Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker will bring with it a host of changes beyond new classes and content. Crafting and gathering activities for Disciples of the Hand and Land will see a significant overhaul. While Square Enix has teased these changes for some time, the latest Letter from the Producer Live stream brought more detail to the proceedings.
The biggest major change in Endwalker will be the elimination of high-quality (“HQ”) materials from gathering activities. Crafting can still produce HQ items, but players can no longer gather them out in the wild. The reason for this change was to cut down on the inventory space needed for crafting and gathering. Now a Disciple of the Land only needs to worry about having one space for each type of material they harvest. Similarly, Disciples of the Hand need not concern themselves with using HQ materials to improve their crafting results. Consequently, the team is adjusting recipes and quality values to compensate for the cuts. As for quests, those that require HQ materials will accept normal ones instead. The game’s base rewards are improving to adjust for the loss of HQ item delivery bonuses.
The elimination of HQ gathering materials from Endwalker will also have a ripple effect on the Disciple of the Land classes. After all, many existing skills are oriented towards improving a player’s ability to gather HQ items. The changes cut some of these actions entirely, or replaced with ones with new effects. For example, some actions will increase the chance of gaining bonuses to the gathering yield.
Specific changes were also detailed in the Endwalker gathering portion of the stream. Fishing’s spearfishing mini-game will receive a complete overhaul. During the stream, Square Enix demonstrated the new version. Players will need to time pokes of their trident to catch fish. It also teased a combo meter, as well as skills to reduce a fish’s defense.
The development team also hinted that certain levequests will have their rewards adjusted. These adjustments will mainly affect crafting and fishing levequests. Those levequests will have lower gil and experience rewards. Other leves will have their rewards increased, though.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker will launch on December 7, 2021 for PC, PS4, and PS5. Check out Siliconera’s coverage of other coming changes.
