The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Kieran

Time hurtled by. Clan Nettle Tea had settled into a regular schedule that had suited them and they had really made great use of the time that they were given. Each and every week, they had spent the time each night getting everyone prepared for the coming of the raid.

By the time November had rolled around, nearly everyone in the group had fully outfitted every [Path] they had any interest in playing. And some that they didn't but deemed potentially useful.

There was an announcement on November 12th that the update containing the raid - among other things - would be released on December 3rd. They had missed the one year anniversary date, but that was alright. Yes, the players had broadly been psyching themselves up for the raids in November, but a delay was alright.

Kieran did feel sorry for workers who had taken PTO well in advance, though. Planning a vacation around a new game or content months in advance like that was always a little risky, and it was very upsetting when it didn't work out like that.

As for Clan Nettle Tea, this delay actually worked out very much in their favor. While Evan was swearing up and down that he would be available in time, things were getting dicey. He kept pushing out his return date, only occasionally popping into the server to say hello to the new friends and introduce himself.

Admittedly, that was still better than nothing, Kieran figured. Thankfully, even though Evan hadn't been able to make basically any of the regularly scheduled meet-ups, he wasn't being a slouch.

Evan was regularly playing the game, just at incredibly random and unreliable times. Kieran had at one point made a trip to the bathroom at 3 a.m. with his phone, and saw Evan listed as playing on their chatting app. And Evan himself had said more than once he was playing whenever he found time to keep his skills up.

It just so happened that most of those play times seemed to be in the middle of night. Probably when Evan couldn't sleep and had baby duty.

Which was fair; Kieran had done the same thing. Get woken up by a crying child, rock them back to sleep over a too-long period of being awake, only to eventually return to bed wide awake at 4 in the morning. Eventually, Kieran too had learned to just give up and stay awake.

Natalie had loved those nights, because she was able to sleep close to her full eight hours if Kieran was on top of any crying. And Kieran didn't particularly mind them either, as long as he didn't need to be up early the next day.

It was particularly great with Kaitlyn. Nat had been due with her in early January, so Kieran had opted to take a sabbatical that semester. It had actually worked out very well, as he had basically been home for basically the first eight months of Kat's life.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

But while Evan wasn't necessarily showing up to raid nights, he was still plenty communicative. He was active in the text channel they all shared, posting jokes and memes regularly - at least when he was awake.

And his prep work in what little time he did play was nothing to sneeze at. He had leveled all of his [Defenders], and had fully geared at least one [Dedication] of each. He was arguably better prepared than Jazz, who hadn't missed a single raid night.

The raid party was able to see his progress through various means; the game's official app allowed you to see information about characters on your [Friend List], including [Path] levels and currently equipped gear. Kieran was pretty sure that it was the clear show of his progress and preparation that had completely curtailed any sort of complaints anyone had about him not showing up.

He may have been absent, but no one doubted his drive.

And then, finally, on November 28th - the last planned raid night before the raids were released - he was able to make it.

"You make us wait for months, and then still have the audacity to show up late?" Ash joked when Evan finally joined the chat. Fashionably ten minutes late.

"Sorry, sorry." He said, genuinely sounding apologetic. "Eli needed a diaper change right before it was go time, and I promised Sam I would cover everything up until it was time."

"Exactly how long does it take you to change a diaper, Fiona?" Kieran asked, still using in-game names with the new friends around. "It should be like five minutes max. And your wife never struck me as someone who would make you change a diaper at 6:59 with a 7:00 appointment looming."

Evan cleared his throat awkwardly. "Caoimhe. Maybe you don't know since you had all girls. But boys have a very dangerous weapon attached to them during a diaper change. And Eli decided that he felt like painting the wall today. And my face."

The laughter in the chat was immediate. Even before he had finished what he was saying, everyone had started laughing, knowing exactly where the story was headed. Everyone had heard of the ways baby boy diaper changes could go wrong.

Kieran fought to control his laughter to shoot back, "Trust me, girls can shoot just as far, though it's probably less often."

"Fair enough." Evan said. "Either way, yes, I had to stop to clean up the wall and wash my face. I wasn't about to make Sam do that."

"That's fair." Marissa said.

"We've not talked much, but you do sound like a good guy, Fiona." Nyx said.

"I can appreciate that." Evie followed. "And you aren't all that late."

"And we don't actually have any real plans for tonight." Firo said. "Everyone is actually fully prepared for the launch next week. Or at least as ready as we're going to get, anyway."

"Yeah. Sorry." Jazz said, a little awkwardly. She had kept putting others before herself when it came to their gearing spree, so she had only fully prepped [War], [Ravager], and one of her two [Fencer] [Dedications]. Though she never seemed that interested in playing [Blade], the one remaining [Fencer] [Dedication] she hadn't geared.

"Nah, it's fine." Marissa said. "Between you and Fiona, we should have every potential Path combo covered, anyway."

"Mhm." Evan said, sounding more chipper than Kieran had really expected him to be. "I've got everything except War ready to go. Just like I'm sure you're planning on leaving Plate entirely to me, Aleister."

"Yeah." She replied, still sounding a little down. "Are you still maining Aegis?"

"Of course." He replied. Evan had been a hard lock on [Aegis] as his main since he saw their playstyle. [Plates] were exactly as their name implied - the singular heavy tank variant. The others all wore heavier armors, but only [Plates] got to actually wear [Plate] class armor.

[Plate] was then broken into [Aegis] and [Tower]. [Towers] wielded large two-handed weapons similarly to [Slayers], relying on their armor to shrug off blows, occasionally parrying with their massive weapons. [Aegis], however, were a fairly standard one-handed weapon and shield type.

Except, their actual playstyle was so offensive-focused, that the Mag Mell community had joked about them being a pseudo-DPS despite their absolutely insane defensive staying power.

[Aegis] was also among the highest skill-cap [Dedications] in the game. While they could theoretically do a high amount of damage, it required a highly skilled player as a huge chunk of their damage was locked behind various counter-attack skills. The player needed to read the enemy attacks and correctly time blocking attacks to then retaliate with their high damaging skills.

Poorly timed blocks still reduced damage, which meant that even less skilled players could successfully tank as an [Aegis], which was good. But the difference in performance between a good and mediocre one was immediately apparent.

And that sort of counter-focused play had grabbed Evan by the neck from day one and never let him go. And, to be fair to the guy, he was good at it.

"Honestly, I really like our standard party comp." Firo said. "Aegis and Ebon play off of each other extremely well. Aegis is probably the best main tank, while Ebon can make use of its off-tank freedom very well with curses and hexes."

"Muse and Soul are basically poised with the same dichotomy." Ash said, picking up the thread. "Muse has a lot of buff and debuff potential, while Soul is the best healer when it comes to just raw point-and-click healing."

"And then the DPS," Marissa said, "are split 50/50 between melee and ranged, with all of the main options covered. We have a heavy damage melee, a support melee, a high damage ranged magic user, and me."

"Plus basically everyone is willing to flex." Kieran added. "So, really, we should never lack for anything."

"We've got this in the bag." Evan said, chuckling.

"You think so?" Evie asked, sounding very unsure. "Not saying we don't, but we have no idea what to expect out of Mag Mell's raids. They haven't said anything at all about what to expect."

"Evie's not wrong." Ash agreed. "While I don't think we're too far off base expecting a fairly normal raid experience, Mag Mell has had some weird stuff included everywhere else. Maybe we should be expecting some crazy stuff involved?"

Kieran considered that quietly for a moment; as did everyone else, judging by the silence.

"I think there's a very good chance that there's some unusual stuff involved." Kieran said, eventually. "More interestingly, perhaps, is the way that DanuSoft has been sorta…sneakily building their way up to this."

"What do you mean, exactly?" Jazz asked.

"Think about it." Kieran began, trying to pull things together from his own recollections. "The main story quests for the base game have effectively gone nowhere. They were all leading up to an invasion led by the Fomorians, but there's been no pay off for that. In fact, all of the story that has taken place in the patches since launch have continued to build that up, with most of the story content focused on reinforcing Tír na nÓg from enemy invasion."

"And they've been evasive on what the update with the raid is actually going to entail." Evan said thoughtfully.

"You think the raid is going to be full-on story content featuring the invasion?" Marissa asked.

"I'm starting to." Kieran said. "It makes sense. And, while I'm not 100% on all of my game lore, I know enough to confidently say they don't currently have any other loose story threads."

"They could make up a totally new storyline." Nyx said. "It wouldn't be the first time a game's done that."

"True, but I think Caoimhe might be right." Firo added. "To be fair, that idea has been bouncing around the online community for a while, and is the most commonly accepted theory."

Kieran chuckled. "Couldn't just let me have that one?"

"Sorry." Firo joined him in light laughter. "I do think you're right though. But what no one can agree on is what the actual content will look like. There's two general sides, similar to our own talk - standard raids and something more unique."

"I can't help but feel like if they were going to go the more normal route, they wouldn't be hiding all of the details so well." Ash said. "It's not like they hid all the other content from other patches. But all of the other content so far has been fairly standard."

"And we've only seen tastes of what their team can do. Presumably." Marissa said. "It's somewhat normal to us now, but the enemy and NPC routines are far more complex than most games. As is the model variety. We've all just attributed it to the use of AI, helping the artists and animators along to get work done faster."

"But the updates so far have been fairly standard stuff." Firo said, beginning to sound excited. Kieran could also see where this train of thought was headed.

"You think they've been putting most of their dev time into making the raids something special?" Kieran asked.

"I don't know." Marissa said. "But if they have…we may really be in for something special."