Buff/Debuff = A common name in the MMORPG world to refer to status effects that are helpful (buff) or unhelpful (debuff), these are not specifically things that heal or do damage (which would be other types of spells) but more that they boost or undermine your character. Buffs are generally things like increased defence, increased speed, increased healing possibility and things like that. Debuffs are generally the reverse, so they make you more susceptible to damage, or lower your attack rate or your damage itself but sometimes it’s something like being feared so your character will run away without your input or being turned to stone where you can’t move at all. Buffs are awesome, debuffs suck, especially ones that the healer can’t dispel.

This time, when the sound of the call comes through, I immediately recognise it for what it is. I jump out of the game, connect the call and jump back into the game.

“Hey!” Fleur sounds really excited. “Guess what?”

“What?” I laugh as I side-step a monster that is trying to attack me.

“My mom said yes to me going to the movies with you.” She almost squeals and I don’t know if she realises that herself.

“Awesome. My mom said it was fine too, but she wants to pick me up after. She doesn’t want me to go back by bus or whatever.” I grumble.

“Well, that makes them even. My mom wants to see you before we go see the movie.”

I let out a short laugh. “Well, I guess it’s not that bad. At least they’re not insisting on coming with us.”

“No. But my mom did say that we weren’t allowed to go see an R-rated movie.” Fleur sounds like she never would have even considered that.

“We could pretend that we are...” I try my best not to burst out laughing.

“No!” She sounds so horrified that I can’t keep my laugh in anymore. She’s quiet for a moment and then lets out a slight growl. “You’re teasing me.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” I keep laughing because she sounded so horrified by the idea, like it would have been the worst offence in the world to her. “Sorry.”

“Meany.” I can hear the pout in her voice.

“Sorry. Better you know this now than later.” I take a few deep breaths, stopping the laughing, but I can’t help the smile when I imagine the way she’s looking right now.

“I can’t believe...” She lets out a deep sigh. “You’re mean.”

“No, I have a wicked sense of humour.” I think anyway.

“Same thing.”

“Awh. I’ll make it up to you. There is something in your in-game inbox. If you haven’t seen it yet.” Which she probably hasn’t because I didn’t see her come online in Elysium yet.

“What is it?” I get why she may be a little suspicious.

“You’ll see. It’s good.” It is. It’s an item we need for the quest line for the next raid.

“Fine. Give me a second.” I see her come online, and I wait as she hunts down a mailbox to get her item. “What?! How did you…”

“Found it.” Sort of.

“These are like... totally hard to get.”

“I had time. And I was waiting for a different item to drop anyway.” For the preparation quest for the new raid, we need to collect some crystals of different drop rates in the final three end-game dungeons, and somehow I got lucky getting two of the lowest drop rate crystals, so hardest to get, while trying to get one of the medium-difficulty drop rate.

“Have you finished the quest yet?”

“Nah. Still need that last one from the minotaur dungeon.” I shrug.

“Wanna do that one? I still need that one too, and since you got me the most difficult one, I only need one more after that.” She sighs. “Which should be right in time for release on Tuesday.”

“We can try.” I eye the guild voice chat. “You want to join in the main chat, we can probably get a couple of us together to run it.”

“Sure. Sounds good.”

“Okay, lemme get the details.” I start clicking around the chat program, trying to find how to add another person to it, since it’s been a while since I did that.

Well, now we can at least finish this quest together. It will be interesting to see how we, or if we, can actually do the new raid as a guild immediately when it comes out. We’re normally one of the first ones to finish it, but I know that Fleur isn’t that confident yet...

***

Finishing up the quest was quite easy, and while we were waiting for the update, we also ran a couple more dungeons and raids so that we could deck everyone in the guild out with the best gear possible. Between making sure we’re in top form to run the new raid, the only other thing you can control is having the best gear going in... And that is where we are right now, going into the new raid. Since it’s summer break, we were able to get a full raid group together in the early morning. This means that we don’t have to wait until the evening to start playing it.

This raid focuses on a story of going into the underworld and we’ll apparently be facing some chimeras and other half and mutated creatures. I think I saw Cerberus as our final boss.

“Wow! This room!” Troy is loud, but what else is new?

I look around, waiting for everyone to arrive. The starting area is bright, though, it won’t stay like that. Supposedly, we start in a field of some sort, and then we’ll move down underground as the raid progresses. The area keeping us locked in the beginning room dissolves and we all start running to the first room with actual mobs.

People slow down a little as we get closer, letting us tanks pull the mobs before they start attacking. The first group of mobs may be big, but they look a lot like the ones that we encountered in the dungeons we ran over the weekend. Of course, this being a raid... They’re a lot stronger and apparently now have a special cleave attack that makes me extra susceptible to more damage.

“Fleur? Can you take the debuff off?” I keep checking my health bar, which seems fine, but I don’t like the extra damage debuff in there.

“No. Doesn’t work.”

“Crap.” I sidestep the next cleave attack, now aware of when it happens, and luckily, by then, the monsters are down.

We rush to the next room, which is a boss battle. Good.

There doesn’t seem to be any special mechanics in the room itself, it’s just a simple room and the boss is waiting in the middle. It’s a huge creature, it reminds me a little of the minotaurs, but this one looks a lot more horrible.

We all pull up our buffs and then the healers also apply the group-wide buffs.

A yellow message appears on the screen: Who is the main tank?

I reply without thinking.

AlexTheDestroyer: I am.

“Alex!” There is a glimmer of fear in Fleur’s voice. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Just heal and stay out of any flashing areas.” I totally forgot about that, but I’m so used to being main tank. I start running, taunting the boss to attack me.

And, as the boss focuses on me, I see the others attack the boss. Everything seems to be going well until I see flashing areas and then hear the others in the chat curse loudly.

“What happened?” I check the screen and most of the raid is dead.

“Some area attack, but it was too quick to get out of,” Aaron answers.

“Should I resurrect them?” Fleur pipes up.

“No.” I check my own health and that of the few other people still alive. “We’re wiped in the next attack anyway.” And right as I say it, three other people also die, including Fleur and I wait out the last two attacks from the boss to finish me off.

Crap.

“What was that attack?” I wait for my character to resurrect and then run my way to the first boss again.

“Something big.” Cerise answers. “I saw it, but it had such a short cast time.”

“Okay. So, any areas where we can stand that are safe, apart from in front of the boss with me?” Which would be hard to time with a huge frontal cleave attack right before it.

“A small area to the side, but by the second round it was gone there too.” Fleur seems a little dispirited.

“We can work with that. Make your way to me when that attack is about to happen, maybe that helps.” I stretch my fingers. “Ready?”

“Sure.” I hear in the chat, but I already start running as soon as I see the buffs go up for everyone.

The second time is a little easier, but we get wiped again with the area attack, though this time more of us survived that first round.

I don’t particularly like dying constantly, but getting to know new content, being so involved in finding the mechanics of a new raid or dungeon is really exciting. This is the kind of stuff that I really really like.

It takes us seven tries in total before we’ve finished the first boss. Not our best, but definitely not our worst. Although... this was just the first boss, we’ve got another three or so coming up.

Awesome!

And that isn’t sarcasm.

***

It takes us all day, multiple instances, because the raid timer will run out, and that means you have to start over from the beginning. But on our final run, we finally got through all of the bosses. Mostly on luck, though. We had only two people still alive when the final boss went down, a tank from a different group, and Cerise.

It’s insane, which is why I love it so much. But at the end of a day like this... I’m exhausted and my fingers hurt like hell.

“Guys, I’m going offline for a bit. I think Mom’s got dinner nearly ready.” I log out of the game. “Later!” And then I also log out of the voice chat.

I stand up, but then crawl onto my bed. My brain hurts, too many things going on, too many flashy lights and too many things to keep track of. But it was a pretty cool raid. Even though I know it will take days before we fully understand most of the mechanics. So many of them are just... Moving around, staying out of areas, keeping track of area of effect attacks or adds and stuff like that... It’s not too complicated, it’s just time-consuming to figure out the order of everything and the timing between the different mechanics.

“Alex! Dinner!” Mom calls from downstairs and I groan as I sit up.

Right. Dinner. Food. That stuff that keeps us alive. I go downstairs and slump into my chair, Mom and Dad are already waiting there for me.

“Good raid?” Dad asks, eyeing me as he spoons some pasta onto his plate.

“Pretty cool.” I nod. “Tiring though.”

“Aren’t they always?” Mom laughs and I shrug. That’s true, they generally are. But I feel like this one is more complicated than the ones before this. Or that’s just my brain thinking that it is.

I finish dinner as quickly as I can before I give my dog Yukio his food and wait for him to finish it. “At least you don’t care if I talk about raids and mechanics. As long as I talk to you.” I look at him, watching him eat, watching his joy.

Then he comes back over to me, looking at me expectantly.

“Yeah, yeah. Just let me grab your leash.” I stand up, putting on my shoes and grabbing his leash. I put it on him and walk out the back of our garden, through the alley that runs past all the back fenses of the houses around us, before we’re on the street.

It’s still so light out, even though it’s past seven in the evening. I like it when it’s like this. This way I can walk wherever I want and today, I need a walk. Sitting in a chair for so long is not comfortable.

My phone buzzes and I take it out of my pocket. It’s a message from Fleur.

‘You coming back to raid later?’

I frown. I could... But I feel like doing something a little bit differently. ‘Walking the dog right now.’ I take a picture of the streets in front of me, the mostly empty streets. Then I also take a picture of Yukio, sending both to Fleur.

‘Ah! Cute dog!’ She sends me a whole load of heart emoticons and I laugh.

True, he’s cute, he’s always been really cute. ‘He needs a long walk.’

‘Cool. See you later, then.’

‘Later.’ I put the phone back in my pocket, walking on for a while before I take it out again. When I turn around the corner, I’m about to walk into open fields. Really nice and big open fields.