Final Fantasy 14 is getting an ultra-difficult dungeon for those endgame masochists

Final Fantasy 14 is getting a tough-as-nails dungeon later this year and I'm already preparing myself to cry and rage over it.

It's part of a new mode called criterion dungeons, which will be introduced later this year with Patch 6.25. Criterion dungeons are level 90 high-difficulty challenges for parties of four players in the standard one tank, one healer and two DPS composition. They're a tougher form of the casual-friendly variant dungeons, another new mode that was revealed in the most recent Letter from the Producer. 

The first criterion dungeon is called Another Sil'dihn Subterrane (we don't talk about that acronym), with both a hard and a savage version available. The hard version will allow for matchmaking, while the savage version will require a fixed party from the get-go. As for differences in difficulty once inside the dungeon, both hard and savage remove the ability for classes to resurrect players through normal means. Instead, the hard version will have a limited number of revival actions, while the savage version won't let you revive at all.

Enemies inside the hard version of Another Sil'dihn Subterrane will mercifully stay dead if the entire party KOs, but the enemies in the savage version won't be so kind. Not only will they all revive if the party KOs, but they'll gain buffs and become a whole lot stronger if they go undefeated within a certain time limit. 

If savage content isn't your bag, then variant dungeons will be more up your alley. They can be tackled by one to four players, with multiple branching paths depending on the actions taken. There'll be a currently unannounced NPC there to accompany players, too. It's a more casual and lore-heavy experience, so enemies will scale with party size and all usual methods of resurrecting players will be available.

There's an awful lot to look forward to in Patch 6.2 and beyond—from Island Sanctuary, to the new relic weapons, new main story content and more. Even before then, we've got cross-data center travel arriving on July 5, finally allowing players to visit their friends in all other servers within the same region. Patch 6.2 will release sometime in late August, with criterion and variant dungeons arriving later in the year.