Goblins

Immediately, I’m spawned in the middle of a street in a city landscape. The city is entirely devoid of people, and it’s a very weird feeling to see so many buildings around that are completely devoid of life. Almost completely devoid of life. There are a few little creatures around that invalidate that assessment. I use observe on one of them to confirm what they are.

They are indeed goblins. As I finish reading the window, the few that are in sight notice me. One of them laughs in a high pitched and mischievous manner, and they run towards me much faster than I would have thought possible for their small frames. Their spears are pointed straight at me.

I back away quickly, firing a few icicles at the oncoming couple of goblins. I notice that more start to come out of the streets and alleyways of the city, and I realise that this could get very dangerous for me, very quickly. An icicle hits one of the goblins and it stumbles backwards. The other two spells miss, and four other goblins are coming closer rapidly.

I use a freezing blast to try to slow them down, and when it works, I use it once more to see just how much I can slow them down. Icicles form over parts of the goblins’ bodies, but they don’t stop completely. I send a few more icicles towards them, and each one hits, now that I have a much slower moving target to hit. They stagger backwards and are clearly injured. Another wave of icicles finishes all four of them off.

25xp

25xp

25xp

25xp

With the closest four taken care of, I turn my attention to the approaching rabble of goblins. They each have wicked grins on their faces, and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to be able to do this. I’ve already used 50MP, and there’s a lot more of them still to come.

I feel a sharp pain on the back of my leg and I whirl around to see a goblin that just slashed my leg with its spear. I waste no time plunging my knife into the top of its head and it evaporates instantly.

25xp

Thinking quickly, I take stock of the situation. Quite fast moving enemies, and a lot of them. I still have 95HP, so while they don’t do much damage on their own, if I’m not careful and don’t figure out how to counteract them, I’m going to be overwhelmed pretty quickly. Luckily my frost magic is pretty effective at slowing them down.

First things first, I need to take away their advantage of being able to surround me. If they can only come at me from one direction, I’ll be able to keep track of them all much more easily and I’ll have a much better chance of winning against them. I turn on my heel and sprint away from them, searching hurriedly for a good place to make a stand. I spot an alleyway with a large overhang stretching all the way across its width, and run down it quickly.

In one sense, this is a stupid idea. The alleyway has no exit, it runs straight into the wall of a building. That means that I have no way of escaping if something goes wrong. It also provides me with a tactical advantage. The overhang going along the alleyway means that the goblins can’t climb up the buildings and jump down on my above. They can’t approach me from the sides, the back, nor above or below. The only option they have is a straight on approach, which gives me the advantage due to my frost magic being able to nullify their greatest strength besides their numbers: their speed.

I stand my ground, ready for the **** from the goblins. I don’t have to wait long. A few seconds after I’ve gotten into position, several goblins come sprinting towards me, spears at the ready. I cast freezing blast once they’re in range, and with their movement slowed, I can easily knock their spears aside and deal a **** blow with my knife. I move quickly between them, making sure to keep within the alleyway.

25xp

25xp

25xp

With the test run of my strategy complete, I wait for the next group of goblins. My strategy proves to be effective, even more so as the goblins only seem to come in packs of a few at a time. If there were more at one, there would have been a definitive risk of being overwhelmed by them all. But as it is, I can handle them all. I try to conserve mana as best I can, only using freezing blast sparingly, and always dispatching of the goblins via my knife instead of throwing more spells at them. I don’t know what the boss is going to be like, but I suspect I’m going to need all the mana I can spare to fight it.

With the pacing between combat, I’ve managed to get my mana back to 198, even using freezing blast every so often. I took full advantage of the slowing effect of my frost magic lasting for a full minute, to slow down the pace of combat so I could regenerate. Now with no time to waste, I sprint out of the alleyway. I doubt this trick would work on a boss, and I don’t want to be trapped in the alleyway when the Chieftain comes around. Rounding the corner, I look to my left and immediately spot the boss, standing in the middle of the street.

The loot table is a little recycled, but I don’t mind too much. I’d be happy to get most of that stuff. The Chieftain sees me and a sneer forms on its face as it starts to run towards me, spear at the ready. I throw a freezing blast spell at it, to once again slow down the pace of combat, as I did with the lesser goblins. The spell doesn’t have as much of an effect on the Chieftain as it did with the regular enemies, but it still slows the boss down.

As it gets closer, it cackles in the slightly unnerving manner that I’ve heard from the other goblins. Out of nowhere, two regular goblins drop onto the ground and start coming towards me. My mind takes in the new information rapidly, forming strategies to best counteract this. Obviously, this boss has an add mechanic. I manage to dodge the small spear slash, retaliating in kind. The goblin is quick but not quick enough, and it vanishes. I fire off an icicle at the remaining goblin.

It dodges to one side, but my aim was off and the dodge takes it right into the path of the projectile. That one goes down too, and I note that there are no XP notifications for these kills. That would be exploitable if there were, I could have potentially holed up somewhere that the boss couldn’t get to me and just picked off the adds for easy XP. Shaking off that line of thought, I turn my attention back to the fight.

I retreat from the approaching boss as I think. The boss isn’t as fast as the regular goblins are, probably to make up for the fact that it’s stronger and tougher, so I can manage to outrun it. The Chieftain didn’t immediately summon more adds when I dispatched the goblins it did summon, so that means it’s not one of those bosses where it always has a certain number of adds to go along with it, no matter how many you kill.

Either the spawning is random, it has a time based trigger or a damage based trigger. Whatever the case, my strategy of slowing down the pace of combat is no longer viable. The longer I take to kill the boss, the more adds I’ll have to deal with and the more my mana will be drained. My mind forming a simple plan, I turn back to the boss and fire a series of mana bolts at the boss. The rapid wave of four arcane spells tear through the boss and leave it very clearly injured.

Another cackling sound emanates from the boss as it stumbles backwards and two more goblins fall from the sky. I retreat a little further until they bunch up enough for me to use freezing blast and hit both of them. I deal with them with relative ease, then turn back to the boss. It looks fairly injured and I frown. It shambles towards me, having lost its momentum and ability to move properly. I let loose three more mana bolts, which is as much as my mana pool will let me. The spell rip through the Chieftain and it falls to the ground, dissolving into dust.

1000xp

Well that was a little easier than I expected. I suppose the reduced XP that the boss gave in comparison to the other bosses I’ve faced is meant to offset the ease with which I could defeat it? It doesn’t matter either way, that dungeon was really fast to go through. I spend some time picking up all the loot. There’s a large concentration of loot in the alleyway that I used, and I put it all in my inventory.

I spend a few minutes waiting for my mana to regenerate, just in case I run into any nasty surprises. Once my mana is fully regenerated, I exit the barrier and look around to make sure that there aren’t any gang members waiting to ambush me. There’s a random guy walking past, but there aren’t any gang members around. I walk back to my apartment quickly, get inside and shut the door behind me, ready to check out the loot I got.

I got a nice sum of money, putting the number in my inventory at $70,000. I’m really happy with that, things are looking amazing on that front. I definitely no longer need any kind of a mundane job, when I can just farm a ton of money from dungeons. Most of the actual loot I got seems to only be useful for selling on the abyss auction. The goblin spears, pouches of gold and two ruby gemstones that dropped (one small, one large), I list on the abyss auction, almost as soon as I inspect them. They’re all worth a decent bit of money, but nothing more than that.

The sacks of storage are worth a little more inspection than that. They’re sacks that have an enchantment to give them the ability to hold more than otherwise might be possible. I keep three of them, listing the others on the auction. The last two items of loot I got are the ring of strength and the ring of agility. After observing them and seeing that all they do is give a +2 bonus to the named stat, I put both of those on the auction as well. Both my current rings are a lot better than that, and I need something more powerful to replace either.

After going through all the loot, I take a break from dungeon running. Partially to heal the meagre amount of damage that I suffered in the goblins dungeon, but also partially because I’m hungry. I eat some food and watch some youtube videos, wondering how I should proceed from here.