Kieran

  “Okay, so what exactly is the plan here, then?” Kieran asked, staring down [Uathach] standing outside of the enemy tent once again.

  The party had done the cavalry charge section in one attempt again, and played it out almost the same way as the previous night’s run. They had also, once again, immensely enjoyed the mowing down of enemies from horseback.

  “I think we just start out as seriously as we can, and see how we do?” Ash said tentatively. “I mean, we spent a lot of time last night just fucking around, so I’d like to see how we do if we actually focus.”

  “That means no killing me or Mello, Bisky.” Evan snarked.

  “Shut your face, Fiona. I’m gonna hold off killing you both for now, but only so I can do it when you least expect it.” Marissa hissed.

  “Bisky, if you ruin a good run by murdering us, I’m gonna…do something.” Ash said.

  “Fair’s fair, I suppose.” Marissa shrugged. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Okay,” Evie said, trying to bring the group’s focus back, “so we’re just going to do our best this time, then?”

  “Think so.” Nyx said.

  “I think it’s the best way to see where we stand, at least.” Firo agreed. “I honestly think we should be fine - we’ve done every mechanic combo correctly at least once, so we just need to not make any stupid mistakes.”

  “Easier said than done, but yeah,” Jazz said.

  “Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s get in there.” Evan said, moving Fiona toward the circle. Kieran was grateful that the pull only started when everyone entered the circle and Evan just running ahead couldn’t start the fight on his own.

  “Do we want to double check clock spots and reconfirm how we’re doing spreads?” Kieran asked. “We should just double check and make sure everyone knows where they’re going.”

  “Good call, good call.” Ash said, walking away from the group. Mellody started hopping in place a little bit away from the party. “Clock spots around me,” he said, then faced Mellody toward [Uathach], “And [Uathach] is true north.”

  “Mello, that’s West,” Nyx said, positioning herself according to the actual map directions. The rest of the party followed her lead.

  “Alright, fine, just use the map’s directions then,” Ash sighed, as he positioned Mellody in the proper spot. “And to clarify, we’re using true north for spots throughout the fight, right?”

  A chorus of agreements followed as the group dispersed and headed toward the starting point. Kieran and Evie stopped just outside the circle. For Kieran, it was to shovel the last few french fries into his mouth before the fight began, and he quickly washed them down with a pull of cola before stepping inside the circle.

  Evie remained just outside the circle a few moments longer. “Sorry guys, just checking a work notification,” she said, and sounded entirely distracted.

  “The heck do they want at this hour?” Nyx asked.

  “Apparently someone screwed something up and they’re looking for a customer service rep to fix it. Not that I have any interest in doing so, but it says you’ll get overtime.” There was a pause before Evie said, “Okay, I’m ready. Nyx, you good?”

  “Yeah. Overtime isn’t the draw they think it is.” She chuckled.

  “For us maybe, but I’m sure someone wants the extra money,” Evie said and stepped into the circle.

  The same short cutscene they had seen thirty times the previous night played through, eventually ending with [Bufon] leaping toward the party.

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  The party had the first phase of the fight completely learned at this point. Not only was dealing with one mechanic at a time fairly easy to begin with, the order was also the same every time, so they could easily react to what they knew would be next and pre-position for most of the mechanics.

  Once phase two began, things became a little more dicey. The first two combinations were easy enough. The cone and spread combo was easy to avoid, as long as everyone was paying attention and no one was out for murder. The second combo was the stack and donut AoE, which might have been the easiest combination possible.

  Third up was the single target leap which required the tank to intercept in combination with the random pillar AoE. Aleister was quick on the [Shade Step] to teleport and cover Nyx, who had been targeted by the boss. Firo pretty easily dodged the pillar when it appeared beneath him, as the combination left plenty of maneuverable space.

  They had found in the previous night’s pulls that each set of combos would be a set of four combinations, and in that set there would be no repeated mechanics. Which meant that of the nine possible mechanics, the last pair could only be the healer grab, tank buster, or delayed damage.

  That sort of process of elimination helped, but was far from fool-proof, given it still had three to pick from. This time, it picked the tank buster and healer grab combo, which was also fairly easy to dodge for everyone.

  “That’s round one down.” Kieran said.

  “Yup, stay focused - we got all easy ones in that first set.” Firo said.

  “Yes, sir,” Nyx said as the group slid into their default positions around the boss again.

  Kieran smiled as they waited through the few basic attacks that [Bufon] threw at the tank between sets. Firo was getting used to making callouts as they played together more, and it made him happy to see the kid adjust to their little group so well.

  They also knew that [Bufon] didn’t repeat any combinations during the sets, so as they rolled into the second set of combos, they had at least a little bit of knowledge of what to not expect.

  The first one was the tank buster paired with the delayed damage. Aleister quickly moved away to bait out the delayed damage effect, while the other melee gave Fiona the space to safely take the buster. That combo was another easy one.

  Second was the pillar AoE mixed with the donut. With more than thirty attempts under the party’s belt, they had a pretty good sense of what the safe zone for the donut AoE was by this point. They spread on the edges cleanly, and when the pillar’s marker appeared under Caoimhe, everyone moved away easily.

  “Nice.”

  “Keep it up.”

  The third combo was the cone AoE and the tank intercepted attack. The party cheered at yet another relatively safe combination, as the conal AoE went out and everyone easily fanned out behind the boss. Then Aleister stepped in between [Bufon] and Nyx, who he had targeted a second time with that attack, easily intercepting the attack.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about this one.” Ash said. “They’re front loading all the easiest combos.”

  “Sometimes the game has to be nice to us, right?” Marissa said, despite also sounding skeptical.

  “Putting all the hardest ones in group three is mean, though.” Kieran said, as the final combination of round 2 played out.

  The healer grab was followed by the spread, which was another easy combination. Everyone remained apart while Mellody simple [Puddle Jumped] her way out of the healer targeting grab attack.

  “And round three,” Firo said flatly.

  “Focus up.” Evie called. “Try to not make any big mistakes here, but we still have, like, all of our healing tools.”

  “True. It’s been very clean up to here,” Ash agreed.

  Kieran did his best to stay focused. With all of the goofing off they had done the previous night, they had never made it past the third round of mechanics. Not only did that mean they were coming up on the furthest point in the fight they had seen, and wanted to push past it, but it also meant that they didn’t know what to expect after getting by it.

  [Bufon] immediately opened with one of the mean combos. The spread mechanic combined with the donut AoE was a very tight fit for everyone to remain safe. If anyone was just a little too far to any side, it meant two deaths, minimum. They game sense the party had developed over their repeated attempts here did not fail them, however, as everyone had a good feel for exactly where to stand, and the attacks went off without a hitch.

  “Good, good.”

  “Stay focused.”

  Second was a tank buster and stack combination. The tank buster and stack were a simple enough combination, it just required a lot of healing to make it through. Fiona took the buster like a champ, while the rest of the party gathered up to take the stack mechanic well outside of the buster’s cleave range. Splitting the stack’s damage seven ways instead of eight was rougher on the healers, but several combinations required it be done that way.

  There was a short rush to heal everyone up back to full before the third combo hit. When the tells for the tank intercepted attack and the delayed damage came up, the party floundered a bit. They hadn’t seen this combination often, and it threw a wrench in their plans for how to handle each one.

  “I’ve got the delayed damage.” Firo said, as he moved out to bait the effect.

  Caoimhe was targeted by the big swing that a tank needed to take, so Aleister [Shadow Stepped] over to cover her from the attack, while Firo simply tried to stay safe to take the big lump of damage from the delayed effect.

  The healers were on top of the whole thing, however. Firo had gotten a decently sized HP shield before the damage hit him, and then healed Aleister back up after the hefty hit he took for Caoimhe.

  A brief cheer went up as [Bufon] rolled into the fourth combination for the round. The healer grab attack and the pillar AoE. It wasn’t a difficult combination necessarily, but it had led to deaths because of the way it was timed. The pillar AoE wouldn’t show on the ground until just after the healer was targeted and needed to dodge. The two mechanics were timed in a very specific way that if the healer chose the wrong direction to dodge the grab, they could move straight into the pillar AoE and eat a one-shot attack with no recourse.

  Mellody was the healer target, and had to just trust her luck as she [Puddle Jumped] away from the grab and toward Firo. When the AoE appeared under Bisky’s feet, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “That’s round three done.” Kieran said, watching [Bufon] curiously. He still had 35% of his massive HP remaining.

  “New phase, I assume?” Evan said, as he focused on minimizing the damage he took from the boss’s interim attacks between phases.

  “Feels like it. The time between is longer.” Ash said.

  “Very well then,” [Bufon] suddenly spoke, for the first time during the fight. The sudden intrusion of the gravelly voice made Kieran sit up straight. It had to be a cue for something coming.

  When [Bufon] rolled into a familiar looking combo, Kieran’s gut reaction was to relax, but he didn’t trust that.

  “Three.” Nyx said, as they all watched [Bufon] go through the conal AoE combo.

  “Say again?” Jazz asked.

  “It’s gonna be three. I’d bet you anything.” Nyx repeated, as [Bufon] flowed like water into the tank buster combo.

  “Oh. Three mechanics.” Kieran said, dryly, as [Bufon] moved into the donut AoE tell.

  “Well, shit.” Ash said, as everyone scrambled into positions. Without seeing anything beforehand, it was hard to tell how the mechanics would mix. With the two-mechanic combos, they happened at the same time. But with three mechanics, all three happening together - depending on the grouping - wouldn’t be survivable. At least not without some very clever use of specific skills.

  The group tentatively moved closer to the boss, skirting right on the edge of the allowable area for the donut AoE. If they got too close, the tank buster’s cleave would kill everyone - and they had seen that outcome enough already.

  The donut AoE came out first, coinciding with the tank buster attack. As soon as the two mechanics finished, [Bufon] spun around and blasted the conal AoE right at the party. Everyone except for Fiona, Nyx, and Caoimhe took the blast to the face. Nyx and Caoimhe had used movement abilities to leave the grouped up party in the instant the cleave went off, mostly acting on instinct.

  Thankfully, the cone damage wasn’t enough to kill everyone. The healers took the most damage, leaving them with just over 1,000 HP after the hit, and frantically smashing their AoE healing skills, while the boss went through the basic attack string that acted as buffer between the mechanic combos.

  “Okay! Three mechanics at once isn’t so bad. We still got this.” Firo cheered. “Totally got this.”

  “Yeah! We’;ve seen everything he’s got, we just need to do multiple things at once. That’s not bad!” Evie agreed, as the boss moved into the next sequence.

  Everyone was on edge as they watched the group of tells. First was the delayed damage, followed by the attack that the tank needed to intercept, and ended with a spread.

  As the clear signal for the spread clicked in everyone’s heads, they all moved apart to create space - after all, without the donut AoE to keep them close, they had plenty of space to work with. When the boss threw his hammer in the air, and it landed next to Evie, that was also simply noted - Aleister was already in the process of aiming [Shadow Step] to get behind her to take the hit.

  The problem came when the furthest player from the boss was marked for the delayed damage. Before spreading, the group had been pretty close to the boss and each other. When they spread out, everyone defaulted toward their general clock spots.

  By sheer, dumb luck, Evie ended up the furthest from the boss.

  When Aleister saw [Bufon] leap toward Evie, he teleported to intercept the hit. In the same instant, Evie turned and ran away as fast as she could manage.

  In the same instant that Aleister took the hit for Evie, the spread AoEs triggered, and the two of them were still too close. The overlapped AoEs in addition to the heavy blow form the boss was enough to kill Aleister - but that was alright.

  The issue that wiped them was that the overlapped AoEs were also enough to kill Evie, who was afflicted with the delayed damage effect - which promptly exploded, killing everyone.

  “That’s bullshit!” Evie shouted. “My Dazzling Shift is on cooldown, but it never went off! I should’ve been out of that AoE! Bull! Shit!”

  "Blaming the lag. Classic."

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