FINAL FANTASY XIV: Evercold to Guarantee Savage Loot for All

FINAL FANTASY XIV is dropping loot rolls from Savage, its hard-mode raid tier. Instead, everyone will receive guaranteed rewards from a personal chest and exchange them on a dedicated screen. The change comes with the next expansion, FINAL FANTASY XIV: Evercold, which launches February 23, 2027, with pre-orders opening November 4. It comes to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC (Windows, Steam).

The news came during the keynote at FINAL FANTASY XIV Fan Festival 2026 in Tokyo. Eight-player raids get a new difficulty, Fierce, between Normal and Savage. You take it on after clearing Normal, and it assigns more mechanics to individual players than Savage does. The developers say it is built so that a party can recover and push through even after a few mistakes. For alliance raids, which involve multiple parties, matchmaking will be split between the first half (the first and second bosses) and the second half (the third and fourth). A Savage-difficulty alliance raid is added too, and players choose two of its four bosses to take on.

Producer and director Naoki Yoshida said in an interview that Fierce was added to close that gap, and that it will be toned down if many players find it too hard. The Savage-difficulty alliance raid requires the same level of preparation as the later floors of eight-player Savage: players enter with upgraded gear. Yoshida also said he has no plans to make anything harder than Ultimate, the top difficulty.

Evercold, Patch 8.0, also changes how the story is paced. Yoshida looked back on the opening of the previous expansion, saying its pacing did not match the feelings of players who wanted to push ahead. That was a problem with his own direction, he said. This time, world-building and slice-of-life stories have been moved into side quests that can be played later.

An even-numbered and an odd-numbered patch are bundled into one “Season,” with no additional charge. A weekly activity for earning points is also being added, and points from earlier weeks can be claimed later. The new job Zephyr is a ranged physical DPS that fights with a crossbow alongside a bird-of-prey familiar. At Patch 8.0, a hawk is the only familiar available.

With loot no longer left to a roll and a Fierce tier between Normal and Savage, the climb into high-end raiding looks set to come in more manageable steps.

Language: English
As of November 1, 2026