We’re just a matter of days from the launch of Patch 4.1, the primary attractions of which are the first chapter in the Return to Ivalice series of raids (the Royal City of Rabanastre), Shinryu Extreme, and the opening up of the Shirogane housing district. The Unending Coil of Bahamut is apparently coming in Patch 4.11, rather than the main patch itself. As usual, we got Preliminary Patch notes today, which you can check out in full here, but I wanted to highlight a few things that stood out to me.

First and foremost, of course, are the gear previews. Strangely enough, we haven’t (to my knowledge) gotten previews of the gear for Royal City, but the preliminary notes do preview the gear from the new dungeon, the Drowned City of Skalla. These sets are all based around the winner of the Healer gear design contest from awhile back, which is the one worn by the female Au Ra in the center. My best guesses are that the set on the far right is the Casting set, the two Hyurs are wearing Fending and Maiming gear (judging by the sort of armored collars), and the remaining sets are divided up among Aiming, Scouting, and Striking (though which is which is anyone’s guess at this point).

We also got a shot of what seem to be two new crafted glamour sets. The materials for these will probably come from the new addition to Lost Canals, the Hidden Canals of Uznair. I don’t see anything in particular about these that suggests they will be gender-locked, but stranger things have happened. I don’t think either of these is really my style overall, but depending on how the body pieces dye, they could end up being useful for some things.

We’re also, unsurprisingly, getting new hairstyles. These appear to be gendered, judging by the two separate screenshots. The style for females looks pretty nice, and I may end up trying it for Alahra. Whether or not I’ll like it is another question entirely, I suppose, since I’m so very attached to her Minfillia hair, but I never did think I would change from her original style either.

We’re also finally getting the /converse and /box emotes, which we’ve been seeing on NPCs for as long as I can remember. Our characters even frequently use /converse during cutscenes, so it’s always been absolutely silly to me that we never had an actual emote for our own use. Now, if we could just get that crossed arms pose we use so often in scenes, too!

An NPC is also being added to the Ala Mihgan Quarter in the Lochs that will allow us to move to the Royal Menagerie, which should be great for screenshots and also just for general idling. The area is positively gorgeous, and I’m glad the team is giving us more ready access to it. I would really like for them to do the same with some older similar areas, like the “in-between” zones for the old Coil raids and things like that.

Outside of these things, there’s not a lot outside of the expected stuff for this Patch. We’re getting options for simplified Job Gauges (which look like they’ll be pretty handy), and Squadrons are getting access to glamour and a select few dungeons (though I’m not entirely sure what all that is going to be good for yet). We’re getting two more dyes as well (Metallic Orange and Metallic Yellow), but given how poorly most of the Metallic colors work, I’m not expecting anything great here. There are also a whole host of job adjustments, with the most attention having been given to Dragoon and Summoner (neither of which I’m familiar enough with to comment on).

But, there is one more little thing…

Tucked away at the very bottom of the Patch Notes is a list of new things being added to the Mog Station, one of which is a set of Far Eastern Noble’s attire! To my knowledge, this hasn’t been added to the game’s files yet, so I have no idea what it might look like, but given my need for more and more Far Eastern gear, I’m pretty excited to see what these are like.

That about does it for the Preliminary Patch notes for me. I assume we’ll get the full notes on Monday, after the game goes down for maintenance, and there may be more things tucked inside. We won’t see those until sometime that evening, though, so I won’t be able to do another pass through them on the site. Lately, the patch notes haven’t changed much going to the full release, other than the actual item listing, so there probably won’t be any major surprises anyway.