I attended FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2026 in Anaheim last month, and the one thing that I keep thinking about is the new Evolved System. I’ve been playing MMORPGs since the early 2000s, and I have put more time into FINAL FANTASY XI Online specifically than I am willing (or ever want to) admit. On July 19, 2005, two of FINAL FANTASY XI Online’s biggest job changes dropped amid the Chains of Promathia expansion epilogue’s release that completely rewrote how to play both Ranger and Ninja:
Before this update, Ranger would shoot arrows without abandon and would be a heavy source of damage alongside Black Mages for Kirin fights in Al’Taieu. The Ninja job was also a job that became a tanking job due to their Utsusemi ninja tool shadows absorbing the attacks that their natural evasiveness skills could not avoid. Those above update changes, combined with the new double weakness nerf that severely penalized ranged accuracy and ranged attack and dropped stats upon a second death within the normal five-minute weakness period, meant the Ranger and Ninja jobs were no longer viable to play for endgame content and the community started to move away from them as a whole with the same-day release of the Lumoria NM system that included Absolute Virtue as a HNM fight.
These radical gameplay changes were unexpected, uninvited, and unwelcomed by the community. I remember this, because while I was a White Mage main who practically lived in Vana’diel at the time and I had plenty of in-game friends who were heavily affected by this. It is impossible to overstate how unhappy the fanbase was with these sudden, sharp changes that changed the game we loved in an arguably worse way.
Naoki Yoshida talked at length about his experiences with Star Wars Galaxies in the media interview he gave during FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2026. Like with that July 19, 2005, FINAL FANTASY XIV Online update, Evolved Mode does change how to play FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, and we saw that during the Development Panel hosted by Naoki Yoshida and Hikaru Tamaki (aka “Mr. Prime”) with how four jobs will be changed in the new gameplay mode.
But, by offering the play mode that players are used to (Reborn Mode) alongside the new gameplay style (Evolved Mode), I think this shows a very real awareness of how the MMORPG landscape has evolved since 2005 for SQUARE ENIX. Twenty years ago, I have no doubt we would have absolutely had Evolved Mode forced upon us with little say on how we felt about it like we were with the massive changes to Ranger and Ninja.
That, I think, is why I am willing to hold judgment on Evolved Mode and what it will mean for FINAL FANTASY XIV Online and the Evercold expansion until I get to try it out for myself. If Evolved Mode is rejected by the community, then FINAL FANTASY XIV Online hasn’t fundamentally changed forever for the worse. I am really hopeful though that the development team gets it right and it turns out to be a lot of fun, and regardless, even those who don’t like it will not have an excuse to quit because Reborn Mode will still be around.
I honestly cannot wait to see what is announced in Berlin on July 25/26, 2026, and in Tokyo on October 31/November 1, 2026 in relation to Evolved Mode, and I am hopeful we will get to see more reworked jobs at both of these events. And hey, if I don’t like how it turns out…then it doesn’t mean I won’t want to play FINAL FANTASY XIV Online anymore.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This is the 66th recipe from the first volume of The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, and it comes from the Dravania Region of Eorzea with a Medium difficulty rating. The recipe uses only ingredients and tools I have used before, and I actually already had everything on hand but almond flour.
The Sesame Cookies recipe itself does not look like it will be difficult to make, but I am curious at how the honey in addition to powdered sugar will work out. I feel like a lot of these Cooking Eorzea recipes use beet sugar as a substitute for granulated sugar, and I have never used honey before quite like that in my personal life. But we will see how it goes!
This is what Sesame Cookies like when a true chef makes them:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Butter is probably one of the most common ingredients I use in Cooking Eorzea, and it is easy to overlook such a stable workhorse in my dishes because of that ubiquity. Butter is made from the fat and protein of churned cream, and it often is made from cow’s milk but can also come from other creatures like buffalo and goats. Unless the recipe specifically calls for unsalted butter, I usually use salted butter in my Cooking Eorzea attempts.
I honestly cannot think of a time since I’ve started Cooking Eorzea I haven’t had butter in my fridge, and it is about time it is given its time to shine in the spotlight as this week’s Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
Let’s take a look at all the ingredients I used for this week’s Cooking Eorzea to close out the desserts section of the cookbook:
First, I preheated the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. I would ultimately turn the oven off and then preheat it again later towards the end of when the raw dough was chilling in the refrigerator.
First, I measured out one-third a cup of black sesame seeds, and I ground them partially down using my mortar and pestle. This took a lot longer than expected, and it made me wish I had used a food processor to make it happen.
In another bowl, I added together the all-purpose flour, almond flour, another tablespoon of black sesame seeds, and salt. I then blended all of these ingredients together inside the bowl.
In a separate, larger bowl, I added together the butter and powdered sugar, and I blended it all together by hand. The butter and sugar took a good while to work into each other, but I was happy with the very sticky mess I had by the end!
I then added in the honey and mixed it all together.
Once that was all combined, I added in the prior dry ingredients and mixed all that together too until I had a solid raw dough to make the cookies with!
This is what the dough looked like when I was finished.
I covered two baking sheets with parchment paper and then dusted them both with all-purpose flour so the cookies wouldn’t stick to the parchment paper while they were baking.
I scooped out a tablespoon of dough and used my hands to roll it into a ball.
I then placed the ball on one of the baking sheets, and I pressed it down to make a disk of around two-and-a-half inches, and I ended up actually measuring the first few of them to ensure they were the proper size!
Once I had all the dough pressed down, I placed the baking sheets into the refrigerator for an hour. When there was roughly 10 or so minutes left, I preheated the oven again to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
I then pulled the sheets out and placed them in the oven for 20 minutes to bake.
Once the time went off, I pulled them out and I left them out to completely cool down.
And here is what this week’s Cooking Eorzea attempt for Sesame Cookies look like in the hands of a baking amateur!
The Sesame Cookies were surprisingly savory to eat. They were a bit crisp (which is not a surprise, because the edges had browned), but they were quite delicious. The sesame seeds really gave it a good texture in my mouth, and I was surprised at how well the powdered sugar and honey worked together.
Overall, this was a really good cookie, and I ended up sharing the batch with some friends as I did not need to have two trays of sesame cookies to eat by myself!
Afterword
If I was to make this recipe again, I would wait on pre-heating the oven until after the dough had a chance to chill, just to conserve energy. I also think I would not grind the black sesame seeds by hand, again, simply because it is incredibly time consuming to do. Overall, though? This was an easy dessert dish to make, and it will be something that I will make from now on for people!
Let’s dive into the ‘thank you’ section now, like always. First up? I need to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook for Volumes I and II. Personally, I cannot wait to start tackling the Volume II recipes soon enough. I also need to thank everyone over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. I also owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice, and you can check him and his works out over on X.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. Eorzea keeps evolving over time- from 1.0 through A Realm Reborn and now into Evercold, and I am glad that the FFXIV community is kept in mind when it comes to how this game continues to grow and develop over time.
Next Time
Next time, I am going to start the final section of the first volume of The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook: Drinks. I do not know if I am going to do just one recipe, or double them up per week. The recipes are fairly simple to make, and I do not want it to be week-in-and-week-out of “throw a handful of ingredients into a glass and call it a day”.
If you have suggestions, please let me know!
How do you feel about the Evolved System?
Are you excited for Evercold?
Let us know in the comments below!
