Final Fantasy 14's next major update arrives May 22

The next chapter in Final Fantasy 14's ongoing story is just a few weeks away, and today Square Enix has released a gorgeous new trailer to tease what's coming next. Under the Moonlight, which releases on May 22, follows the same template we've come to expect from Final Fantasy 14's updates. There's a new 24-player raid that expands upon the previous ones set in Ivalice, the world where all the best Final Fantasy games come from. There's also a new trial, new dungeons, more beast tribe quests... the list really goes on and on.

The trailer above does a good job of showing where the story is headed, with the Garlean Empire sending envoys to Doma under the guise of peace—but that's probably not going to last very long, is it?

One thing to note with this update is that a large chunk of it is rolling out in smaller patches throughout the summer. For example, patch 4.31 will introduce the new Savage raid tier, a group encounter so tough that only a few thousand players will ever beat it. After that, in 4.35, we'll get more Hildebrand side-story quests to play through and a new Deep Dungeon. Then, in several months, comes the new Eureka exploration zone.

It's a shame that all of this isn't coming at the same time, but I guess rolling it out slowly will stop players from binging on it in just a few weeks and then twiddling their thumbs all summer.

I haven't been back to play Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood since last year, but I'm already reinstalling it. I'm excited to see how Square Enix has expanded upon the incredible first impression Stormblood made when it first launched.

You can find out more about Under the Moonlight over at its own special website.

Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.