Dwarves And Wolves

The dwarves dungeon is also interesting in design. It does feel like Gaia put more thought into both the elven and dwarven dungeons. When we spawn into the dungeon, we’re put into another clearing with no enemies. We search around for a few seconds and spot the entrance to what looks like a mine.

We head inside the mine, preparing ourselves for a fight. It doesn’t take long before we find one. A pair of axe wielding dwarves - each closely resembling Gimli from Lord Of The Rings - stand guarding a door, an entrance to deeper inside the mine. Skylar and I engage one each, and after dispatching them and looting them, we press on further inside the mine.

We pass various pieces of heavy mining machinery and miscellaneous mining equipment laying discarded on the ground. As we journey deeper into the mine, we come across two different types of enemies: more axe wielding dwarves like the ones guarding the entrance and some kind of dwarven constructs that resemble Dwarven Spheres from Skyrim.

We take care of the enemies that we find on our way to the boss arena. After half an hour of walking and fighting, we come to another door. Mia tries to push it open, and we find that it’s locked. Some mechanical whirring draws our attention from either side of the room, and a pair of dwarven constructs emerge from panels in the walls.

These ones resemble Dwarven Centurions, also from Skyrim. “Gaia’s taking a lot of inspiration from Skyrim in this dungeon.” I remark, readying my axe. “I’ve got the left one.” Skylar replies, storming towards it without further comment. I shrug and send waves of frost magic towards the other centurion.

The mechanisms that allow it to move don’t seem to be able to handle ice magic very well, and audible cracking is heard as the dwarven machine struggles to walk towards us. I walk towards it, sidestepping to avoid a swing of it’s mechanical fist. I aim a mana bolt at the joint of it’s arm, and the limb is damaged pretty badly. It takes one more spell to blow its arm clean off.

Skylar and I destroy the two constructs with relative ease, and I get a notification after we’re done.

I raise an eyebrow as I read those words. “What?” Mia asks. I read the words aloud to her. “Gaia is definitely getting more creative, I’m kinda liking it.” Skylar pushes at the door and this time it swings open. Inside is a mech suit of sorts, of the same style of construction as all the other dwarven machines we’ve passed.

Observing the thing reveals nothing of particular interest, besides a possible legendary drop of an ingot of metal called adamantine, and the fact that there’s a dwarf pilot inside. The Forgemaster is level 40, so it’ll likely be a decent challenge for all of us. The moment Skylar charges towards it, it activates and focus on her, letting loose a burst of flames.

She stops and forms a small barrier in front of her to block the flames. “Go left!” I tell Mia, heading for the right. Wordlessly she takes off and we flank the boss together. The ceiling isn’t very high here, so Mia doesn’t have much of an advantage with her flight. She also can’t use her usual blunt **** technique of slamming downwards with a wall of solid air.

Instead, she does her best to charge horizontally with the same technique. It doesn’t work as well because she doesn’t have the **** of gravity to help her, but she does manage to give the Forgemaster a solid hit. For my part, I try my hand at freezing the mechanisms in it with freezing blast. It doesn’t work as well as it did with the other enemies, but it does still slow it down.

Skylar hits it square on the head with a giant fist of shadow, and it retaliates by swiping at her. She dodges and hits it again, as Ivy starts to heal the burns she suffered from the flames that got past her barrier. I blast it with spells, alternating between freezing blast and mana bolt, hoping to simultaneously damage and slow it down further.

It turns its gaze at me and lets loose a breath of fire. I scramble out of the way, but I’m too slow to avoid all of it and my clothes catch fire, my health reducing by 30. Thinking quickly, I fire freezing blast down at myself, hoping my ice magic will be able to extinguish the flames. Luckily it works, and I look back up just in time to see a fist crashing into me, sending me flying backwards into a wall.

Another slamming sound indicates Mia’s second solid air attack, and the Forgemaster turns away from me to focus on her. Ivy runs over to me and kneels down to help me. “Be careful Gemma!” She scolds and I smile at her. “Sorry love, I’m doing my best.” She frowns at me. “I don’t like seeing you get hurt.”

“I’ll be right, you’ll make sure of that.” Her face brightens with a smile at my words. “Of course I will.” She helps me up once my HP is back to full again. I give her a quick kiss on the cheek, then rejoin the fight. Skylar and Mia are alternating hits, doing their best to keep it off balance. While it’s slower than before, it’s still very much a threat, as is evidenced when it just manages to graze Mia with its fist.

I send wave after wave of freezing magic at it, now committed entirely to slowing it down the best I can. It starts to turn towards me but a simultaneous hit from both Mia and Skylar focuses its attention back on them. I continue my volley of icy blasts, and it starts to crack as it moves. Ice is starting to form on its exterior, and I’m hoping its interior workings too.

The boss’ movement is visibly slower than it was at the start of the fight, and its taking more visible damage from the hits that Mia and Skylar are dishing out. Deciding that it’s frozen enough, I add to the damage by letting loose more mana bolts at the thing.

On one particularly hard hit from Mia, the exterior cracks and the machine stops. Skylar punches it once more and the mech suit falls apart, revealing a tired looking dwarf inside. Skylar, having no time for games, sends a spear of shadows through where its heart would be.

2000xp

“What do we think, better or worse than the elves dungeon?” I ask as we collect the loot. “About the same.” Skylar replies. “Agreed. Lots of walking, minor enemies along the way, big enemies at the end.” Mia chimes in. “You’re both wrong. The elf dungeon was better.” I proclaim. “You’re only saying that because you like finally being not terrible with that axe, you chaotic woman.” “Guilty as charged.”

We need one more dungeon run for Ivy and I to be able to level up. I’m really close to a level up and once I get there, Ivy just has to eat some of the loot. The problem starting to arise on that front is that she’s going through stuff at about the same rate as we’re finding it. It’s not currently an issue, but it will be soon enough, when she needs to eat more than we can find.

As we rest, we decide that we want to face the wolves dungeon first, and leave the ogres dungeon till after lunch. The main reason for that is because we’re all really curious to see what the ogres dungeon has in store for us, and as such, we’ll leave the most interesting until last. Once we’ve recharged fully, we go back outside and I open a dungeon for the third time that morning.

Immediately we’re dropped into a flat grass plain with a dozen or more snarling wolves. “It’s a horde! Divide and conquer!” I yell, immediately sending waves of freezing magic at the pack as some of the wolves immediately start bounding towards us. Skylar reacts quickly and puts up a shadow barrier between the first few wolves and the rest of the pack.

Mia and I work quickly together to take them out, while Skylar continues to put up barriers to separate the wolf pack. The fighting is fast paced but the individual wolves themselves don’t pose too much of a threat, and between the two of us, Mia and I find that we can handle them fairly easily.

The wolves dungeon turns out to really not be too interesting, compared to the elves and dwarves dungeons. The only particularly interesting thing about it besides the fast paced combat is the fact that once we’ve taken care of the full wolf pack, two bosses spawn in instead of one, those being the mother and father wolves.

The two bosses are level 30 each, so we do our best once again to divide and conquer. The thing I don’t realise (which I should have because it’s pretty standard game design when there are two bosses in a single encounter), is that once we manage to kill the mother wolf, the father gets a rage buff, getting faster and stronger. This further pushes the fight into the fast paced variety, but we manage to take him out too while only sustaining a few injuries for Ivy to heal.

1000xp

1000xp

Another quirk of having two bosses in the same encounter is that the fight itself gives the same amount of XP as the other dungeons, but the bosses give half each. We pick up the loot, and exit the dungeon. I allocate my statpoints as Mia, Ivy and Skylar are discussing what to have for lunch. Well, Mia and Ivy are, Skylar is mostly just listening and occasionally nodding.

5 more statpoints into Wisdom pushes the stat up to 60, and puts my total mana regeneration at 17.6, with my effective mana regeneration at 16.6 once I factor in Ivy’s sustain costs. “Pasta again then? Ivy’s become a really good cook.” Mia encourages Skylar. “Oh nice. That works for me.” We get inside and before she starts cooking, I get Ivy to eat a piece of loot so I can allocate her stats.

I raise her agility up to 20, and hopefully I’ll be able to raise it up to 25 by the end of the day. The past few dungeons have shown just how instrumental raising her agility has been in order for her to keep up with the pace of the fights that we’re getting into. With 20 agility, she should be able to keep up fairly easily now, but 25 is just a nice threshold where she’ll get a bonus too.