FFXIV update — The Keeper of the Lake

Apologies, another gaming related post coming up. The pic below is of my character, Meeka, and the new minion she just earned from completing the Keeper of the Lake.

To bring my non-gamer friends up to date, Square-Enix, the Japanese developer of FFXIV brought out an expansion in July I think. This expansion was mooted to be as big and fantastic as a whole new game. Hence the buzz.

I didn’t buy the expansion, however, because to actually play it, you have to finish all the old content first. This content is attached to the storyline, and FFXIV is heavy on storyline so there’s a lot of it.Up to this point I would not be complaining. Unfortunately, the dungeons and trials I hate so much are a part of the storyline, and you can’t do one without the other.:(

Yesterday, I tried to do the next dungeon in the storyline [the Keeper of the Lake] and came very close to quitting the game altogether. The reason? A group of players I would not like to meet in real life. I don’t want to make this a self-justification rant, but I was not the reason the melee dps and the healer died at the first boss [Einhander], leaving just me and the tank alive. [In dungeons, once the healer dies, the tank usually dies soon after, and vice versa].

Now, in this situation, the thing I did right was to use my weak, Summoner healing spells to keep the tank alive. The thing I did wrong was to forget about my ‘Resurrection’ spell.

As its name suggestions, Resurrection allows a Summoner to revive a dead player during a battle. Unfortunately, Resurrection takes over 6…six…seconds to cast, and you cannot move during that time or the spell will be interrupted — i.e. the player stays dead.

While this is all happening, however, the boss is not being polite and waiting while you cast your six second spell. No, it is spamming AOEs [area of effect spells] all over the place, so the player who stands still for even 1 second is essentially dead.

I knew this, and thought the fight was hopeless, but I was wrong. There is a way to get around the long cast time of Resurrection — by using it in conjunction with another spell called ‘Swiftcast’. Essentially, what Swiftcast does is it turns the first spell that follows it into an instant cast. So in theory, Swiftcast + Resurrection should go from taking 6 seconds to taking 0 seconds.

In theory, again, when the dead dps said ‘smn rais hlr’ [translation: summoner raise healer] he was right — I should have whipped out Swiftcast and followed it by Resurrection to revive the dead healer. But I didn’t have Swiftcast, did I?

Without going into too much detail, Swiftcast is a spell that you get as another class. The class is called Thaumaturge, and they get the spell at level 26. Now what you need to understand is that in FFXIV you can play as every single class in the game, and you can use some of the skills you gain in what’s called ‘cross class skills’.

But. You guessed it, my Thaumaturge was only level 20 [because I don’t enjoy playing it].

So in that sense, the dps player was within his rights to demand that I use Resurrection. Instead, we wiped and that should have been that. In the past, when a group wipes [everybody dies] they try to learn from their mistakes and go back in. In this group, however, they kicked me from the dungeon and the group.

Under normal circumstances, I’d feel as guilty as hell about that, sure that my age blah blah makes me a terrible player. But in this instance I just got mad. Very, very mad. You see the mechanics of Keeper of the Lake [the dungeon] are all about movement, and dodging. If there is a theme, KotL [Keeper of the Lake] is a movement test of all party members. Thus the melee dps and the healer died because they were either not aware of, or unable to master the dungeon’s mechanic. My lack of a quick Resurrection spell may have exacerbated the problem, but it did not cause the problem itself.

Hence my anger. Nasty, mean-spirited and unfair were some of the cleaner things I called the group as I stood there, unable to believe they would blame the whole mess on me. I can understand the temptation to do so, but it was neither just, nor in keeping with the courteous spirit of the game. And for once, anger stopped me from running away.

I spent all of yesterday getting my unloved Thaumaturge to level 26. Then I spent hours more trying to create a macro that would allow me to revive someone faster. [Macros are like tiny command driven in-game apps that automate actions and skills].

I wish I could say my Resurrection macro worked this morning when I retried the KotL [with a much nicer group!], but it didn’t. This is what the macro looks like:

/micon “Resurrection”
/ac “Swiftcast” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Resurrection” <t>
/p Raising! <se.11>

/micon “Resurrection” — simply creates an icon for the macro so you know which one does what. [worked]

/ac “Swiftcast” <me> <wait.3> — is made up of a number of commands:

/ac ‘ means the command is about an action. It can also be written as ‘ /action ‘

“Swiftcast” — is the name of the action to be used [worked]

<me> — says that my casting is to become instant

<wait.3> — is supposed to give the connection time to process the command before going on to the next one. Remember we are talking about the command going from my computer, via the internet [slow in Australia] to the Japanese servers and back again. On good days there is no appreciable lag and everything feels ‘instant’, but in dungeons and other areas of peak action, the lag can be noticeable. [I think this failed]

/ac “Resurrection” <t> — this is the prime command and tells the game to revive the player currently targeted — <t> — by me. [did not work]

/p Raising! <se.11> — this is basically just a message to the group members that I’m going to be raising someone. The <se.11> is supposed to play a sound to get everyone’s attention. [did not work]

Each line of commands should work, but something in the mix failed because when I used the macro in the dungeon this morning [to revive the healer would you believe 0.o], Swiftcast worked but nothing else did. I managed to cast Resurrect manually before the 10 second Swiftcast interval ended, but I died just as the healer revived. If anyone can fix this macro I will be eternally grateful.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting, and lead me to writing this post — we were at the last boss [of 3] and the AOEs were insane. Picture a main boss who keeps spamming AOEs that cover great big chunks of the available floor space. Get caught in this maelstrom of criss-crossing damage and you don’t last long. Now add to that a second, boss-strength creature that is also spamming AOE’s and the fight becomes horrendous.

We did not have time to think, literally dancing from one small safe area to the next while desperately trying to do some damage. But as both the Black Mage and I were magic casters, it meant we’d get half way through and 2.45 second cast and bang, we’d have to jump out of the way again. Our spells kept being interrupted and we were all getting tired just from from the visual overload of trying to make sense of the constantly changing action.

Inevitably, concentration slipped. The Black Mage died and suddenly the healer was dead as well, leaving just me and the tank. Again.

I won’t lie, I was terrified. The debacle of the first attempt ran through my mind as I hit the macro to revive the healer. And…nothing happened. What????

I wasted a second or so thinking the delay was normal before it hit me that the macro had failed. Swiftcast was on but nothing else had worked.

My brain went into neutral. I knew there was an icon for the manual Resurrection spell on my hotbar but do you think I could see it? Talk about flustered, or perhaps that was just sheer fear. I did find the icon eventually, and there was enough time left on the Swiftcast to manually hit Resurrection, but I was caught in an AOE and died just as the healer revived. It was the most freaky timing I have ever seen.

After that, all I could do was lie there, watching as the healer [who is a very experienced player] and the tank did the impossible and beat the boss. Just the two of them.

It was wonderful, and I can honestly say I loved every member of my group the second time around. And you know what? Out of that 4 man group, only the healer had ever done KotL before, but the healer made sure everyone knew what to expect and we pulled together and got through. As a team.

That is how massively multiplayer games should be played — with courtesy and kindness and camaraderie. Because everyone has to learn the hard way, by making mistakes. I studied that dungeon for hours, but seeing it on a video clip is nothing like doing it yourself. That experience you can’t get second hand.

So to G***t Knight — you were right, I should have raised the healer. And thank you for pushing me to learn a skill I should have had sooner. But about everything else, you were so wrong.

And in celebration a few more screenshot of me, my house in-game and my cute little minion.

-hugs-

Meeks