Sunday night is raid night!

Sunday nights are rapidly becoming a highlight of my gaming week. It’s the first time I’ve had a dedicated static raiding group to play an MMO with, and Final Fantasy XIV’s raids are one hell of a lot of fun if you’re with the right people — people who know their stuff, but who aren’t above having a bit of fun with the experience.

For those who are less up on the MMO lingo, a “raid” is differentiated from regular dungeons and other, more casual-friendly multiplayer content by virtue of its difficulty, which primarily comes from the need to be organised, communicate and take responsibility for the things you’re supposed to be responsible for. There’s little room to be “carried” in raids, particularly if you’re playing content that’s on the (relative) bleeding edge, though if you’re playing older stuff that people have since outgeared (and, in Final Fantasy XIV’s case, the raid itself has also been made easier over time, too) there’s a certain amount of margin for error.

Tonight our regular group tackled the final two Turns in the Second Coil of Bahamut, the second of three hardcore raids that are currently in Final Fantasy XIV. These raids are multi-part challenges that task eight players with working together coherently, and get consistently more challenging as you go through. The final Turn in each Coil is the most difficult by far, taking in very complicated mechanics and demanding that everyone is playing at absolute peak potential. A big stumbling block for a lot of players is Turn 5, the last Turn in the first Binding Coil of Bahamut, in which you take on the very angry dragon Twintania, but we successfully cleared that a while back without too much difficulty. The Second Coil of Bahamut is significantly more difficult throughout for the most part, but we’ve gradually worked our way through each Turn in… well, turn, and now we’ve arrived at the next big wall to scale: Turn 9 (also known as The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4).

Turn 9 is the most complicated fight I’ve attempted in Final Fantasy XIV to date. It’s an incredibly daunting prospect, but it’s a good example of what raiding is all about. It’s not a fight you can just jump into and hope for the best; it’s a fight where you need to know what you’re doing, what you’re responsible for and how to deal with the various situations the encounter presents you with.

Turn 9 is so complicated because, like most fights in the game, it unfolds over the course of several discrete “phases”, but unlike many other fights in the game, each phase is completely different from the previous and would be mechanically complex enough to be a single conventional encounter in its own right. Tonight, we spent nearly an hour attempting it, and we managed to just about get our heads around the first phase after a bit of practice and a lot of initial bewilderment. There’s a hell of a lot going on, and it’s initially very difficult to work out what you might be doing wrong when everyone suddenly dies at a moment’s notice. As you try again and again, though, you start to notice things; you start to recognise patterns in the boss’s attacks, you start to be able to predict what’s coming next and you figure out the best way for you to successfully handle your own responsibilities, until eventually you reach a stage where you can effectively run it on autopilot.

This is the way to handle Turn 9. Because it’s so long and daunting, it’s not an encounter you can just give people a simple explanation of and plough through without any difficulty. Rather, it takes time to learn each phase and to perfect the way your own unique group composition handles it. Getting things right is exciting and enjoyable, and successfully reaching a milestone in the fight — like the changeover between phases — is cause for celebration.

This evening, we successfully cleared the first phase, which involves everything from trying not to get meteors dropped on your head while ensuring that they are dropped in helpful positions for later to getting zapped with a rather unpleasant Thermionic Beam. Oh, and the main tank (which, for part of our run, was me) keeps exploding throughout the fight, too, which is nice for them. It’s tense, and a lot of pressure on everyone, but it’s a huge amount of fun to challenge with people you’ve come to know, enjoy the company of and trust.

I’m really looking forward to our next attempt, when we’ll hopefully be able to survive for more than ten seconds when a bunch of nasty golems appear and try to kill us!