2 years after its announcement, FF14's monster-taming Beastmaster job finally arrives this year, along with what looks like a Slay the Spire-esque roguelike mode

Final Fantasy 14's next big patch, 7.5, will be dropping next month—and in subsequent updates will be adding Beastmaster to the game. Players have been waiting a long time for this'un. Given Square's propensity to announce almost everything in an expansion before its launch, we've known about Beastmaster since (checks notes) two entire years ago. Twelve forfend.

Some more details were announced in today's live letter, and it's a doozy (thanks to the Final Fantasy XIV Discord server for the fan translation).

Beastmaster is a "limited" job like Blue Mage, meaning that it's not something you can play in regular content—rather, it's more of a side-activity you can plug some hours into whenever grinding out your relic weapons gets a bit much.

Wielding an axe and a shield, players will be able to go out into the open world and snag various critters to assist them—both in acquiring more monsters for one's pocket, and in what's likely to be, similar to the Blue Mage, dungeons and duties leading up to level 50. You'll be able to bring three of your tamed beasts with you to help at a time, and each will give you unique abilities to whap trash packs with.

Also FF14's apparently gonna have a roguelike mode—well, technically its second roguelike mode, next to Deep Dungeon.

Details on the new duty, dubbed Crucible of the Unbroken, are relatively slim, but I mean. C'mon, look at that. It's a branching path with nodes. It's giving me the Slay the Spire tinglies. It's probably a roguelike mode, and if it's not, I'll eat my hat—which will make me very sad because I was planning on putting it on the silliest animal I can find.

Game director Naoki Yoshida says: "You can play to just clear, but we also are trying to implement some sort of rankings for those players that really want to go hard at it," adding that "It has a lot of volume."

So much volume, in fact, that it's pushed poor Blue Mage's planned updates to the wayside: "Beastmaster took all our resources/cost so we need to push the BLU update back. I know many of you have been looking forward to BLU updates, and they will come in the future, but we prioritized Beastmaster this time. I am sorry."

While my heart goes out to my Blue Mage-loving mates, I reckon the Beastmaster's still going to be a riot to play—and I love me a rougelike. Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.5 releases April 28, though Yoshi-P says the Beastmaster's coming "a bit further, 7.5x", meaning we might be waiting until June (7.51), July (7.55), or September (7.56) to finally catch 'em all—I mean, er, obtain them in great volume.