Emily,

I recently entered and died in a Heroic Dungeon, and I have some questions about the mechanics. With the number of monsters that were higher leveled than I am slain, why have I not leveled up yet? This should have happened already. If this is one of those dungeons where I get all experience at the end, I want to ask the developers to rethink that plan. I assume they don’t want someone on the verge of leveling up to come in and gain an advantage by leveling immediately and closing the gap between the monsters and player. This could be solved by simply locking only the levels of the monsters on the same level as the player, and letting lower levels grow to again be three levels higher than the player. As it stands, by finishing the dungeon with all creatures at the same level I am losing out on total experience, and people WILL complain about that.

I do appreciate the death mechanics. Having the boss chamber respawn everything will prevent kamikaze runs to wear down the boss. The only question I have is if I have to leave the dungeon for some reason. Will this reset everything, or will my progress be saved? I understand if you can’t answer, but will I get some form of achievement if I manage to defeat a heroic dungeon without leaving to have equipment repaired? This would limit me to less than ten deaths.

Thanks,

Marty

Sighing in frustration, I sent the email off to Emily. I really hope they decided to revamp a few of the things with the dungeon, namely the experience. Oh well, but that’s not going to help me defeat this dungeon. Shaking off my frustrations, I headed straight back to the boss chamber, and camped outside it for a while as I planned my next foray into battle.

One of the things I had noticed was that the imps lost a bit of their health in order to heal the boss. They also didn’t attack too swiftly, so I could practically ignore them. My plan was going to be fairly simple. Slay two of the healing imps and take one down to very low life, hopefully near a quarter health. I would then switch to the boss, and hopefully draw him away from the armor in the chair. Since he didn’t try and enter it until the last imp died, I could hopefully take him out before he could enter it. I was also hoping the last imp wouldn’t sacrifice its own life to heal the boss, but those things are never certain. The other observation that was going to be vastly important was the difference in cores between the imp and the imp lord. Each imp had a small core in the stomach area, while the imp lord had several cores spread throughout the body, most likely to stop someone like me from getting a one shot kill on the boss.

I first double checked all my equipment, and used another ethereal shift and ethereal flame potion on my weapon, both effects having disappeared upon death. I waited until two of the imps were in a line before charging in. Once again, the imps started creating a massive fireball. “[Keen edge].” I said calmly, slashing through and dispatching one imp. I headed to the next one, easily slashing through it as it suffered from the backlash of having their combined spell backfire. The third imp only got a hammer blow to the face, taking off a chunk of health but not killing it. It was only down to about half life, but I switched to the boss and managed to barely avoid his thrust that would have taken me mid back. “Not this time ya sneaky bastard.”

I slowly retreated a bit, getting the imp lord to follow me. Keeping him between the imp and the imp lord wasn’t too hard, and once all my cooldowns had recovered I launched an attack. “[Death’s gaze][Reaper’s edge]!” I yelled while darting forward, and saw the imp lord’s eyes widen in terror for a second. I went with a diagonal slash through his stomach, catching three of the core areas that were highlighted red in my vision and just barely missing a fourth. Continuing my combo, I immediately moved into a horizontal slash that only cut one core, but left me with three in a line for a final strike. “[Keen edge]!” I snarled, slicing through the three cores as the imp lord howled in agony. It retreated for once, and I noticed the remaining imp creating a ball of healing energy.

I ducked under the imp lord and stood up between the two, and used my hammer to smash the healing orb as it flew towards the imp lord. Maybe it was something to do with the ethereal shift, but the orb shattered, sprinkling me in blue shards. I turned my attention back to the main boss, as the healing imp had dropped to a quarter health, while the boss had recovered from my attack and was sitting at a third of his health. I gave a predatory smile, at last having the upper hand in the battle.

The rest was anticlimactic, as I took slight damage from the occasional fireball from the imp as I worked on taking out the boss. I couldn’t avoid all damage, as his jabs with that annoying trident were rather rapid. It was also taking much more care to avoid getting its cores slashed, so it was normal attack damage instead of critical hits for the rest of the battle. I still lost just under half my health, but it was much easier than fighting that oversized suit of armor. “For Thanatos!” I yelled before trading the final blow, kicking myself for using [Reaper’s edge] so early in the battle.

Thanatos finds your offering acceptable.

For slaying an acceptable offering, you gain 10 favor.

For slaying a heroic monster, you gain 20 favor.

For slaying a miniboss type monster, you gain 25 favor.

Current favor: 84/250

Champion type monsters sacrificed: 2/3

Weekly kills: 10/10

Why sacrifice a miniboss? It probably wouldn’t give much in the way of loot, and I would need to sacrifice them at some point anyway. It would be better to get that requirement out of the way as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of this dungeon. Wait, could I do that? I’m sure there would be another floor boss at some point, which could gain another 50 favor minimum. That would leave another 120 favor, ten of which would come from turning in my weekly quota quest. I’ll have to see what happens when a regular heroic monster is destroyed.

Smiling, I looked through the boss room for hidden treasure but didn’t find anything. That was disappointing, but nothing too bad. Search complete, I headed towards the back of the room and into the staircase leading down.

The second level was slightly more worn looking than the previous. There were alcoves with bones of all types, and puddles along the wall from some unknown water source, most likely the cause of the stone wearing down. The first chamber at the bottom of the stairs had the same seal as the beginning of the dungeon, and I got a popup asking if I wanted to set this as my bind point for the dungeon. I hit yes to save some time after resurrection, and continued down the hall. After thirty feet or so I came to an open chamber with some lights floating around. Closer examination showed them to be oriental type lanterns with a bit of bluish flame coming out the top, and a gruesome face inside the lantern. Huh, must be something like a will-o-wisp. I turned my attention to the creature squatting in the center. Every few minutes it would face a new direction, and its body was completely made of flame. The face had no features other than four slanted eyes that burned a deep purple color. The arms were long and lanky, and had no hands, merely ending in spikes. There magic core of the creature was moving constantly, which would make critical hits a pain in the butt.

Heroic spectral pit fiend

Lvl 30

Pit fiends are imps that have evolved through contact with a shard from the Heart of Flame. They are part of the core of many demonic armies, as their immunity to fire magics severely limit the array of battle magics that can be used by opponents.

Well, this sucks. I went ahead and cancelled the effect of the ethereal flame potion, annoyed at myself for wasting the potion. I waited for it to turn its back to me before sneaking in. There were five of the lights floating in the room, clustered near the exit. Perfect. I leapt forward with [Keen edge] activated, slashing down through the head and back of the pit fiend. As it stood up and arched its back in pain, I kept going with a combination, rotating counterclockwise through an asterisk style slash. If it were on the face of the clock, the initial strike would go 12 to 6, then 7:30 to 1:30, 3 to 9, and finally 10:30 to 4:30. After the last strike the pit fiend stumbled forward, health heavily into the red. Then my world got rocked.

Quite literally. All of the floating lanterns had gravitated towards us, and the closest one squinted at me before changing to a glare. Then it exploded, knocking me into some pinballesque series of explosions as each lantern exploded in series. When it was all said and done, I was at half health and the pit fiend was fully restored. I did the only sensible thing, and turned and fled. I took two burning slashes across my back, but I managed to maintain a bit of speed by stumbling and not falling down. I kept running back to the seal, not looking back lest I trip and fall. Panting and out of breath, I flopped onto my back and let everything recover. What the hell were those lanterns? And why did I not read the effing monster description before going into battle? Damnit, I got complacent with the ease of the first level and assumed level two would be just as easy.

Twenty minutes later everything was full, and I headed back down to the room to observe. The flying lanterns were back, and I focused in on them to see what they actually are.

Heroic onidoro

Lvl 30

The onidoro is a Japanese demon that takes the form of a burning lantern. Though they have terrible sight and low health, their kamikaze attacks are terrifying to behold. The force of the explosion will break almost any guard, and they are often accompanied by stronger demons with an affinity for fire that are more than happy to exploit any openings generated by their deaths. Entering into melee range is not recommended.

No shit, melee isn’t recommended with things that go boom. I pulled out my crossbow and used another ethereal shift potion. Luckily the onidoro weren’t constantly in motion. Instead they would move around a little bit, then stop and hang in the same spot for five seconds or so before moving again. Taking aim, I shot one as it finished moving, thanking Khaliss once again for giving me the [Windless trajectory] skill, as this shot would be impossible without it. As the bolt hit and passed through the thing, it started vibrating and swelling before finally exploding. Once again there was a chain reaction, as each of the remaining lanterns flew to the general area and started exploding. The noise covered my approach as the pit fiend tilted its head in confusion at the explosions. I once again opened with [Keen edge], hoping this time for a decapitation. After that initial slash, I dropped the head and gave a rising slash back across my body, turning a complete circle to keep up momentum and giving a diagonal slash forming an X shape.

The pit fiend stumbled forward, eyes glaring at me as I smirked at it. My opening combo had taken down its health to just under half, and taken out its healing option. We traded a few attacks, both landing glancing blows as I was taken aback by its flexibility. Instead of straight dodging, it would flow with the attack as it moved out of the way. As it gave ground after our third exchange, it suddenly jumped back and placed its hands on its chest. I saw mana congregating in its chest, and knew something bad was about to happen. “[Reaper’s edge]!” I shouted, slashing straight through the accumulated mana. Apparently I disrupted whatever spell or skill it was trying to use, as five jets of flame erupted out of its chest and singed my face.

Stepping back and waving my weapon defensively, I saw that the pit fiend had finally died, and left a pile of ghostly ashes on the ground. Looting it gave me spectral ashes as well as a ghostly flame shard. The remains of the onidoro gave me a silver coin apiece.

Heading down, I came upon another chamber after another thirty feet, populated with the same creatures. Similar tactics led to another victory, only this time I decided to end the battle with [Death’s gaze] and dedicating the kill to Thanatos.

Thanatos finds your offering acceptable.

For slaying an acceptable offering, you gain 10 favor.

For slaying a heroic monster, you gain 20 favor.

For slaying a monster while using Death’s Gaze, you gain 10 favor.

Current favor: 124/250

Nice, getting closer to that upgrade. Heading down, I didn’t sacrifice any other pit fiends as I wanted to see what those shards could be combined into. The dungeon was rather simple, ten chambers set every thirty feet or so. The tenth one had the exit to the right instead of straight ahead, but was still a simple matter. Turning the corner, I headed down another thirty feet before examining the next room. It seemed that there was going to be something different after all, as the monster was nothing more than a loose group of small insectoids.

Heroic vile swarm

Demonic insects that are incredibly weak individually, but group together in a loose alliance to overpower other creatures. Their bite contains a mild poison that swiftly stacks with others to kill their opponents. Once the group has dropped down to less than ten percent of the original number, it will disband in order to protect the surviving members.

Oh great, a horde of poisonous demon mosquitoes. Looking through my options for weapons, I really had nothing for area of effect attacks except for mana shockwave. Unfortunately for me, mana shockwave wouldn’t trigger on ethereal bodies. Time to head back to the seal and test out a few things.

The first thing I did when I got back to the seal was to pull out some vials to try some alchemical concoctions. Subbing ectoplasm for water in the pyrophoria potion worked, though the damage was split between ethereal and physical damage. Slightly grinding the ghostly spores from the ferns I had come across and combining it with the ectoplasm worked wonders, and was probably going to be the potion I would use against the swarms. The best part of it was that I got three attack vials out of what one normal potion would make. I also went back upstairs to the boss room and grabbed an axe from one of the statues, one that was light enough for use one handed.

Bi-phasic blaze potion

Created from ectoplasm and mycofiend spores, this potion will ignite upon contact with air and cause damage to both spiritual and physical enemies.

Does 50 physical damage over 10 seconds

Does 50 ethereal damage over 10 seconds

Spectral blast potion

Created from ghostly ferns and ectoplasm, shaking this potion will destabilize it and cause an explosion after three seconds. Anything within range will take spectral lighting damage.

Does 250 spectral lighting damage to everything within three feet of explosion.

Potions made, I returned to where the vile swarm was waiting. Standing in the hallway, I leaned the axe against the wall. As a safety net, I charged my hammer up for a shockwave. I pulled a spectral blast potion from my inventory and gave it a hard shake. One. Two. Throw! I hurled the vial at the swarm, but I had waited too long. A wave of cackling energy blasted out in a sphere, barely touching some of the insects. As the swarm charged at me, buzzing in anger, I pulled the axe from the wall and waited until they were just out of range. “[Mana shockwave].” I spoke calmly, slamming the axe against the hammer to cause the skill to erupt. The results were devastating. The swarm had no chance to dodge, and simply ran into the wave of energy and died. A few were far enough away that they could escape. I bent down to loot the pile of corpses and obtained a venomous shard.

The rest of the level was fairly simple after that. Use a spectral blast potion or a mana shockwave to take out the vile swarms and collect venomous shards, or use a bolt from the crossbow to take out the onidoro before moving on to the pit fiends. There was one time I was slow, and the mana surge to the pit fiend’s chest was actually them giving birth to five more onidoro at once.

Monsters aside, the layout of the level was fairly simple. Ten pit fiends in a line to start, turn right and head straight for 8 vile swarms followed by a pit fiend. Again turn right, and get 9 more pit fiends. The level slowly rotated down a square for three lines. The fourth line that would have gone parallel with the initial hallway stopped after one room, and the hallway off the last of the right hand turns led straight into the boss’ chamber.