The new patch 5.1 for Final Fantasy XIV will bring a lot of new content, including several new boss fights that are quite challenging.
When will patch 5.1 be released? In the producer’s letter, the head of FFXIV announced that the next content update will be released on October 29.
With this, a number of new features and content will be added to the game. You can watch the trailer here:
Warning: Minor spoilers for the last boss fight of FFXIV: Shadowbringers follow
New Extreme and Ultimate Fights
This is Hades EX: Hades first appeared in the final battle of the Shadowbringers expansion and quickly became one of the most popular boss fights. It was expected that he would now be included in the game as an Extreme version.
What is known so far:
- The fence around the arena is likely destructible and you can fall off the edge.
- Hades seems to change his form again during the fight. It resembles the original “appearance” of the Ascians.
- The fight will contain mechanics from the normal mode, but they will hit harder and function a bit differently.
- After the victory, the fight will drop 2 totems. As a reward, weapons with item level 465 will probably be offered.
- There will also be a new dragon mount as a drop.
Yoshida also mentioned that the difficulty of the fight is roughly comparable to Shinryu EX. Shinryu was the final boss of the previous expansion of FFXIV, Stormblood. His EX version was considered real tricky content in party searches, often ending in group dissolutions.
So you can expect that Hades EX will also pose significant challenges for players in the party search.
This is Alexander Ultimate: This raid continues the series of Ultimate fights that began in Stormblood with Bahamut. These are extremely difficult boss fights that require a lot of skill and good group coordination. Only a small part of FFXIV players have mastered them.
The Alexander raid focused entirely on the Mecha-Primals Alexander, who had the power to manipulate time. Accordingly, the raid’s design was very steampunk-themed, and the mechanics included time-distorting components.
In the trailer for patch 5.1, you can see the three bosses of the raid, and one is later shown in the intro:
- Living Water
- Chaser-Mecha
- Brutalos
- and Prim-Alexander
If the new Ultimate raid is structured like the previous ones, then players will have to defeat these bosses in quick succession under strict DPS checks. In the process, they will be overwhelmed by an avalanche of various tricky mechanics.
During the last Ultimate fight against the Ultimate Weapon, hardcore players vying for the first kill were tricked by the developers. Alexander bosses offer just as much leeway. They all had extraordinary mechanics in their battles that were unique at the time of release. For example:
- Living Water changes its forms and alternates between a humanoid, two large hands, or a whirlwind
- Brutalos consisted of 5 different robots that could also attack separately and had different properties
- Chaser-Mecha destroys its combat arena, and you have to hold on to it to survive.
- Alexander himself could stop time for the players and send them back in time to influence the past
Yoshida emphasized that players who experienced the epic Alexander raids at launch will love the new Ultimate. He said: “We packed EVERYTHING [all mechanics] in.”
Especially the boss Living Water was considered a “Static” destroyer at its time, against which many groups failed. Hardcore raiders can thus expect that these mechanics might return in a stronger and more devastating form in the Ultimate fight.
As a reward for the victory, there will be special weapons and a title. However, Alexander Ultimate will be released only with patch 5.11, two weeks after 5.1.
This is YoRHa Dark Apocalypse: Additionally, the new 24-man raid YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse will be introduced, based on the game Nier Automata. It is expected to feature 4 new boss fights.
It is not yet 100% known who exactly players will face in this raid. However, there are some initial hints:
- In the trailer, a giant robot is shown, which fans will recognize as the Goliath-Class boss
