The Casual Adventure Team’s photo shoot captures friendship and well-being in Final Fantasy XIV

If you find yourself in Final Fantasy XIV, and you wander around the player housing area in The Goblet you will come across a large mansion, not quite out of the way, in the ninth ward. It’s not an overly assuming house, but its yard is filled with all manner of distractions including gurgling fountains, lush topiary and even a few moogle statues.

Here is where the Casual Adventure Team (or CATs to those of us who are fans) kick up their feet after a long day of adventuring. CAT is an online gaming guild with a rich history and an effervescent variety of members, many of whom enjoy their time together participating in all that FFXIV has to offer.

In Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, a massively multiplayer online game developed and published by Square-Enix, guilds are called Free Companies and these are player run organizations within the game who receive their own chat channel and the opportunity to buy housing. Free companies also get specialized crafting opportunities and access to an airship—the CAT airship, the Kupomobile, often goes out on beer runs.

FFXIV originally launched in 2010 but eventually shut down due to too many complications in its development in operations. FFXIV: A Realm Reborn rose like a phoenix from FFXIV’s ashes in 2013 and represents the MMO that we know and love today.

Three years after that the Casual Adventure Team was founded in 2016 by current guild leader Jolly.

“I started CAT because I decided this was going to be the MMO I stuck with, but I’m really busy sometimes so I came up with the ‘Casual Adventure Team,’” Jolly said, “which was an idea that people joining wouldn’t have to feel pressured to do content or even be online because it’s casual!”

If you want to visit the CATs, you can often find them hanging out at the Free Company’s mansion at Plot 35, 9 Ward in The Goblet. This large, lovely abode, warmly appointed with all manner of amenities (and, of course, hot tubs) is known as the CAT House.

In the beginning, the free company was small but cozy and Jolly had to go on a trip for a few months. The founders at the time, in the absence of their leader.

“At that time there was Pale Luna, Kanra Orihara and Melimea Hor’thst. Those were the founders of the FC,” said Jolly. “That summer I left on a trip where I wouldn’t be able to play for four months so between Kanra, Pale, and Melimea it was up to them to keep the FC alive. Which they did! So, when I came back I started recruiting by sending tells to people.”

Since then the guild has grown to 109 active members and the daily turnout for the free company is also very strong as between 15 to 20 people log in to play on most days.

Current members of the CAT free company speak fondly of their experiences and the way that the group dynamic affects their lives and time spent in FFXIV.

First to comment about the CATs, Anne Ironborn said that she feels that what makes the CATs a prevailing gathering of players is the company.

“Maybe it’ll sound silly, but I think it’s the sense of companionship/friendship we all have,” she said. Anne is a Ninja main who joined the CATs in January 2017.

Reminiscing about joining, Ironborn added, “I never thought I would like to be social online, but I loved Final Fantasy, so I thought ‘what the hell’ and started playing. I was in two other FCs before joining the CATs, and there was nothing like it.”

How did the CATs differ from Ironborn’s previous experiences? She says it’s about the people who make the free company work.

“I’m impressed because everyone helps everyone,” she said. “We like to laugh at each other but we’re also there to talk and discuss serious things too.”

Although things can get serious in Final Fantasy XIV, sometimes it’s about who you bring along that makes the difference—and sometimes it’s about how silly things can get as well. FFXIV is a game and in that spirit the CATs can cover every corner of the map.

“If you want a short version, I think the CATs bring out the good side of friendship,” Ironborn said. “We’re all a bunch of people who embrace other people’s personality, and try to help everyone find themselves in the game. Maybe raiding, maybe crafting or maybe doing a semi-naked dance contest in New Gridania.”

This camaraderie was inherent to the mood of every member of CAT who spoke during interviews. It became a common theme for many of them and cited often as the reason they stay together, play together and join one another in Eorzea, the setting of FFXIV.

“This is my first MMO ever, I’m usually more of JRPG gamer, and when I started playing the game in 2014 I was in a different free company, that well…wasn’t closely as friendly as CAT,” said Emi Dalmati , a Bard and Scholar main and CAT since January 2017. Dalmati is also married to Ironborn, so they joined on the same day. “So, between that and some stuff, I stopped playing for two years and when I came back I joined the CATs because I liked the name and it turned out to be so much better than the other FC.”

The name of the free company is often cited by members as the reason they joined. Brothers Tristan Augustus and Snuggle Buggle also joined the group because of the acronym CAT and the idea that it was a casual group.

Tristan Augustus, a Dragoon main (and not an associate of the lalafell conspiracy) and member since April 2017, said he enjoys the company of CATs “because of the social environment and the will to group together to do dungeons/raids/trials to help others along.”

“The feeling of belonging the close-knit family we have whether in game on voice chat or just talking on Discord,” Augustus added. “It’s a really a close ‘we treat everyone like one big happy family’ kind of deal.  All really welcoming and willing to put their best foot forward in helping newbies and vets alike.”

This sentiment is echoed by Dalmati who also said, “The main difference is that being in CAT feels like really playing with friends. I actually think of most CAT members as real friends, not just people who play with me and everyone is here for the fun, having good times.”

Misha Mikado, a Red Mage main and CAT since November 2017, relates similarly to the group even as a very new recruit.

“I haven’t been a part of the CATs for a very long time — I joined a few months ago — but this place is ‘homely’,” Mikado said. “There’s nothing more I enjoy than logging on and getting bombarded with messages to go questing in the game.”

Although, as Mikado went on, being a CAT often means a lot more than simply playing FFXIV, or getting dungeons or raids done.

“Of course, talking to everyone about life and other subjects, we sometimes end up wasting so much time on just talk rather than playing,” Mikado said.

While the CATs are highly social within FFXIV and in their Discord chat, this doesn’t prevent them from getting a great deal done. Some members are working their way through new storylines while others continue to do weekly boss fights in dungeons and raids to raise their gear score for battles in the future.

Over the past few months, Jolly started a weekly event called Map Night.

During this event, the CATs gather together to attempt Treasure Hunts – which work as much as someone would expect when looking for pirate treasure with a map. The Timeworn Map items can be obtained from gathering, but cannot be used until twenty-four hours pass after obtaining it. Maps can also be bought from the market.

All of the maps have different tiers of difficulty, which provide requisite rewards according to their challenge. This is because the treasure coffers that maps lead to are trapped and monsters, sometimes in waves, that must be defeated in order to claim the loot. As a result, groups of players operate best when digging up buried treasure marked on these maps.

“I think Map Nights is one of the best things we do,” said Jolly, when asked about what kind of events the CATs socialize with. “And, recently we did a photo shoot, which was a success!”

Some special treasure maps, such as the Gazelleskin Treasure Maps, have a chance to spawn portals that open into a treasure-filled instance called the Lost Canals of Uznair. The CAT Map Night event revolves around attempting to get one of these portals, which have a small chance to appear.

Once a portal appears and the group enters they can find more treasure chests, which are similarly trapped with monsters. After the monsters are defeated and the chest looted, the party is faced with two doors: one that opens into another floor of the Canals and one that exits. The Canals contain a total of six doors and in the final room is a boss.

With a 50-50 chance of choosing the correct door each time, it can be difficult to reach the boss. To date, Jolly said the CATs have reached the end boss of the Canals once.

Of course, no photo shoot is complete without everyone in their underwear.

The CAT House also has a room with hot tubs in it for everyone to relax after any grand adventure. No doubt so that everyone can relax, talk about their day and wind down after a regular dungeon delve, harrowing near-defeat at a raid boss or to sift through treasure from a Map Night.