0hp: Final Fantasy XIV

FFXIV Moogle Treasure Trove 2026: the First Hunt for Astronomy, from 9 September

2026-10-31T00:00:00Z

The Moogle Treasure Trove returns on Wednesday 9 September 2026 as the First Hunt for Astronomy, by Square Enix's own announcement. The Trove, which is a recurring event that pays a temporary currency for replaying old content, is billed this time as a special edition marking the upcoming release of Evercold. It runs across two installments rather than one, and its special reward is an uolon horn.

What is different about this one

	First Hunt	Second Hunt
Starts	9 September 2026	"a later date", no day given
Currency for exchange	different tomestones from the other hunt's, per the announcement	different again
Item lineup	its own	a different one
The uolon horn	yes	yes, by Square Enix's own note
Extra requirement	minimog and ultimog challenges award the item the horn needs	not stated

A tomestone, in case that table is the first you have met one, is a token the game pays out that you exchange for items. The announcement calls this event's ones irregular tomestones of astronomy I, and says the two hunts need different tomestones from each other.

Square Enix calls this run "a special edition" and says it takes place across two installments.

Our take: what it means for players

The two-installment shape changes how much of this is urgent, and the answer is less than it looks.

Square Enix states plainly that the uolon horn is available in the Second Hunt too, so the reward is not on a clock that ends with part one. The announcement says the tomestones required for exchange differ between the installments, and that the item lineups differ too.

The two footnotes are where the earning goes wrong. Running content with an adventurer squadron, or through Duty Support, which is the system that fills a party with computer-controlled allies, awards no irregular tomestones of astronomy I at all. Our reading is that this removes the most convenient way to farm old content alone. An unrestricted party has to have Level Sync switched on to receive them, and Level Sync is the rule that drops a strong character down to a lower area's power. So a high-level group racing through low-level content without Level Sync earns no irregular tomestones of astronomy I for it.

That exclusion is the one thing here we would argue with. As we see it, Duty Support is what lets a player without a regular group still see old content. Paying it no tomestones in an event built on old content is a quiet tax on the people with the least flexible schedules. The event is otherwise the good kind, in our view: a currency earned by playing, spent on a fixed lineup of items.

The framing is worth a line of its own. Square Enix pegs this Trove to the upcoming release of Evercold. Our reading is that this is a catch-up window aimed at people levelling a job, meaning a character class, before Evercold arrives.

What's next

Patch 7.56 arrives the day before, on 8 September, and Square Enix's own notice says it closes PvP Series 11 with it, PvP being short for player versus player.

A PvP Series is a numbered season of that side of the game's reward track. The Trove start date and the patch both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them. Evercold's release date is tracked on our Final Fantasy XIV page.

FFXIV maintenance schedule, September and October 2026: nine possible nights to 8 October, checked 25 September

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

Square Enix keeps a list of the nights Final Fantasy XIV might go down, and it keeps changing it. Read again on 25 September, the notice carries nine possible windows and nothing confirmed. Six new nights run to 8 October, and the next one is the night of 28 September.

Yes, the list lives on a wedding page. The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding is the game's in-game wedding, booked in advance, and Square Enix says maintenance may cause a reserved one to be cancelled. That is why this notice exists at all.

Every night we have seen the notice list, and what it said each time

We have now read this page four times. The columns are those four readings. Every window marked possible runs from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. the next morning, Pacific time, which the notice writes as PDT.

Night, Pacific	2 Sep	7 Sep	10 Sep	25 Sep
31 Aug into 1 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
1 into 2 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
2 into 3 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
7 into 8 Sep	Possible	Confirmed, 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.	Gone	Gone
8 into 9 Sep	Possible	Possible	Gone	Gone
9 into 10 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
14 into 15 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
15 into 16 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
16 into 17 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
21 into 22 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
22 into 23 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
23 into 24 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
28 into 29 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
29 into 30 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
30 Sep into 1 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
5 into 6 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
6 into 7 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
7 into 8 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible

Square Enix marks the possible ones as subject to change, and says emergency maintenance can still happen outside them. The confirmed list currently reads "None".

The three nights from 21 September are still on the list, though all three have passed. So by our count six of the nine possible nights are still ahead, and the next one is the night of 28 September. The notice lists nothing for the three nights before it.

Our take: the list is a live document, and that is the story

Credit where it is due, because this is a publisher telling players something ahead of time rather than after the fact.

The useful thing here is not the wedding advice. It is what four readings of the same page show. On 2 September the notice listed nine nights and confirmed none of them. When we read it again on 7 September, three had dropped off, one had hardened into a confirmed four-hour window, and the rest were untouched. By 10 September that confirmed entry had been cleared away, and three new nights had appeared at the end. By 25 September four more nights had gone, and six new ones had appeared, reaching into October.

So this is not a schedule published once and left. It is a page Square Enix edits. Our reading is that it is worth checking again rather than trusting a copy of it, including a copy of it on a site like ours, which is why this table has four columns instead of one.

The uncomfortable half of that is what it means for anyone planning around it. A list that gained three nights at one reading and six at the next is a list you cannot plan a month against. Our view is that publishing it anyway still beats the alternative, which is a player finding out the servers are down by trying to log in.

The one rule worth carrying away sits at the bottom of the notice and dates to 2018. A ceremony booked to start after maintenance or an outage ends stays valid and needs no rescheduling. Square Enix says to reschedule a reservation that overlaps confirmed maintenance, and confirmed is a stricter word than possible. Read that as a floor rather than a ceiling: the same page says maintenance may cancel a reservation, and that emergency maintenance can happen outside every window the notice lists.

The two scheduled windows we have seen

When we read the page on 7 September it had something concrete on it. The confirmed section named 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time, and an all-Worlds maintenance notice gave the same hours. All Worlds means every server, rather than a few. By 10 September the confirmed section was back to "None".

The night of 16 September was one of the possible nights, and it did get a maintenance notice. An all-Worlds emergency maintenance notice scheduled the game offline from 11:00 p.m. on 16 September to 3:00 a.m. on 17 September, Pacific time, to add hotfixes for Patch 7.56, and said the finish time could change. A hotfix is a small repair shipped between the game's numbered updates. We did not read the wedding notice that week, so we cannot say whether it ever showed that night as confirmed.

Note that the edges did not match, either time. Both windows were scheduled for 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., narrower than the 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. bracket the possible nights use. Neither notice we hold says when the work actually finished. Two nights is not a rule. Our reading is that it is still worth remembering if a future night hardens the same way.

What's next

As of 25 September, by our count six possible nights remain, the last of them ending at 4:00 a.m. on 8 October, and none is confirmed. We will read the page again rather than assume this table still holds. Every date we track for this game sits on the calendar with the day we last checked it against the Lodestone, which is the game's own news site.

FFXIV on Switch 2 starts charging on 8 September, and the account link is permanent

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

The free subscription period on the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy XIV ends at 11:59 p.m. on Monday 7 September 2026 in each region. Square Enix's own notice explains what happens next in more detail than the date suggests. Billing on this platform does not work like the others.

A subscription, for anyone new to the game, is the recurring fee you pay to keep playing. And FFXIV is simply the usual short name for Final Fantasy XIV, which is why the coins below are called FFXIV Coins.

The rules that are specific to Switch 2

	How it works
Subscription scope	Separate from every other platform, even for an existing subscriber
Discount	Half price with an active subscription elsewhere, but not while a 30-day free play period is running there
Payment method	the subscription itself, FFXIV Coins from the Nintendo eShop only
Payment registration opens	8 September, 3:00 a.m. Pacific
Renewal	Automatic while the coin balance covers it, halted when it does not
Account link	Made on first launch, and cannot be undone or transferred
Nintendo Switch Online	Not required to play; members get one extra free teleport destination

Our take: what it means for players

Two of those lines cost money or characters if they are read late, and neither is the headline date.

Start with the one we think is indefensible. A subscription is rent on a world, and this is the same world, the same character and the same server. Charging a second time because the player picked up a different box is a platform tax wearing a product's clothes. The half-price discount is a discount off a fee that should not exist, and it comes with a condition on top.

The condition is the part that will catch people. On Switch 2, registering a Starter or Complete Edition, which are the two retail bundles, gets you a 30-day free play window opening on 8 September. While a free play period is active on another platform, the half-price Switch 2 subscription is not available. Square Enix adds that the discount does apply if remaining game time is still on the other platform when the charge lands. So the order of operations decides the price.

The account link is the other one, and it is the only genuinely irreversible step here. On first launch the Switch 2 user profile binds to a Square Enix account permanently. An existing player must pick their existing service account at the licence prompt. Choosing to create a new service account instead means, in Square Enix's words, that you will be unable to play as your existing character. The registered region has to match as well: an Americas account needs a Nintendo account registered in the United States, Canada or another applicable region.

One smaller trap is worth knowing before anyone blames the game. Hotbars, HUD layouts (the HUD being the bars and buttons drawn over the game screen) and macros are stored on the device rather than the account, and Square Enix says they are not synced automatically. So a character logged in on Switch 2 arrives with whatever that console holds, until the settings are uploaded from the other platform through the server backup feature and downloaded again here.

What's next

Patch 7.56 lands on 8 September and, by the same notice, is scheduled to resolve the launcher bug that currently stops it opening the coin purchase screen in the eShop. Until it does, coins are bought through the console home menu. Both dates are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

FFXIV Patch 7.56 maintenance: 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Pacific, and the season that closes with it

2026-10-31T00:00:00Z

Patch 7.56 for Final Fantasy XIV lands with overnight downtime. Square Enix's maintenance notice puts that at 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time, while its other notice on the season ending dates the same maintenance to Tuesday 8 September. Our reading is that these are one window written in two timezones.

That other notice says PvP Series 11 draws to a close with the beginning of that maintenance. PvP is short for player versus player, the part of the game where players fight each other, and a PvP Series is a numbered season of its reward track.

That is a useful reminder. Our reading is that the deadline easiest to miss is the season closing under the patch rather than the patch itself.

The downtime now has an hour on it

By its own all-Worlds notice, Square Enix takes the game down from 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time. Maintenance is the planned shutdown while a patch is installed, and the notice says the finish time may move.

Our reading: the patch day is still the eighth almost everywhere, but if you play on the US west coast, your evening of the seventh is the one that disappears.

Four smaller things go with it, and one of them is not obvious.

Data Center Travel stops 30 minutes early. That is the feature that lets you visit another group of servers, and it stays off until maintenance ends.
The same 30-minute head start applies to three Mog Station jobs: moving your character to another home server, renaming a character, and entering an item or gift code. Mog Station is the game's account and billing website.
The Companion app is unavailable too. That is the game's companion phone app, and Square Enix gives it a maintenance notice of its own.
Duty recorder data recorded before this maintenance can no longer be replayed after it. The duty recorder is the feature that saves a run so you can watch it back later.

That last one is the one to act on before the servers go down. The notice states the effect and gives no reason for it; our reading is that a patch changes the game underneath a recording. It is also the kind of thing a player only discovers by going to watch a fight they were proud of.

What changed

Several things move around the eighth, and not all of them are updates.

What	When	Detail
Patch 7.56 downtime	7 Sep 23:00 to 8 Sep 03:00 PDT	Brings beastmaster, a limited job (job is this game's word for a character class)
PvP Series 11 ends	Tue 8 Sep 2026, as the downtime starts; our reading puts that at 7 Sep 23:00 PDT	Series experience and level reset, rewards replaced
Series 11 rewards claimable until	end of Series 12	Trophy crystals carry over
Switch 2 free subscription period ends	Mon 7 Sep 2026, 23:59 in each region	30-day free play then starts 8 Sep
Moogle Treasure Trove, First Hunt for Astronomy	Wed 9 Sep 2026	Two installments, uolon horn reward

Beastmaster comes from a different notice. The Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XCIII digest was recorded at Fan Festival 2026 in Berlin, which is the game's own convention. Lead battle content designer Masaki Nakagawa walks through live gameplay of beastmaster there. Square Enix calls it the limited job introduced in Patch 7.56, a job being a character class and a limited one being a class that only works in certain content.

Before and after, for anyone on Switch 2

This is the quiet one, and it is a bill rather than a patch.

By its own notice on Switch 2 subscription fees, Square Enix ran a free subscription period on the Nintendo Switch 2 version, introduced to help ensure server stability. That period ends at 11:59 p.m. in each region on Monday 7 September, the same night the downtime begins. From Tuesday 8 September, the 30-day free play window that came with a Starter or Complete Edition registration begins. A subscription, which is the recurring fee you pay to keep playing, is required once that window has elapsed.

The same notice carries the part that decides what you pay. A Switch 2 subscription is separate from every other platform's, even for an existing subscriber. It is half price with an active subscription elsewhere, and that discount does not apply while a 30-day free play period is running on the other platform.

So the practical order runs like this. The free period ends the night of the seventh. The 30-day clock starts on the eighth. Thirty days from there lands in early October, which is where our maths puts the end of the free play window. The notice says that if you set up payment before then, the fee comes out of your FFXIV Coins balance, bought from the Nintendo eShop, once the window expires. Square Enix gives the first two dates, not the third. The free trial is unaffected and stays free, which the notice says outright.

Our take: what it means for players

We are going to defend the model and then complain about the paperwork.

A flat monthly subscription is the fairest arrangement in this genre, in our view, and it is worth saying so while the industry drifts the other way.

The paperwork is where we would push. There are three dates in this chain. The free period ends at 23:59 on the seventh. The 30-day clock starts the following day. Our maths puts the end of the free window in early October. Our guess is that only one of those three lands in most people's heads. As we read the notice, a Switch 2 player who set up payment will see a charge they may not have planned for, and one who did not will find they cannot keep playing until they pay. Nobody is being tricked here. The notice writes down every step except the end date, and a single line in the launcher would fix that.

The free trial is unaffected and stays free, which remains one of the more genuinely generous things any subscription game does.

What's next

The Moogle Treasure Trove opens the day after the patch, on Wednesday 9 September. The Trove is a recurring event that pays a temporary currency for playing old content, and this run is called the First Hunt for Astronomy.

By its own announcement, Square Enix calls it a special edition celebrating the upcoming release of Evercold, and it runs across two installments. The uolon horn needs an item awarded for minimog and ultimog challenges. Square Enix says the horn will be available in the Second Hunt as well.

Our reading is that 7.56 is a closing patch rather than an opening one. Evercold's release date is tracked on our Final Fantasy XIV page. The patch, the Switch 2 date and the Trove are on the calendar.