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We’re now about two months out from the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, so it’s past time to talk about the last few months in game, and patch 7.5(+).

First off, unlike Blue Mage, I hopped on the new Beastmaster limited class right away. Smudge and I need to get back to it and finish off the story, which is being good, but… the class is disappointing.

The general idea is about what you’d expect. And inside the Crucible of the Unbroken, it works about as you’d expect. It uses light/melee DPS armor, and you have a pet out who attacks with you and has special abilities. One note is the class gets fairly complex with the interaction of their special abilities and yours for the requisite class meter.

Outside the Crucible of the Unbroken, the beasts have the same token presence as, say, a carbuncle. They’re present, and they do things, but don’t have health, aren’t targetable, can’t tank, ect. I was hoping for more the Chocobo/companion model (even if they had to boot the Chocobo out while you had a beast out). This makes going into dungeons (which share in this problem) to collect some of the beasts much more annoying than it should be, and at that point shares in the Blue Mage problem of wanting a non-limited class along to help out.

Speaking of Chocobos, it has been announced that they will be able to fill out a dungeon party in the future. This is is what Smudge and I have been wanting for ages, so I’m eager to see it, probably around patch 8.1….

Spoilers for patch 7.5 and 7.55 story ahead!

As for the main event—that is, the main story—that has been very good.

7.5 itself featured a dungeon that I don’t care for (Clyteum), as I find the boss mechanics at best confusing, and generally very hard to follow. The main exception is the motion scanner during the second boss, which I picked up on immediately, and got to see everyone else get bounced. I’ve only done the trial once, and don’t recall how that went, but at least I got a terrible joke out of it.

The epilogue to all that introduced the us, the Warrior of Light, to the survival of Calyx and his new partner, Halmarut (as opposed to just being seen by the player in cutscenes). Halmarut is one of the Ascians, and we’ve seen reference to her before, with one of the wings of Academia Anyder being “Words of Halmarut”. They pretty much invited us to interfere in the Fourth, and implied that Calyx at least does not approve of the ongoing project there. On his personal side, this probably indicates an attempt at a Rejoining, and Calyx, despite his methods, wanted people to live forever. I think both of them consider whatever’s going on preferable to the Solstice, but are willing to give the Scions a chance to find a different solution.

So, Evercold will be entirely on the Fourth, like Shadowbringers was on the First. Unlike last time (patch 5.55), getting there happens at the start of the final patch, though we’re marooned on a small floating island. Getting off of that will involve seeing the new zones and base city, and will be the start of Evercold itself. The big surprise was accidentally pulling Alphinaud and Estinien along. This is obviously caused by having a vision of someone who looks a lot like Ysale right before hand. It again seems obvious that we will be dealing with her a bunch in the main story, though I bet it will take a while to meet her.

And Ysale is an obvious choice for a reflection to deal with, since the Fourth has all but succumbed to an unbalance to ice aether. And now we’re in a world of sky islands and giant flying airships. Our new secondary character, Visna, has been great so far, and should be a good guide through the Fourth. Or at least, parts of it, since the setup says she can’t go everywhere. I am thinking that the last zone or so of Evercold may get us access to the ground as we start doing something about the Icewardens.

Speaking of, the big fight (/duty) we got in 7.55 was interesting. The designs were new, showing off a new style of enemy we’ll probably see all too much of in the next ten levels. However, it kept putting me in mind of Eden’s Verse: Iconoclasm (E7), with the little guys here reminding me of the design of the central Idol of Darkness.

[End of spoilers]

In other general news, me and Smudge are continuing our Saturday night Deep Dungeon runs. We have now done a full 1-100 clear of Pilgrim’s Traverse, and now we’re using the stone 71 “bookmark” to get books on a slightly tighter schedule. Not that those 30 levels aren’t capable of beating us as it is. We’ve only managed it once on a couple tries so far.