Do It For The Clout

Character creation stuff doesn't impact gameplay by affecting stats or anything so I ain't spending that much time on it. I just make a black-haired, red-eyed tall dude. Give him my birthday, or at least the equivalent in this world. Mine is the nineteenth of November, which equates to the nineteenth of Pelkresia. I'll probably ask Kandance whose name that month is based on later.

Now to decide what role I'm starting as. You can do all of them on one character, there's three main roles with multiple sub-roles to specialize in. Damager, Supporter, and Challenger, fancy names that basically equate to DPS, Healer, and Tank.

Now, what I should do is pick a role with the least responsibilities in a fight where a lot of stuff is going on.

Healers in this sort of stuff would have to keep everyone else at basically full health at all times to survive unavoidable damage while also contributing to the damage dealt, and one missed heal basically means game over.

Tanks need to make sure the boss is focused on them, and from what I know about this kind of stuff from the game I played back on Earth, many difficult mechanics require the tank to be the one to resolve them since they have the highest health.

Damage dealers need to make sure they do not stop hurting the enemy, something everyone else is also doing, but is most important for them since the HP amount needed to reach another phase can be really tight to reach.

And of course, it's basically a loss if even one person goes down. Even if they can be revived mid-fight, there's likely a debuff that reduces your stats for a bit, which can have huge consequences. In the end, I'm picking which buttons I need to press faster.

Which is why I'll be selecting the Challenger role. Higher health and defense means I'm more likely to stay alive, and even that can be useful since it means I get to see more of the fight even if everyone else is dead. Very important for fresh content. My sub-role will be chosen later.

Lastly, I'm giving my character a name. Funny how I'll have four names now: my original name, my God name, my Mortal Form's name, and now my Magys Regal character's name.

I'm deciding on "Onedis" for the name, and it's not something that will be elaborated on. Probably.

It's seven days until the race begins. And I have to get to current content first. This is gonna take a while…

And when I say a while, I mean it. There's the launch stuff plus three expansions worth of content to get through, and that's not mentioning the extra stuff added between expansions via patches.

Sure, I can skip the cutscenes to make it go faster, but it doesn't speed up everything else I have to do. Clicking through non-cutscene dialogue, doing the main missions, doing the stuff for my role, and sometimes I just get distracted by the addictive side content.

And since this is all early game stuff, none of it is even that hard. You hit your attack buttons, you avoid the telegraphed attacks and take the auto-hits, use stuff that's off the global cooldown when you can, and make sure to read what all your things do so you don't miss anything.

I'm lucky to have a second MPC in the form of the original one in my cubicle. Currently it's playing music and random fire gatherings, Fanta Regauss' version of podcasts, and it makes me feel like what I'm doing is productive. Did you know that people thought the eighteenth Hero was the seventeenth Hero again at first since they had the same skill? I guess those were the ones mentioned in that pamphlet I found the first time I arrived here.

Anyway, I'm almost done… reaching level twenty. Since the amount of quests left to do can usually be tracked by their required level, and the current max level is eighty, I should be a fourth of the way done, right? Hahahah, NO.

Because the base game stuff ends at level fifty, and each expansion has ten levels worth of base stuff, not to mention everything in the patch content that just uses the level cap of the current expansion at the time. So really, I'm just two fifths of the way done with the base game.

And the MPC cafe is opening up for everyone again soon, so I've officially spent twenty four hours in Fanta Regauss. Hoorah. And like a third of it has been used just playing this game. Damn it, no wonder they call it massive.

Lemme start a new fire gathering, my old one just ended. There's one here about Magys Regal and they have a new one from two days ago.

"Hello, hello! This is the Regal's Racers fire gathering! I'm Zoops!"

"Len's the name."

"And Mo is mine."

… What.

"So Mo, how was your trip to-"

Hold on, hold on, pause the fire gathering. Those three run a podcast about this game? Wait, is THAT what they meant when they talked about a queue last time?! Also, that fire gathering name. Lemme read their description…

"Listen to the tales Mo, Len, and Zoops, their favorite game, and their experiences as racers for the title of world first."

This is what I need! I need three other people to play with for that race, and they're in the cubicle behind me! I still have that messenger app on the cubicle's MPC, right? Lemme try to reconnect to them…

"Just found the Regal's Racers fire gathering. That's you three?"

Come on… respond… I'm mashing through dialogue, there's nothing better for me to be doing, please just respond…!

"secrets out guys"

"Yup, we're those people. heheh"

"Aspiring racers who will get world first… eventually. We placed in the top ten during the first two Optimaximum Raid races."

Oh, so there's only been two, and the third is coming soon. Well I feel less worried, but still. I need to convince these guys to help me.

"Nice. I need your help, I made a bet to join the next race and beat someone else. Never played this game, just got to level twenty, will you party with me if I make it to current content?"

"Ah. Give us a moment?"

… I don't know how long until they respond, but they're taking their time. I've just been rushing through the story stuff as much as I can, not really interacting with the other people I see in the game. Some try to message me to join their "new player friendly" alliances, but I don't trust them.

"well our usual fourth is going to be gone so maybe"

Maybe isn't a guaranteed no, that's good.

"Can ya reach the requirements in time? Ya need the best gear from rough raids too…"

"I dunno. But I'll try my hardest. I have to win this bet."

"You know you could buy a skip, right?"

… Oh yeah, these games usually have that. But… well, I don't like skips, okay? I wanna learn the mechanics naturally and by doing them in the way the game intended.

"I'd rather not. I wanna learn everything myself."

"Good. Then we'll let you join if you can make it."

"Good job on passing Mo's test btw! He'd deny you if you agreed lol"

"Ah, you told them…"

"well they already passed"

"Yes, but it's the principle of things."

"Uhhh. Guess I'll go back to playing and listening to fire gatherings?"

"I recommend episode 41 of ours! Mo sings a cute song in it. uwu"

"The lyrics are true and I refuse to let anyone convince me otherwise."

Cool, that went better than expected. Now I have to do the long and tedious thing. Man…