Centaurs And Murlocs

“Watch the arrows Mia!” I call out, ducking under the swing of a sword as the beasts charge at us. Out of the other two new dungeons, we decided to take on the centaurs dungeon first. The enemies turned out to be a horde of centaurs (shocker), wielding a mixture of swords and bows.

The main tactics of the horde seem to be to have the sword wielding enemies charge at us in a stampede, while the archers fire at us from a safe distance. The archers themselves have taken a particular liking to shooting at Mia while she’s in the air, a fact which annoys Mia to no end. “Damnit!” She yells, pulling an arrow out of her body and flying down to Ivy for healing.

Aside from the new appearance of the enemies and the stampede tactics using their horse legs, they really aren’t all that interesting for a new dungeon. Once Mia takes out the majority of the archers and frees up our attention to be able to tear through the rest of them, we find that the boss isn’t too interesting either.

The Centaur Captain is the name of it, and the main differences are that it’s bigger, stronger, wears a plumed Roman style helmet and wields a club instead of a sword or bow. It also uses much the same tactics as the regular enemies, and occasionally summons adds to help it. A bit different but nothing overall that we haven’t seen before.

The main new thing about this dungeon is that Skylar is struggling even more than before to keep up. It seems like every 30 seconds, she’s having to drop out of the battle and get Ivy to heal her. She’s still managing, but it’s clear that even with the mechanics of my dungeons adjusting difficulty for the level of people inside, she won’t be able to keep up once we move up to level 60 and above.

Disappointingly, the Centaur Captain doesn’t drop any new elemental armour either. I’m interested to see what other elements are really a thing in the abyss. Through seeing various types of magic in action, I have confirmation of fire, water, earth, air, ice, shadow and lightning. I would assume the counterpart to shadow is light, which puts the number of elements at 8.

Is there a poison element? Or would that just be a subtype of water elemental? But if that’s the case, why is ice a separate element from water? Questions that neither Mia nor Skylar can answer, because they don’t have the knowledge. I drop the line of thought for the moment, as we head back inside our palace to relax and recover.

As is our usual routine, Ivy and I check on our kittens before sitting down to relax. They ate a lot for breakfast, so we refill their bowls all the way again. Sol and Luna pad their way out of their beds to watch us refilling their bowls. Then, as we’re still refilling them, something absolutely magical happens.

Sol walks straight up to Ivy and nuzzles her head against Ivy’s leg. Luna does the same to me a moment later, and I stop what I’m doing to swoon over the cuteness of our kittens. Tentatively, I reach down and stretch my hand out, palm facing inwards, to let Luna sniff my hand and to make sure she knows that I won’t hurt her.

She sniffs my hand for a few moments, before letting out a soft mew sound at me. Her tail swishes around lazily in the air as I start to pat her for the very first time, stroking her gently and lovingly. Luna purrs quietly at my touch, and my heart melts at the cuteness. I look over to see Ivy happily petting Sol and smile giddily at her.

The orange kitten chirps happily as Ivy pats her, and we both sit down to more easily play with them. As soon as I sit down, Luna climbs into my lap, nuzzling her whole body against me. “They’re so cute, oh my Gaia!” I whisper to Ivy, who giggles softly and agrees happily. “I love you, cute little fluff ball with your adorable little toe beans.” I coo happily, and Luna meows at me in response.

After a few minutes of affection and patting, Sol gets up off of Ivy’s lap and makes her way to the food bowls. She chirps at Luna, who follows suit. Luna mews at me and the two kittens start eating together. Ivy and I stand up and cuddle each other tightly in a moment of cute aggression. “I’m so happy we got them.” I say. “Me too, they’re the best.” Ivy agrees.

Ivy and I sit down on the couch to recover from the dungeon, and get ready to go grinding again. Once Sol and Luna have eaten their fill, they come back over to us, much to our delight. Sol jumps straight onto Ivy’s lap and curls up, purring loudly at Ivy’s patting. Luna meows at me from the ground, and I slowly reach toward her, doing my best not to scare her off.

She meows again, her body language looking very relaxed, but seeming to want to come up and cuddle with me the same way Sol is with Ivy. I pick her up and set her down onto my lap, to which she also curls up, closing her eyes and resting on me. I stroke her fur gently, enjoying the adorable purrs and occasional mews getting quieter and quieter as she falls asleep.

“Now we’re really in heaven.” I joke with Ivy. She raises an eyebrow at me, amused. “How’s that?” She asks. “We live in a gorgeous palace, with our amazing girlfriends, and our adorable cats. What could get better than that?” I say dreamily. “You’re so cute!” Ivy lets out, giggling at me happily.

“They’re cute.” I say, emphasising the kittens sitting on our laps. “Absolutely they are. And so are you. You’re my cute little kitten.” Ivy teases, and my face immediately reddens, my eyes going wide. “What...why does that do so much to me?” I ask in shock, and Ivy cackles. “Oh I wondered if it would! We’re gonna have so much fun teasing you tonight!” She exclaims.

“You’re rude.” I pout jokingly, and Mia chimes in from across the room. “We can always be ruder.” The aeromancer teases. “Shush!” I squeak, hiding my face behind my hands. “Awww hehehe so cute!” Ivy giggles. “Tell us that you love us honey, you know you do.” Skylar joins in, and I sigh, unable to hide my smile. “I love you all, way too much.” All three of them cheer.

Much to the disappointment of Ivy and I, we do have to set Luna and Sol down so we can go out and grind more. They each seem equally as disappointed as we do, chirping and meowing sadly at us, trying to get us to stay. It damn near breaks my heart to leave them, they’re way too cute for their own good.

We do manage to break ourselves away from them for the time being though, after refilling their bowls once more. As much as we don’t like it, we have a job to do and dungeons to grind through. This time, we’re facing the last of the new dungeons: the murlocs dungeon. Crossing my fingers that we won’t have to fight underwater, I open the dungeon.

We’re dropped into a sort of marshy area, with equal amounts of solid land and water around us. I use observe to confirm that the ground is in fact solid and able to hold our weight, and I’m glad to find that it is. It takes a few more seconds for us to spot the enemies of the dungeon, but when we do, I simultaneously sigh with relief and groan.

They’re murlocs, ripped straight from World Of Warcraft, submerged in the water and looking up at us predatorily, like a crocodile would. “Okay listen: stay out of the water at all costs. They’re much more dangerous in the water than on land. If we can bait them into coming out of the water, we should be able to take them out fairly easily.” I inform my girlfriends.

A soft but menacing growling sound starts to emanate from the water around us. “They mostly use hit and run tactics with their swords and daggers. Stay alert, watch each others backs and stay in range of Ivy’s healing. Stick together, spreading out too much will make us much easier targets individually, especially on this terrain.” I continue.

The first murloc rises out of the water and starts toward us, brandishing its knife and baring its teeth aggressively. I ready my axe, and as a group, we all bunch a little closer together. More murlocs soon follow the first one and begin charging at us. I fire a mana bolt at one to test how quick and durable it is. The spell burns a hole through the enemy and I get an XP notification.

Satisfied with this, I use mostly icicles and fire balls against these enemies. Not much point using more expensive spells if the cheaper ones can work just as effectively. It turns out that my hastily put together strategy works pretty well against the murlocs. Grouped together like we are, all watching each other’s backs, they can’t sneak up on us at all.