“Aaaalrighty everyone” With a whoosh of light, I appear in the inn room, surrounded by the 3 mages, who are busy chatting about schoolwork, that is until I arrive.
Motioning for them to follow me, I leave the room, head downstairs and out into the stables, knocking on Rogericks stall.
With all 4 of them in tow, we go back into the plains as the morning sun rises over the hills and sit them down.
“Yesterday we accomplished our primary goal; getting you all to level 10”
Celebratory cheers are in order as well as high fives!
“However we’ve still got quite a bit to do today. First off, you’re all going to learn a crafting and gathering skill and you mages will be learning 2 more spells, or trying to. You all ready?”
“Sir yes Sir” they all mockingly salute.
“Ok, so all of you mages are going to focus on creating either a support or an aoe spell, dependent on what you’ve already made” They look at me confused “Earthen has an aoe spell, the rest of you have a support spell. Aoe spells do damage to an area while support spells boost the capabilities of someone or as you’ve shown, their spells, comprende?” They all nod.
Well at least they’re just naïve not dumb.
“You will also try to learn a control spell” Juicy raises her hand, which I ignore since I know the question “A control spell is one that usually restricts the movement of the enemy but in general it as the name suggests, allows you to limit the enemies possible actions, making it easier for others to finish off”
Everyone starts looking deep inside themselves to try think of spells. But I’m not finished yet!
“Rogerick, you’ll come with me to try find a craftsman while the rest of you will try your spells on the boars. That is all”
Clapping my hands, everyone gets to work.
Walking alongside the clopping Rogerick I am slightly amazed he can move in all that armour, the sheer weight must be a real pain.
Stopping a random human (what a surprise; a normal being!) on the street I ask where the nearest alchemist is.
“If you want an alchemist, you ain’t going to find one here. At the capital is where they’re all at; much gold involved in being part of the Royal Alchademy. Any fellow with dreams and a bit o’ skill heads up there sooner rather than later” Seeing as though he’s answered my question, he begins to walk off.
...Well there goes my plan.
Guess backup plan is in action.
Walking over to the Smithy, I waltz inside and lean onto the counter towards the thick muscled and bald dwarf who works on the forge.
“Ser, would be so kind as to teach this young fellow over here the art of blacksmithing?”
The blacksmith looks at me funny “And lose me job and a high paying customer? Yer outta yer mind you are” He shakes his head and goes back to hammering a heated chunk of metal.
“I wouldn’t dream of cheating you out of your money Mr Blacksmith but it’s important for me to patch up my armour in times of need, as a dead customer has no value to you does it?” Rogerick saunters up, using a more intellectual tone than his face-plated face suggests.
The blacksmith looks Rogerick up and down “Aye, you have some reasoning” His face scrunches up in thought “Fine, I’ll teach ya how ta fix yer armour, but remember a good hammering is nothing compared to using a forge and anvil”
Huh, guess I should let my psychology teacher do the talking from now on, he’s actually much better at this than I (time to learn conversational skills!).
“Ah thank you...”
“Roderick” The dwarf gruffly responds.
Oh the irony.
“Rogerick” Rogerick responds with a gleeful smile, and they clasp arms.
Roddy (easier to distinguish) takes a long look at the plate armour. “That’s some fine plate you have there. There’s a mine south of the village, get me about 20 chunks of Iron and I’ll teach ya how to repair yer armour”
What’s likely a quest, pops up in front of Rogerick and he accepts happily.
Getting a pick (for free, because Rogerick asked nicely) we head out to the fields to see how our mages were faring (we’d only been gone for the better part of an hour).
Long story short, they haven’t done much...or so I thought until I asked them what they had done.
Time for a demonstration!
Juicy was up first: Her aoe turned out to be quite literally breath of fire, from her mouth...which burnt her mouth dealing about ¼ damage to herself
...
..
.
Well it works at least?!?
Her control spell was non-existent as of yet, so she’s gotten somewhere at least.
Earthen was next: She summoned a wall of earth. Fair enough, pretty decent control spell. Though her support was slightly more interesting; she tried making earth armour. Really cool thinking, but she only managed to make a shield, which crumbled the moment she stopped sustaining it.
It’s something, plus I can see the huge defensive capabilities of that later on.
Ricky was last but not least: His control spell was a one-direction gale. Essentially slowing the enemies a bit so I guess useful? Hopefully at later levels it’ll be more powerful. The aoe spell was a little bit better; it was literally wind slice, just longer so it could hit maybe 3 targets.
In all fairness, if he’s going melee, that kind of spell is more useful than a long ranged one.
So, those 3 need to practice those spells but for now let’s get questing!
“Ok, so because there’s no alchemist there won’t be any crafting skills for you guys, however Rogerick is going to become a blacksmith so we have to help him with his quest”
“No crafting skills for us? And what’s an alchemist?” Juicy asks.
‘No crafting skills, because none here are exactly useful to you. An alchemist creates potions, basically like a pharmacist”
Ok time to go mining.
Wading through the lower-levelled mobs, we reach a dingy looking cavern at the base of a mountain (oh yeah, forgot to mention that I found out that this entire place is ringed with impassable mountains).
Entering the cave, we immediately all get a notification
Warning, you are about to enter the Dungeon instance: Murkal’s Mine
This is the mine the village Murkal uses to gather it’s raw materials from. However recently it’s been overrun with spiders.
Recommended Level 10-15, Recommended party size 4-6
Perfect level and perfect party size. Onwards! (I don’t count for any of this I’m just observing from a distance.
Walking into the dungeon instance, we waltz into the dimly lit entrance, getting darker by the step.
“Juicy, can you make a flame?”
A little ball of fire appears floating in her hand a moment later.
Peeking at her energy bar, it seems to be staying at around half full.
Now that we’ve got some light, we can see most of the entrance, as well as a cluster of 4 spiders that were happily sleeping in the corner (not anymore though...whoops).
“EEK!” In shock, Juicy throws the small fireball, setting a spider alight, providing enough light to illuminate the others as they skitter angrily towards us.
Name: Cave Spider [Lvl 10]
350/350
Ah not too bad and it’s only as big as a Labrador really.
Rogerick charges the spiders trampling and stunning 3 of them underneath his hooves while Ricky sends out his enlarged Wind slice.
As the spiders recover from being trampled, 2 get hit by either a rock bolt or a flare, finishing them off, while one races after Rogerick and the burning one heads straight for Juicy.
It bites her for a decent amount of damage and the mages, waiting for their energy to regenerate, start slicing/whacking the spider damaging it a decent amount, but all getting bitten in the process.
Finally Ricky’s longsword slashes through the spider killing it and Rogerick impales his, finishing the battle.
Though all 3 mages die from poison...wow that sucks.
They walk back inside moments later, looking slightly unhappy.
“Ok, so now you know that these spiders a poisonous right?” They all nod “So how do you stop them poisoning you?”
“Not let them reach you” Earthen responds
“Exactly, so you should all take turns at casting your control spell to keep the spiders at bay while the rest of you deal damage. Rogerick, beautiful trample, but maybe try to agro all 4 since your armour is thick enough to save you from poison”
They all nod taking my advice since I am the pro at this (wahahaha).
Peering round the entrance, we quickly find rails that go deeper into the mine.
Following the tracks, we encounter a few spiders, one at a time, along the corridor, dealing with them easily.
After a good long trek through this winding, unending corridor with a couple of holes in the side where they seemed to have mined a little bit, we finally reach what I guess is the main cavern.
By now, we’ve mined nothing, because we haven’t found any deposits yet, however when we reach the main cavern I can spot twinkling deposits everywhere.
Imagine like a top floor with wooden platforms running along the walls and a wide hewn slope which goes to the floor of the cavern, branching out 2 times along the way to floors of platforms built into the wall.
The rails go to a wooden tower in the centre which seems to be an elevator of some kind from bottom floor to top, although now it’s filled with cobwebs.
The cavern itself is circular in shape and the roof is just barely above Rogerick’s head.
Now you’re wondering how we can see? Well there’s a bright light coming from crystals in the ceiling, mostly in the centre and not possible to mine out at all.
*Whistleeeeeeeee*
That’s quite the echo and whoever did that should not have done that.
But then again we have a walking beast of plate so we’re going to make lots of noise no matter what.
“Ok, so this looks like the main room, so we’re going to sweep this level by level, taking out everything until we get to the bottom level”
Nodding, everyone begins moving.
Oh my Lord that armour is extremely loud.
The clanging of plate reverberates through the entire cavern and soon I hear skittering.
“Everyone, change of plan. Rogerick, charge down to the bottom floor and continue running round in a circle to agro as much. Don’t fall or you’ll die” He begins to trot down the hewn slope with care.
“The rest of you, follow me”
I tactfully go to the slope and stop there.
“Juicy focus dealing damage, Ricky and Earthen control the spiders’ movements, try to bunch them up and slow them down as much as possible”
If Rogerick doesn’t die then we should only have a few spiders coming at us at most.
Sure enough, only maybe half a dozen start up the slope.
Though I see maybe three to four dozen begin skittering down towards Rogerick and that’s only at a glance (Yeah, he is attracting 4 floors of spiders...he’s probably going to die).
The spiders coming towards us slow down due to a sustained gust of wind which actually helps speed up the flare that shoots out of Juicy’s hands.
One spider lights up (this flare spell has some pretty damn high status chance) and then a wall of earth appears in front of them, blocking them from view for a few seconds.
Then they clamber over and around it, continuing their way towards the mages.
“Do a meteor guys”
Immediately Earthen forms a boulder, increasing it to the size of a bouncy ball and Juicy feeds some fire into it making it crack and illuminate the cracks just before it’s launched into the air and then pushed down by the wind, quickened.
A new crater forms on the slope, along with 4 squished spiders, 2 of them blown to pieces.
The remaining two had been blasted off the slope and fell to their deaths with a crunch, close to Rogerick who’s galloping as fast as he can (not very) through a growing horde of spiders (luckily his armours still keeping him alive.
“Ok, start meteoring just behind him and you should get a good amount of them.
Like a mortar team, they stand on the ledge, Earthen aiming her boulder while Juicy infuses it with explosive fire. Ricky keeps his eye on the boulder, readying his quickening spell.
See when they first cast this, I thought the boulder appeared in mid air, apparently it was chucked by her, and so most of the aoe was supposed to be done by the gravity and the weight, which is a logical enough thought.
So it’s more like a mortar shell rather than a meteor (in the sense that it’s launched rather than simply dropped).
I stand as observer, making sure they don’t hit Rogerick and kill him.
“FIRE”
Silently (pretty terrifying if you think about it) the meteor (still going to call it that because it ends up like one) launches into the air and drops down speedily to the cavern floor, bashing into the ground causing a larger than usual crater, exploding and sending rocks everywhere, killing 3 spiders outright and blasting maybe half a dozen to smithereens from the aoe.
...
..
.
For the aoe to deal at least 350 damage is kind of insane (though they are all level 10 so their damage has increased by 5 from INT and maybe more because of the increased energy pool so it’s quite plausible but still!)!
“Just over 700 damage that’s pretty decent isn’t it Zach?” Earthen asks.
“Pretty decent is a good word” That’s pretty insane! You just one shotted like 10 spiders between the 3 of you (ok you are useless for the next 20 or so seconds but still)!
Waiting for their energy to regen, quite a number of spiders turn towards us and head our way. A few skitter up the wall while others come up the slope, 14 of them.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
That’s a lot of spiders!
Peeking at Rogerick, yea there’s likely 3 digits of spiders there...pretty much the whole cavern I believe!
“Ricky focus on pushing the spiders off the wall, Juicy and Earthen do something for the slope ones”
Immediately, they both charge up another, but smaller, meteor, launching it after a couple of seconds into the spiders.
The explosion only damages 3 out of 6, but it pushes 1 off the side, hopefully killing it.
With no other choice than to wait, they both wait for their energy to regenerate, allowing the spiders to reach the level below them before they fire another mid-sized meteor.
This one kills the already damaged 3, setting another on fire but still leaving two undamaged.
“I suggest your acid breath would be useful, that and running!”
Ricky fires off an enlarged Wind Slice, cutting off the legs of the foremost 3 spiders, causing them to tumble off the wall taking another 2 spiders to the floor with them.
That’s another 5 dead.
Leading them onto the top platform, the remaining 3 slope spiders reach the top floor but a small distance away and are quickly joined by the 3 climbing ones.
“RUUUN!” Running at a sad 100% movement speed along the rickety platforms, the spiders quickly catch up, biting towards Ricky but missing ever so slightly.
Pivoting round, Earthen releases her acid breath, causing the front line to slow down and squirm around in pain as the acid disintegrates them slightly.
Julia turns around a moment later breathing fire while CRYING (because she’s burning herself too, the fool) dealing a substantial amount of damage to the front line, as well as fully stopping them in their tracks.
But she doesn’t stop the back line as they skitter along the wall and jump onto her.
Leaving her for dead (because she is let’s face it) we continue running, Ricky sending wind to slice away at the spiders, spewing green blood but not killing them.
Killing Juicy they turn once again to us and one gets rammed off the side by a sudden wall spurting out from the cavern wall.
“Continue doing that” I command as we continue to run away from the skittering foes.
A loud neigh of pain comes from below and I see Rogerick literally covered in spiders, still moving slowly forward, but ever so slowly stopping.
“Deal as much damage as possible to the ones on the ground” I shout towards them.
They’re going to die so might as well gather some xp while they can.
A boulder drops rapidly onto the spiders down below, dealing a decent amount and squishing 2 of them, but without the explosion there isn’t much aoe damage.
The spiders on top catch up, biting and poisoning us, and we quickly die along with Rogerick.
Spawning outside the cave, they look slightly haggard, especially Rogerick who spawns with broken armour.
He may have been down there only a few minutes, but his armour got wrecked.
“Ok, so in all honesty you weren’t going to survive that” I confess to all of them “But what you did get was a lot of xp right?”
They all check their character sheet and see that they went up a level.
“Dying in dungeons happens more often than just dying normally so the xp penalty is set to 5% so don’t worry about dying in a dungeon as much, it’s bound to happen. Especially against poisonous spiders”
All of them nod, the poison being decently powerful (1 damage a second apparently) but it stacks and that’s what killed Juicy and Earthen mostly.
“So we’re going to go back in there, but this time have a plan on how to stop spiders from reaching our mages, any ideas?” I ask the group and they all ponder for a while.
“How about pushing them off the platforms like I did?” Earthen suggests. Good idea, but not going to help in the long run.
“What you could do, is learn how to use your flight”
Yeah, for some reason none of them have tried to fly yet...it’s a bit odd but then again it’s a new set of limbs (and for Ricky no idea).
Earthen flaps her wings, lifting an inch off the ground with quite an effort plastered to her face.
“It’s really difficult” She notes out loud.
“Then all of you practice!” I command and then look at Rogerick “While they practice you’re going to go farm”
“Farm, what’s that going to do?
Oh right, forgot he has no idea.
“Farming is when you kill a group of monsters in search for a specific drop. In this case you are gold farming; so killing monsters that give the most gold with the least amount of effort.
I send him and his breaking armour to get repaired as much as possible before he goes farming.
While he races off, the mages begin hopping in the air trying to maintain themselves in it, but not doing so well.
After 30 minutes of watching this (I have a surprisingly good patience span), Rogerick comes back with slightly less beaten armour.
“Ok, so wolves give around 10-15 coppers a kill, so I want to meteor them to death as usual everyone, but you must all be at least hovering off the ground”
They complain about the difficulty but I’m having none of that; they need to learn to use all their skills, especially their racials!
The farming begins beautifully with meteors killing wolves in the dozens.
After about 4 hours of farming (God my patience span is good), they amass almost 80 silver, all of which is given to Rogerick for repairs (80 silver for 4 hours of farming...that’s really good for this level).
But for that we’ve had to wipe the plains clean as well as scorch more than a decent amount of the earth with meteorites...Whoops.
Well at least this fits well the burnt down forest (this poor poor village).
Repairing his armour to full, Rogerick meets us by the cave and we enter once more.
It’s a bit past midday right now so I’ve got maybe 8 hours left with them, more than enough time I hope.
Luckily nothings respawned yet (must be a daily reset then or something), so we don’t have any difficulties reaching the main cavern.
“Ok, Rogerick you charge down there like before, us 3 to the platforms, for now and begin meteoriting everything asap. Let’s do this!”
“YEAH” they all shout and get into action.
Wailing his head off, yodelling I believe (if that glass shattering sound can be called that) Rogerick charges down the slope and into a spider crushing it underfoot.
Now he doesn’t kill them but he does do about 150 plus damage which is pretty crazy for a charge (I swear my charge skill only has me do 50% weapon damage).
Somehow this time, every spider agros onto him and the entire cavern seems to move, swarming towards him.
We race to the platforms, set up a meteor and launch it, blasting a dozen spiders’ dead, but also causing that much to come for us.
Ok step 2.
“Ricky, push the spiders off till they’re on the platforms. You 2 continue meteoriting”
Following my instructions, within another 15 seconds a slower meteor crashes into a pile of spiders killing maybe 8 of them while Ricky cuts off the legs of 2 spiders down below.
About 20 are now climbing towards us, none going for the slope as of yet.
Another meteor crashes into the swarm of spiders, charred bodies smacking into others and a rock pelts into Rogerick, denting his rear armour.
He’s down to a cantering pace now, the spiders slowing him down as they try to move out of the way of his hooves but are blocked by their brethren already filling up the space.
I spot maybe 100 or so spiders down there swarming him with a good 3 dozen on their way up here?
The first dozen reach the platforms below but that doesn’t change anything as a third meteor blasts down, splattering spider everywhere.
They all level up and almost immediately another meteor comes crashing down (thanks to everything going back to full due to levelling up).
Maybe half the remaining spiders are coming up towards us now but only 6 are almost at this platform; a few metres below us.
“Next meteor in front of Rogerick to let him run” I shout at them while Ricky frantically sends small wind slices to try unbalance the spiders, somewhat succeeding.
The fourth meteor lands a little in front of Rogerick, blasting spiders away and lowering substantially the amount coming from the front, helping him speed up to a slow gallop, but still not outrunning the bulk of the spiders.
The first spider reaches our platform, a few feet away.
“Juciy continue fireballing Rogericks spiders, rest of you, get them off this platform!” I shout as I ram my shoulder into the spider, toppling it off, while only scratching myself (no poison thank god) for about 20 hp.
Luckily they don’t do that much damage in one hit so they’re not too bad.
A few seconds later 3 spiders clamber up on the left, only to be slammed into the air by a slab of rock jutting out from the wall.
Fire fills my eyes as a football sized fireball zips down to Rogericks position bursting at the bottom and setting a good 5 spiders on fire, causing them to panic and stumble other spiders up.
8 more skitter onto our platform, 2 losing their legs, 4 bashed off by rock and I’m left with 2.
Charging one before it gets a good grip, it stumbles off, but the second bites me.
-63 (47/110)
You’ve been poisoned
STATUS: Poisoned (mild)
Take 1 damage per second
Well I’m dead.
Grabbing it before it’s jaws can disengage, I drop off the platform, taking it with me.
“FOR VALHALAAAAAA”
*SPLAT*
Would you like to remain as a spirit and watch?
Yes
No(respawn)
A window pops in front of me and I click yes, spawning, as a ghost, next to my dead body.
Rogerick bucks in the vicinity, blood finally spewing from the holes in his armour, his face full of fury as he smacks spiders left and right with his spear, hooves and shield, trying to take as many with him as possible.
Though he falls moments later; the damage overkilling him within seconds.
Peering up I spot the 3 of them still fighting while a small swarm of spiders climbs towards them, already a dozen on the platform and quite a few more below.
A wide slab of rock pushes half a dozen off, their bodies splatting on the floor next to mine, while an intense fire blazes out at the other 6, burning the platform to ashes along with the spiders.
That fire breath spell is a lot more powerful than before, just what is? Oh.
I spot Ricky doing something while Juicy breathes fire and it causes her fire to blow out faster and more furiously than before, disintegrating the spiders.
Hmm, Ricky definitely should go support with air magic, really complimentary with more magic.
Though even as they kill 12 spiders, more pile onto the platform almost numbering 20 now and the remaining ones by Rogerick are now climbing, numbering the total number of enemies to be close to 70, if not more.
Suddenly all 3 of them jump off the platform, allowing it to get completely overrun within seconds as they use their wings (I believe Ricky has wings too, just not very visible ones, much like him) to glide to the opposite platform, just a level lower.
That saved them for now, but now the spiders split into 2 groups; coming from the ceiling and coming from the floor.
Ok so now they’re only mildly screwed, much better (not really).
It seems they’re not caring for the ones above as they all focus on meteoriting the bottom spiders, killing a dozen as well as hitting the base of the elevator tower, causing it to shake.
I swear I see their eyes glint
...
..
.
Oh no, that feels like a bad idea.
Sure enough their next meteorite slams into the base of the elevator tower, causing it to slowly collapse their way, squishing a good 20 unsuspecting spiders, not bad...
Except for the fact that they just woke the boss (I mean it’s a dungeon, you have to suspect a large creature to be somewhere and the move obvious place was that tower!).
The Boss of Murkals Mine has been disturbed, would you like to respawn for the oncoming Boss Battle?
Yes
No
Oh sweet, so free revive for boss battle, that’s always useful to know.
Pressing yes I immediately respawn next to the mages with a flash of light, along with a broken armoured Rogerick.
“You started a boss battle you fools” I reprimand them, pointing to the fallen tower.
As if on command, smashing out of the tower appears a gigantic brown cave spider, about the size of an elephant
BOSS: Cave Spider Mother [Lvl ???]
???/???
“Holy Christ” Ricky exclaims as the Boss starts towards us and judging by that speed, it’ll be here in maybe a minute.
“METEOR IT, ROGERICK CARRY EARTHEN AFTER SHE’S GOTTEN AGRO”
Seconds later a meteor crashes and explodes in the Boss’ face making it screech (hopefully in pain) and stopping it in its tracks for a second.
Earthen bumpily rides Rogerick towards the opposite end, having the Boss turn round and round to face them along with all the spiders.
Huh, so because she’s the one launching the meteor, she gets all the agro?
Seems like it as everything’s going towards her.
Forgetting about the normal spiders, I have Ricky and Juicy recuperate and attack the Boss, taking out a good 200 health as it turns.
Maintaining agro on Earthen, it spits towards her, the poisonous green liquid spattering onto her and Rogerick
Well they’re dead.
“Ok, we’ve lost; focus on killing as many small spiders as possible!” I order them, and they begin to attack the spiders, turning agro towards them. “Do that fire breath combo when they come closer” I suggest.
I spot Rogerick dying alongside Earthen within half a minute, eek.
All spiders turn towards us.
Time for a final stand!
The Boss clambers towards us along with lots of mini spiders, which somehow get here a few moments earlier.
Juicy breathes fire, Incinerating half a dozen before getting impaled by a giant leg.
Ricky’s quickly swarmed along with me.
Respawning outside, they all look pretty beaten up. That battle actually took close to 10 minutes this time.
“Rogerick, go get your armour repaired in a second. The rest of you, tell me how strong the Boss was”
“Level 15, 8,000 health” Earthen responds.
“Hmm ok. Rogerick, when you go to repair your armour, I want you to scream and shout and make noise as you go. Imagine you’re trying to make everything in your vicinity attack you” His confused expression turns to one of understanding.
Turning back to the mages “How much damage does your meteor do?”
“About 720” Earthen speaks for the 3 of them.
“So it should take you around 12 hits to kill it then. How long does it take you to cast once?”
“About 15 seconds” Ricky answers this time “5 to max out its power and 10 to regenerate energy”
“Ok, so the plan for now, is kill all the spiders, then figure out the boss’ attack pattern and then kill it”
“So we figure out how it attacks us before we kill it, won’t that get us killed?”
“Very likely, but like with its poisonous spit, knowing its cooldown will save your lives in the long run” They look at me funny. “Boss battles require a lot more planning than normal battles. Usually mages will control the boss while a tank, someone with heavy armour takes agro and all other damages will whittle the boss down. However with this group, things need to go a little differently.”
They all sit down, prepared to listen.
“You 3 are damage, and your goal is to deal as much damage as possible to the spider without causing agro. However that’s not possible, so what you have to do is prepare to counter its attacks. The one attack we know of is its spit so Earthen can deal with that with her earth wall. Rogerick will try to get agro but don’t count on that ok. Do you understand?”
“Yes!” they say in unison.
“Good, now when Rogerick comes back, let’s clean the cave of spiders” They look at me slightly confused “Oh, in dungeons, monsters wont respawn like normal, only when the dungeon resets, so like at the start of each day, will everything respawn”
A couple of “Oh”’s passed around.
Rogerick came back a short while later, bringing a platoon of random animals, which were meteored to death succinctly.
Explaining the plan to him, we delve back inside and begin the spider slaughter again.
Luckily only about 70 odd spiders remain and thankfully the boss is reset.
About half die from meteors within a minute, leaving about 20 climbing up while the rest still try to swarm Rogerick as he gallops away.
Focusing fully on the ones coming up, most of them don’t even reach the top platform and the few that do are rammed off by slabs of earth.
2 minutes in and most of them are dead.
Another meteor kills a couple more and then Rogerick deals with the remaining 8, bucking about, smacking them with his shield and spear doing a good bit of damage, all the while armour protecting him from the spiders’ poison.
All the spiders dead, I have everyone recuperate, before Rogerick kicks the side of the elevator tower, awakening the Boss.
It bursts out, angrily skittering towards Rogerick as he gallops away and a meteor crashes into its face immediately causing agro to swerve to Earthen.
Rogerick turns round and begins spearing the Boss’s side, annoying it, but not enough to switch agro.
A second meteor smacks into its face and it retaliates with spit. “WALL” one...two...
Just in time it appears, poison sizzling off the rock.
The boss begins to climb, receiving a third meteor and a fourth before it reaches the top platform.
Trying to run is useless as its legs impale us one by one and then deals with Rogerick.
Ok, so we really need someone to hold agro better.
Hmm we could do that...
Back inside, The beginning of the fight is the same, but after each meteor Rogerick becomes the only attacker until agro is on him and then he lures the Boss to the other side of the room.
Another meteor to re-agro it to Earthen and the first poisonous spit comes. 1...2...
Rogerick charges once more, dealing enough damage after half a minute to get agro.
32...33...
Meteor smacking it on the lower back this time causes it to swerve round and spit, on 45.
Ok so 45 second cooldown.
Luckily the wall is up and everyone is safe.
Agro switches back to Rogerick after some work and the spider continues to skitter in this back and forth fashion.
4th meteor hits it and its eyes flash yellow. Ah stage 2.
“Ignore it and continue” just in case someone else saw it.
Instead of turning away from Rogerick, the Boss simply stops and as exactly as I fear: web spews out of its abdomen, colliding into us.
Eww, I’m covered in it and plastered onto the wall.
Like the rest of us we’re stuck in a web. HOWEVER THEY’RE ALL MAGES SO IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER
...
..
.
Or well it shouldn’t...
Nope, apparently it is...huu
“Everyone, why aren’t you casting?” I look around to see all of them plastered on the wall like me.
“I can’t move my hands” Juicy complains.
Ah. Well I guess they don’t know how to cast without moving their hands do they?
It doesn’t really matter anyways as Rogerick gets murdered by the spider and then it just spits on us, killing us all.
“OK Round 3, don’t forget to put up a wall when there’s poison and a web. Poison is every 45 seconds, web we don’t know yet”
Everyone nods and we’re back in there.
The first half of the fight is the same as before; back and forth skittering till it reaches half health and webs spew out on Rogerick this time.
With him dead, there’s nothing stopping the spider coming after us and summarily destroying us.
“Ok, I believe I have a plan. Juicy, I want you to be riding with Rogerick, that means the agro will change quicker everyone so be ready”
“Er why?” Juicy asks raising her hand reflexively (but after she asked the question...what’s the point in that?).
“So when the Boss goes to half health we make sure it aggros onto you or Rogerick at that moment, causing it to shoot webs at you”
“So I’m setting them on fire?” She half gets it.
“Yes, but before it shoots the webs”
...
..
.
“Ohhhh” She gets it.
“You can also try doing it before that point, but it’s probably not going to happen”
Back in for round 4!
Same as before except less damage on the Magey side, causing agro to switch back and forth a lot quicker than before and after about 3 minutes of back and forth the Boss finally goes down to half health, abdomen and agro pointed towards Rogerick and Juicy.
Almost immediately, the Boss starts screeching as flaming webs shoot out, entrapping and summarily burning both of them but also continually burning inside the Boss’ abdomen.
Within about 20 seconds, it curls into a ball, legs in the air, smelling slightly roasted.
Dungeon complete!
This dungeon will reset in 9 hours 32 minutes 14 seconds.
Phew, that’s over.
Everyone spreads high fives around (I do not shy away from them even if I did literally nothing) while we wait for the other two to come back in and share in the revelries.
Rogerick bursts in with some sheets of plate still remaining (a lot of it fell off because of the fire, surprisingly effective) bucking around while yodelling.
Juicy, who tries to remain on his back Yodels with the same enthusiasm.
Seems like this lot will survive just yet...
Reclaiming all the corpses (took like an hour to do so) while everyone took turns mining (so they’d all get the skill) they get more than enough iron ore as well as 5-6 silvers and a few dozen poison glands, might be useful too!
Reclaiming the boss’ body, a small red book spawns where the body used to be as well as some fried spider legs (I’m guessing).
Since it’s red, I believe the book belongs to Juicy, who I direct to pick it up.
“Oooh” She looks wide eyed at it.
“What is it?” Everyone asks excitedly (even I’m excited to see what it is).
“Web of Fire spell, requires level 1 Fire Manipulator Talent” She reads aloud receiving a round of ‘ooooh’s. “What’s a talent?” she asks me.
“Ah, Talents are like skills but they’re more defining of your character I believe. For example Lucky is a talent”
Not quite sure they understood that but oh well I don’t know much about talents, they just sort of creep up on me!
“For you to get the fire manipulator talent, I think you need to learn how to manipulate fire magic to a much better degree than just fireballs”
Ok they seem to get that.
“Right shall we go celebrate with a drink at the inn?” Rogerick asks.
I guess he’s forgotten that we’re all underaged...
But we go along with it anyways and head off to the inn.
Getting a table and 4 tankards of milk (5 actually since Rogerick doesn’t want to be different, what a great guy) we sit down by the hearth and clink our tankards together in victory.
“Right. So this ends the tutorial guys” Everyone lets out a sad sound, I guess they were enjoying my company somewhat “So from now on, you should stick together, at least for a little while and get your classes sorted out”
“So what classes should we get?” Ricky asks inquisitively, finally some slight semblance of his usual analytical visage appearing.
“Well first off, Juicy and Earthen, you should stick with going your respective type of mage; so Pyromancer and Geomancer should be what you’re looking for. If you find something cooler, don’t hesitate” The both nod at that “Rogerick, get your blacksmithing skill and go for a tanky class, ask the stable master where the best war mounts are trained and become one of those...if that’s possible”
“Well, that is actually kind of what I was going for so I’ll do that” He muses.
“And finally Ricky...for now, I want you to not get a class and simply focus on your quickening spell as well as your combat technique. The idea is to use your air magic to help you fight in melee, and I have no idea what class does that so you’re going to have to be on a lookout for that alright?”
He nods, thinking deeply.
“Ok, so everyone, it has been quite the pleasure teaching you how to play, so have fun and if I ever meet you in game, please don’t be a Player Killer”
“Player Killer? As it sounds?” Juicy asks
“As it sounds”
With a last gulp of our drinks, I say farewell walking out the door and logging out, the character deleting itself once I’d done so.
Now back to some real fun...or hell whatever way you look at it.