Square Enix announced Final Fantasy 14 Evercold‘s first eight-player raid, and it’s also the first FF14 x FF7 collaboration: Beyond the Lifestream. FF14 producer Naoki Yoshida and FF7 Remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi revealed the collaboration during Berlin Fan Fest after showcasing the Bastion job and outlined a few details, plus some Gold Saucer additions launching before the Evercold expansion.
FF14‘s FF7 raid is a full three-tier raid, and the first part of it goes live in patch 8.01, shortly after Evercold‘s launch in January 2027. It will include FFXIV‘s new raid difficulty as well, so you can challenge it on normal mode, savage mode, and the new in-between difficulty. Motomu Toriyama, Final Fantasy 13‘s scenario director and the scenario design director for FF7 Remake and FF7 Rebirth, is co-writing the story alongside the FF14 scenario team. Kazushige Nojima, the scenario writer for multiple Final Fantasy projects, including Rebirth‘s main story, Stranger of Paradise, and the original Final Fantasy 7, is the story’s supervisor. Tetsuya Nomura is the art design supervisor, taking a “hands-on” approach to ensure you get the “Final Fantasy 7 feel” from the raid’s monsters and bosses.
Hamaguchi held back on the raid’s story details, but did tease that “a lot” of FF7 characters will show up over the course of the series. This kind of crossover has become a common thing for FF14. Previous raids include the large-scale 24-person Ivalice raid series with ties to Final Fantasy 12 and another equally large-scale series with ties to NieR Automata. The Dawntrail expansion also featured a crossover with Final Fantasy 11. Evercold‘s 24-player raid is a collaboration with Evangelion.
Before Hamaguchi left the stage, he and Yoshida announced another FF7-adjacent feature coming to FF14: a Gold Saucer addition. Starting Oct. 28, Square Enix is plunking the FF7 Gold Saucer in FFXIV‘s Gold Saucer with a new activity, Keybound Brawler. It’s a typing game you can play with up to three other players, and Square Enix will add other “typing challenges” in future updates. Yoshida said the format makes it easy to swap in themes from other collaborations (Hamaguchi teased a Dragon Quest crossover) or even use it for things like quiz battles or trivia challenges. Keybound Brawlers’ first reward set is a glamor bundle featuring a Barret costume and a Tifa costume, which you can see above. Barret’s glamor doesn’t include the Gatling gun arm, though you can add it as a fashion accessory.
Final Fantasy 14 Evercold launches in January for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.