Final Fantasy XIV Won’t Be Getting A Free Story Skip To Dawntrail Anytime Soon

There’s no denying that Final Fantasy XIV is an absolutely massive game, with countless side quests and optional adventures on top of the main storyline that spans the base game and four expansions to date.

With the Dawntrail expansion’s launch steadily approaching, the question that regularly pops up is whether new players will be able to skip ahead to the new story arc and skip the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga entirely. The answer is not at this time, but you can skip ahead to the Endwalker expansion if you’re willing to pay somewhere around a hundred bucks for the story skip and the expansions.

Producer Naoki Yoshida, however, is looking into possibly letting players start their adventures in Dawntrail itself for free, although it seems like he’s leaning more towards keeping it a paid feature.

“For the story we are not currently planning any kind of new skip feature,” Yoshida told PCGamer. “This is something I'm constantly torn about. […] I'm concerned that if the globally acclaimed storyline can be skipped through a function, the value of the FF14 game itself will be diminished. So far, FF14 has been able to continue to grow while keeping the story as the main focus. As such, please let me think about it some more.”

If you do decide to take the scenic route, it’s probably going to take you a few hundred hours to complete the story from A Realm Reborn all the way up to the final Endwalker patch. Dawntrail won’t be coming out until this summer, which gives you a few months to catch up. Or you can just pay to skip ahead when the expansion launches. I highly recommend going through the entire storyline though. I can assure you that it’s well worth the trouble.