Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (21 page)

After another 10 minutes we all received the same automated message from AltCon informing us of the task we were being given. This AltCon quest was indeed to be a raid, made up solely of our team mates. The only hitch was that the parameters of the raid would be determined by the average of our levels. Our group had reached level 12 since we were continuing to grind through experience trying to get levels for our next Sir Kenyon quest. However, our teammates were still at level 9. This meant that we were likely to get mobs that were levels 12-14. doable for my group, but I didn’t know about our team mates.

Once we had formed our raid party, with me as the leader, I accepted the quest and we were instantly transported to the entrance of a dungeon. The interior of the dungeon. So we had no idea where it was located in the game world. And of course there was no map. Thankfully there were no mobs either. Gary was the first to notice a lack of a map, other than me and my group.

“Well this sucks, how are we going to know where we went if there is no map?” Gary asked.

Before I could answer, Dan shot us a private message that just said, “ixnay on the hotographic emoryma!” Seriously, he wrote it out in pig Latin.

“We’ve dealt with this before, and Dan is remarkably good at keeping track of where we’ve been. He’s like an idiot savant that way. Leaning heavier toward the idiot,” Jason answered.

Dan sent us another private message thanking Jason for keeping his secret so well. Really, it was almost impossible to get mad at Dan.

Jenny seemed to be their natural leader and provided her thoughts to begin, “I say we let Alex sneak around a bit and see what is down here.”

My whole team groaned. They really didn’t like the time suck that was my Conceal/Stealth. And although I’d gotten faster with levels and Stan’s training, it was still remarkably slow.

“Or we could just wreck shit,” Gary offered.

“Ooooh, I like Gary. Alex, can we keep him!” Dan exclaimed.

“Not a chance tree hugger, he’s ours,” Kaitlin said. “Ok Dan and Gary, do your thing.”

Gary and Dan spoke briefly and decided to just have Gary make his way out to the first mobs and bring them back. If we got two, no worries. Tim would try to crowd control the extra, but if needs be, we would have Wayne tank them both with Jason and Kaitlin trading off heals to keep him alive.

Gary headed into the halls and came back almost instantly. “Guys, there are two mobs around the corner. And they are both yellow to me.”

This is what I was afraid of, but knew that they may not be so high a level for my group. I sent Dan to check it out, and they were Blue to Dan. So they were likely level 13. Quite a bit high for our team mates, but doable for us. It looked like our team mates were about to get some really good experience.

“Pull away Gary, and Play Dead when you get back here. Wayne, you got this?” I asked.

“Really Alex? I thought only Dan asked stupid questions,” Wayne said while laughing.

The pull was not a problem for us at all. Thankfully, Gary’s Play Dead worked and he didn’t take any damage from the mobs. Wayne was able to Tank both at the same time, although Jennifer did offer to take one of them. When she saw how hard they were hitting for, however, she decided to let Wayne take the brunt of the damage.

What Gary pulled were rock creatures called Enraged Earth Dwellers. We got through them without any concerns, and with our combined damage, the task did not take long at all. I wondered how well Tim’s Charm spell would work on a yellow mob, so I put forth an idea to do one of my experiments.

“Say no Tim. Don’t even let him finish the thought. These things always end in a bloodbath,” Wayne said when I put my idea forward.

“Come on man! It was just those two times, and we learned valuable information!” I replied. I wasn’t going to mention that a tiny Rabbit beat on Wayne. The Warrior in him would have orchestrated my death in retribution. And he would have totally thought I deserved it.

“It’s fine Wayne, I’m always game to try new things,” Tim said.

“Your funeral bro, and I don’t know how respawn works here,” Wayne answered.

When we pulled the next two mobs, I told Wayne to get aggro on them again, but told Tim to try and Charm the one Wayne wasn’t primarily attacking. It was yellow to Tim, so I didn’t know if he would be able to land the spell.

“Failed. Failed. Landed.” Tim replied.

So now we knew the mob had a high resist, but that with enough time, Tim could likely get the mob under control. When it finally did break that Charm though, it was going to beat Tim’s ass something fierce. I made sure all heals were ready to save Tim when Wayne finally launched his attack.

Ten percent. That’s how far Tim’s health fell before Wayne was able to get aggro. And that was with lots of heals. Tim went down to only 10 percent life left. And Tim was shooting daggers at me when it was all done. “You’re right Wayne. Alex can do experiments on himself from now on. That sucked.”

I muttered something about “valuable information” and suggest we keep going. The rest agreed, as we weren’t here to fight mobs in the entry way.

This dungeon was much like the sewers we had fought in before. A maze of corridors, but this time made to look like caves rather than sewers. And with the twists and turns, we were all lost, except for Dan.

“If my calculations are correct, we should be turning the next corner and finding some kind of boss fight,” Dan said.

And wouldn’t you know it, as we turned into the next hallway we found two more mobs and what looked like a large room behind them. Our team mates thought this was a lucky guess, but we all knew the amazement that was Dan’s weird brain. If only it could be used for good and not just crosswords.

We cleared the last two mobs before the big room and our team mates gave out whoops of joy. Apparently they had leveled. We took a quick break so they could distribute the points they received. Every bit was going to be necessary for this fight. This still left the mobs yellow, but were likely only 3 levels vice 4 higher than they were now. Although that was likely to be different in the large room.

More importantly, we had been lucky with our looting. Well, I had been lucky. The rock dwellers were dropping a significant amount of Silver, and more importantly, some armor. It was all metal based given they were rock, but it allowed Jennifer to deck out in a full set of Rusted armor minus one bracer, but this was an improvement for her. Gary, Tim, and Kaitlin couldn’t wear the metal based armor.

I thought back to our previous boss fight in the sewers and expected some kind of AoE spell that was going to hit us from the boss. Everyone in my group had a minimum of 10 resistance against the elements, but I was figuring this was going to be an earth based attack given where we were. I told Jason to prep his Earth resistance spell.

“Oh, I have one of those too!” Kaitlin said. “I get Disease and Poison at level 10, but I can’t go and get those spells right now obviously. But I got my Earth resistance earlier.”

It appeared her spells were opposite to Jason’s in the order they were given, at least for resistances. Now I only hoped the two spells would stack. Sometimes in these games if you were casting a spell with the same effect, the two effects wouldn’t compound. In this case, I was hoping that with a Cleric and a Druid, two very different Classes, the spells would stack, or work simultaneously.

“Let’s hold off casting those until after I get back from scouting the room. Otherwise the buffs could wear off. And Dan, no crosswords,” I said.

“You always ruin all of my fun, Alex.”

I moved out to the large room and scouted the area. True to form, the phrase stuck – “A dungeon, is a dungeon, is a dungeon.” There is only so much that you could do with a dungeon layout, and this had been the case in every game I had ever played. You had mazes, mobs, and bosses. I hoped in higher level dungeons things would get more interesting, but this was still a very low level encounter. It just so happened that my group had completed the one instance dungeon that Resurgence had to offer, so we had already seen a similar layout.

And this was indeed looking just like the sewers, with regular Enraged Earth Dwellers and a Furious Earth Dweller who was yellow to me. I relayed this to the group, and returned to discuss our strategy. Unlike when there was only the four of us, we likely wouldn’t have to kite around any of the mobs. Jennifer was feeling better about her Tanking chances and suggested off-Tanking one of the regular Enraged mobs. That would leave Wayne to deal with the mini-boss and the other Enraged. We would kill Wayne’s Enraged first, then Jenny’s and then focus on the mini-boss. I felt better about Tim’s chances of Charming the Enraged, but I also saw what happened when the mob broke through the Charm and almost killed Tim. And we wouldn’t be able to save Tim and keep Wayne healed if that happened. Tim was disappointed, but admitted to the smarts of the plan.

Thankfully, the two resistance spells did stack and we were all blessed with an additional +40 resistance to Earth. That put my group at +50. I hoped this would be sufficient to resist the AoE that we figured was coming.

We entered the room and Wayne immediately taunted the Furious Dweller and Bashed the Enraged, establishing aggro on both. Jenny began attacking the other Enraged, but then stopped after establishing aggro, to heal herself. Her successful heals meant the mob would keep hitting her, and Kaitlin and Jason could focus on Wayne’s health. We tore through the Enraged quickly and then moved to help Jenny. However, her heals had put her too high on the aggro list of the Enraged she was fighting and Wayne couldn’t pull aggro. He also kept getting stunned by the Furious mob, which left him unable to do much damage wise.

Jenny dropped below 50 percent health by the time we finished her Enraged. I worried that even with Jason and Kaitlin’s buff’s Jenny would still get hit by the AoE and would be effected by it, whatever it was.

With both of the Blue mobs down, we focused our attention on the Furious mob. And true to form, at 50 percent the Furious Earth Dweller cast it’s AoE. Only it wasn’t a damage AoE, it was worse than that. It was a Stun. And it lasted for 10 seconds. In any regular group, this would be the death of all of us, since Wayne couldn’t maintain aggro when he was stunned, and Jason couldn’t cast heal. And the AI was smart enough that it would have gone right for Jason and taken him out of the game.

Only we weren’t a regular group. We were the Bunny Slayers of Port Town. And that extra 10 resistance saved our asses.

Our team mates all got hit by the stun, and were out of the fight for those ten seconds. But because of our extra resistance, our group was not affected. And Wayne was able to continue his attacks and Jason was able to heal. It happened again at 25 percent, and with the same effect. Where normally this would have destroyed another party, we were able to hold out. And after a couple of minutes we vanquished the Furious Dweller. There were cheers all around.

“Now watch Alex do what he does best! Chance Master, you up!” Dan yelled.

I approached the mob and looted the corpse. And it was a doozy for sure. There was four Gold on the mob, meaning 50 Silver each. Enough to really help outfit our team mates. There was also some rock pieces that I didn’t recognize, and one piece of rare loot. Gary was going to shit his pants.

“Well, this one is a total no brainer,” I said and linked the item to the group for everyone to see.

“Woah!” was all Gary said.

“Congrats pull brother!” Dan said, while pushing Gary toward the corpse.

“Are you guys sure?” Gary asked.

We all laughed, since we had all been there before. That moment when you get some sweet loot but you can’t believe someone else doesn’t want it. In this case, no one else could use it. So we definitely had no problem with Gary taking this one.

“Dan was right bro; you are the Chance Master. Jenny, can we keep him?” Gary said and we all laughed at that.

* * *

My group was not surprised to find a stair way that led down to another level after we killed the Furious Dweller and the concealing mist lifted totally. Our team mates were surprised that we had another level to go through. I wanted to get to the next large room, figuring this would be the big boss.

We followed the same pattern again, only this time we found Gary had become a wrecking machine. Twice he had to Play Dead from the level of damage he was dealing with his new Rock Knuckles. And that Stun he was randomly dishing out was not helping matters. He began Playing Dead after each successful Stun hit, knowing that would lower him on the aggro list, otherwise he would just keep pulling aggro.

After another hour and a half, we had cleared the second level of the dungeon. Our teammates were halfway through level 10 and my group was close to level 13. Because of my one death, I was still 25 percent behind my group. We also had lots of
Rusted
armor in our inventory to sell later. Jenny now had a full set of armor.

I scouted the room again and found only one mob, The Master of Earth. And he was Yellow to me but Red to my team mates. Even by himself, he was going to be a real challenge. I told everyone what we were facing and we buffed accordingly. Everyone had their Earth resistance on and Wayne charged the Master.