The Deepest Abyss (1 click away from disaster)

The Deepest Abyss (1 click away from disaster)

Most of us live on a razor’s edge every day.  Since a well balanced and brilliantly conceived persistent world like higher ground tends to be an excellent mirror of an alternate world/life the risks and dangers on higher ground tend to be magnified and force the player to really appreciate the fine line between victory and disaster.

Last night we attempted to take on Orcus Lord of the Undead in his frigid abode of Thanatos. Orcus is never an easy run. He is well defended by legions of Undead as well as a very elaborate system of keys and phylacteries.

Of course, getting to Orcus is the relatively easy, if time consuming part of the adventure. It is fighting Orcus in the citadel of his power while attended by a huge host of his minions were you really begin to appreciate the tiny margin for error that a party of adventurers really has.

Last night all went well as we got ready to set up for the final confrontation with Orcus. When getting ready to take on an Abyssal Lord, positioning can often make the difference between win or wipe. So not wanting to take chances we opted to set up behind his throne, which is a highly defensible area that should afford us an extra 15-30 seconds of safety in which to focus all of our abilities on bringing down Orcus before his summons begin to appear.

But, mischance is fickle, thus last night one of our players miss-clicked on Orcus while trying to get into position. This miss-click began the fight immediately with the party in absolute disarray.

Hoping to salvage the situation, I gave the order for everyone to focus on Orcus in an effort to bring him down fast.

Using Epic Wall around myself I set up toward the north east corner of the room and began trying to take out blood winds using greater ruins which would enable me to open up and use evards black tentacles, incendiary cloud and delayed blast fireballs on the spawn.

I knew that I was taking some big risks here, surrounded by epic wall and with several kick back mobs still in the spawn I would need to watch my health like a hawk. Blocking all this out I began to cast and cast, there is almost a Zen like feeling to watching your casting queue fill up as you go through an arcane casters formula of destruction. Evards, evards, cloud, dbf, dbf, dbf each cast is 3 seconds 20 seconds in I can see the Balors making their way around the main spawn and Orcus to get to the party. Ok now Starfire (A high damage epic spell usable only once per day) and Orcus is Injured.

Things are on target and we may be able to recover. 30 seconds in immute (Immutable Force a druid epic which makes the party invulnerable for approximately 30 seconds) is down and Orcus is beginning to summon, the artaglith in the back of the spawn is summoning zombies at an exponential rate. The zombies kick back is beginning to get past my resists. I have used my 2 ruins on blood winds at the start of the fight.

I bio (Bios are magical pots that restore a casters spells, but are only usable every 5 minutes.) ok ruin the artaglith, precious seconds tick by as I carefully target on the atratglith within a writhing mass of creatures at the far end of the spawn.

The ruin hits but the artaglith does not go down, ok keeping my fingers crossed as I attempt to use my second and last greater ruin. My targeting if good and he goes down. But as I re-focus on the main spawn the room is literally awash with abyssal zombies and several blood winds.

Being out of ruins my only hope is that our cleric is able to implode the blood winds fast enough for me to bring the pain to Orcus. I queue fire orbs which are a targeted spell to at least keep his regeneration to a minimum as I wait on the cleric to clear the blood winds.

Roughly 50 seconds into the spawn, my epics wall is breached. The very experienced tanks in the party react quickly to close the breach with their bodies buying me a few more seconds in which to Starfire Orcus again. The whole massive spawn seems to wilt under the huge wave of magic energy I unleash. I can see my life bar plummet as I take massive kick back from the spawn.

A slight smile plays across my lips as I see Orcus at Badly Injured even as my character dies under a full press of monsters and overwhelming kick back.

I hope this gives you a bit of an intro to the very challenging end game areas that are available on Higher Ground.