Diving into Doors

Gathering Information

One of the very first steps that is normally conducted by the Association through the use of a scouting division but the information that can be learned from this depends on who is sent into the Door and what they encounter. But even though scouts may only be able to gleam basic information on the inside the Divers participating are trusted to be able to understand what is given to them and find more information on the more specific details through both conventional resources provided by the Association' Bestiary, past experience or other unconventional means of third sources that may or may not be accurate. When participating in a Dive all those involved should know as much as they can and share information so that everyone is equally prepared for any situations that may rise. Relying on the team leader is not always the safest plan as even they are susceptible to death when dealing with the numerous possibilities behind Doors.

Preparation

Using the information learned the team members should purchase or otherwise obtain any equipment needed to appropriately deal with what they know of what is behind the targeted Door. This can be done through the Association's Auction, a gathering where more rare items and special materials can be bid for dependent on their worth and rarity, though they also provide a market under the same name that hosts more common items and those that are not up for the current round of auctioning. Another place could be from markets created by guilds to sell the items and materials that have been found in the Doors they have closed.

Organizing a Team

At the point where the team has gathered and prepared their individual gear, they should come together either before or usually the day of the Dive to pool their knowledge and confer with each other the overall capabilities of the group and separate each other in roles fit for killing monsters, protecting the group and healing the injured. These roles are the most basic but it allows for them to understand what everyone does and creates an idea for furthering their strategies to properly deal with situations that will arise. Though these roles may mix the higher ranked a Diver is because then they deal with stronger Doors and need much greater flexibility wen in a team, while those who remained hired under the Association rarely deal with the more deadly Doors and instead tackle the smaller problems that guilds usually leave alone with smaller and less complex groups.

Roles

A Diver's role in the team is crucial to understanding where they can be positioned and how they should be reacting to threats. The three roles that are distinguishable are damage dealers, tanks and healers. Damage dealers are people who are sole focused on pushing forward to cut down monsters as quickly as possible. Tanks are the protectors of the team and carry the intent to intercept any monster that appears and hold their focus so as to protect their team members from harm. The healer is a role that is hard to fill as skills that heal other people with magic are rare and only few people obtain them when they go through ignition. But when the role is filled, their job is to perform emergency healing if a team member is critically injured.

Constructing a Strategy

Once the roles have been confirmed, the strategy phase begins as they will lay out plans and possibility formations if the size of the group is large enough. With the information collected and the team fleshed out, the Divers will create a plan of action detailing what the objective is, how long they have and how they can accomplish it with the current group. Most times the Association calls on Divers to close a Door, but other Guilds or organizations may post a bounty that smaller groups may be able to accomplish. Time flows strangely on the other side, without being accurately measured as the difference in mana varies between Doors. That being the case, accomplishing the goal in a record time is paramount to the safety of the team. Accomplishing the goal they set out to do relies on the positioning and how they react to monsters that appear inside, the most basic positioning to deal with threats and move quickly through a Door is a spear head where the team moves in a reverse V-formation with tanks and damage dealers as the wings to be able to switch places and eliminate monsters while the healers and ranged damage dealers remain in the center to be protected.