After a poetic 14 hours, Final Fantasy 14 Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida congratulates World First on clearing Endwalker’s Pandaemonium raid.
Pandaemonium (Savage), Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker’s first endgame raid, went live this week, attracting hardcore raid teams from all over the world to take on the challenges. Final Fantasy 14’s World First cleared the expansion’s first raid tier a poetic 14 hours later.
Pandaemonium: Asphodelos sees players delve into an ancient prison-like facility, confronting warped defenses and wild monstrosities along the way, without giving anything away.
When these battles were added a few weeks ago, players had already cleared the story mode encounters for these battles, allowing raiders to focus on the differences in the Savage versions of the encounters added in FF14’s Patch 6.05.
Pandaemonium: Asphodelos was cleared in just over 14 hours by Thoughts Per Second, the raid team that had previously won World First for The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) and Eden’s Promise (Savage). Aether Group 3 came in second place, clearing the final circle in just under two hours, and Entropy came in third an hour later. After their clears were confirmed, Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida personally congratulated these teams.
The fastest raid tier clear in Final Fantasy 14 was 14 hours, just beating the fastest clear in the Shadowbringers raid Eden’s Gate (Savage), which was about an hour faster. The majority of Shadowbringers and Stormblood raids took between 20 and 40 hours to clear, whereas Heavensward and A Realm Reborn raids took days or even weeks. The original Binding Coil of Bahamut from A Realm Reborn took 65 days to clear, and 34 days to clear Alexander: Gordias (Savage) from Heavensward.
Those who aren’t competing for world first in any MMO enjoy watching those who are competing against their peers to defeat the bosses first. The race for Pandaemonium World First, dubbed “Panda Express” by some players, also provided an opportunity for some Twitch streamers to hold charity fundraisers for Extra Life, a tradition that the Final Fantasy 14 raid community has followed for several raid tiers.
Some players, on the other hand, are disappointed that a World First was already confirmed just one day after the raid was released. Many have accused Final Fantasy 14 of making endgame content too easy, claiming that no Savage raids have taken World First raiders longer than 48 hours since Heavensward. This is partly due to the fact that Final Fantasy 14 has since added even more difficult encounters known as Ultimates, which still take several days to complete. The fact that players have had years to perfect their skills and rotations, as well as the challenges posed by the value downscaling in Endwalker skewing numbers, all contribute to Pandaemonium: Asphodelos being cleared quickly (Savage).
