Final Fantasy 14 Heavensward Expansion To Feature Flying Mounts, Dark Knight Class

The world of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is set to expand next year with its first major update, Heavensward, with brand new details about a new job class, new enemies and more revealed during a recent Fan Festival hosted by Square Enix in Europe.

Fan Festival events are planned leading up to the launch of Heavensward next spring but, over the weekend, the first celebration of all things FFXIV produced some tasty tidbits for fans to digest. This will have to tide you over until Dec 20-21, when the next Fan Festival is planned to take place in Tokyo.

During the recent European event, Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida provided several new details for players of A Realm Reborn to get excited about, beginning with the introduction of flying mounts.

The new land mas introduced in Heavensward will be a series of floating islands and, as such, players will likely need a bit of winged help in order to get around more quickly. The first flying mounts to be revealed include a new black chocobo gifted with the power of flight, as well as a personal airship for players to pilot. Yep, that all sounds pretty dang rad to me.

The new details didn’t stop at flying mounts, though. Also included in the Heavensward expansion will be a pair of new beast tribes and their respective primals (AKA: Boss battles!) These include the Vanu Vanu and their primal, Bismarck, and the Gnath, who represent the Ravana primal. Your new story chapters will take you through multiple confrontations with these races, as well as put you to the task of carrying out missions for them, once new allegiances have been formed.

Also creating a lot of buzz at the Euro Fan Festival is the introduction of a new job for players to take up, the Dark Knight. While other jobs will be announced in the coming months, the Dark Knight seems like a nice place to start if you’re hoping to get players new and old excited for the upcoming update. The Dark Knight will serve as a tank class, wielding a two-handed greatsword and utilizing actions and maneuvers that draw on the power of, you guessed it, darkness.

Unlike other jobs in FFXIV, you won’t have to level up a starting class before evolving into a Dark Knight. No details have yet been provided, but it sounds like players at the level cap will be able to simply take up the new job and get to working on new missions tailored to its abilities.

I’ve had a pretty great time playing FFXIV so far but, not too long after my most recent addition to the “evolving review,” I had to step away from the game in order to, you know, play a whole bunch of other games. News like this makes me want to dive right back in, though, so it’s a good thing I have until next spring to get ready for all of this new Heavensward content.