There was once a boss named Watcher of Death Vek’Na in the popular MMORPG Yggdrasil. Released upon the game’s eighteenth expansion, Shadows of Nilbog, the boss was the only side boss in the dungeon Tomb of Nilbog, it was entirely possible for the dungeon to be beaten without fighting him, but for many, it was a priority to make sure he was the first boss killed.
For Vek’Na possessed a unique aura, Eyes of Death. If at any time a player character fell below a quarter of their HP within the dungeon, Vek’Na would unleash a blast from his chambers and instakill them, no matter where they were or any obstacles in the way. Thus it was a priority to swarm him as quickly as possible, as many other bosses possessed high damage AOEs, Vek’Na made the dungeon harder by just existing.
He was not an easy boss to take down, possessing high base stats even amongst dungeon bosses along with powerful abilities. Carrion Call, a powerful AOE that leaves behind an incurable percent HP DOT that lasted until he was dead. His weapon, Scythe of Ruin, did four-hundred percent extra true damage to HP shields. The boss room itself was dangerous as well, having multiple environmental effects. Grated pits of necromancy and skulls spewing green corruption constantly drained HP but also periodically interrupted ability casts and animations.
Then there was his aura.
When fighting him, Eyes of Death will have other effects, when it was activated there was an uninterruptible zero point five second cast time where he will stop and stare at the target before the effect activates. Once his target was dead, Vek’Na will completely reset his aggro chart, as well as healing him for a percent of the damage Eyes of Death deals.
It was an extremely difficult boss to face which tested a party's healers and tanks. Healers needed to ensure all party members were above his execution threshold, and if his aura does activate then tanks will be forced to quickly redo aggro. If at any time they made a mistake, it was entirely possible for it to snowball to a wipe.
However, since it was a dungeon that had no player limit on the instance encounter, most people just swarmed him. Brute forcing the dungeon with dozens, sometimes hundreds of players. At the time, it was thought to be the best strategy.
That was until one of the top raiding guilds unlocked Mythic Difficulty. The highest difficulty of any instanced encounter.
When in Mythic Difficulty, Vek’Na gained several new effects.
Blessing of Death, with every player takedown, he’ll gain a huge damage buff, which will keep stacking until the dungeon is reset.
Clarion Call gained a buff, the longer the fight drags on, the more percent HP damage it’ll deal. Along with Scythe of Ruin, which now dealt eight-hundred percent more damage to shields.
Final Pass, his new enrage ability. When Vek’Na himself falls below twenty-five percent HP, he’ll lose all damage resistances, cleanse and become immune to all CC and taunting effects along with quadrupling the damage buff of Blessing of Death.
But the most ludicrous change was his Eyes of Death Aura. The ability’s HP threshold now scaled with the number of players in the dungeon. Dead or alive.
With five players, it’ll activate at forty percent HP.
With six players, sixty percent.
Seven players, seventy-five percent.
Ten players, eighty percent.
Here the scaling began to plateau and eventually caps out at thirty players with a ninety-nine percent HP threshold. Regardless, the new thresholds meant that if a raid group brought ten or more players, then they would wipe from a single AOE.
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It was an attempt by the Developers to soft-lock higher level content from simply getting brute-forced by huge groups of people. Putting a hard number lock would be against their ‘freedom of choice’ game design which they prided in. So, they used Vek’Na to act as a deterrent.
It worked, people quickly discovered that five-six players were the sweet spot, and the Tomb was run multiple times by top-ranking raid guilds in Mythic.
But they all never managed to kill Vek’Na. Even with top players, best in slot gear, it all went to shit when Vek’Na entered his enraged mode, his damage increase simply snowballed too quickly. Being immune to CC and taunting effects meant he almost always rushed a squishy healer or DPS, hitting them once before Eyes of Death activate, healing from killing them and gaining an absurd damage buff from Blessing of Death. After one kill, a single one of Vek’Na’s attacks will place any non-tank below forty percent HP, where his Eyes of Death will activate, giving him even more damage. Then he’ll start working down the aggro charts until he actually fights the tanks again.
Other strategies were proposed, replacing pure DPS with mix-class DPS tankers that had higher survivability along with more healers to deal with his enraged state, but that had a problem. His buffed Clarion Call ability left behind an increasingly higher damage DOT, which wasn’t alarming at first, but if not dealt with within a few minutes would surpass anything healers could manage. The only way to clear the debuff would be to kill Vek’Na, but a group that dropped pure DPS classes could not damage him fast enough before the DOT wiped them out.
It was a catch twenty-two. Without durable DPSers a party would wipe once the enraged state activated, but if they did then they would not have the damage to reach that point. Players tried running it with larger parties but every additional character only worked against them. Shield and damage mitigation based supports were started to be run to bypass the execution threshold, but due to Scythe of Ruin, it was even less effective against Vek’Na than healing.
When the difficulty of it was brought up, a developer simply said this:
‘Mythic Tomb of Nilbog could be run with more than ten people.’
The words: ‘No, it fucking couldn’t. You delusional detached piece of shitstain game developer. When was the last fucking time you even played the game? It is literally impossible to beat Mythic ToN with more than six people you inherently brain dead gamer ass stain spawned by the hate farts of basement dwellers,’ though significantly censored, surmised the community response rather well.
‘Pfft… As if players know anything. Yggdrasil’s dev team has OVER TWO-HUNDRED years of game development experience combined. Obviously I know better than you.’
The community response to that was… well there was no point in relaying it, as it would be A, incomprehensible, and B, so full of expletives that censoring to make it match this site’s values would leave literally nothing behind.
Regardless, these were MMORPG players, one of the most stubborn and deranged groups of people on earth. Only beaten by serial killers, mass murderers and MOBA players. ‘Gracefully’ accepting that the devs were once again fucking useless, they cleared Mythic Tomb of Nilbog. Always skipping Vek’Na and running HP shield classes since he was the only one that dealt increased damage to shields.
The dungeon’s end boss was beaten multiple times, yet the Mythic full clear achievement never happened. Until the game’s PR team caught wind of the developer’s comments and forced the idiot to stay up for three days in a row to program the nerfs to Mythic Vek’Na.
The nerf would’ve significantly lowered Vek’Na’s Eyes of Death kill range along with nerfing Scythe of Ruin’s damage buff against shields. Players rejoiced after enforcing their ‘objectively correct’ opinion and top-level guilds waited for the nerf to come out before rushing to clear the dungeon and get the First Full Clear.
Everyone had given up beating Mythic Vek’Na before his nerf.
But merely an hour before the scheduled server maintenance to update Vek’Na, something unexpected occurred.
> !!Server Announcement!!
>
> !!MYTHIC RAID FIRST FULL CLEAR!!
>
> !!TOMB OF NILBOG!!
>
> Players:
>
> Aban Twice Crowned
>
> HitZaDecs
>
> Mattmanfoo
>
> Mortimer Memento
>
> Silv3r_Belle
Something thought impossible had occurred.
A group had beaten Vek’Na on Mythic difficulty.