Here's a closer look at the FF14 Beastmaster and The Crucible of the Unbroken, courtesy of Live Letter 93

We might have already had one big FF14 press conference this weekend, but there's still time for more. Delivered on stage at Fanfest Berlin, Final Fantasy 14 Live Letter 93 is a Beastmaster special. The new class joins the MMORPG in patch 7.56 and is our second 'limited job' after the Blue Mage, meaning that it offers an especially unique combat style from the standard roster, but can't be used in much of the regular battle content. Instead, there's a special activity designed especially for it, which is dubbed 'The Crucible of the Unbroken,' pitched as "a magic board game that Beastmasters use to train themselves."

Joining Final Fantasy 14 Game Director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida on stage is Lead Battle Content Designer Masaki 'Mr Ozma' Nakagawa, who has been the main person working on the new job and its associated activity. "This is actually my first time playing the game live on stage," he says, "so if I make any mistakes, please go easy on me." In order to start playing the Beastmaster, you'll need to reach level 50 on a battle job (Disciple of War or Magic), have completed the base 2.0 story quests in a Realm Reborn, and own the Dawntrail expansion. It's a melee DPS that uses an axe and shield, and will start at level 1 with an initial cap of 50.

We got a basic introduction to how the Beastmaster plays courtesy of Yoshi-P in Live Letter 92, but today is a deeper dive. Mr Ozma starts with a quick recap of the basics: there are up to 50 different beasts, each of which must be captured out in the wild. These can then be assigned to your trio of Battlehorns to call them out onto the field. The summon you currently have active will change the four core skill types you have at your disposal, with 50 possible 'Tempered Release' abilities that you can have your creatures execute, and eight more that you can 'Borrow' to use yourself based on their overarching type, and you'll be managing two separate meters for you and your beast.

With that setup established, it's time to jump into the game demonstration. Mr Ozma notes that he'll be making use of some debug commands to speed the process up, so keep that in mind if you're watching. In one example, he uses a Slime's Syrup ability with Tempered Release to bind his enemy and a Pugil's Quelling Wave with Borrow, allowing him to attack his target from a very advantageous position while it's unable to move. When the Bomb he's fighting attempts to self-destruct, he uses Borrow on his Coblyn to deliver Soul Crush and interrupt the attack.

The Beastmaster also has four 'instinctual skills,' while each summon has one, and you gain additional benefits if you perform these in sequence. "When you perform an instinctual skill in the clockwise order, we call that an 'intentional combo' - if you do it in any other order, it's just a regular instinctual combo." As you level up, you'll gain two more skills, 'Rally' and 'Rallying Cheer,' which instantly fill you and your companion's gauges respectively, and thus can be used to chain multiple instinctual combos in sequence. Lastly, each beast comes with a powerful area-of-effect finisher, which causes them to leave the field after its use.

Mr Ozma reassures us that if this initially sounds complicated, it'll be explained more thoroughly over the course of the job quests. With that all established, it's time to look at the Crucible of the Unbroken. This begins once you hit level 30. You'll choose "between ten and 15 familiars" to bring along, plus a selection of duty-specific items. Competing in the Crucible will earn you Beastmaster EXP, and the beasts you bring along will grow stronger as you fight through its numerous encounters.

In order to dodge too many spoilers, our entry point today is a temporary one - a 'Crucible Tester' Moogle in the Black Shroud who opens up the interface. Mr Ozma starts by investigating the first upcoming opponent, and looking to determine its weakness - in this instance, it's vulnerable against piercing attacks, so he filters his Bestiary to find creatures that fit the bill. Another later in the run is susceptible to fire, and so on, allowing him to build his full team.

If you find this micromanagement all a bit tedious, however, there's an option to auto-select a basic recommended team. Yoshi-P comments that this might be a good way to start out, but that the more you play, you'll probably find ways to experiment with more interesting team compositions. Mr Ozma, as the expert in all things Beastmaster, makes a few manual tweaks of his own to the lineup, before diving head-first into the action. We start out with what resembles the overhead view of a boardgame, with branching paths that lead to various encounter types.

When you're drawn into a battle, you choose three beasts from your roster to bring into the arena. Yoshida explains that when you Borrow an ability from one of your familiars, such as the interrupt we saw earlier, it will remain in your arsenal even if you switch your active companion - it only goes away when you choose to Borrow another. Based on some of the early action we're seeing, it seems as though counters to specific problems such as interrupts are going to be quite valuable, so keep that in mind.

As we go into our next fight, Yoshi-P notes that Mr Ozma's Coblyn is pretty battered - which gives him the opportunity to show off a healing potion, one of the Crucible-specific items at your disposal. He compares this list of consumables to the Pomanders you collect during a Deep Dungeon run, essentially acting as a selection of helpful one-off buffs, boons, and recovery tools to help you push through any sticky situations. Another example is the Tome of the Impervious, which grants five stacks of Blink, each of which nullifies the damage from one physical attack.

The subsequent fight is won, but not before Mr Ozma's Beastmaster falls. Fortunately, this gives an opportunity to show off one piece of Beast Gear you can equip - a Ring of Sacrifice. This will revive you once if your character is knocked out, but at the cost of sacrificing your current familiar. "I thought it would be more fun if I was living a little bit on the edge, so I secretly turned up the difficulty," Nakagawa laughs, causing Yoshida to respond in exasperation: "Tell me that in advance - I was worried!"

At certain treasure chest spaces, you'll be presented with four possible items of Beast Gear to choose from and keep for the rest of your run. Some of these can be very strong in certain specific ways - for example, with an upcoming encounter threatening some serious poison damage, Mr Ozma snags an Angel Robe, which offers 100% poison resistance.

You'll find shops as well, and these sell a wide range of consumables, along with 'feed' items, which you can use on a familiar in your roster to make them stronger. The amount of food you can give to each of your beasts is represented by their hunger level, or 'Satiety,' which is shown as a series of squares next to their name that you can slot their meals into. Additionally, some feed can only be used on specific beast types. Consider this carefully - creatures that might not be as strong to start with could grow especially powerful over time due to their high Satiety if you keep bulking them up.

We're treated to a brief glimpse of our final boss for the run, "Breaker of Beasts: Pas de Seul." She's an imposing succubus with a giant red blade, and Mr Ozma is only able to bring her health bar about two-thirds of the way down before he falls, despite having two revival items. "I want all of you Warriors of Light to take on the challenge and clear it for yourself," he smiles.

Run over, it's back to the Powerpoint slides, and on to Beast Ranks. Once you level a companion up to its maximum rank of 25, you'll have the option to change its appearance to an alternate form, which will be seen both in the Crucible and out in the world, allowing you to show off your hard work. "You don't need to play the higher difficulty versions like I showed you today - you can still level up and increase your Beast Ranks in the easier versions as well," Mr Ozma assures.

"Having said that, let's speak about high difficulty." Once you've cleared all the boards, you'll unlock additional challenge tiers called the 'First Degree,' 'Second Degree,' and 'Third Degree.' Nakagawa reveals that the one we were watching today was actually on Second Degree (to Yoshi-P's repeated disbelief). Yoshida notes that he considers this "a different type of difficulty" from different high-end duties, because this is more about strategizing, finding synergies, and data-based analysis.

There will be Crucible rankings for players who complete Third Degree runs, and the most successful contenders can earn rewards for their performance. This is going to work on a seasonal model much like PvP, with the first ranking period beginning two weeks after patch 7.56 launches and lasting until patch 7.58 arrives. The prize for this first season? An extremely shiny, rainbow-colored crystal golem mount. Get practising!

The FF14 Beastmaster launches with patch 7.56 on Tuesday September 8. While we've had a big info dump today, Yoshi-P encourages everyone to take their time and enjoy the process of working through the story and levelling both the class and your beasts.