The Misadventures of Cas

Once upon a time, I was sitting around being lazy at our beautiful FC house, that for once was  NOT dyed bright pink, when i caught wind of a distress signal over the Novice Network. Immediately my mentor radar went off as i listened in on the desperate request for help.

“Hello? I’m lost and can't get to the quest marker. I don’t know how to get to the map.”

I knew what needed to be done. I quickly threw my chatmode into the Novice Net and began typing furiously. 

“Hey there, which quest is it and where are you?” Flawless, I though to myself. Just another day on the job. 

“Gridania.”

Bingo, easy. 

After informing the sprout that I was on my way to help her, I ported to Gridania and soon found her frantic, greatly confused green leaf running around the aetheryte plaza at the speed of sound. I managed to calm her down and again enquired about the quest. Unable to tell me, I hesitated for a moment before asking where she needed to go.

“Out”, she said.

...out? Out where?

Out of town.

I was genuinely confused at this point. Out of town? Surely she didn't mean she needed help exiting Gridania proper. However, with no other leads to go on, I felt the need to rule out the possibility.

Sure enough, the poor sprout, no more than 3 levels old, was completely lost within the aetheryte plaza as if an invisible wall held them there; keeping her from walking right down the road and out the main gate to the shroud.  In utter disbelief, I invited the sprout to a party and led them out of Gridania, feeling the need to see this through to the end personally; half out of concern, but really out of curiosity. 

As we passed the threshold and entered into the shroud, my young, green companion became overcome with excitement. 

“We did it, there’s the quest marker! I have to kill those monsters!”

Now, I had ninja equipped at this point in time. Some of you may not understand why this is important to mention, but some of you probably have, based off of my story this far. 

This girl runs up to an enemy and hits it. It pulls its little friends with it. As they are wont to do. My new friend, though a conjurer, was so caught off guard and unfamiliar in this first ever fight that she forgot to heal herself. Completely. My mentor instincts kicked in and I ran in; killing the low level mobs and ensuring that I wouldn’t have a dead sprout on my hands. 

Now I quickly realized that I couldn’t leave this sprout on their own. They are completely foreign to this kind of system it would seem, and if an aoe didn’t kill her, a level 17 treant would. So, I switched to my black mage, which, at the time, was able to cast physick, and, if I may say so myself, looked quite dashing in a set of dreadwyrm casting gear. My new friend was again overtaken my complete bewilderment and excitement at this bizarre sorcery I had just pulled off. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO, HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?”

...D-do what now? What did I-...

Then it dawned on me.

“...You mean this...?” I switched over to white mage.

“HOLY CRAP YOU DID IT AGAIN! WHAT ARE ALL THESE COOL OUTFITS!?”

After reconfirming that my tastes in fashion were indeed “cool”, I confidently began explaining how one may level every class up on one character, if they so choose. (While of course demonstrating by changing to all the glamours I was most proud of...and still am. No regrets.)

By this point, this new player must have thought me some ancient sage from the beta testing stages of the game that had miraculously survived the calamity for the sole purpose of passing on my ageless knowledge and wisdom to her at this exact moment in time...When in actuality I’m a lazy, slightly fashionable mentor that spends all my time laying around reading on FC benches while my poor members attempt to constantly goad me into doing some kind of work that even remotely resembles my duties as an FC leader. 

What happened after that really doesn’t matter that much, I followed her around for about an hour killing low level mobs, keeping her alive...I was almost killed by a Roegadyn. But hey, what matters is that everyone lived to see another day, and all’s well that ends well!

The sprout (and...somehow the Roegadyn...) ended up joining our merry band of casuals and we all lived happily ever after!

So a few months ago I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to take a bunch of my FC members down into the Coils of Bahamut. About 5-6 of them. As the only one who knew the fights. What could go wrong, right? T1-T4 went rather smoothly, as one might expect from 6-7 lvl 53-60 players in an unsynced raid. Then came T5. 

“Ok guys, this fight was tough back in the day, I don’t know what’s going to happen here. If we wipe a few times, don't get discouraged.”

My team was rather disheartened at my comment, but we charged in regardless and killed Twintania with no trouble whatsoever. It was a great time. Things continued to go exceedingly well until T9. 

Now most of you probably already know where this is going. For those of you who don’t, T9 is a notorious fight, at least in the circles i’ve been in, for being extremely difficult; hailing from a time when insta-kill mechanics were still a thing. I took my team in and again gave my speech. “This will be tough. We will die. Let me try to explain this fight as well as possible.”

Hyped up on hubris for having beaten Twin with such ease, one of my beloved dps rushed the boss and before i knew it, 7 people lay dead within 10 seconds. I was actually rather impressed at how quickly we died. Regardless we started again and all were quite willing to listen to the mechanics of the fight.  After struggling for quite some time in phase 1, also lovingly known as the meteor phase, we saw phase 2...At which point we immediately died and struggled on phase 1 again for another hour. Eventually we got to phase 2 again and managed to survive to see the fire and ice debuffs. 

“Everyone stack!” I yelled. 

They did.

Without me.

With the only tank dead, the party quickly scattered and was picked off one by one. There was utter silence when we spawned back in. “So,” I said. “...Everyone stack, what was missing?” We all laughed as the group explained how they thought that ‘everyone stack’ meant everyone *except* the tank. (we love tanks, really). 

After trying to calm them down as they ran about screaming like headless chickens during dive-bombs and struggling with fire and ice a  few more times, we finally beat Nael with just a few members left standing. I wish we could say there were great tears of joy, but to be honest, most were too tired to show any form of emotion. 

All in all though, I think it was a good experience for everyone. They learned many valuable lessons that day. 

1. “Everyone stack” includes the tank

2. Pretty circle around the arena means death

3. Meteors kill