The first of Dawntrail’s Savage raids launched on July 30 with the advent of Patch 7.05, and players across the world dove into Final Fantasy XIV to take on what were sure to be some of the hardest fights yet. Some elite teams took things one step further, joining the World First Race.

The race was over in a remarkably short 10 hours (roughly), with the Japan based team GRIND coming out on top, defeating Wicked Thunder in M4 first. According to their FFlogs upload, the team achieved the feat in just 17 pulls of the boss. Sadly, GRIND was not streaming their efforts, so results were unclear in the moments after the first clears started to happen.

While Square Enix does not officially preside over any World Race competitions, the community diligently watches and tracks Savage, Ultimate, and even Criterion. MogTalk hosts most of that historical data, and if Dawntrail's player-managed races are accurate, The Arcadion's AAC Light-heavyweight M1-M4 made for the fastest world race clears yet.

In what is as close to a photo finish as we’re ever likely to get in an FFXIV World First Race, Frosty from MogTalk examined the participants' footage and had to resort to Eorzean Time to determine the victors. 

For those who aren’t aware, each minute in Eorzean Time is equivalent to roughly 2 seconds of real time, so GRIND managed to beat Serenity by a mere 14 seconds.

Serenity came in second, taking down Wicked Thunder in 22 pulls. Lucrezia came in third, but were the first team to take down Wicked Thunder on Stream. Echo (Formerly known as Neverland) completed Dawntrail's first Savage tier in fourth, missing out on third place by just 16 seconds. 

For those wondering, Team Variety Pack (including Mountain Dew Gaming’s in-game mascot Big Sippin’) was trailing behind at this point, still trying to work their way through Honey B. Lovely in M2 when the Race was over. According to MogTalk, they finished 74th in the race overall. Still an impressive feat to those of us just dipping a toe in through the week.

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