Square Enix just dropped patch 7.5 for Final Fantasy XIV Online, and instead of the community talking about the new trial or the upcoming Evercold expansion reveal, everyone is losing their minds over a very round dungeon boss named Chort.
Meet Chort, the accidental icon of patch 7.5
The new dungeon, The Clyteum, is a solid post-Dawntrail addition with a proper final boss fight. But it's the second boss, Chort, who has completely taken over the conversation. He is large. He is round. He is, by all accounts, the most meme-able creature Square Enix has put into the game in recent memory, and that is saying something for an MMO that gave us Fat Cat.
Parties are reportedly stopping dead in their tracks the moment Chort appears on screen. A Reddit thread from the r/ffxiv community captured one group's collective reaction on release day, with the tank confirming they all froze the moment they laid eyes on him. The post spread fast, and the replies turned into a full-blown demand campaign.
The community response went from laughs to formal requests
"We're gonna need a Chort minion, immediately," wrote one player, and the sentiment spread like wildfire. Multiple threads followed, with players expressing genuine devastation that Chort doesn't already drop as a minion from The Clyteum. Someone else announced plans to have Chort carry them as a mount. Another player, apparently throwing all pretense aside, declared they were "literally in love with Chort."
Here's the thing: this kind of community response doesn't happen for every boss. Chort clearly hit a specific frequency that FFXIV players respond to, somewhere between "he could absolutely crush me" and "I need him in my pocket."
Chort is the second boss in The Clyteum, the new dungeon added in patch 7.5. No minion or mount of the character currently exists in the game.
The fan art started appearing in reply threads almost immediately, with players sketching tiny versions of Chort and posting them alongside increasingly earnest pleas for Square Enix to make a miniature version happen.
Square Enix acknowledged the chaos with one word
The official Final Fantasy XIV English Twitter account posted a single word on May 5: "Chort." That's it. No context, no announcement, just the name of the round boy himself.
The official Discord and Xbox accounts both joined in, responding with their own variations on the name. The community collectively lost it. The key here is that Square Enix didn't promise anything, but they clearly know exactly what they're doing by engaging with the bit. Whether that translates into an actual minion is a separate question, but the acknowledgment alone was enough to send the community into a spiral of renewed hope and fan art.
What this means for the community going into 8.0
The Chort moment is genuinely good timing for FFXIV. The game is riding momentum from the Evercold expansion announcement, and having an organic community obsession like this keeps energy high during the wait for 8.0. It also follows the recent Senor Otter Pack incident, where players were briefly given a cute otter backpack by mistake before it was removed, leaving a Chort-shaped hole in the community's collective heart.
What most players miss is how much these silly, unplanned moments of community bonding matter for a live-service MMO. A single round boss generating this much genuine enthusiasm is the kind of thing money can't manufacture.
For everything else arriving in the current patch cycle, the FFXIV Patch 7.4 Into the Mist content guide covers the dungeons, raids, and job changes that led up to this moment. And if you want to prepare your character for when Chort eventually (hopefully) becomes a collectible, brushing up on the FFXIV glamour system after the patch 7.4 overhaul is a solid place to start, because you'll want to look good standing next to your tiny round companion.
