After a nearly four-year wait, Final Fantasy 14 finally has a brand-new exploration zone called The Occult Crescent. Launched with Patch 7.25, this update brings a fresh type of midcore content that many fans have been craving—me included! It’s the kind of content that mixes solo play with spontaneous group fights, making it a distinct addition to the game’s world.
Exploration zones, or “field operations” as Square Enix calls them, are large-scale areas where you level up through a unique system while encountering random boss fights and FATEs with other players. These zones walk a fine line: you need to pay attention or you’ll die, but a single mistake won’t wipe out the entire group. It’s a neat balance of challenge and accessibility that’s been missing for a while.
The Occult Crescent lets you grind two things: your overall “knowledge level” and “phantom jobs.” Knowledge level boosts damage against formidable enemies, while phantom jobs unlock new abilities and passives. There’s a whole roster of phantom jobs already revealed—chemist, ranger, berserker, geomancer, samurai, bard, freelancer, cannoneer, monk, oracle, thief, time mage, and knight—with more expected to be unlocked through purchases or memorable boss fights.
Here’s a cool twist: maxing out a phantom job grants you a “Phantom Mastery” status, which increases your damage and offers other bonuses that stick around even if you switch to another phantom job. So if you want to get powerful, you’ll want to max out as many as possible. Sounds like a grind, but I’m kinda excited to jump into.
Once your knowledge level hits 20, you unlock access to The Forked Tower, a raid for up to 48 players. Entry requires offering a unique item called a sanguine cipher. Since this will probably be popular, you can increase your chances by providing more ciphers, and if you don’t get picked, your ciphers are returned. Pretty fair, right?
Besides the primary grind and raid, side activities like treasure hunts involve quirky little goblin pots. It sounds like a fun way to spend some hours, even if it took a long time to get this type of content back finally. The last exploration zone, Bozja, came out in October 2020 during the Shadowbringers expansion, and we didn’t see a similar addition during Endwalker. Instead, Square Enix focused on variant dungeons, which are fun but more one-off challenges rather than ongoing progression.
It’s strange that The Occult Crescent took nearly a year after Dawntrail’s release to arrive. The expansion has had some delays and odd priorities, focusing more on raid tiers and extreme fights. But hey, the combat design has been on point lately, so I’m hopeful this zone will be worth the wait. I can’t wait to get stuck in and see how these phantom jobs feel.
What do you think about this new exploration zone? Are you excited to grind phantom jobs and tackle the enormous raid? Drop your thoughts in the comments, I’m curious if this will change how you play Final Fantasy 14!
