FFXIV: Preliminary Patch 4.2 Notes Highlights

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Aywren

Preliminary patch notes for FFXIV Patch 4.2, which is releasing next Tuesday (Jan 30), were posted today. So it’s time for me to dive into them and give my thoughts on the “important” things. Like the fact they changed “glamour commode” to “glamour dresser.” Booooooo!

YAAAAAAY!

Ananta beast tribe quests have been added.

I welcome our new Ananta overlords. And the experience for my tanks. And flying elephant mount. Yes, really.

The number of dungeons available for command missions (squads) has been increased.

Yaaay! I’ve been looking forward to more Squad dungeons! Though the selection is kinda iffy, more variety is more variety:

Dzemael Darkhold
Pharos Sirius
Copperbell Mines (Hard)

Doesn’t look like they’ve given us any level 50+ dungeons in this mix. But the fact we’ve gotten two new level 50 dungeons makes me wonder if the XP you get from those are intended to cover the 50-60 gap. I’m not quite there yet in terms of leveling my jobs, but I’ll find out soon, I suppose.

Exterior and interior fixtures will no longer be lost when remodeling an estate.

Finally.

Oh! This is actually very useful and unexpected! I can put a repair NPC in my personal house now. Thank you.

Triple Triad Stuff

This makes me all sorts of happy. As a collector of cards (though I haven’t played in a while), this is a really sweet change that will encourage me to pick this back up.

Though, I think maybe they should make removing the icon completely an option you select. What if you want to go back and play with an NPC again? I wonder if this means more changes are coming.

Players will no longer be inflicted with the Heavy status effect when taking damage from behind while mounted.

Thank you! This was so annoying.

A new glamour prism item will be used to cast glamours of all types instead of class-specific catalysts.

Yes. Thank you for saving me more storage space!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Amazing!!!

Thank you! Thank you! I’m slowly regaining control of my retainer space again!!
(I have all of these pieces on all of my characters except for Moogle things and Cait Sith Ears… they take up so much retainer space…)

Come to me!! <3

Though, this bit bothers me a lot:

* Please be warned that gear, once transformed into a glamour, can no longer be used as an item. This is an irreversible process. Transformed gear no longer exists as an item.
* Transformed gear cannot be returned to your inventory or Armoury Chest.
* Glamours stored in the dresser cannot be applied to adventurer squadron NPCs.
* Some gear cannot be transformed into a glamour.

I got the impression that we’d be able to pull items back out of the Dresser. Maybe this is something they’ll work on in the future. I know they said this isn’t a complete feature yet — at least Squads will be able to use it later.

Until then, this is useless for my special store-bought glamour items. There’s no way I’m sticking something I bought with money or was gifted from others in the dresser if it can’t come back out!

I have a feeling this will change.

The Chocobo Saddlebag feature has been added.

YES! My new fishing tackle box. 🙂

The Undo Sort subcommand has been added to the inventory, retainer inventory, and Armoury Chest.

The change I didn’t know I wanted! I hate accidentally hitting “sort” in my main bags… then having to resort everything because I was dumb.

It’s Good!

The difficulty of certain recipes required for Ixal beast tribe main quests and daily quests has been reduced.

It’s about time. Some of the restrictions on the Ixal recipes were plain out dumb.

Gear for Disciples of the Hand has been added as a reward for Ishgardian tradecraft leves.

Oh, what’s this? We’ll have to see. I still have tons of leves to go through as I level.

I’m not the airship person in our FC, though I strangely enough should be given my enjoyment of such things. But I know some of our Artisans are going to be very happy to have something new to build in our workshop this patch!

Players can now teleport directly to a friend’s free company estate, private estate, or apartment building.

This was a long-needed change. So many times, people in our FC want other people to come and visit their house, but it’s so hard to do.

Now just let our alts be sub-owners of our houses and I’ll be content.

New furnishings have been added.

New orchestrion rolls have been added.

New aquarium fishes have been added.

New furnishing, fish and music are always happily welcome.

A new Performance UI has been added.

Sounds for the following instruments are now available:

Harp

Piano

Lute

Fiddle

The music volume of performance actions can now be adjusted.
A volume slider can be found under the Sound Settings tab of the System Configuration interface.

These are all very good changes. I haven’t messed with the performance skill yet, mostly because it’s still not the type of music system I can really play well (please give an ABC system like LotRO). But for those who enjoy this, this will be nice.

New hair is always good. But I’m not sure if I like these styles yet. We’ll see once they’re in game.

More stacking in inventory changes? Very good!

Certain items such as those that grant new minions or orchestrion music may only be discarded if the corresponding feature has already been obtained.

Very good!

Item levels will now be displayed for meals.

Neat! I suppose this will help figure out which food is worth hanging on to. I have a lot of it cluttering up my inventory.

The Duty Recorder, which allows you to document duties for later viewing, has been added.

I’ll probably never use it, but it’s a nice feature for raiders, I suppose.

Hmmm..?

HOOOOOOOOUSING

This is a loaded topic. There’s so many changes here, and I feel both the good and the bad of these choices. I can’t really put the overall topic in a “good” or “bad” spot in my highlights thoughts. This could warrant a whole post on its own… we’ll see how this shakes out.

The Fashion Report has been added to the Gold Saucer.

This is interesting. Especially this part:

Players will receive 10,000 MGP for participating in the Fashion Report. Those who receive a rating of eighty points or more will receive an additional 50,000 MGP. Moreover, those who continue to participate in these challenges will gain access to Kasumi’s boutique, which contains other unique items.

I have a feeling I’ll be participating just out of curiosity.

Certificates of commendation have been added as rewards for completing Wondrous Tails.

These certificates can be exchanged with Khloe Aliapoh for a number of unique prizes.

Interesting. I haven’t done WT in a very long time, mostly because I don’t like the RNG system. I’m not going to go out of my way to run something just to finish WT for a chance at something.

BUT… if they add a more assured set of rewards, I might be tempted to look at WT again.

The raid dungeon, Omega: Sigmascape (Savage), has been added.

This is the first time (I know of) that Savage raids have been released alongside of normal. I wonder why they chose to do this? Not that it effects me any.

MEH…

To ensure new players are able to enjoy the cutscenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium, all cutscenes in these dungeons can no longer be skipped.

Did something need to be done to fix the situation in Castrum and Praetorium for new players? Yes.

Did they need to punish people who just want to run it for daily roulette by making cutscenes completely unskipable? Heck no!

Unless this roulette rains down rewards – I’m talking a full weekly amount on tomes or something – NO ONE is going to run this anymore. I’m not exaggerating.

I love taking FC members through these unsynced and I’m totally sympathetic to people wanting to watch the story. I would never force them to skip cutscenes, because I had to skip mine first time through… and never got to play it proper until unsynced runs were a thing.

BUT.

This is going to make finishing these two dungeons next to impossible for new people now that no one is going to queue for it to begin with. It’s going to be a case of ARF all over again, back before ARF was put into a roulette.

It’s a shoddy answer to a problem they created by choosing to poorly design the final two dungeon instances for 2.0. Bad move.

While I’m interested in seeing the Fractal (Hard), it’s a little sad that we’re saying goodbye to Skalla so quickly and dropping back to only two dungeons for the Expert roulette. I understand new Tomes and all, but…

The rest of the dungeons are getting dumped in a Level 70 Duty Roulette. But seeing that it only gives 15 Tomes of Mendacity for running it, I really have no reason to do it. My goal is to gear up with Mendacity, and there are far better ways. I guess if you need Creation Tomes for something, it’s a good run?