Bad news, that adorable backpack that mysteriously appeared in Final Fantasy 14 players' inventories isn't meant to be there

Patch 7.5 for Final Fantasy 14 landed today, and with it a strange appearance in the inventories for some players: an adorable otter backpack that reminds me of those weird Loungefly bags that seem to permeate every pop culture store in the UK.

It wasn't mentioned in the patch notes, and stuff randomly appearing without due notice is very rare. It also wasn't immediately obvious exactly what was triggering it to show up for some but not for others—I didn't have it, but my friend did.

After some tinkering around and dropping 140,000 gil on a Black Embroidered Parasol (and a handful of other registrable accessories), I saw the backpack instantly pop into my fashion accessories tab as if by magic. My friend surmised it was probably an accidental item ID overlap, and I now have to regrettably tell him that he's pretty smart since Square Enix has now confirmed this to be the case.

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In a known issues post on the Lodestone, it goes into a little detail about what happened here. "Upon investigating this issue, we confirmed that during data configuration, the internal ID for the 'Senor Otter pack' was mistakenly set to the same internal ID as the 'Black Embroidered Parasol.' As a result, if you have already obtained the 'Black Embroidered Parasol,' you will also be able to use 'Senior Otter pack.'"

The post continues: "We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. However, we plan to correct the internal ID in an upcoming HOTFIX, so the feature will no longer be available at that time. We would appreciate it if the content could be reviewed again once the revised version has been officially published."

As for where the backpack is actually supposed to come from, that's less clear. Square Enix just calls it "a fashion accessory that is scheduled to be released as a content reward in the future." Could be treasure maps, could be an upcoming event. My money's on the annual Make it Rain event, personally.

Either way, prepare for a huge surge in the price of black parasols on the market board until a hotfix is out, I guess. Presumably the backpacks'll be taken away when the hotfix lands, so make the most of 'em.

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