The Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXVII stream went over quality of life changes in addition to teasing new additions, and among Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida’s announcements were promised changes to the FFXIV The Occult Crescent The Forked Tower: Blood field operation and raid. Those were supposed to debut in August 2025 alongside the 7.3 patch. Some of these will now appear earlier, with two adjustments expected on July 3, 2025 or earlier according to a Lodestone statement.
One of the immediate changes will involve participation. This is a situation in which up to 48 people can be a part of the instance and take part. However, right now it’s more of a random affair, as if there is a larger group the selection for getting into The Forked Tower in FFXIV will be random. The update changes that. Yoshida noted one priority is “the ability to enter the Occult Crescent instance with a preformed alliance of up to 48 players.” This would mean if you did have a large enough group ready, you could be guaranteed you would all go into the field operation and raid together.
The second part of these changes involves the Auroral Mirages weather needed to even access The Forked Tower in FFXIV. Ahead of the patch, it could take almost 40 minutes for those conditions to appear. If you miss the chance, then it could take almost that same amount of time for Auroral Mirages to return again. Naoki Yoshida didn’t state exact update times after the changes, but noted the update will allow “auroral mirages to generate sooner after the Occult Crescent instance has loaded.”
Naoki Yoshida also explained why this decision to add two of the five planned changes tied to The Forked Tower will come up in FFXIV this first week of July 2025. Here’s his explanation from the Lodestone website:
“However, when evaluating our development and QA capacity to release a potential emergency maintenance update, it became apparent we would be able to do so with minimal effect to our schedule. Rest assured that there will be no impact on the release of Patch 7.3 as a result of this advance update.
It should be noted that the planned emergency maintenance update may introduce some technical issues. However, we determined that the benefits of implementing these changes in a timely manner outweigh the minor risks involved and will do our utmost to ensure the update is released in a stable state.”
The remaining changes Yoshida specified are still coming are:
- “Improvements to the cipher offering UI.”
- “Delaying auroral mirage generation until an active critical encounter has ended.”
- “Enabling exclusive access to the Occult Crescent instance for a set time when joining with a preformed alliance.”
Final Fantasy XIV is available for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, and the FFXIV patch 7.3 update arrives in early August 2025.
Published: Jul 2, 2025 12:00 pm