For a long time, players have been asking the head of Final Fantasy 14 to introduce the Blue Mage into the MMORPG. Now their wish has been fulfilled, but not in the way they expected. The Blue Mage is a “limited job”: This means it cannot join “random” groups. Also, the level remains low for now.
What is a Blue Mage? In the Final Fantasy series, the class has been present since the fifth installment. This first Blue Mage also serves as the design basis for the FFXIV version.
The peculiarity of the Blue Mage is that its new magic is not learned while leveling up. Instead, it must “steal” it from the monsters in the game.
When a monster uses one of its abilities in combat, the Blue Mages can learn it. Either by seeing it or being hit by it. The learning method varied depending on the Final Fantasy game, but it always had to be abilities from monsters.
How will the Blue Mage function in FFXIV? With the Blue Mage, a completely new subtype of classes called “Limited Jobs” comes to Final Fantasy 14.
This means that the job can be used almost exclusively for solo content and is not equivalent to other combat jobs in FF14.
For example, unlike most other jobs, it has no starter class and initially goes up to a maximum level of 50. The current max level for all jobs is 70.
Director Yoshida stated that this system allows developers to introduce jobs in Final Fantasy XIV that otherwise wouldn’t fit into the MMORPG.
To play as a Blue Mage, players must meet the following requirements:
- A combat job at level 50
- 2.0 main scenario completed
- No expansions required, the base game is sufficient.
The level of the Blue Mage will increase over time and be adjusted to other jobs. It will share its equipment with other mage jobs like Summoner or Red Mage. You can watch the trailer for the job here:
What restrictions apply to the Blue Mage? Because the Blue Mage was designed for solo play, it is excluded from most group features in FFXIV. The following features are not available to it:
- All content that is entered without a full group, meaning basically all content with random players.
- Daily random content
- PvP content
- Deep Dungeons
However, Blue Mages will be able to enter dungeons in full groups, as they will need to level up or learn new spells there. The mages will also receive a higher amount of EXP than other jobs.
Almost like Pokémon collecting in Final Fantasy style
How does one learn new spells? To learn new abilities, Blue Mages must venture into the world and fight various monsters. However, only certain monsters have abilities that the job can learn.
If a monster uses such a spell, there is a “low” chance that the mage learns it. The job developer stated that it will not be easy to learn these abilities. One only needs to have seen the ability, being hit by it is not necessary.
In total, there will be 49 different spells. With an increasing level cap, new ones will be added. However, players will only be able to use 24 of these abilities at the same time. They will have to create “decks” (not an official name) in which they combine different spells.
From which opponents can spells be learned? In a spellbook, players will be able to see which spells they already have. However, it will not indicate which specific ones are still missing and from which opponents they can be learned. It will only reveal the approximate location of these abilities.
According to the developer, it is the community’s shared task to collect all the spells.
The monsters from which spells can be learned are of different types. They can even include primal bosses. The chance of learning an ability increases with the monster’s level.
What content can the Blue Mage participate in? For the new mage, the development team has also come up with a new type of content. The Masked Carnival is an instance exclusively for the job. It will be played under different rules.
It is an arena in the city of Ul’Dah, which has 25 different combat rounds. Each round has different opponents. Therefore, many different spells will be needed to complete them all.
The reason for this is that different types of opponents also have different elemental weaknesses. Flying monsters, for example, are weak against lightning elemental attacks. Accordingly, the Blue Mage must adapt its repertoire of spells to the respective monsters to progress.
What do players say? The opinions on this new development of the Blue Mage are mixed. Some players are happy that the job has made it into Final Fantasy 14 at all. Others want to wait and see how this implementation actually feels in gameplay.
However, there are also enough fans who are quite disappointed with the implementation. Many of them wanted to make the Blue Mage their main job and tackle raid content with it. This, under the given circumstances, is impossible.
When will the Blue Mage be released? The new job will be available before the launch of the Shadowbringers Expansion early summer 2019. It is expected to go live with Patch 4.5 in January 2019.
For more information about the new Shadowbringers expansion, click here:
Final Fantasy XIV: AddOn Shadowbringers fulfills the fans’ wishes
