Mander of Catte

Good Morning Friends! Sometimes I get a dumb idea stuck in my head and can’t shake it loose. One of these recently is that I decided I wanted to pick up a commander tag. I’ve dipped my toes into trying to start groups in the group finder, and one challenge is the inability of someone without a Commander Tag to create groups larger than 10 players. Technically you can make strikes work but can do nothing to create subgroups and arrange people. Then there is the problem that technically a group without a commander means that anyone can tag up and effectively take control of your group away from you. I’ve heard anecdotes of folks going into the strikes section… merging groups and then telling everyone that they are now doing raids instead. Even if that does not happen… gating the ability to control a group properly behind a hefty price tag is not exactly great.

However, of my friend group, I am definitely the most “wealthy” because last year I hit the jackpot in opening a black lion crate and getting a permanent banker. Instead of keeping this, I opted to sell it and have been living on the proceeds ever since. So while 300 gold is a heck of a lot of money, it was something that I could afford and figured would definitely make group activities go a little bit more smoothly. The normal commander tag is pretty easy to get and I believe you can purchase it from a vendor in every major city. When you purchase the commander tag… you get a choice of one of these icons floating over your head.

I mean this is perfectly fine and functional… but would be the incorrect choice. There is however a semi-hidden system that allows you to get the “catmander” tag granting you access to these much better symbols floating over your head.

If I was going to spend 300 gold on something so frivolous, I was at a minimum going to get the arguably better version. So this began my quest and planted a seed in my head a few weeks back that I could not seemingly remove.

The problem with this mission however is that the Catmander requires you to do one of three jumping puzzles located in the World vs World borderlands. So not only do you have to be comfortable enough with WvW in general, but also be able to complete some of the most annoying jumping puzzles I have experienced thus far. The problem with these is that they are not so much jumping puzzles… but falling puzzles. The final leg of each of them involves falling gracefully from a perch and trying to land on a shelf below that will ultimately allow you to jump into the opening to the cave where the Catmander is located. After spending an entire afternoon making an untold number of tries, I stumbled upon the above video. Effectively I could use a druid staff ability to catapult myself to the ledge with the Catmander and skip the jumping puzzle entirely… or at least most of the hard bits.

Just like that, on my first attempt doing the above method… I landed on the ledge and made my way to the Catmander’s chamber. I ultimately went after the Blue Catmander, because the quirks of WvW meant that it was functionally easier for me to get to that chamber this week. Inside you are greeted with a delightful sight as the Catmander is obviously training some recruits… with kittens working on training dummies while a lieutenant cat supervises. This scene alone is worth the price of admission honestly.

One of the cute quirks of Guild Wars 2 is that you have a form of player housing called the “Home Instance”. This is used as part of the early story quests and is something that you can collect things for over the course of the game. One of the things you can collect is a series of cats that live in your instance with you. Effectively around the world are various cats and if you have a specific item in your inventory you will be given a prompt to interact with them and feed them that “food”. It seems that you can do this with the three Catmanders as well. The Blue one for example wants a Gift of Battle, aka something that you farm up for legendary weapons and is a rewards track in WvW. So of course I am now farming up another Gift of Battle so I can collect that cat. Thankfully the Yellow Catmander requests something more sensible and wants a Can of Spicy Meat Chili. That would leave only Penelope the Unconquerable in Armistice Bastion… but she resides at the end of a pretty traumatic jumping puzzle and that zone requires paid access so it might be a while before I collect that Catmander.

As much as I love World Boss Trains… I am uncertain if I am going to be finding myself leading them. It seems like a lot of effort, and while I applaud the commanders that go from zone to zone leading the troops… I figure I will probably keep my tag in my back pocket for when I need to arrange instanced content. I just feel like I am maybe not comfortable enough leading most content… that is other than Tequatl. I can do “Taco” in my sleep and have collected many spoons in the process. I guess if you find yourself in need of a commander for something, hit me up.