MORE DUNGEON RUNS. And this one's a doozy. These three rather, I guess.
The first run, a Math dungeon run, features MaxYeskly (ElfEater), Myself(Mobliz), Kyunoko(alexwazer), and ozythesage(Ozymandias). We originally set out to get some leather, as I'm working on weaving lately, and need it.
As you may notice here, Math is populated by KOBOLDS. Lots and lots of kobolds. Welsh mythology kobolds as well, not them tiny mostly harmless ones in DF. Honestly this screenshot is most of the dungeon. Kobolds main gimmick is they're... well, they're goblins, but harder. Archers will attack you while a melee guy attacks you, pretty basic stuff, although a big hurdle for a new player.
At any rate, we bash through it, as always, and prepare for the boss fight. Nothing quite as iconic this time...
Hellhounds! Currently pictured: One getting the hell kicked out of him by three people at once. The general strategy with hellhounds is offense, the only nasty nasty thing they can do to you, firebolt, has a cast time. If you keep the pressure on, you'll probably be fine.
Here is a perhaps more dignified picture of the monsters. After we'd taken out the first one, we moved on to the second. The third didn't take kindly to this, and aggroed on to me, and nailed me with a firebolt. Even through savage beast, this did a pretty nice slice of damage. MaxYeskly, threw himself into the fray, and managed to hold the third off long enough for us to finish the second, and end the third as well.
But we weren't done there, my no. We moved on to Rundal, although MaxYeskly sadly had to leave us for it Meaning it's down to Me, Kyunoko, and ozythesage.
The gimmick of Rundal is SKELETONS. Pirate skeletons to be precise. They're not terribly hard, but later rundal difficulties can be pretty nasty.
We rest before the boss, as per usual. I lost my screenshot of the boss, but it was a cyclops. The strategy here was Kyunoko and ozy would provide ranged support from behind me, while I use windmill, an AoE attack that always knocks enemies back, regardless of passive defenses, to keep him from slipping by and killing them. I got nailed by a stomp halfway through but otherwise, went off without a hitch.
And did you think the train would end there? If you answered no, YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT!
Ya see, Kyunoko got a Rundal Basic pass in the rundal normal run. (Normal is the generic dungeon you run through when you drop a random item. Basic is a step above that.) We called in Laur for a bit of extra firepower, and it proved to be a wise decision, as Basic was pretty nasty. We all died at least once, even, a first, as far as these summaries are concerned.
Our party again. Laur is in the back, and is an elf. Now, don't reach for the torches and whatnot just yet, elves are actually very deadly and honestly probably the best race in mabinogi, unless you want to go melee. I'll go over elves and giants more in depth in the next tech update. Anyway, Rundal had a lot of one thing, and that was oddly, animal men. We had Sahugains, or however you spell that, Gnolls, of two varieties, Flying swords, and archer saguhain. Now, a little thing about multiple monster types in the same room in mabinogi. Each monster type, even if they will only single aggro you, will have one attacking a charecter at one time. So basically, in the worst case scenario, I could have a Doberman GNoll, a Pug Gnoll, a Saguhain archer, and a normal saguhain warrior on me at a single time. Thankfully it never came to this, thanks to the fantastic work by Ozymandias, who saved my ass at least once during this. Shot an enemy that had knocked me back and was moving in for the kill, and managed to kill it. Laur was also an amazing help with Crash Shot, a ranged AoE attack that packs quite a punch, and Thunder which will just murder anything nearby. Another note about this, Flying swords? They have magic. So, if you can imagine dealing with a melee creature, an arrow firing creature, and a magic creature at the same time, that's what you have to deal with here. It is not a kind place ,and I was very impressed with how Ozy handled himself. Had two deaths early on, which if I recall were mostly due to trying to get one last shot off, and missing, which happens.
We pulled through however, primarily due to all the ranged firepower we had at the time. (Kyunoko is an alt of Alexwazers that uses alchemy, which is a ranged hand cannon kinda thing, it's pretty awesome.) We moved into the enemy chamber to reveal the foulest foe we had yet to face....
AN IMMINENT CATSPLOSION. MY GOD. Also cat men. I was serious about the animal person thing. I didn't get a better picture because I was clearly too horrified to approach. Despite this, one managed to combo me and take off most of my health, leaving me to millwall duty, which was the tactic I previously described in the first rundal boss. Now, there are about 9 cat knights I believe, and most of them were taken out by Laur and Ozy, with some support from Kyunoko from the side. He managed to die at one point, but since laur and ozy were holdin off the foes well enough on their own, I snuck over and revived him. He provided supporting fire in the battle with the final cat knight, and distracted it long enough to let me prep windmill one last time, when the final barrage of arrows felled the things.
So yeah, three dungeon runs tonight. Mostly just got a shit ton of gold, but that's not a bad thing at all.
Notable drops for other people were, Arish Ashuvain boots, I think they were male, and Laur managed to net a female bohemian hat. Both fine equips, particularly for laur, as the bohemian set is an archer set. She already had one, but hey.That's that! Don't be afraid to stop by the steam chat and ask questions if you haven't yet. We're all pretty chill. And personally I'm a know it all, so I love answering questions. The link is in the OP, again.