FF14 patch 7.35 hides a secret quest that Shadowbringers lore fiends will love

A super-secret quest found in FF14 7.35 after the completion of the new deep dungeon revisits one of the best characters in Shadowbringers and gives us a tantalizing taste of what might lie ahead. Carefully laid story threads have long been a big part of Final Fantasy 14's growth into one of the best MMORPGs ever made, and as we start to consider what might happen post-Dawntrail in the 8.0 expansion and beyond, it's good to see Square Enix and Creative Studio 3 continuing to reward those that scratch beneath the surface.

If you haven't spotted this new Final Fantasy 14 quest despite completing the Pilgrim's Traverse deep dungeon, you aren't alone. Beating all 100 floors is already a pretty hefty task, and upon doing so, your mind will likely flit towards taking on the new hard-mode trial, The Final Verse (Quantum). Fuath NPC Aenc Daen does gently hint that you might want to seek out someone steeped in both Darkness and Light, but you'll need a bit of prior knowledge and some intuition to figure out who you should be speaking to, as it isn't clearly marked.

Note that the remainder of the article discusses story spoilers for FF14 patch 7.35 side content relating to the Pilgrim's Traverse deep dungeon, as well as the Shadowbringers role quest series. You have been warned.

The person in question is Cyella in the Crystarium, who's a key player in the Shadowbringers role quest series, which deals with the old Warriors of Light from the First. If you go through all four sets (tank, healer, magical ranged DPS, and physical DPS), you unlock a final pair of missions that unveil her old identity as Cylva, who was brought from the Thirteenth reflection by the Ascians to act as a mastermind known as the Shadowkeeper.

In her role, Cyella was instrumental in bringing together the First's Warriors of Light and triggering the events that led to the Flood of Light all but consuming the world. Through the optional post-Shadowbringers quests, you're able to establish a measure of atonement for Cyella, and since then she's continued to act alongside fellow Thirteenth-born Unukalhai as a key point of contact for anything relating to Darkness, Light, and the Void that consumed their reflection.

If you've already done all the work to see these events play out in game, you can now speak to Cyella about the boss you fight at the end of Pilgrim's Traverse, a fiend called Eminent Grief that's born of a fusion between beings of Light and Darkness. This quest, which is titled 'The Pilgrim's Answer,' doesn't appear to show on the minimap, so you'll have to seek out Cyella directly if you want to hear what she has to say, but it's worth it.

Pulling you to one side, Cyella bemoans your "singular talent for dredging up memories I'd sooner forget," and says the creature you faced resembles a voidsent she had sealed in memoria back in her time on the Thirteenth. She notes that such a powerful creature could have turned the tide of battle in her favor against Ardbert and the Warriors of Light, but that she feared "being twisted by Darkness like so many memoriates before me."

Cyella instead locked the crystal holding the creature's power in her former quarters. She suggests that its concentrated Darkness likely attracted sin eaters that were able to break the creature free from its binds with their Light, only to be consumed by it. She then thanks you for overcoming the reborn voidsent and concludes the matter. You can read the dialogue in full via the quest's wiki entry.

There are certainly some serious implications at play. We've already developed the ability to transfer Light and Darkness across reflections (during the post-Endwalker quests), but this is likely to dramatically shift with the Key to Interdimensional Fusion now in our possession. Could it mean we start seeing more hybrid creatures moving forward into the 8.0 expansion, or stronger creatures finding more ways to cross the barrier as voidsent do?

Keep in mind that this new lore drop is something many players won't see, due to the requirement to complete the Shadowbringers role quests on four different jobs. As such, I wouldn't expect Cyella or Unukalhai to suddenly become part of the next MSQ - we're already facing enough of a dilemma on whether Ryne's goth bestie Gaia should be allowed to take part without mandating that everyone complete the Eden raid series (although you absolutely should). Nevertheless, the mission's mere existence certainly gets my neurons firing.

If you're looking for something to tide you over until the next FF14 patch, take a stroll through the best anime games in 2025, or try some of our favorite new MMOs.

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