My group has been slowly been collecting tags and the pieces to the Wand of Orcus while adventuring in the abyss as preparation for returning the pieces of the Wand of Orcus to Pelor for its final destruction.
Last night was our final night of tagging for the first of two scheduled attempts. Many in the group needed the wand piece held by Obox-ob to have a full set. And this is why last night once again found us in Zyon the twisted horror infested realm of the Demon Lord of insects.
The main challenge of this run is keeping characters from being infected by the Ekolids (Insectoid Demons). Just being in their presence is enough for a low saves caster to become infected. If this happens, the character begins to grow Ekolid eggs inside their body, making it difficult to concentrate, then causing excruciating pain and finally culminating in a scene much like the alien movies where hatching Ekolids overwhelm their host and hatch from the host’s body to plague the group with more and more Ekolids.
I have had numerous experiences with newer parties where the entire screen was completely filled with Ekolids from infection allowed to progress unchecked.
Last night we cautiously made our way through the twisting tunnels leading to Obox’s throne room using a puller (a character with greater sanctuary, Mordenkainens Disjunction and black blades of disaster).
The idea is that they encounter the spawn first mord them to get their spell resistance down, and the use a black blade to lead them back to the party which is set up at a choke point with area of effect spells ready.
Barring a random spawn which can land on the party, this allows some control over where the fight will take place and provides a terrain tactical advantage to the players.
Using this technique we were able to reach Obox-ob’s throne room in about and hour of game time, and were now ready for the trickiest part of any part 3 abyss run.
Because Demon Lords are able to summon at a very fast rate (Around every 30 seconds or so), any party wishing to beat them is forced to really bring the fire power to take them down quickly.
Unlike the Hells where it is often possible for under powered parties to wear a spawn down by slowly picking it apart, in a Demon Lord fight you are done one way or the other in a fairly short time.
Last night’s party had 3 arcanes and with proper tanking and support the party was able to make short work of Obox-ob, this is the only way to go because long term exposure out in the open to so many Ekolids as the Obox spawn is quite large would invariably lead to massive infection issues and a wipe.
After finishing off Obox, some of the more crazy hmm I mean intrepid group members tried to go after Graz’tz Lord of Azzagrat with a party of 4. We learned the hard way that the party mix must be exactly right or a party that small cannot deliver damage fast enough to Graz’tz to bring him down.
To the party’s credit we did reach the throne room and cleared his throne room spawn several times until we were forced to conclude that the damage output we brought was just not enough to take him down before he was able to summon more and more minions.
All in all quite a fun night, I hope this gave you a bit of an understanding what some of the very tough end game content on high ground is like.
Btw I am on every night at 8:00pm east coast US time. If you get on and need a bit of help or direction starting out feel free to send me a tell using our chat commands (Type: !tell “bin so bad” then your message).
I look forward to meeting you online and introducing you to this amazing world.
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