Final Fantasy 14 Online's new expansion is finally here in Early Access. The new expansion brings players a whole bunch of brand new content to play including new story quests, two new Jobs called Reaper and Sage, and tons of changes to older content. But one of the biggest changes to the game in this expansion is the level cap.
The Level Caps in Final Fantasy 14
With every expansion, the level cap in FF14 has continued to grow. In the base game and the relaunched version of the base game, players were limited to level 60. When the first expansion, called Heavensward, dropped in 2015, it brought the level cap up ten levels to 70. The next expansion, Stormblood, did the same, making the level cap 80. The newest story expansion is called Endwalker, and it has also changed the top level for players.
Like all the previous expansion titles, Final Fantasy 14's Endwalker is bringing the level cap up another 10 levels, bringing the new top level to 90. Jobs also now have a level cap of 90.
Number Squish in FF14
Along with the new level cap, players will also see some value changes to other FF14 numbers. To avoid the World of Warcraft issue of having damage and life-total numbers becoming over-the-top, Final Fantasy 14 has decided to "squish" numbers down with the release of 6.0 Endwalker. Character health, character damage, enemy health, and enemy damage will all be lowered in order to streamline the in-game processing of numbers, keeping battles and boss battles fast. Some of the numbers, which were inching closer to the billions and taking up tons of processing power, will be noticeably smaller, while others will be less noticeable.
According to the Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker patch notes, while the damage, HP, and XP numbers will be smaller for players, the developers were careful to keep the ratio the same for each of these stats. In solo content, where players are most likely to be affected by the number squish, Final Fantasy 14 has added buffs to help players get through the content without additional trouble. Thankfully, the actual level cap itself was not touched, allowing players to keep their level 80s and continue on to try to hit level 90 in this new expansion.
This value change will delete any incomplete leveling XP for jobs, retainers, and Trust NPCs. This loss of experience for players was necessary to help squish the numbers back into more reasonable sizes, but it is a little disappointing for anyone who is working hard to get levels for their jobs and things.
Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker is in Early Access for PC, PS4, and PS5.