Effects
The Effects tab is a set of simple on/off switches for Chromatics' animated effects. Click any tile to toggle it - there's nothing else to configure here.
Some effects paint across the entire device (the base layer), some interrupt your lighting with a brief flash (the effect layer). See Mappings and Layer Types if that's new to you.
Every effect on this tab can be silenced per device from the Mappings tab. Toggle the Effect Layer enable switch on a device and that device stops playing all of these effects, while still running its base and dynamic layers. See Effect layer on the Mappings page for the full list of what the toggle covers.
Available effects
Startup Animation
A rainbow gradient that plays across your devices while Chromatics is starting up and hasn't connected to the game yet. Affects: the whole device.
Title Screen
A gentle animation while you're on the FFXIV title screen or character selection screen. Affects: Effect layer.
Duty Finder Bell
Flashes your devices when a Duty Finder queue pops and is ready to accept. Affects: Effect layer.
Damage Flash
A brief flash when your character takes damage. By default the strength of the flash scales with the size of the hit. Affects: Effect layer.
Reactive Weather
Plays animated weather effects that match the current zone - gentle rain, rolling thunder, sandstorms, and so on. Works together with the Reactive Weather base layer on the Mappings tab. Affects: Base layer.
Cutscenes
A subtle animation while in-game cutscenes are playing. Affects: Effect layer.
Vegas Mode
Cycles your devices through colourful animations while you're in the Gold Saucer. Affects: Base layer.
Raid Effects
Choreographed animations that take over your lighting during supported raid encounters. Uses zone-entry, phase-change, and music-driven transitions to stay in sync with the fight. Affects: Base layer.
About Raid Effects
When Raid Effects is on and you enter a supported encounter, Chromatics temporarily replaces your base layer with a scripted animation for that encounter. Effects include arena pulses, ripples, colour washes, and rhythmic beat-synced patterns.
Supported encounters include the Dawntrail Arcadion raid series (M1–M12 & Savage), Dawntrail Trials, and some secret ones. Chromatics also reacts to music changes mid-fight - when a phase transition cuts the music, the lighting blacks out briefly to match.
If you're in an unsupported encounter, your normal base layer plays as usual, so you lose nothing by leaving Raid Effects on.
You can customise raid colours in the Palette tab under the Raid Zone Effects category.
Advanced effect settings
Some fine-grained effect options aren't exposed in the UI and can only be changed by editing effects.chromatics4 in %AppData%\Chromatics\. Most users should never need to touch these, but they're documented here for completeness.
effect_damageflash_scaledamage
Scale the Damage Flash opacity with the size of the hit. Default true.
effect_damageflash_min_flash
Minimum Damage Flash opacity when scaling is enabled. Default 0.1 (range 0.1–1.0).
weather_*_animation
Enable or disable the animated form of each weather type individually. There is one toggle per weather type (rain, showers, wind, gales, thunder, snow, blizzard, sandstorms, umbral wind, umbral static, umbral light, umbral storms, Mare Lamentorum and Ultima Thule variants, etc.). All default to true. Setting one to false falls back to the static colour for that weather type.
Always close Chromatics before editing effects.chromatics4 by hand, or Chromatics will overwrite your changes the next time it saves.
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