Square Enix’s latest patch for Final Fantasy 14: Shadowbringers introduces a smorgasbord of new content that should excite just about every player of the game.
Final Fantasy 7’s Ruby Weapon is now a boss in the game, the next tier of the Eden raids have been added, and there are even more story quests leading up to the next part of the NieR: Automata alliance raids. The next alliance raid itself isn’t out yet, alas, but it’s possible it will be included in patch 5.3.
The patch also includes the Qiqirin beast tribe quests for gathering classes and a chunk of new main scenario quests, which producer Naoki Yoshida noted will take ample time to play through. There’s a lot of content here, and a lot of things that should make your sessions more pleasant.
Some of the best additions to this patch are the quality of life updates, in fact.
Materia melding is easier
Not only can you now extract materia from your equips without destroying them, but you can also meld materia on any of your gear as long as you have a crafter that can equip the item. You can also toggle a setting to list gear that already has full materia melds on the materia screen, and also see how many materia you have in total while melding.
Differentiate which fishing hookset you need to use easily
If you’re anything like me and you have a hard time realizing whether you need to use a Powerful or Precision hookset to reel in that specific fish, Square Enix has made things clearer. Exclamation points now appear above your character’s head when something is on the line, with the number of exclamation points letting you know which hookset to use. The higher the number of exclamation points, the bigger the fish.
Desynth items consecutively
If you have a whole stack of fish to desynthesize, you can now just hit a “retry” button to desynth them one after another. No need to go back to your menu and reselect the fish. It’s not quite as convenient as the desired ability to desynth all of them at once, but it’s better than the previous system.
You won’t be forced to leave a duty 10 minutes after it ends
For those who love taking screenshots in special locations, like dungeons or raids, you won’t be forced out of the duty after 10 minutes anymore. You’ll be given however much time you had left to complete the duty to just hang out and explore a bit, or take some screenshots.
Note that if you finish the duty with less than 10 minutes to spare, the timer will set to 10 minutes, making sure you always have a reasonable amount of time to spend in that area.
Save your gpose camera settings
If you snapped the perfect group pose shot, you can now save your favorite camera positions and lighting settings to use later. Load those bad boys up and take the perfect shot every time, without having to reconfigure anything.
Wedding attire is no longer gender-locked
Female characters can now wear suits and male characters can now wear the wedding gown. If you have one set of the wedding attire, you can trade it to a Calamity Salvager in any of the main towns to swap it for the opposite gender’s version.
For the full patch notes, you can check out the Final Fantasy 14 website.