by Akella,G.
In the old games, when a character's maximum level was limited, everything was simple. All builds (a character's intentional designation of stats and talents to suit a particular style of play) and rotations were easily accessible online. But today, with such a tremendous amount of talents and potential paths of development, it was the AI that determined each player's rotation based on their unique build and equipment. The problem was, I hadn't been able to find a way to manage it in my options. Either it had disappeared with the patch, or I simply didn't know where to look. The average DPS I was seeing in the menu currently was calculated from our fight with Nerghall. I didn't know whether or not the AI had taken combat form into account, but I wasn't itching to complicate the numbers even further. At the same time, the morning after killing the Lord of Darkness, I gave serious thought to potentially increasing those numbers even more.
I'd used Reece, Salta, James and a few more demons as guinea pigs. Taking the troops to the training area, I asked them to attack the tattered training dummy for exactly ten minutes without changing form. After recording the data, I dismissed them, returned to my room and immersed myself in calculations. Because I hadn't given my soldiers more than three-four attack talents, preferring badass specialists to jacks of all trades but masters of none, it wasn't very difficult to arrive at a rotation for each class. But to my great surprise I discovered that they were already employing those exact rotations! I couldn't explain it, but there was no point arguing with facts. Moreover, I realized that Salta had altered her rotation significantly after getting her scalable bow. This meant that the young woman had switched up her attack talents purely on instinct! Even professional gamers would take time to optimize their strategy after an upgrade, but not her! I couldn't know for sure, but I suspected the effect was a carry-over from her past, back when NPCs were governed by AIs. Upon this discovery, I felt disappointment, since there really wouldn't be a way to increase our damage output, but also great relief. Because any intervention into my demons' combat tactics would only cause harm, this was one less problem for me to stress over.
All the gnolls were put down in under nine minutes. The main problem in these scuffles was keeping focus on the right targets—as a result, our archers and mages had no choice but blast the mobs at near point-blank range. It took quite a high skill to aim and fire from behind the tank's back, assuming the tank wouldn't twitch at the last moment and catch your arrow. We could have taken out the packs with a frontal attack, but despite the rush I'd decided not to take risks and play by the rules.
On my command, ten gnolls from the pack before us were transformed into miscellaneous creatures of roughly the same size, and another seven into blue blocks of ice from the archers' freezing spells. That left only five, who roared with outrage and charged right at us.
Only three made it to the tanks, and then the slaughter began. Morph and Icing had a minute long duration, and we only needed three volleys from twenty archers to take a mob from full health to zero. By the time the crowd control spells broke only seven bipedal hyenas were still standing, only to be turned back into icy sculptures a moment later—each squad had eighteen archers, but the freezing shot was only used by seven at a time. This Icing ability was kind of OP, meaning overpowered. An instant cast that completely put the target out of action and, most importantly, could be used in combat, unlike the mages' Morph. The only downside was the long three minute cooldown, but our two squads more than compensated for it with sheer numbers of archers.
In the end, aside from the few gnolls that had made it to our melee fighters, we were left completely out of work, letting the archers and mages finish off the remaining mobs at their leisure. This is a bit too easy, I thought to myself, watching the last few ice boulders get smashed to pieces. I knew better than to get complacent, and was bracing myself for the worst.
"Everyone on my target!" Salta's sonorous voice boomed in the channel. "Mages, wake up! Where did that fat rat come from? Your handiwork, Reece?" the head archeress chuckled as the last gnoll collapsed onto the stone tiles.
"Why are you always blaming Reece for everything?! I'll have you know that your 'rat' was actually a hamster, our commander' sacred animal. After wolf and boar, naturally. So take it up with Krian!"
"You're the hamster," I smirked and looked to my right, where Elnar's squad was finishing off their own pack of mobs. They had been lagging, but not by much. A bit closer to us, in the rear of both squads stood Iam, his face somber and his chin raised high, his left hand clutching the flagstaff on top of which the clan's banner streamed in the wind. I couldn't have dreamed of a better candidate for our standard-bearer. With his sense of duty, I didn't even feel the need to keep the banner under guard during peaceful activities. Then again, why risk it? The clan treasury, regardless of level, came with a secret area that no thief could break into—something akin to a player's private room. It wouldn't store much, but it was perfect for relics such as this.
"On to the next pack! Leave the corpses! Look alive, mages! Coordinate your targets in advance! Wait for the cooldowns to reset. Attack on my command!"
After earning her tail and promotion to officer, Salta's resemblance to a panther had grown even more. I often found myself admiring my sworn sister: her narrowed jade eyes, her tail swaying side to side, its tip ornamented with three silver rings. Even her slightest movements breathed determination and purpose. She looked nothing like the taciturn girl that had approached me alongside Iam barely over one month ago, but had turned into a majestic, deadly predator entering her prime. And now with that massive epic bow in her hands, she could have easily been tapped for the main role in some superhero movie. Catching me looking, the girl winked at me and nodded in the direction of the moving squad.
"Need a special invitation, Krian?"
"Coming, coming," with a chuckle, I Jumped to catch up to the troops who were forming up in their new position.
"Straighten out your ranks! Reece and the mages, take three steps to the right! Tanks ready? Begin!"
The boss tree looked fairly ordinary. Some thirty feet high with a trunk circumference of around ten feet, it stood at the center of a rectangular tiled platform that measured roughly forty by forty yards. Its leaves were narrow and dull, but the flowers blooming on its branches were a vibrant raspberry color. It would actually make for rather a pretty sight if not for the skulls and bones scattered around it. And then there were the translucent cobweb-like threads that stretched from the tips of branches down to the ground, blocking our path. And by the looks of them, getting through without wings would be highly problematic. Otherwise I would have simply ignored the wooden bastard and pressed forward, since I doubted he had anything of real value anyway. The boss' two hundred million HP wasn't going to be a problem—even with 50% physical damage absorption he wouldn't last more than ten minutes. But I was still wary of surprises. Besides, for the life of me I couldn't tell the tree's front from its back, since, as any tank worth his salt, it was on me to turn the boss' rear to the rest of the raid. One would assume that all I needed to do was draw aggro and assume the correct position, and the boss would turn to me automatically. Still, it would be nice to know what to expect from the encounter beforehand so as to formulate some kind of strategy. Oh, but a demon can dream...
"Amazing," Vaessa's awed voice broke the silence. "I had no idea such huge specimens existed!"
"Come again?"
"This is the Tree of Hatred," she said, admiring the flowers growing from the branches. "But no one has ever seen a tree of this species taller than four-five feet!"
"You do understand that we're going to need to cut it down, right?" I inquired, just to be on the safe side.
"Well, yes, of course, the tree won't let us pass otherwise. But would you look at the size of those buds!"
"Vaessa! You can discuss the birds and the bees with Reece all you want, but after the fight! Agreed?" I cut the magus short before she could turn this into a scientific conference. "Right now I'd rather
you tell me specific things about this nature's wonder. For instance, what can we expect from it?"
"I honestly don't know, Krian. Once I was able to get my hands on a few buds from a barbarian visiting Xantarra. Its petals can be transmuted to an essence that's used in lots of alchemical recipes. But not even he knew where the buds had come from or how to get more. I know from ancient books that the Tree of Hatred waylays its victims, entangling them with sticky threads, much like a spider would, and devours them. And if a regular-sized tree is known to devour horses without trouble, I shudder to imagine what this fellow is capable of," the magus concluded.
That didn't clear up much at all, but time was ticking with catastrophic inevitability. We had to act. Going by the name, let's assume that his main attacks would be physical and poison-based. What else? In theory, trees are supposed to be scared of fire. Unfortunately, that wasn't our forte: the century only had five fire mages and seven archers with maxed out Fiery Arrow. Still, that should probably be enough. There were also about a dozen gaping rifts on the platform surrounding the boss, and I fully expected a bunch of Pinocchio types to crawl out of there to help defend the mama tree.
"Listen up, everyone! Make a semicircle around the boss, use formation four. Aritor, keep your team by those black holes in case anything crawls out. Everybody must drink elixirs of nature resistance, the ones Vaessa handed out in the castle. If adds appear, ignore them. The tanks will pick them up, drag them to the edge of the platform and keep them there, spaced out at twenty yard intervals, no less! Aritor, you're in charge of adds, but be ready to tank the tree if need be. If anything goes wrong, use your best judgment. Shift into combat form ten seconds into the fight. If this bastard falls, we split up into two squads as before and keep going to maximize the increased damage output. Officers, make sure all your units are buffed! Start falling into formation. We're starting in one minute."
We put down the tree in six and a half minutes, but spent the next three dealing with the boss' aides. Looking like ten-foot-tall black bluebells, they had crawled out of the rifts as expected. All in all, the encounter was fairly easy, if somewhat unpleasant on account of my being smashed onto the tiled floor rather painfully a dozen times or so. That, and every inch of my armor was covered with sticky goo. I looked like a flytrap that my mother used to put out at our country home every summer. Wasting not a minute, we fell into our previous formation and pressed on, up the passageway and to the right.
The clock showed 10:47 PM, and we were finally here. Before us stretched a standard stone platform, on which stood an equally standard structure with eight stone columns and a closed iron-plated gate. This had to be the Derelict Temple. Spaced out along the perimeter were granite statues crumbling with age, and on it...
Occupying the second platform, the dungeon's second boss—an eighteen-foot-tall cyclops armed with a menacing two-handed cudgel—fell even faster than the tree. We'd had to show considerable nimbleness to avoid the monster's attacks which crumbled the sturdy stone tiles with frightening ease. After catching one such blow with my shield and losing nearly 60% of my health, I'd decided to shift strategies and instead Jump or roll away from the attacks instead. It wasn't long before the cudgel had the entire platform covered with gaping fractures, falling into which meant certain death. All the while massive boulders fell periodically from the skies, splintering as they crashed into tiny shrapnel that made life miserable for anyone in their immediate vicinity. Thankfully, the cyclops wasn't the fastest creature under the Arkon sun, and I was able to execute three-four attacks before he would attempt the next swing. I kept the boss' aggro throughout the fight—it would have been tough for our damage dealers to out-aggro me with all the rift-hopping and boulder-dodging they had to do while firing off arrows or casting spells. Leaving the ugly carcass right where it fell, we pressed forward—through packs of ape-like creatures and into the final stretch.
Surprisingly, there was no boss in sight on the third platform. But the bigger surprise was what we saw instead: people. Specifically, three groups of fifty people each. Judging by their garb, each group had paladins, priests and mages. And these weren't the disavowed either—I didn't spot a single gray cassock among them. There weren't any hints as to who they were or where they came from, but I didn't much care either way. The legends above their heads burned red, symbolizing hatred, which meant they were enemies. Well, folks, it's nothing personal, as they say. The group closest to us had ten priests and just as many mages, and those would need to be crowd-controlled: the former to keep from healing, and the latter as the most dangerous. Well, my century had twenty one mages, not counting myself, and all of us had Silence at our disposal, so that shouldn't be a problem.
"Krian, those are... What in Hart's name are light ones doing here? You said the way into our plane was blocked for them!" Elnar said, incredulous.
"I'm just as surprised as you are, but does it really matter to you whom to fight?"
"I guess not..."
I too was extremely curious what in the hell one hundred fifty high-level human NPCs were doing in Gilthor. And the fact that these weren't ordinary mobs was beyond doubt, as every one of the fighters on the platform had a unique name.
"Listen up! Battle formation two! Archers and mages focus on the priests—the ones in white mantles. Maximum crowd control. No AoEs [Area of Effect are mass destruction spells that strike a particular area rather than a specific target] of any kind. Do NOT hit controlled targets..."
Following my orders, the archers and mages split into two groups and began to move, taking positions at an angle just behind the melee fighters; this way, after the battle began they could fan out and unload on the enemy while minimizing risk of friendly fire. But then, when the entire raid made it out onto the platform, something strange happened. The tallest of the paladins from the group nearest to us pointed right at us and cried out in alarm.
"Demons! Everybody in wedge formation!"
All three groups of fifty humans stirred into action, and a mere fifteen seconds later we were facing down a tight formation of plate-clad warriors bristling with spears, their mages and priests spread out in a semi-circle behind the main attack force.
Impressive drilling, I admitted in spite of myself. And then the same paladin bellowed again.
"Crush those filthy scum! Attack, brothers, attack!" And the formation began to advance on us, hiding behind a wall of massive shields.
I admit, it was an unsettling sight, especially considering their superior numbers—by about fifty percent—and each unit boasting around 350,000 to 400,000 HP.
I felt a blinding rage surge through me, sweeping away all hesitation and doubts. The blade slid out of my scabbard with a strident screech, and I took several steps forward, shifting into combat form on the go.
"You sold your souls to the dark gods, and you're calling us scum?!" my roar reverberated over the platform, bouncing off the temple gates. "Everybody in combat form! Salta, Reece, take out the priests!" I commanded, and immediately popped Aura of Horror, scattering the humans as they screamed in fear, thereby completely obliterating their monolithic formation. Only the paladins weren't affected, their divine shields sparkling around them. Bow-strings snapped all around, as Reece's and Salta's teams pushed forward, shelling the priests at practically point-blank range. I had to give the paladins credit: though there were only forty of them, they didn't panic and immediately commenced with closing their ranks, moving swiftly like a single unit. But my century of demons just wouldn't have that. The front row was upon the enemy before they could regain their formation, and then the butchery began.
The whole thing was over in less than five minutes. Deprived of their heals and magic support, the melee fighters couldn't hold out for long. Though paladins had some healing capacity, making any real difference was tough when beset by demons intent on interrupting any cast that wasn't instant. The paladin class was one of the toughest to defeat in a fair fight, as it was able to dole out decent damage, hunke
r down like a tank, heal when necessary, and also stun, which actually felt like a punch in the nose in real life. Except no one said this was going to be a fair fight.
Infernal Rage was an awesome talent. Every ten seconds guaranteed a critical hit, and since my archers' average crit against mobs, bosses and NPCs was in the neighborhood of 50,000, the enemy ended up running out of priests real fast. My archers and mages then moved on to the enemy mages, snuffing out nearly all of them by the time Aura of Horror wore off. They didn't even bother hiding behind the melee anymore, though still remaining within their healers' casting range. With the mages dispatched, our ranged dps proceeded to bombard the half-century of enemy fighters, already tied up by our own melee units. At first the enemy tried to achieve some semblance of a formation, but gave up on that idea after a dozen of them fell dead in quick succession, and the entire platform became a dueling arena. And, as everyone knows, in a duel it's the side with heals that wins more often than not, even when the difference in hit points between the duelists is close to four thousand percent.
They must have been the third boss, I realized, looking out on the platform littered with corpses. After all, the notion of a game boss transcended the classic definition of a big bad monster, whether alone or with a bunch of minions. But I wasn't blind to the fact that the global bump in NPCs' intelligence after the patch had nearly played a real nasty trick on us. Logic dictated that each half-century of enemy fighters was designed to attack us separately, after a certain time interval, but certainly not all at once. Otherwise the encounter would be virtually impossible for an ordinary raid of fifty level 180 players. And even for us, truth be told. If it weren't for my Aura of Horror... When would my streak of luck run out, I wondered? The very fact that I had remembered a talent I hadn't used even once before was remarkable. And suspicious. Were the gods looking out for me? Ugh, how ludicrous that sounded. And arrogant! As if the gods cared whether I got out of here alive. With the possible exception of Celphata, who had some skin in the game, I doubted that any of the others gave a damn. Apparently I was just a lucky son of a bitch.
