Gameplay for the upcoming Beastmaster limited job was shown off in the Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter aired earlier today, as well as previews of more combat and what’s to come in the 7.5 patches. While basics for Beastmaster were shown off in the last Live Letter, we get a little more in-depth look with a live hands-on play-through courtesy of Naoki Yoshida.
There are three steps in capturing a beast, translated officially as: “Gauge,” “Weaken,” and “Catch.” First, you use the “gauge” capacity to see if the beast can be captured at all; then, you reduce the beast to give yourself a better chance of capturing it. Using “Catch” will give you an attempt at catching it, allowing you to knock its HP down fully; a success means the beast is recorded in the Master’s Bestiary.
Once a beast is captured, it can be called upon through the Bestiary by assigning it to a “battlehorn,” with up to three beasts assignable. One is summonable at a time in combat, but it’s swappable mid-combat; it’s shown during the livestream, also, that they can be summoned in a city-state, with no cooldowns.
Of course, each beast unlocked brings skills that can be tapped into during battle, much like FFXIV’s prior Blue Mage limited job enabled. They become available to both players and the beast, as “Tempered Release” makes the beast perform it, while “Nature’s Gift” lets the player execute it.
Beastmasters also get some nifty abilities to do alongside their beasts, as both the player and beast build up a gauge that, once past 100, allows them to do some “instinctual skills.” These skills, when used in succession, will unlock special combo versions that need to be performed in a certain indicated order for peak damage. Either the player or beast can do each one, but the color/type needs to remain the same in order to get higher damage.
We don’t get to see the solo instances, but as discussed in the prior Live Letter, it’ll allow players to tackle a solo instance to train and level up their beasts. They state, unfortunately, that we’ll have to wait for a separate stream for that.
To see the full Beastmaster demo, you can check out the full VOD of the Live Letter above. Just from the “extra stream” mention, it unfortunately sounds like we might be waiting a bit longer.
As it often goes during the second Live Letter of a patch, too, there were other gameplay demos shown. We got a preview of the final Alliance Raid’s first boss, which is Final Fantasy 11’s well-beloved Shantotto, a well-beloved Black Mage in the classic MMORPG.
Some of the more minute additions to the game are added. Most importantly, of course, chobobos will end up reacting when you /pet or /poke them, which is well overdue for me to pet all my friends’ chocobos. Plus, dungeon gear will be stowable in the Armorie, more items will be usable in housing, and there’ll be further expansions to Occult Crescent and Cosmic Exploration.
The first part of this patch series releases on April 28. As it goes with X.55 patches, we’ll be seeing the second part much later, this time in September; however, as it’s the final major patch of the expansion, that “part 2” will have a hefty amount of content itself.
We’ll also likely be hearing more about the 7.5 patches during the Anaheim FFXIV FanFest happening next weekend, which includes free streaming of all of the informational panels.
The full trailer for the patches are live as well:
