Yesterday Square Enix produced their thirteenth live letter from the producer, and in it they talked about patch 2.2. Patch 2.2 is scheduled to go live on Thursday next week and now pretty much all of the details are known. The news everyone has been wanting to hear is that regarding ilevel increases, and it was confirmed that 115 will be the new maximum. Below is a summary from the live letter.
Equipment:
The maximum ilevel for weapons will be increased to 115.
The maximum ilevel for armour will be increased to 110.
Leviathan weapons will be ilevel 100.
Tomestones of Soldiery will be ilevel 100.
Only the Binding Coil 2 will drop ilevel 110+ gear.
Crating gear up to ilevel 90 will be added, along with new recipes.
You will be able to upgrade your relic weapons to the Zodiac weapon system. This will be a very long quest and have multiple stages. It will also change the appearance of your weapon after a certain point.
Full ilevel 90 equipment should be enough to clear Leviathan and Good King Moggle Mog extreme fights.
Glamours:
You can only alter the appearance of equipment if its ilevel is higher than that of the equipment you are transfering the appearance from.
You can use Glamours on multi-slot equipment such as cowls, however it only uses the chest portion.
Weapons and accessories can be changed too.
Retainers:
Additional retainers can be hired for a $2 monthly fee.
Retainers can now go out on ventures. This is a system whereby you select a job and equipment for your retainer and they can go out and gather items for you.
Ventures earn EXP and level up over time. This gives access to new areas and better items.
Each venture costs venture chips which can be bought from grand companies.
The time required for a venture varies depending on the task.
Certain items will only be available via retainer ventures.
Retainers on a venture can still sell items and you can still retrieve your items from them.
Housing:
Small, medium and large sized gardens will be available to all houses.
Gardening is used to harvest seeds and items as a result.
Rare seeds can be obtained through cross-fertilization, resulting in rarer rewards.
Small houses will have a basement added and the number of items they can place doubled to 100.
Personal housing is still coming, but SE feel they need to investigate potential server stresses first so they are using FC housing to gather data.
Echo Buff:
This is designed to make difficult content that has been outdated easier, so people can catch up.
After wiping more than 3 minutes into a battle the echo buff will become active.
This will give you increased HP, damage dealt and cure potency.
Each further wipe will increase the echo buff further, until a maximum has been reached.
For the Binding Coil the echo buff will be added in phases, so every two weeks it will become stronger. However during the first two weeks of 2.2 there is none.
Misc:
The Gilgamesh battle will not be difficult content.
Fantasia potion (to change your character’s appearance) will eventually be sold on the Mog Station.
Game addons and API will be released at some poiny after the PS4 version has been released.
There will be special mounts added for the PLD and WAR jobs.
Additionally the bonus for doing content in the DF as a tank will be multiplied by 7.
After the PS4 version has been released a roadmap will be shown for future development of the game.
Future Patches:
Gold Saucer is coming with three main features.
In 2.3 you will be able to enter the Crystal Tower with a pre-made alliance of 24 members.
New Grand Company ranks will be added in 2.3.
In 2.3 you will be able to summon your chocobo companion after registering for a duty.
In 2.3 you will be able to use the Duty Roulette with a pre-made party.
Eventually the cap on the number of furnishings you can place in a house will be increased.
You will be able to fight Nidhogg from the DRG job quests once we are able to go to Ishgard.
The theme for the first expansion pack (3.0) will be “A Thousand Year War”.
The city of Sharlayan will be accessible some day. (expansion maybe?)
Extra from the Patch Notes:
Amdapor Keep will have its difficulty lowered through weakening the second and third bosses.
Pharos Sirius has had its difficulty reduced so that it is similar in difficulty to Copperbell Mines and Haukke Manor hard modes.
Turn 2 of the Binding Coil will have its difficulty adjusted. High Voltage can now be removed with spells that normally remove paralyze effect. This is most likely due to the fact it is now in the DF and you aren’t guaranteed a PLD or BRD to silence the attack when using the DF.
Darklight has been moved to the new dungeons, while Philosophy tomestones no longer exist.
Tomestones of Philosophy can be converted to Mythology via an NPC.
