What’s Cosmic Exploration in Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail?

Final Fantasy XIV features a lot of different activities that can keep your busy for months, and the Cosmic Exploration will be one of them with the release of the Dawntrail expansion in Summer 2024.

The flagship exploration feature of Endwalker was the Island Sanctuary, which took you to your own little world. But you’re going to get out of it and explore with what’s coming in Dawntrail: Cosmic Explorations.

Here is what Cosmic Explorations will entail in FFXIV‘s Dawntrail.

Cosmic Exploration explained in FFXIV Dawntrail

Cosmic Explorations is the upcoming flagship casual exploration feature of Dawntrail. It will feature activities where you’ll be able to travel to other planets, alone or with friends, to scavenge resources and build some sort of base.

That’s what the official art, revealed during FFXIV Tokyo’s Fan Fest on Jan. 6, hints at. It shows a miner wielding a pickaxe to scavenge resources, as well as some other characters building up items. It looks like Loporrits will help players in this endeavor.

If it’s similar to Island Sanctuaries, you’d get some sort of progression system dedicated to explorations, with missions to complete in order to access more planets. FFXIV director and producer Naoki Yoshida didn’t say much about the feature, though, so it’s only pure speculation. The key difference with Sanctuaries is that you’ll be able to explore with friends, which isn’t the case in Endwalker.

When will Cosmic Explorations release in FFXIV?

The feature was revealed as part of the Dawntrail conference at Tokyo Fan Fest, among many other features that will be brought with the upcoming expansion in Summer 2024.

It’s still unclear, however, if it will drop at the same time as the expansion. Usually, the developer holds most activities that aren’t linked to the game’s main story for later updates to keep players busy between two expansion releases. As such, Cosmic Explorations are likely to be introduced in FFXIV sometime after the official Dawntrail release.

This article will be updated when a time window for the feature is revealed.