Breaking Through The Dawntrail 7.2 Gear Wall

Well, I did it. I am now eligible to enter Final Fantasy XIV's patch 7.2 trial, Recollection. I reached item level (IL) 715 on Sunday night. Of course, reaching the minimum item level of Recollection did not initially help me run The Underkeep. After melding my newly dropped gear, I managed to defeat the first two bosses cleanly but took 25 minutes to kill Valia Pira.

While not finishing well, my 9th run of The Underkeep did result in the drop of three more pieces of the healer's Underkeep healers set, giving me 7 out of 10 gear pieces at IL 725. My weapon, however, was still IL 710. Still, I could try to push on and get a first week completion of Recollection. But for my greater goal of crafting the Ceremonial healing set, I kept grinding away.

A funny thing about crafting the best armor sets in patch 7.2. The biggest hurdle is acquiring the Allagan Tomestones of Heliometry required to purchase the rest of the goods I need. Yes, patch 7.2 introduced 5 new legendary nodes whose materials are also acquired, but after two hours or so I had more than enough, even though the nodes only spawn twice every game day. I already had purchased the required Tomes of Regional Folklore in patch 7.1 so no speedbumps encountered in that respect.

The preferred crafting food for high-end crafting apparently switched to ceviche. The big pain is fishing the main ingredient, cloudsail. Not really hard, but I found a YouTube video that really sped the process up. As in going from catching 17 my first hour to catching 34 in 30 minutes.

So off to The Underkeep I trudged on Monday night. And then, something clicked. For my first run of the night I defeated all three bosses without dying once. I do have to credit my newly acquired dropped gear for giving me just enough health points to keep from dying to the second boss. Include a newly acquired instinct to self-heal immediately upon taking unexpected damage and I survived. Perhaps more importantly, I completed the dungeon in under 30 minutes. The 30 minute mark is key because without free company buffs food effects only last 30 minutes.

Interestingly enough, I almost didn't make that first deathless run. I had for the first time in my time playing FFXIV hit the weekly tomestone cap. I had reached my 450 Allagan Tomestones of Mathematics cap for the week and the reset wasn't until Tuesday. But as I really don't plan on grinding out the IL 750 Historia set so the "lost" tomestones didn't bother me so I decided to just run the dungeon twice to get the drudgery out of the way.

For those trying to get through the dungeon at my skill level, here's how I managed it. For the first two bosses, follow around G'raha Tia. But I was playing white mage. I'm not sure what to do for tanks.

The final boss was difficult because I couldn't follow G'raha around. Instead I tried to stay in space as much as possible. Entering the arena I dive directly to my right to the corner. From there I was able to observe what to do for the first minute or so. The first real problem mechanic is when the boss spreads out pie slices. Don't try to find an uncovered spot. Just stand in a dark red slice. From that first corner I could basically run forward to find a spot.

Another problem I had was the bosses half-arena attack. I did key off G'raha, and later on Krile, to know which side of the arena to run to. But that was probably after 50 pulls and only a handful of successes.

This isn't a walk through of the dungeon. Maybe I'll do something later, but for now I'm concentrating on gearing up my max level jobs. After another setting a personal best of 28:30 in completing The Underkeep last night, I'm looking forward to getting the final 171 tomestones needed to let me begin crafting my Ceremonial gear. That is only 3 more runs of The Underkeep to go.

All of the cutting edge raiders had arranged to get their Ceremonial gear to begin running the new Savage on Tuesday. While I technically don't need to do the same to continue on with the MSQ, I figure I need all the help I can get. The main difference is while crafters are out working to gear up their friends and FC mates, I'm making the gear for myself.

Cloud Imperium Records Record Sales in March And The First Quarter Of 2025

Cloud Imperium finished off a record quarter yesterday by finishing the month of March with $10 million in cash shop sales for the first time in the company's 13 year history. The $10 million, according to the CCU Game dashboard, represented a year-over-year increase of 40.2% over the $7.3 million in sales recorded in March 2024. For the first three months of 2025, CIG finished with $25.5 million in sales, a 47.3% YoY increase over Q1 2024's $17.3 million.

First quarter 2025 cash shop sales

The $799.5 million displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of March was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $898.1 million in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2022 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $799.5 million (through 31 March 2025)
• Subscriptions: $33.0 million (through 31 December 2022)
• All other sources: $65.6 million (through 31 December 2022)

In addition, the company has received a total of $63.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2022 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $961.4 million, or $956.6 million when excluding the returned funds. An additional $5 million in shares sold in January 2025 are not included in the total.

The Funding Plateau - Over the last three years, Cloud Imperium has faced a sales plateau in the company's sales of virtual good like internet spaceships. Sales have fallen withing 3% of the average of $115.9 million between 2022-2024. I believe the shakeup of upper management that began in Q4 of 2024 is designed to break through and increase revenue for the company. So in addition to providing year-over-year metrics I will also comparing the sales figures from 2025 to the average sales for the years 2022-2024. I believe if sales continue to fall within the range of $112.4 million and $119.4 million the C-Suite at CIG, if not the board of directors, will not be happy.

In March the Marketing Masters In Manchester had a lot to smile about. Not only did sales rise 40.2% for the first quarter YoY, but increased over the previous 3-year average for the quarter by 31.4%. Sales really benefitted from both the continued effects of the release of Alpha 4.0.2 on 28 February and the final sales associated with the launch of Alpha 4.1 on 27 March.

March 2025 cash shop sales

Over the first seven days of March, the company recorded $1.6 million in sales, a $790,000 increase over sales in the first seven days of March 2024. Over the final five days of the month CIG received $4 million in sales, or an increase of $3.1 million over the same period in 2024. These two periods offset the disappointing performance of the annual Fortuna event which only brought in $3.4 million, a $1.4 million YoY drop from the event's sales in 2024.

New Account Creation - From 2022 to 2024 CIG saw the number of new accounts created each year fall by 44.5%. I'm assuming that part of the shakeup is aimed at improving that performance as well. So I came up with a simple predictive formula to estimate how big of a drop in new player account creation is expected based on historical trends. For the year, my formula comes up with a 19% drop in new user accounts created in 2025, which is twice as much as I predicted at the beginning of the year.

Q1 2025 new account creation

Overall in Q1, the number of new accounts created fell by 29% year-over-year, from 121,088 accounts in March 2024 down to 86,008 last month. I often get asked how sales revenue can increase to record heights while the game itself attracts less and less new people. The answer, as always, is any correlation between sales numbers and new account creation is purely coincidental. The marketing team is concentrating on sales to long term players with a proven track record of spending a lot of money (aka "whales").

March 2025 new account creation

However, for the first time since August 2024 CIG experienced a year-over-year growth in the number of accounts created in March. Account creation increased by 6.1% to 25,496 last month. While not a large amount compared to the over 40% cash shop revenue increase in March, the rise does represent the first uptick in the metric for the new leadership team.

Ongoing Concerns - March has come and gone and we do not have any indication if the Calders exercised their put option during the quarter. As the only remaining period to exercise the option is Q1 2028 the submission of Cloud Imperium's accounts to UK Companies House should provide a clue.

Speaking of UK Companies House, CIG had not submitted its financial accounts to the government body as of the writing of this post. From past experience a 7-10 day lag does exist before the paperwork will show up on the site. But as of today, the fine for late filing increases from £750 to £1500. If the accounts are not filed in April I'll begin to think something suspicious is occurring instead of just the regular Cloud Imperium shuffle.

We do know that the Cloud Imperium page is active on UK Companies House as back in February the company posted the required information, on a timely basis, on the allotment of $5 million in shares to as yet unnamed purchaser. The company probably will not reveal the buyer's identity until required by Companies House. The next deadline is in September.

Observers are still awaiting the traditional reveal of Cloud Imperium's 2023 financial report on CIG's corporate website. I believe, if not legally required in the UK, is traditionally seen as a bad sign by investors if one is not present. I'm still trying to track that piece of information down. Honestly, I didn't expect CIG to fall behind this late.

Finally, for a quarterly review, I cannot forget the shutdown of CIG's Los Angeles facility. In March 2024 Cloud Imperium CEO and co-founder Chris Roberts issued a "Letter from the Chairman" in which he announced game development work would cease in California but the office would remain a main administrative hub. Last month we learned differently.