“Do you guys remember when Alex had really good plans? Maybe we should pick a new leader.”
“Shut it, Dan. We would still be stuck at the entrance if he hadn’t come up with that shit earlier,” Jason said, defending me.
“It’s all good, Allister. Feel free to give us your grand strategy, oh wise Ranger.”
Dan sat down against the rock face of the tunnel and looked to be thinking. “Let them die of old age?”
“Right. Anyone else have any thoughts?”
“Alex, if you’ve got something cooking, let’s hear it. We knew we would be playing this one by ear as we went along.”
I looked around to get everyone’s consent. Despite his acting, Dan was nodding along with Jason at Wayne’s comments.
“You’ve taken a couple of shots from these mobs, right Allister?”
“Sure have. They hit pretty good, but nothing I couldn’t get away from if I had to stun and move back.”
“Think you could take more than just a couple?”
“I wouldn’t want to try and tank, but I think with my buffs I could last for a bit.”
“Then here is what we will do.”
Over the course of the next several minutes, I modified the same plan, only this time my three teammates would all enter at the same time. I would, again, be placed near the fire pit that I had marked as 1.
The difference this time around was that Wayne would pull four of the Blues to him, Dan would do the same, and Jason would take two himself. Dan would be able to get off two solid Snares before the mobs had a chance to get to him, and then he would run away enough that only two out of the four would get a chance to beat on him.
Dan would fire an arrow at each of the two he did not Snare to maintain aggro. Jason would take a swing at each of his two to do the same. Wayne would Taunt one, Kick another, Bash the third, and swing his war hammer in a normal attack at the fourth. Wayne assured me that he could cycle through each of the mobs easily enough. I already knew Dan had practice in doing similar things while trying to engage different mobs. I was also confident that Jason would be able to get the aggro on his two mobs.
Dan’s mobs would be the most difficult to deal with. The others would all be running after my teammates at a set pace, though two of Dan’s mobs would be running while snared. That could either hurt us or help us, depending on whether someone crossed their paths and they changed aggro.
If I could get the fires started quickly, and they were of a significant enough size to do what we wanted, we could win the day. There were still a lot of “ifs” in this scenario. But I remembered something about fortune favoring the bold.
On my mark, my teammates put their faith in my plan and entered the room as one. Immediately, the ten Blue mobs started running toward the tunnel entrance and my fellow adventurers. I had to hold off on dropping my Invis until all of the mobs had taken aggro, or this wouldn’t work.
Wayne stayed in the middle, while Dan and Jason fanned out to the left and right respectively. Dan immediately cast Snare on one, and then another mob. When both turned toward Dan, along with several others, Dan fired off two arrows. Wayne then went forward and ran through his cycle of Taunt, Kick, Bash, and attack. Jason followed closely behind Wayne and performed his two attacks as well. So far, the plan was working as designed.
All that was left was for me to light a fire. I only hoped it worked.
Each attempt took only a second, but the first two attempts were failures. I was looking in the direction of my teammates as I attempted to light the fire, and I could see they were approaching my position at a rapid rate.
In this case, third time was the charm. With the successful strike against my tinder box, the fire ignited and then instantly took shape into a large fire. I didn’t wait to see if my plan would work and stuck to what I was supposed to be doing. As soon as the fire took and grew, I ran across the room toward pit 6 and immediately began striking my tinder box again.
This time it only took me two attempts to get the fire going strong. According to my own plan, I now had to run back and forth, igniting pits 2, 5, 3, and 4, in that order. I spared a quick glance at the health bars of my teammates. While they were all partially depleted, none of them looked to be in any danger.
Wayne was shouting directions concerning where to run while I lit the fires. I was down to the last pit, number 4, as I saw Wayne run past me. Dan and Jason followed suit soon after. In order for this to work—if it was going to work—I had to wait until they dragged all the mobs back “behind” the fire pit line. As soon as Jason ran past, I struck my tinder box.
And nothing happened.
I struck again, with the same result.
Hoping that the third time was the charm yet again, I put the tinder box near the fire and struck again.
Nothing.
Each of the guys were yelling various obscenities, either at me or in my general direction, while I shot forth with every four-letter expletive I knew.
Apparently, the fourth time can be the charm as well.
As soon as the fire was roaring, the guys sprinted toward the gap. I dared to look at their health bars, and I became very worried. Jason’s health was at 30 percent, Dan’s was at 35 percent, and Wayne’s was at 45 percent. I was the only one with a full health bar.
“As soon as you guys get past me, I will engage the first mob while Allister gets Wayne healed up. Dan, you focus on healing Allister.”
With our funnel of fire in place, the Trolls did exactly what we wanted. And while it took longer than anyone would like, we eventually killed one Troll after another.
During that time, the fires started going out, and I had to disengage and restart a pit. The Trolls stayed bunched up near the gap between fire pits, still trying to attack either Dan, Jason, or Wayne, depending on whom had initially established aggro during the tour around the room. None of the Trolls disengaged, but I certainly didn’t want to take that chance.
As we started on the last Blue Troll, I kept wondering what the Red would have in store for us. He was easily twice as large as the rest of the Trolls and had a wicked-looking club in his hands. He hadn’t so much as twitched since we entered the room. The only benefit of it taking so long to take down the Trolls, with their crazy hit point regeneration, was that Dan and Jason both had a healthy amount of mana. Jason’s mana took priority for heals, but you never knew when one of these bosses would spawn extra minions and we would need Dan to kite some mobs around the room.
“Allister, Dan, you guys good on mana, or do you want Wayne to draw this one out a bit more?”
“I’m almost full, brodonkakonk. All I’ve been doing is shooting arrows.”
“I’m at 80 percent, Alex, and I rebuffed everyone just a few minutes ago. I’m ready for the boss whenever.”
“Ok. Let’s burn this guy down and hope Dan never says any variation of ba-donk-a-donk ever again.”
“Amen to that.”
With only a few percentage points left on the Troll, we made short work of him. As soon as the Troll fell, the Boss looked around and then started trotting in our direction.
“Do we want to move him more to the center of the room, Alex?”
“Yeah, this way we don’t have any problem with Dan and I getting behind him to do our damage.”
Wayne slowly backed up while keeping the rest of us behind him. In this way, Wayne could ensure that he would take the first swing at the Boss and, in turn, establish primary aggro.
Which is exactly how things played out. In fact, it was textbook maneuvering. After several moments had passed, we were all in position with Wayne fully establishing his aggro on the Boss.
Only nothing was happening.
Yes, I could see that I was doing damage, and I knew Wayne’s hammer was proc’ing and doing plenty of damage as well. While I couldn’t see what kind of output Dan was providing, I had no problem seeing his arrows fly true.
But the health bar on the boss only flickered slightly, and then was ba
ck at 100 percent.
It was after this happened two more times that we realized what was happening. The Boss’ regeneration was unfathomably high; he was regaining hit points faster than we could take them down.
We were already throwing everything we had at this guy.
The only thing I had left in my arsenal was to use the Force Multiplier Ring, and I didn’t want to shoot that off until we were close to finishing the Boss. Even with the extra bonuses, I didn’t think we would be able to negate the Boss’ regeneration fast enough to take him down in five minutes. The only thing that had ever been able to really negate a Troll’s regeneration ability was fire.
Fire.
I turned around and saw that three of the six fires had gone down. I wouldn’t have to wait long until the other three would go out as well. And the unlit fire pits gave me an idea.
“Wayne! Move the Boss over to pit 1!”
Wayne started maneuvering the Boss toward the pit that I had earlier designated as pit 1. The fire in that pit had gone out already. Pits 3, 4, and 5 were still lit, based on how I originally started the fires. Pit 5 would go out soon.
As soon as the Boss was standing over the unlit pit, I stopped attacking and knelt with my tinder box. After the second spark, the pit lit up!
And the Boss immediately went from 100 percent, to 84 percent!
The Boss’ next action was to destroy the fire pit, making it unusable. His second action was to start destroying me. I guess I pulled all the aggro since I was the one that started the fire.
My hit points started going south quickly, but Jason saved me with a well-timed heal. After only a short time—that felt like an eternity while getting pummeled—Wayne reestablished aggro on the Boss.
Wayne already knew what I had planned. Without any prompting from me, Wayne began to maneuver the Boss over to pit 6. We would follow the same path as earlier and move the Boss around the room. The reason for this was clear to my teammates. I wanted to have the last two pits be right next to each other, 3 and 4, with still enough room to maneuver around them.
“I’m going to hold off on my aggro building Skills until after you light the fire, Alex.”
“Copy. Just let me know when you are ready.”
Several seconds later, Wayne said go.
I lit the second fire on the first attempt. And just like before, the Boss dropped another 16 percent. His hit points went to 68 percent, which also activated his first special skill. Naturally, the Boss had a special surprise for us once he had lost 25 percent of his hit points.
While the Boss destroyed the fire, Wayne hit him with all three aggro building Skills. That didn’t stop him from unleashing his special attack, but it did take the attention off of me.
The Boss hit us all with Troll Stun. In essence, he performed a whirlwind with his big-ass club, and we were all hit with a massive Stun. We couldn’t attack or move. While we were immobile, the Boss’ hit points started going back up, although slower than before. When the stun finally broke, the Boss had regained five percent of his hit points and was at 73 percent. He had also beat on Wayne quite a bit, requiring time for Jason to heal more than normal and then regain some of his mana.
Pits 2 and 5 went off without a hitch, and the Boss followed the same pattern. He destroyed each fire and then beat on me until Wayne could pull back the aggro. When he dropped below 50 percent, three more Blue Trolls spawned and came at us.
Dan was about to enact our normal strategy for extra mobs and Snare two of them in order to kite them around the room. Before he got his spell going, I yelled for him to wait. If the fire had such an effect on the Boss, I hypothesized that it would have a devastating impact on the Blue Trolls.
“Wayne grab ‘em! Hold ‘em for now!” I yelled and then explained myself. “This could go really bad, really fast. He’s at 40 percent and the next fire pit will take him down to below 25 percent. But if we focus our attention on these Blues, we won’t be doing enough damage to stop the regen on the Boss. Let’s use the fire pit on the Blues as well.”
No one disagreed, and Wayne maneuvered the pack over pit 3. I hoped my intuition was on point, because if these Blues didn’t die straight away, these four mobs were going to plaster me into the ground.
Wayne yelled that all of his Skills were ready. Without waiting another beat, I lit the fire.
The resulting fireball was glorious. As before, when the fire ignited it scorched the Boss and brought him down to 23 percent. But the fire also lit up the three Blues as I had hoped. Before the Boss could take out the fire, the Blues destroyed it themselves. But the extra flames of the Blues compounded the effects on the Boss, and his hit points went down to 20 percent.
I made a mental note that if we had tried to use the fire itself to kill the initial 10 Blues, there would have not been enough pits to take out the Boss. Unless the pits respawned, which I had no clue about. Trying to tackle a dungeon the first time always led to more questions than answers.
The three Blues went down quickly, and I didn’t take much damage from them. The fire itself took out much of their hit points, and the extra damage from the combined fires of the three mobs standing on top of each other did the rest. All that was left was to light the last fire and beat down the boss.
However, this was going to be easier said than done. The Boss’ last special skill was an AoE debuff that specifically targeted our Attack. Our resistances were no help, and we were all affected by the spell. The debuff took off 50 from our Attack. While not a huge amount, the Boss’ regeneration now had a chance of negating any damage we did.
Once Wayne had all of his aggro gaining Skills refreshed, I lit the last of the fire pits and watched the Boss drop from 20 percent to 3.
Three measly percent. That was all that separated us from completing this quest. But with our Attack lowered, we were making barely any headway. I could see the Boss wasn’t regenerating past his current level, but he was still dealing out plenty of damage.
Our main concern now was mana—specifically Jason’s mana—as he had to continuously heal Wayne. I thought about using the Force Multiplier, but what if it didn’t add enough to take down the mob in five minutes? That would be a waste for sure.
After five more minutes, the Boss went from 3 percent to 2.
“His hit points moved!” Wayne yelled out.
“Mana, Allister?”
“I’ve got 55 percent. At this rate, it will be close, but I think we can make it!”
“Then let’s keep lighting him up!”
If Jason didn’t have those wonderful Shoulders, we probably would have run out of mana. The reduction in mana cost was saving our hides in this one.
In the end, it didn’t take some fancy strategy or some grand surprise attack to bring the Boss to zero. All we had to do was keep beating on his ass mercilessly like any good MMORPG.
Another 10 minutes into it, and it looked like the Boss was about done. I took that moment to activate my ring. With my new Strength and Dexterity, I was able to land successive Backstabs on the Boss with insane damage. Before he could turn and acquire aggro on me from the damage, the Boss fell to the ground.
“Hell yeah!” Dan screamed, pumping his fist in the air and then turning to give Jason a high-five. I patted Wayne on the back as I passed him, heading toward the Boss and our loot.
“Great job tanking, Wayne. I’d have been minced meat a number of times if you hadn’t grabbed aggro.”
“Hell, man, we wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t figured this stuff out. Get our loot, Chance Master, and we can slap each other on the back later.”
I approached the boss and looted the corpse. He had two very solid items. One was going to Wayne immediately, and the other would be up for consideration.
“Nice, Naugha!” Allister said, while giving Wayne a fist-bump. Dan was also nodding his head. This was the first time we had seen an item that was specific to the size of a race. The large races were Barbarians, Trolls, and Ogres. Since this was for la
rge races only, there was no question who would get them.
“Awesome. Thanks, guys,” Wayne said as he approached the corpse. As soon as he looted the leggings, his plate armor vanished and was replaced by the new armor. It looked like leather, only scaly and a very dark grey that matched the skin of the Troll Boss.
“Kinda sucks that we just spent all of that cash on the Fine Plate Armor Greaves, though. We won’t get half back from a merchant for what we paid for them. And Jenny has her set of armor already.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I was thinking about selling Wayne’s leggings to Lug. Those guys don’t know it, but their information was key in us getting through the entrance. I am sure we can get most of our money back, since Lug doesn’t have our discount with the Dwarves. And we will make friends with those guys by helping them out. Never know when you are going to need more players.”
Everyone agreed, and I made a mental note to contact Tyke as soon we left the dungeon.
With that piece of business finished, I showed everyone the second item.
“Hot damn! That is usable by anyone?”
“Yeah, Dan. It doesn’t have any restrictions, other than it binds on acquisition. We could all use it, so I say we roll.”
“I’m out, guys. I already got the leggings.”
“I’m ok with it if you want to roll, Wayne,” I said. Dan and Jason nodded their heads in agreement.
“Thanks, but I got loot, so I’m not going to hog. You guys roll.”
As before, we rolled random numbers between 1 and 100.
If we could do backflips in the game—and with the mechanics in Resurgence we probably could—I would have thought Dan would do a whole floor routine with the amount he was jumping around after winning the roll.
Jason came a close second, and I was a distant, distant third.
I gave the room another good search before we headed back toward the cave entrance and called this quest a victory. All we needed to do was tell Captain Treeswain he could now use his bridge.
We decided to practice our swimming some more and crossed north of the camp and the bridge. The Skill went up slowly while we made our way across the river, and I saw that our movement speed was reduced to almost nothing while we were in the water. It took us a good while to cross the river, but I had finally got to try out my experiment with swimming without the horse. We definitely wanted to try and avoid running away from any mobs through water, especially if they had ranged attacks like bows or spells. We would have been sitting ducks.
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 15