! There are several arrangements of Final Fantasy IX music, including “Dark City Treno,” that greatly enhance the nostalgia factor.
Into the Mist isn’t just about nostalgia, though. It’s also a character-focused story centered around the Warrior of Light’s brush-wielding ally, Krile, who learns more about her family while searching for answers about the key. On the one hand, these developments feel a little odd, because Krile already seemed to get resolution for her character arc near the end of Dawntrail proper. And because the focus is so tight on her, there isn’t much time for the expansion setup that we’d normally expect to see here. On the other hand, it’s quite the enjoyable story, with plenty of heartfelt moments and an intriguing sendoff. It may ultimately feel like a detour, but it’s still a fun ride.
Getting to Treno is where Into the Mist’s new dungeon, Mistwake, comes into play. It starts off a bit slow, with a mine excursion and a first boss that is frankly one of the more boring opponents I’ve seen this expansion. But things ramp up nicely in the second leg of the dungeon as you emerge from the mine and get your first glimpse of Treno itself. The second and third bosses, both of whom fittingly use lightning attacks, are much more enjoyable to fight, and the trash mobs in between are more strongly connected to the story. Slow start aside, the entire dungeon gets a new arrangement of “Battle 1” from Final Fantasy IX, and the usual Final Fantasy XIV fanfare music is replaced with the original version from Final Fantasy IX as well, both of which are nice touches that add to the nostalgia factor of this dungeon and patch.
Later on in the main story, we meet Into the Mist’s new trial boss, the Doomtrain. It feels just a little random, both in the context of the story and as compared to the previous two trials, because Doomtrain is from Final Fantasy VIII, not Final Fantasy IX. But the fight itself is incredibly fast and fun, on both the normal and Extreme difficulties, as Doomtrain chases you down the rails, destroying car after car until none are left. The action is accompanied by an excellent trance arrangement of Final Fantasy IX’s “Battle 2,” which strangely enough fits the fight perfectly despite coming from a different game. Overall, it’s one of my favorite trials from this expansion, and I think Final Fantasy VIII fans will especially appreciate the homage to the Guardian Force’s summoning animation.
The final piece of instanced content that we need to talk about is, of course, the conclusion of the Arcadion raid series. Story-wise, this last leg provides a decent wrap up, but it feels rushed and unsatisfying in some respects. The battles themselves are fantastic, as is to be expected by this point. They’re fast, require players to pay attention to their surroundings, and feature another selection of catchy and fitting accompaniment—with one exception. “Everything Burns,” which was composed for and gifted to Masayoshi Soken by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, is a pretty great rock track on its own. But it doesn’t fit Final Fantasy XIV all that well, even though the Arcadion is probably the best place that it could have been used.
Last but not least, Into the Mist brings some long-awaited quality-of-life updates. First, and probably most important, glamour restrictions have finally been removed from the game. This means if you’re a healer who is tired of always wearing robes—like me—you can finally don tank armor or crafter casuals. And vice versa, of course. The only remaining restriction is on weapons, which must match your current job, but this is a minor limitation in the face of what is unequivocally one of the most significant and requested improvements to Final Fantasy XIV in a long while. As I’ve said multiple times before, glamour is the true endgame, and this change allows players to really let their creativity and fashion sense run wild.
Second, Into the Mist finally implements the Strategy Board feature the devs have been promising for a while now. This is basically an in-game way to make and share raidplans for fights, allowing players to use an overhead view of an arena and job icons to communicate how various mechanics should be handled. The Strategy Board editor itself looks fairly robust, it’s easy to share boards among party members, and there’s even a real-time editing option, which should be useful for discussing positioning in more complex mechanics. However, there are some limitations to this feature that may affect how readily the community adopts it. For example, each board is the equivalent of a single raidplan slide, and you can only save 50 boards total, meaning space is going to be a real issue if you regularly do harder content. Another problem is that sharing boards outside of parties requires using a long code, and that code is only good for a single board. This means they effectively can’t be linked in Party Finder descriptions, and console players may have difficulty using them. All that said, this feature is still in its infancy, so only time will tell how much the community warms up to it.
Third, Into the Mist adds a new way to access various commands like emotes, job sets, and fashion items without taking up hotbar space or digging through menus. Fittingly called the Command Panel, this is a dedicated window with up to 100 slots for you to place frequently used commands which you can then easily pull up with either a dedicated button or a hotbar shortcut. For controller players in particular, this provides the option to move the more utility-oriented commands they may have on their hotbars to a separate location, thereby freeing up valuable hotbar space for more job actions.
And finally, Into the Mist gives the Duty Support treatment to two of Final Fantasy XIV’s most hated dungeons: Dzemael Darkhold and Aurum Vale. The former completely changes how the ahriman boss works (goodbye, purple light of safety) and eliminates the need to stand on magitek terminals to open various doors, making one late room in the dungeon much less annoying. The latter removes a few of the annoyances in the various trash mob rooms and changes how the debuff-cleansing fruit works during the first and third bosses. Most of these adjustments do not significantly alter the identity of these two dungeons but rather streamline things to allow for faster and less stressful runs. The ahriman boss in Dzemael is perhaps the one exception. As annoying as the old light mechanic was, it was at least unique; the new version of the fight is entirely forgettable.
And that’s really patch 7.4 in a nutshell: a pretty good experience all around, with just a few nitpicks here and there. Into the Mist’s main story is a little light on setup but gives a healthy dose of nostalgia and heartfelt emotions. The Arcadion finale is a bit lackluster in the story department but excellent when it comes to the actual fights. And there are some wonderful quality-of-life updates, along with one or two head-scratchers. I do hope that patch 7.5 lays more groundwork for the upcoming 8.0 expansion, but by the time you’re reading this, I’ll be neck deep in Savage prog, so I’ll have other things to worry about for a few months. In the meantime, let’s look forward to Fan Fest and see what the last few Dawntrail patches bring us!
