24. Resonance of the Sea pt. 2
The fight would have been difficult if we hadn’t brought three tanks, as we quickly found out that these enemies were immune to [Polymorph]. Three of them began casting heals on the others, and Nefeline called out for us to burn those targets down first. The DPS members of the party were happy to oblige, although I began the fight by casting [Befuddle] on the three of them first to increase their cast times.
The enemies had three larger Naga that carried massive spears, and five smaller melee damage dealers who wielded a foot long blade in either hand. The remaining four were enemy spellcasters, which were splashing the party at random with high powered water-jets, ignoring the tank’s attempts to get them under control.
One of those jets hit me, staying on me for a full thirty seconds despite my attempts to avoid it. It dealt 150 damage per second, and would have brought me down to around 2650/7150, but almost as soon as the water focused on me one of Clara the Feybinder’s fey settled on my shoulder and raised up a shield. The water damage was cut in half, and I gained a heal over time effect worth +45 health per second, reducing the total damage I took to just under a thousand. The fey remained on my shoulder after the effect ended until I reached full health, then flew off to help a party member who needed it more.
Naga are typically weak to lightning, and these were prime examples of that rule. I was slowcasting Chain-Lightning to deal as much damage as possible; like my fire spells there were multiple versions of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning which I had to relearn as a mage. Chain lightning wasn’t as mana intensive as Inferno had been, but it also dealt less damage and wasn’t a true AOE. The version I was casting dealt about four thousand damage per cast to each target it struck, took three seconds to cast, and cost a little more then three thousand mana per cast.
It was a huge spike of multi-target damage, but it only took a little more than 40 seconds to run through my mana pool, which was 39,688. My mana regen at this level was 699, and with meditation I was able to increase that by up to five times if I stood still and actively focused on it, allowing me to regenerate my mana from almost empty to almost full in a little more than ten seconds.
Unfortunately, ten seconds is a long time to be standing still in a fight, so I never reached the full five times rate. Instead I would cast a few times, dodge, meditate for a few seconds, cast a few times, dodge, dodge again, yell at the tanks to pick up this rogue Naga that was attacking me, dodge again, manage to get a few casts off, then meditate until I reached 70% mana before burning my mana completely empty and entering a regen phase back up to 60%.
It was very frustrating. I kept wanting to rush into melee and start laying about with my sword, but I couldn’t imbue my weapons with this class, my damage with a sword would be negligible, and I lacked [Battle Trance], the ability which had given me a fixed percentage of my mana for every melee hit I’d scored. I was casting far more spells than I had as a spellblade, and my spike damage was at least as high or higher than when I had used my most powerful spells in that class, but my overall DPS was only average.
The Naga healers healed themselves, but our rogue interrupted one of them, while our goblin [Marauder] had two of his minions stay on one of the other ones to provide interrupts, and our [Ranger] took care of the third, switching between Damaging down the primary target and using his interrupt skill on the tertiary one. A few of the heals got off, resetting some of our progress, but not enough to stop us from turning the first healer into black smoke. Then the second, and the third.
Polix was looking at me funny as he cast plain old lightning bolt. It was the empowered version of it, which would do more damage than my Chain Lightning on a single target, but this was a large pull, so I wondered why he wasn’t using AOE.
Once the healers were down, we focused on the spellcasters with their annoying waterjet spells next. They never did seem to respond to an aggro table, but they didn’t have too much health or armor and we quickly put them down. It simply got easier from there as we worked our way through the melee Nagas one at a time.
Overall, the entire encounter took six minutes, a lot of which was spent on the final two naga. They weren’t only larger than the others, they had significantly more health. They would have been impossible to kill if we had focused on them first.
Once the party of elites had all evaporated into black mist, we paused to take stock of the situation.
“So, yeah, that was harder than I thought it would be,” Polix admitted.
“That was a really large pull,” Nefeline agreed. “It would have been difficult without three tanks to pick up all of those melee.”
I shrugged, looking over the damage measurements from the last fight. “I didn’t think it was too hard,” I commented. I had taken third place, behind Tefla the elvish stalker and Fritz the goblin marauder, after the damage from his Native minions was added to his total. I wasn’t used to coming in third and I was sort of annoyed. The three of us were a bit above the next highest, but not too much. Polix, for all his talk before we’d begun, was below one of the tanks in terms of damage, and even below that in terms of usefulness, I thought. “But I think it’s going to get harder from here on out.
“Harder than that? You sure?” Nefeline asked.
“Probably.”
Nefeline glanced at Polix. Polix looked embarrassed.
“I’ll try to pick things up. I’m not used to magic yet, my main is a warrior. I keep tripping over the spells and stuff,” Polix said to excuse himself. “If we start having trouble I’ll drop and let you guys get someone else.”
I shrugged. “We need to do what we just did twenty-four more times to get full credit,” I informed them. “I expect it to get harder, but I’m not certain it will. I do think that it will save progress, so if we don’t get it done today it’s not the end of the world. But I do want to finish it this week. I mean, you know. One Earth day.”
“What happens if we’re not in the party when you turn the primary quest in?” Nefelina asked.
“Not sure, but you should get partial credit,” I said, feigning ignorance. That was exactly what would happen; they’d get a reward scaled based on their participation.
“Right. Well, let’s go find another one of these zones where the comb resonates or whatever,” Nefelina said, and we set out.
We didn’t make a big deal about it, but Tefla, Fritz and I spent the next three hours consistently fighting for first place. The elven ranger was doing great as well, they were just consistently about 2% behind the the top three. Polix continued to struggle, but we hadn’t run into issues so far so nobody was saying anything.
My foresight in loading the party with tanks was proving to be our saving grace. Each stone we encountered added another naga to the mix. One of their swordsman on each the first two, then one of the big guys. On the fifth stone we got an extra healer added to the mix.
The fights were challenging, but we weren’t struggling. Our tactics were working and we consistently came out of the fight in good shape. However, after the fifth stone was destroyed, the sound of a conch shell echoed through the air, and a pop-up appeared before us.
The leaders of Wrathwater Lair have noticed your actions
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
All enemies are now Elites
“Oh, just great,” Polix complained.
“Actually, I think that is great,” I said. “Elites give ten times more experience than regular, and I’m mostly here for the levels.” I had already gotten to level twenty-six, and was just shy of twenty-seven. We were one-fifth done with the lair, and if I was going to get level thirty from completing this sort-of-quest from Eliyenia, then I needed more.
“I would have been more concerned if it said that the difficulty of the spawned enemies would increase,” Nefeline agreed. “We just can’t roll over the mobs looking for these special resonance zones or whatever. It would help, Hagi, if you would tell the rest of us what we were looking for, or how you’re finding them.”
“I told you, it’s part of the quest,” I insisted. “We just need to keep checking enemy camps, and I’ll be able to tell whether or not it’s a resonance zone once we get there.”
I’d gotten a little more inconspicuous when destroying the Lair Stone, but I’m not certain that anyone actually believed my story. Nobody had called me on my bullshit, but I caught some suspicious glances.
Our progress slowed down after that, but our experience per hour went up. The number of enemy spawns responding to destroying a Lair Stone capped out at twenty, but for the next five stones we got one additional large naga that replaced one of the smaller ones. Fortunately, while those enemies hit hard, they weren’t really all that dangerous as long as the tanks kept them under control.
On the tenth pull, one of the large naga’s didn’t have a spear, and instead began casting the same water-jet as the other mages. It did about half again what the smaller enemies had done before, which was enough to be dangerous to anyone of us, but especially a squishy target like me or our two healers. Like the other spellcasters, it didn’t respond to attempts to tank it, although interrupting it worked fine.
The problem was that the other spellcasters would focus on the target of the large naga. Although the mitigation from Clara, our Feybinder, kept up to half of the damage from occurring, the focus-fire method was dangerously effective and we nearly lost Tefla and Polix before I stepped up and began [Counterspelling] everyone.
[Counterspell] is a curious spell. It deals no damage, it just disrupts spells. It’s easy to cast, easy to target, and has no cooldown. One mage can, if they’re skilled, shut down two or three other mages, which often leads to two mages who are doing nothing but countering each other endlessly in PVP. But you can’t use other magic while [Counterspelling], which means that for as long as I was [Counterspelling] we were down to four damage dealers, and we had to burn through the healers.
And the healers were winning.
“Polix, take over what Hagi is doing. Counterspell like crazy,” Nefeline called out.
“Yeah, sure, easy to say,” he said, and we quickly switched roles. I burnt through the rest of my mana quickly with single-target [Lightning bolt] on the healer with the lowest health, and that was a tipping point in the fight. Once we killed one healer, it was easier to kill the next, and once we had the healers dead it was easier to kill the rest of the party.
Easier, but not easy. The fight took us almost ten minutes, and everyone was exhausted at the end of it.
“This is shit,” Polix exclaimed. “This is way out of balance. I’m going to open a ticket and complain.”
The rest of us exchanged looks. Polix had been one of the more vocal members of the group. Mostly complaining the entire time. But he hadn’t really done much. I think everyone was getting frustrated with him, not just me.
“How many more resonance points do we need, Hagi?” Stolit, the warrior, asked.
“Fifteen,” I answered. “I’m not certain if we’ll manage with the group as it is.”
Nefeline sighed. “Sorry Polix,” she said.
Polix has been removed from the group by the party leader
Reason given:
Low DPS
Ajanta has joined the party
“Hey guys! I heard you’re doing some sort of elite quest? I’ve got the Lair on my Fast Travel, so I’ll be right there, it will just take me a minute to find you all,” Ajanta said through party chat.
“No, don’t move,” Nefeline said. “All of the enemies have transformed into Elites. Let us come to you. If you pull even one of the regular groups it will kill you.”
“Ooh, that’s cool. Who triggered the special event or whatever?”
“It’s Hagi’s quest, we’re just along for the ride.”
“Well it’s nice to meet all of you,” she said, and she kept talking.
Polix yelled and complained for a while. He didn’t leave until Nefeline and Tefla threatened to PK him if he didn’t GTFO. GTFO is one acronym I hadn’t picked up yet, but I got the general meaning of it through the context. Polix’s response was to try to pull three groups onto us at once, but the third group killed him before it got to us, and honestly, it wouldn’t have been any more difficult than the spawns that were appearing when we broke the Lair Stones.
“I kind of felt bad for him, before he did that,” I confessed.
“He was a moocher. He’s always talking about how his main is high leveled and acts like he knows everything, but he’s a total scrub,” Stolit pronounced. “So totally done with him. Going to block him after what he just did.”
“Aye, Same,” Deeprum agreed.
Ajanta was a level 33 [Arcanist], a [mage] specializing in the arcane family of magic. She was a perfect replacement for Polix, as it didn’t change the group dynamic too much except that she was far more competent. The fights had peaked in difficulty, and with Ajanta willing to spend the opening of the fight [Counterspelling] all of the enemy mages, they were difficult, but no longer threatened to be impossible. She never came close to the top four on damage, but that was expected given her role in shutting down the incoming magic.
She was a friend of Nefeline, and our fearless leader had originally intended to bring her along, except that I’d specified it was a level 25-30 event. However, almost all of the elites we were encountering were level 29 or 30, so our kills were productive for everyone.
Between the large pulls that happened at every Lair Stone and all of the patrolling Naga and Snails that we encountered in between, I gained another three levels by the time we finally found the twenty-fifth Lair Stone. Everyone else had likewise progressed, with most of our members having started out ahead of me and now reaching levels 30-32. Even Ajanta had gained a level.
“Alright, everyone,” I said as I knelt over the final lair stone, pretending to get it to resonate with the comb that Eliyenia had given me. “This is the final resonance point. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Be ready for anything.”
The others signaled their preparedness, and I destroyed the final stone. Abruptly, downstream from us in the estuary, something enormous broke the surface of the water with a loud splash. It must have been swimming up from the ocean; one of the monsters of the depths. It was an infant compared to its full size, and it was only level 31.
But it was a level 31 Midgard Serpent.