We’re about watch the kicking off of the e3 Live Lettter, and we’ll be liveposting it below! You can watch the stream here:

• The Live Letter commences!
• First thing, the new Heavensward Trailer plays
• They begin by discussing the expected congestion of early access.
• They’re planning to create field instances to reduce server strain.
• Like housing, this would create different versions of the same area. They haven’t said yet whether it is temporary or selectable.
• Coerthas Western Highlands, Sea of Clouds, and another of the Coerthas highlands is planned to be instanced.
• You can still send tells to people in other instances.
• You can choose which instance you want to enter when walking or using a mount.
• They understand it may be frustrating, but it will be done to reduce crashing and login timeouts.
• Only heavily populated worlds like Balmung will see this implemented; It’s not something they wanted to do, but they were worried about launch day numbers being too great.
• They have an “early access” graphic.
• Early access begins on Friday, June 19th, at 2 AM PDT/ 4 AM CST/ 5 AM EST etc.
• You must have an access code and register it on Mog Station in order to get into early access if you’re on PC, but if you’re on Playstation 3 or 4 and have pre-purchased then it is automatic. No need for a code!
• If you’re trying to get early access now you have to try and find a retailer that still has an early access code now for the PC version. It sounds like today you can’t purchase online and have early access for the PC version. The PS3/PS4 digital pre-order will work right up to the end of today for that.
• Players with early access will be able to reach the new Heavensward areas and experience new content, but those without will still be able to enjoy the 2.0 updates and fixes as well as see things like new gear on other players.
• Next is the company workshops.
• Yoshida is in the housing area. It looks like we can now get minion versions of the two colors of Carbuncle.
• Getting to the work shop is done through the door that says “Entrance to Private Chambers”
• The cost of creating a workshop, they say, is “probably less than one million gil”.
• They enter the workshop and show off the schematic board, where you create recipes
• The Flight Control Panel programs the airship for exploration voyages
• Actual crafting is done at the Fabrication Station
• Three types of items so far: Aetherial Wheels, Airships, and House Parts
• The orb will show a hologram of the finished item.
• One of the hull types is the Bronco. It appears to make the airship we’ve used previously to travel between nations.
• Hull, Rigging, Forecastle, and Aftcastle are the four necessary parts for an airship.
• Even from these, you create the parts in “phases”, with only part of it created at a time rather than the whole hull or rigging all at once.
• They say it doesn’t take much effort, and that you don’t have to level crafting too much to participate
• The construction requires materials, which are gathered and submitted by the company.
• Crafting a hull, for example, will require multiple crafters. It sounds like your Free Company has to actually have a party of 4 crafters in order to finish your current phase of development.
• Even players who weren’t involved in the crafting can see what is currently in progress in the hologram orb.
• They head to the Schematic Board to discover new recipes.
• The Bronco is the starting recipe, others have to be exchanged for essentially at the schematic board.
• Once you’ve turned in all the require materials, you get the actual recipe for the Fabrication Station.
• You can name your airships and send them out on exploration missions.
• You can have 4 airships in a single Free Company at the start of 3.0, regardless of your members or the size of your house.
• You start be selecting an area, and then from there you can decide where to launch your airship and where it will end up.
• You can set multiple destinations, but the more places you send it the longer it will take to return from its destination.
• The expeditions let you discover and retrieve rare items.
• The airships are manned by the Mammets, and the translator likens it to sending out a probe in space.
• In a later update, they hope to add the ability for players to go to islands already discovered and “probed”, so they can manually explore them and maybe meet other players from other companies that have also discovered that particular island.
• You can mix and match airship parts it would seem. You have to have the four pieces mentioned above, but you can change which parts you’re using in which slots.
• The ship parts you use will affect both graphics and the airship’s stats.
• You can sacrifice other stats to create high speed airships to find things quickly. Doing this causes your surveillance to suffer, meaning you’ll find less rare items and less of them.
• Focusing too much on one stat will make another suffer greatly, so you should look forward to using the four available slots to create airships for various situations.
• Some items will have amazing stats, but there is an “airframe capacity” that essentially prevents you from using all of these together.
• As your airship gains experience from voyages and goes up in rank, your airframe capacity will go up and you will be able to mix and match more powerful parts.
• Recapping the creation to expedition process.
• Apparently you discover new islands during voyages to islands you already know about.
• You can find schematics on islands to earn new recipes, in turn potentially upgrading your airship’s performance with new parts.
• The furthest sky islands from your start will take nearly a week to get there and then come back.
• Each voyage creates a flight log, letting players read about where their ship went and what they found at those locations.
• This information can be shared with others, to deepen the sense of community.
• You can distribute found items among your free company members, or one person could take them and sell them so everyone can get pure gil out of things.
• Sometimes there will be a lot of items, and sometimes there will be just one super-rare item that members can roll on.
• “Recruit a Friend Campaign” graphic shown
• Has expanded features, special rewards for both the inviter and invitee.
• The new campaign is “powered up” and starts on the 19th after maintenance ends.
• The inviter will get Golden Chocobo Feathers for each friend invited and for subscription time purchased by that friend.
• You can exchange them for special items such as 1 for a set of 5 of a rare dye. For 8 there is a two-person chocobo that is red. And for 15 there is a Twintania mount, a dragon creature from T5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut.
• Yoshida shows off the mount in-game. It is capable of flying.
• The Twintania can do a barrel roll in mid-air as a special action, similar to the Magitek armor’s canon.
• For your first friend invited you get 5 Gold Feathers and a Fist Bump emote. For every friend you invite thereafter up to 5, you get another 5 Gold Feathers.
• For subscription times, you get a Friendship Circlet for their first 30 days, plus now an Aetheryte Pendulum.
• At 90 days you get the draught chocobo whistle, for the yellow two person chocobo.
• At 150 days you get 5 Gold Feathers. At 210 you get another 5, and at 270 you get yet another 5.
• You would have to invite 3 friends for at least 30 days or have one friend buy 210 days worth of game time in order to get the Twintania mount.
• A little red text at the bottom says that previously recruited friends and their current subscription lengths WILL be counted toward the new rewards.
• This means many people who have already invited others will suddenly receive a massive amount of Gold Feathers
• The invitee now gets the friendship circlet, the fist bump emote, 99 Aethernet Tickets, and 10 Silver Chocobo Feathers for just their first 30 days.
• Silver Feathers can be exchanged for special gear “designed to make low-level adventuring easier”.
• Yoshida jokingly plans to recruit-a-friend his mother, and make her a Mother of Light
• The new loot system is up next.
• The Need/Greed/Pass system remains as an option.
• The new looting systems are only available to pre-made parties! Entering random dungeons will only allow for the Normal loot system to exist.
• Greed Only means nobody can select Need, only Greed or Pass.
• Loot Master is the party leader, and they can choose whether to give an item to a specific party member or allow the party to roll Greed (but not Need) on it.
• If you choose to let players roll Greed you can cancel this choice, but if you re-select then previously rolled numbers will remain the same.
• If loot is not distributed before the end of the dungeon, it is discarded completely.
• Another loot system is shown, for the Alexander (Normal) raid. This will be available around 2 weeks after launch.
• Treasure coffers in each area contain items that can be exchanged for gear.
• Alexander has different levels similar to the Coil’s turns. Once per week, you may obtain one item from each level.
• These items can be traded for gear of your choice regardless of Job.
• The type of item and how many you have decide what you can trade for. The text example is one of Item A can be exchanged for an accessory, whereas it will take four of Item B to get a single piece of body armor.
• You can replay the levels of Alexander as many times as you want right from the beginning, but you still will only be able to obtain one item a week.
• The specifics of what items you will need to trade for which gear will be released in patchnotes ahead of Alexander becoming available.
• They included Alexander in this Live Letter because there won’t be another before the Primal’s inclusion.
• Approximately a month after launch, there will be a Savage version of the raid. However, they plan to have another live letter by then so you can look forward to more information.
• A development map has been shown off.
• June 23rd is Heavensward Official Launch, followed by the 3.01 Patch that adds Alexander (Normal) about 2 weeks after. Around another two weeks after that they will introduce patch 3.05 which will add Alexander (Savage), Allagan Tomestomes of Esoterics, a new Frontline area, and Red Scrips for both crafting and gathering classes.
• Red Scrips are limited per week in the same fashion as the current Tomestones of Poetics.
• The Twintania mount is apparently trending heavily on the Japanese twitter
• The next Live Letter will be on July 10th of 2015. This will be the 23rd Letter From the Producer Live!
• Now they go on to discuss the special soundtrack for Before the Fall, available August 26th 2015. This marks the game’s second anniversary and contains tracks from patch 2.2 through 2.5!
• The soundtrack includes a code for the Primogs Minion, the cute little band of Moogles that floats through the Twelveswood playing harps and horns and such.
  The minion is actually all five at once, rather than 5 separate minions.
• They are bringing back the Welcome Back Campaign for returning players.
• Players who have not logged in between April 1st and June 7th 2015 will be eligible for an in-game item that can be exchanged iLevel 120 gear.
• It’s not a full set of i120 gear because that’s not fair to players who stayed, but it will allow them to get a good weapon or something like a set of body and leg armor to boost their defenses. Possibly both, but not more than this.
• The item can be exchanged for items lower level than this, i120 is simply the highest reward for those who may have hit 50 already.
• A new Veteran Reward has been introduced. The outfit of Firion, main character of Final Fantasy II. It is called the “Wild Rose Attire Set”. It can be obtained at 840 total days of subscription time.
• They are wrapping up, but have shown off Emerald and Topaz Carbuncle plushies that will be on sale soon. They have wires in the tails so they can be posed.
• They will first be sold at Japan Expo, which is July 2nd through the 5th.
• It will be on sale in the e-store starting in August for both North America and Europe. This is also how you get the in-game minions of the Carbuncles as seen earlier.
• Yoshida says he will be at Japan Expo. He jokes that he will be the one selling the Carbuncles to people.
• They’ve been hard at work the “whole Spring” to make sure there is enough content to fill a full RPG for this expansion.
• Yoshida says to think of it like the beginning of the second season of a tv show, even though the first episode of that season will be over 50 hours long. Players are free to do what they wish though, so it may take even longer!
• It’s time to say goodbye, and the livestream ends after a word to existing and potentially new players.