Final Fantasy 14's latest variant dungeon is so good, it deserves better—the MMO needs to figure out its rewards so all this great work isn't wasted

Final Fantasy 14 is so very nearly clear of the issues myself—and our fellow FF14 aficionado Mollie Taylor—have been yapping about for years, with its latest patch offerings being really rather good. The studio's new approach to multiple levels of difficulty has, more or less, been a success.

While the somewhat-sluggish release schedule is still a problem, I'm really glad that as a self-described "midcore" player (I did exactly one savage tier with randos and decided I'd had my fill) I've had more to do. This expansion's Deep Dungeon being more accessible, alongside the new Variant Dungeon's optional harder bossfights that aren't quite criterion level? Brilliant moves. There's something to do in every patch, finally.

But the rewards structure? Oh boy.

The good, the bad, and the accessories

Firstly, though, my compliments—The Merchant's Tale might just be one of my favourite dungeons ever conceived in an MMO, both from an aesthetic viewpoint and from the design of its fights themselves. It's visually stunning, a painterly-rendered version of FF14's artstyle that feels like it wandered out of Genshin Impact, splattered with unique textures and adorable little touches.

Baseline, the dungeon's bosses are all excellent, too. A haughty, sleepy genie who keeps flinging a carpet at you; a master swordsman with directional slashes who duels you on a mount; a mermaid that rides its own spear and conducts a choir of freaky ocean critters; and that goddamn whale that kept eating me (call me Ishmael).

The new midcore difficulty, advanced, is also an absolute win. Being able to hop into something that's not a total snoozefest with a mate is brilliant—it's something that requires planning and execution, but not the tactical sharpness of eight other players. Somewhere between a normal and extreme raid in difficulty.

Everyone involved at Square Enix who put The Merchant's Tale together: Its artists, its fight designers, and even its writers? They all deserve their laurels. Which makes it all the more frustrating to find out Square's botched the rewards, again.

Don't get me wrong, I think both of the outfits you can get from the dungeon are lovely—and hey, the emote's cute, but that's about where it stops. A mount, which you used to get for beating all routes on the normal difficulty, has now been relegated to its hardest difficulty, replaced by a sleep mask.

And sure, you can grab some furniture while you're in there—but The Merchant's Tale mostly just throws these annoying consumables at you. Popping open the chests inside isn't all that appealing.

Things get even more dire on the advanced difficulty. It's a ton of fun to do, but what can you buy with your hard-earned Corvosi Brass? Some sunglasses and flowery accessories. The only bonus is that all this stuff's tradeable, so if you wanna turn your runs into gil, it's kinda worth it. Kinda.

You get four Brass for beating all three bosses in the time limit, and 1-12 Brass at the end—though most of the time, you're only going to be getting the 80% chance. So most of the time, five brass. These dinky little accessories cost 12, meaning you'll need to do around three runs of these three (quite difficult!) bosses just to snag one little bangle.

Just give me gear

The real pain point, however, is that none of this stuff rewards gear (outside of giving you tomestones, which you can grind for elsewhere) which I'm just going to come out and say is FF14's biggest crime.

Square Enix has this antiquated notion that players should only get the highest level of gear from Savage raids, and it's weighing the game down bigtime. I do think that, at the time they release, Savage raids should give you your best-in-slot stuff—but these tiers have gaps of months between them.

To give you some perspective, the first savage tier of the Arcadion was released in July 2024. The second in April 2025, and the latest didn't come around until January of 2026. That's one new raid tier every nine or so months. Surely at some point in those nine months of playtime, Square Enix might be happy to go "right, the raiders have had their fun, let's let everyone else have-at"?

I'll be knocking over the rest of advanced just to appreciate the fights, but once I'm done, there's nothing in the list of rewards that really draws me—but if I could get some new pieces of kit, beyond the tomestone grind? You bet I'd be there. It's genuinely baffling to me how Square Enix is still stubbing its toe on this problem—because I think its fight designers are some of the best in the business, and they deserve to have a game that does their good work justice.

Still, we know that Square's taking a look at rewards for its next expansion, including adjustments to tomestones, so I do hope it's something the dev team is keeping in mind. I just hate to see all this good work wasted while they (hopefully, please) figure it out.