Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (37 page)

Kind of anticlimactic seeing as we waited over a week to get this thing started.

The only real interactions of note were the mini-boss and main boss of the raid.

After clearing out all of the mobs within the camp, but not within the main structure of the camp where we figured the boss would be located, the mini-boss appeared. He seemed to be the last line of defense between the outer portion of the camp, and the interior. And as such, he brought friends. But it looked to be pretty weak to our eyes. The Woodland Bandit Commander was flanked by two Woodland Guards. The Commander was Yellow to my group and Red to our teammates, but we hadn’t had so much as a close call up to this point. All the same, knowing we were going into a boss fight, we buffed and raised our resistances appropriately.

We handled this guy like any other three mob encounter. Wayne tanked two and Jenny off tanked the third. We killed the weaker one of Wayne’s first, then Jenny’s, followed by engaging the boss. Completely and totally by the book. Jenny would self-heal if necessary, but Kaitlin would have primary healing on Jenny and secondary on Wayne.

What made this mob fun and exciting was that we didn’t have to wait until he hit 75 percent of health before we got our first surprise. At 90 percent two archers appeared on the parapets along the outer wall and began raining attacks on us. At the same time, the Commander called for reinforcements and two more guards came out of the inner sanctum to flank the commander and begin attacking us. Our plans for dealing with the new guards was simple, but those archers could very easily do some serious damage to us, especially since we couldn’t control who they aggro’ed.

“Well, whadda’ya know?” Tim said as he stood up and started walking toward the archers. “I finally get to do something other than making mobs stand still.”

Before I could comment on Tim’s words, he cast Charm twice and both Woodland Bandit Archers stopped shooting. This was good for keeping the archers out of the fight, but I didn’t see how this was going to end well once both of the mobs lost their Charm spell and started treating Tim like a pincushion. But that was because I forgot about the other half of the Charm spell. It is great for controlling a crowd, but even more so, it allows you to direct the movements of the mob as if it were your very own pet.

And in this case, Tim had a strategy that I couldn’t have beat. With a single command from Tim, the archers turned and started firing arrows point blank at each other. I almost doubled over in laughter at the sight. They did massive amounts of damage to each other before one of them died and Dan finished off the second one with his own arrows. Without Tim we would have had serious difficulty taking down the archers, as we didn’t have a character in our group who could do high level direct damage spells from a ranged position. Nor did we have anyone who could do damage over time like the Dark Casters. I planned on telling Tim after the fight that he had earned his Robe and then some in this fight. Although I think the fact that Tim was getting to do more than just crowd control had him in utter bliss. Much like with Jason, who loved his role as our healer, sometimes you just want to fuck shit up.

I naturally wanted to try an experiment during this encounter, but didn’t want to hear the bitching and moaning that would come from my teammates if I brought it up. So instead I just told them what to do. They look to me as leader more often then I like, so this time I planned to take advantage of that.

As we were dealing with the two new guards flanking the Commander, and the two new archers that appeared when the Commander reached 80 percent, I gave out my orders.

“Listen up. We kill one of the guards next to the commander and the other one we take down to 10 percent. Tim, you do the same on the archers. Leave one of each alive. Then focus on the Commander and get him down to 70 percent.”

No one questioned my orders and did exactly what I said. I worried for a brief moment that there would be an extra surprise at 75 percent, but that fear was unnecessary. My hope, and I knew it was unlikely, is that if there was already a guard and an archer, the system wouldn’t spawn another set. More than likely though, we were going to have two more of each. Which is why I had them take the second one down to 10 percent before engaging the Commander.

And as I feared, at 70 percent two more did come out to play. So if we hadn’t taken care of the archers, once we got this guy down to 70 percent we would have been facing six archers now, instead of just the two and the one about to die. The same could be said for the guards on the ground. At 20 percent it would have been 16 archers and 16 guards. No one would have lived through that.

“Just as I thought, even if there is still a guard alive out here, every ten percent we are going to get new guards and archers, so let’s just clear em out. How’s mana?”

Jason looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up. Then Wayne looked back for a brief second to look at me before engaging a guard and said, “You asshole, you totally just did one of your experiments without telling us, didn’t you?”

I nodded my head, not ashamed of my subterfuge. “Don’t cry, no one got the least bit hurt. Maybe this is how I will do them from now on so you guys don’t get all anxious because you know it’s one of my experiments. Wouldn’t want you to get stage fright out here and seize up.”

“Like Dan at the urinal,” Jason added.

“Hey! I’m pee shy! And Allister, you promised you wouldn’t tell!”

* * *

At the end of our fight everyone was down a few hit points, and mana was low, but we again didn’t have any close calls. Mostly this was due to Tim’s ability to deal with the archers on the parapets so masterfully. As the raid leader, I was in charge of looting the corpse and made my way to the Commander for our loots. I focused on the Commander’s body, blinked once, and brought up the inventory of lootable items.

“Well this first one makes total sense since he was in charge of all of those archers,” I said.

Everyone started congratulating Dan immediately. He did a little jig around the interior of the camp and said, “this is awesome! That is a huge upgrade to my current bow. And even better, it tells me that at some point I am going to get double shot!”

I then linked the second item.

While still looking at the item, I heard Kaitlin audibly gasp behind me. It was no doubt that she wanted this item. Sure, the armor was great, and the increase in her Wisdom would mean a much bigger Mana pool for her. But the fact that it would cost 10 percent less Mana for a spell was huge. That really stacked up over time. But it was both Druid and Ranger usable. So we had to ask Dan.

“Well, what do you say Dan?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me Alex? Do you have any idea how awesome Kaitlin would look in Leather Pants! I’m not going to say that I’ve pictured that in mind many a time already because that would just be weird, you know?” Dan said. Then thought about what he said. And then looked at Kaitlin and mumbled, “I just made it weird didn’t I?”

“If I’m wearing those pants TC, you can look at my leather any time you like. Especially if you are saying I can have them.”

“Of course I am! Congrats Kaitlin!” Dan said and then looked over at Wayne and whispered, but not really, “Did you see that bro. You should take notes man. TheClaw got mad game son.”

After Dan and Kaitlin looted the corpse, we entered the inner sanctum of the Bandit Camp and continued our raid.

* * *

Two hours later we were in the center room of the inner sanctum, having cleared out all of the mobs and standing in front of the Woodland Bandit Leader. As I noted previously, the mobs were not difficult, and with Dan’s new bow, they went down even faster than before. About ten mobs before arriving at the Leader, our teammates leveled to 15. Such was the benefit of fighting the yellow mobs en masse. They ended up with tons of experience. I imagine they didn’t think they would get to 15 so quickly, so they hadn’t already purchased their level 15 spells for Jenny, Kaitlin, and Tim. And to be honest, I didn’t think they had the funds to do so anyhow. The bright point, however, was that Kaitlin was now able to equip her new pants, and they did look smashing on her.

The Leader followed closely with the Commander in that every 10 percent he called in reinforcements. However, this time it was four Woodland Bandit Guards that came to his aide. There were no archers this time around, but we were still able to use Tim’s tactic of Charming two and having them beat the snot out of each other, while Wayne tanked one Guard and the Leader and Jenny off tanked the last Guard. The Guards had more hit points than their brethren out in the yard, and the Leader definitely had more hit points than the Commander. But that wasn’t what made the Leader such a pain to kill.

The Leader was a healer. And though we were able to disrupt his spells time and again with Bashes from Jenny and Wayne, he still landed more than we disrupted. It also told me how this guy would be the Leader of the bandits. If looked at from a logical point of view, I mean. He had more hit points, he hit hard as a truck, and he had a bunch of plate armor on, which added to his armor class. And even if someone challenged him for his position as Leader, he could just heal himself and keep whittling down his opponent’s health. Of course this isn’t how the game worked, but you can’t blame me for thinking through these things.

Wait? Did I just have a Dan like moment of internal rambling? That’s when I knew this had been a long day.

The Leader went down eventually, although it was a fairly long fight, and showed us another aspect of the game with the reinforcements and introduction of a healer. I didn’t count the bandit Lester, since he wasn’t much of a challenge.

Right before I approached the corpse of the Leader, I remembered my Force Multiplier ring. I hadn’t used it yet, since there hadn’t been a need. But what better opportunity to give it a trial run than before looting the boss of a raid, even if it is a mini-raid? So with that thought in mind, I activated the ring through the old time tested method of focus and blink. I immediately looked at my stats before doing anything else.

Alex: Rogue, Level 16

Str: 72 (+2)

Cst:
80 (+12)

Agi:
40 (+16)

Dex:
148 (+26)

Wsd:
24 (+1)

Int:
4 (+1)

Chn:
600 (+2)

The first thing I noticed, because that is how my mind works, is that only the main skills get the 4X bonus. The bonus to stats from items and weapons does not. The second thing I noticed, and what truly made my jaw drop, was that my Chance was now at 600! I was on shaky legs as I approached the Leader. With a Chance this high, I couldn’t see how we wouldn’t get the best drops this mob had to offer.

And boy was I right.

I linked the first two items to the groups and waited for people to look the items over. I knew, personally, who I wanted the items to go to. But I wouldn’t stop anyone from wanting to roll. There was also a third item that Jason was going to get, so I told him to let Jenny have the first one. He didn’t question my statement and immediately called out Jenny for the boots. I knew Wayne wasn’t going to stop her from taking them either.