XIV’s storyline is surprisingly well-loved. I say “surprisingly” because it’s an MMO, and MMOs aren’t generally lauded for their storyline. Well FFXIV is a little different – rather than telling a different story with each expansion, Final Fantasy more or less continues the same plot thread from A Realm Reborn all the way to Endwalker (which ends the storyline). Needless to say, that story is pretty dense. And it’s full of characters who undergo individual arcs and trials across hundreds of cutscenes (not all of them winners). If you’ve been playing the game from the start, it could be literal years between the beginning of XIV’s story and where we are now. Or if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably skipped a bunch of these cutscenes on your way to the endgame. You might have only the faintest idea of what happened in Eorzea on the road to level 80, and you might want to go back and tackle the story at your own pace. This is why New Game Plus exists: to give you the option to revisit these beloved storylines without making a whole new character.
How Do I Start New Game Plus?
Well… you’ll have to beat the game. Specifically, the quest ‘The Ultimate Weapon’ which generally marks the end of A Realm Reborn at level 50. It’s the one that involves clearing The Praetorium – the two stage eight-player dungeon with all the unskippable cutscenes. Once you’ve cleared that significant milestone, you can find an NPC named ‘Wistful Whitebeard’ in Western Thanalan (x:12, y:14) who’ll unlock the feature in the Duty Finder for you. Naturally, you’ll only be able to replay content you’ve already cleared – and you probably won’t be too keen to replay A Realm Reborn if you’ve just finished it! But once you’ve selected a chapter, you’ll be put into New Game Plus mode, which essentially places your character into a separate instance. Your quest list is replaced with a special New Game Plus version, and you’ll basically be locked in to following the primary quest line of that story chapter. There are, naturally, limitations to playing XIV like this. The biggest problem is that you won’t earn any rewards – no items, gil or experience. It’s purely to see the cutscenes/fight the big battles again. You also won’t be able to progress or complete anything that isn’t part of your New Game Plus Chapter. And you can’t back out of it during cutscenes or instances. You can also only tackle one chapter at a time. So you’ll have to complete the chapter you’ve already selected before you can replay another. When you’re done with New Game Plus mode, you can exit back to the main game by pressing the exclamation mark next to the quest list.
What Can Be Replayed With New Game Plus?
It’s not just Main Scenario stuff that can be replayed – you can basically re-experience most of the game’s storylines by making use of New Game Plus. You can replay job quests, raid storylines, crafting quests, and more. Perhaps most importantly, you can also witness the entirety of the Hildibrand quest line over and over again. If you’ve yet to experience these quests, do it. XIV’s side quests really don’t get any better than Hildibrand’s adventures. And they reward you with some of the most gentlemanly cosmetics in the game. Again, it’s important to note that you don’t earn any rewards for completing stories in New Game Plus. So if you’re hoping to regain a lost piece of equipment or glamour items then you’re unfortunately gonna be out of luck.
New Game Plus vs. Creating A New Character
We’ve covered the benefits of creating a new character to play alongside your main character. But comparing New Game Plus vs making an alt, it really depends on what you’re looking to experience. If you choose to create a new character, you’ll obviously have to experience the entire story from scratch. You can’t pick or choose where you start from, you can’t just hop back to your regular game whenever you like. But playing a new character will give you tangible rewards for the time you spend watching all these cutscenes again. It’ll also give you access to lots of extra storage space! So if you want to cherry pick which parts of the game to replay, New Game Plus is probably your best option. Then you can dip in and out of your favorite parts of the storyline without any of the extra fluff. But if you want to experience everything all over again then maybe consider making a new character. This can actually be really liberating. Journeying through the MSQ again without the pressures of getting caught up can make you appreciate the story a hell of a lot more. You might explore more, and you might be encouraged to try classes you haven’t thought about in the past. With a new character, the whole world will be wide open for you again – which isn’t something New Game Plus offers. Ultimately it just depends what you’re looking for.
