Final Fantasy XIV: what the 7.55 patch notes don't tell you about the phantom weapons — four hidden quests, 22 models per tier, and the item-level-1 replica trap

In the patch 7.55 notes for Final Fantasy XIV, the legendary weapons saga: the phantom weapons take up five lines in the sidequest table. Only one bears a name — "On the Borders of the Mirage". The other four are filled with "???": masked title, masked location, masked NPC, masked prerequisite. This is why no guide can announce the complete chain to you based on Square Enix.

The reminder of the mechanic fits in two lines, which we detailed on August 6: the starting quest is picked up from Lydirceil, at the ghost town (6.6, 7.1), after "Ultimate Phantom Power", and two upgrade stages lead to the final form, the second one letting you choose the attributes.

What follows is the other half of the subject: what the new items table contains that almost no one combs through, what the Eorzea database documents that the notes don't repeat, and what circulates without bearing the publisher's signature.

The saga has five quests, and Square Enix names only one of them

The sidequest table reads line by line. For the phantom weapons, it lists five:

• "On the Borders of the Mirage" — level 100, ghost town (6.6, 7.1), Lydirceil, after "Ultimate Phantom Power".
• "???" — level 100, location and NPC masked, after "On the Borders of the Mirage".
• "???" — level 100, after "???".
• "???" — level 100, after "???".
• "???" — level 100, after the sidequests "???" and "???".

Two takeaways emerge from this. The length of the chain is known: five quests, neither two nor ten. And the last line is the only one in the series to require two sidequests instead of one. Since both titles are masked, it's impossible to say whether this second prerequisite comes from the same chain or from exploring the island of Northern Lunule: that is precisely what a masking makes undecidable, and we won't decide in the publisher's place.

This can be compared with the official wording: "The new phantom weapon enhancement quests will require you to complete various tasks and go through two upgrade stages to reach their final form." Five quests for two upgrades: the bulk of the journey therefore lies in undocumented "various tasks".

The masking is not an oversight: 13 of the 17 quests in 7.55 are anonymous

One might suspect a layout oversight. The count says otherwise. The table has 17 lines, of which only 4 bear a title: "Return to the Crescent", "On the Borders of the Mirage", "Double Trouble, Double Omelette" and "Turali-Style". The other 13 are masked, and the sequence "???" appears 62 times on the page.

The rule then becomes obvious: Square Enix names the first quest of each chain, the one the player needs to get started, then masks everything that follows so as not to give away the story. The exploration of the island of Northern Lunule follows the same pattern, with eight lines of which only one is named.

Direct consequence: the names of quests two through five circulating on wikis are records from players who have finished the series. Presumably accurate, but not verifiable against any Square Enix source — a guide that presents them as official is mistaken about their origin.

22 models per tier — and 22 replicas at item level 1 not to be confused with them

Where the notes are, however, exhaustive is in the list of new items, which few guides bother to comb through. It names every single one of the final weapons, following a regular pattern: "[weapon type] phantasmal" followed by eclipticum or occultum.

There are 22 entries per tier — 21 weapons plus the paladin's shield — all at item level 100: "Phantasmal Sword eclipticum", "Phantasmal Blade occultum", "Phantasmal Bell Mallets eclipticum", "Phantasmal Tonfas occultum", and so on for every job.

The trap lies elsewhere. Alongside these 22 entries, each tier lists 22 more whose label begins with "Replica". These are item level 1 items: cosmetic pieces with no combat stats whatsoever.

Patch 7.55 also adds the replicas for the obscurum tier, including the "matte replica" variants. So in an exchange table such as the market board, read the first word of the label before the last: it is that word, not the suffix, that separates a level 795 weapon from a cosmetic item.

The five-tier scale is official, but it's not in the 7.55 patch notes

This is where caution is aimed at the wrong target. The penumbra, umbra, and obscurum tiers are indeed absent from the 7.55 patch notes as weapons: "penumbra" does not appear there once, and "obscurum" only in reference to the replicas. They date back to earlier patches in the 7.x cycle. That said, they are not player reconstructions: they can be found one by one in the Eorzea Database on the French Lodestone, along with their item level.

Fifty item level points separate the first tier from the last. Note the case: the Eorzea Database writes these suffixes in lowercase, attached to the weapon's name ("Phantasmal Sword penumbra"). This is the form you need to enter to find an item.

No, the relic's stats were never randomly assigned

A misconception took hold with the announcement of stat selection: the idea of a randomness that players would finally be freed from. There was never any random roll on this relic, nor any reroll function to look for in the client. In earlier tiers, the distribution of stats was predetermined, locked in on the weapon from the start — this is in fact the very criticism leveled at Square Enix at the obscurum stage, which broke away from the customization that had become standard since Stormblood.

What patch 7.55 restores, then, is not protection against randomness, but a freedom of allocation that had been removed. The nuance matters if you're reading English-language guides that talk about reroll: the term is off the mark, and you'd search in vain for the corresponding button. Square Enix, moreover, publishes neither the number of allocatable points nor the caps per attribute — a numerical breakdown presented as "optimal" does not come from the publisher.

What the guides add — and the "fantasmes" trap

Several widely repeated elements appear nowhere in the 7.55 section of the French Lodestone, where only Lydirceil and Dodokkuli are named: a whetstone bought for a hefty sum in gil, crafting components, "dissipators" to collect in dungeons and raids, or the possibility of redoing the attribute allocation later in exchange for a piece of ecliptite. These are player theories, not specifications.

What the patch notes actually say, in a two-line reminder: to arm a second job, you exchange mathematical Allagan memoquartz for pieces of ecliptite to bring to Dodokkuli, at the Ghost Town (6.7, 7.1); and the series remains subject to the "fixed class or job" rule, to be locked in before accepting the first quest.

There remains the vocabulary trap that costs French-speaking players the most time: the correct term is "armes fantômes" (ghost weapons). The form "armes fantasmes" circulates widely and even tops some search results, but it is incorrect. Both the French patch notes and the Eorzea Database use only "fantômes": that's the word to type, whether in your client or in a search engine.

The upcoming milestones: 7.56 on September 8, Evercold in January 2027

Patch 7.55 released in late July 2026 and closes out the bulk of the 7.5x cycle. Update 7.56 is expected on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, centered on the limited job Beastmaster: its patch notes have not been published, and nothing announced so far concerns the ghost weapons. The milestone that truly structures the schedule remains the Evercold expansion, in January 2027.

Until then, the only information you won't find anywhere except in-game is the names of the four quests that follow "On the Frontiers of the Mirage." Square Enix has deliberately chosen not to publish them: anything claiming to reveal them before 7.56 will be a player's account, and is best read as such.