The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

Zoe wasn't sure what to expect after the melee enemies went down. Her assumption had been that the phase would continue the same way as it had been going so far - the mages would continue to cast with some kind of uninterruptable buff while the shieldbearer would continue to try to get in the way while the party mostly ignored the archer.

After the huge barrage of AoEs ended, though, things quickly changed. The enemy mages were moving down to the southern end of the platform to stand near one another, while the shieldbearer took up a position in front of them. The archer, meanwhile, completely broke away from them, heading to hover just off the platform with flight magic on the northern edge.

"Um."

"Yeah. Not a new phase, necessarily, but new mechanics?" Firo said.

"Looks like it." Fiona agreed.

"To be fair, without the melee enemies, the previous strategy loses all its danger." Bisky said, as the whole group quickly moved toward the enemy mages. Instincts built up over who knew how many years of collective gaming sense had led them all to the same target next without any actual discussion.

Zoe, Fiona, Aleister, and Caoimhe all used gap closing skills to leap into the fray, but the shieldbearer stepped in front of each of them, doing an awkward looking stutter-step to interpose himself between the dashes and the mages, stopping all of the melee in their tracks a bit before their targets. Instead, they were forced to face down the massive tower shield.

Bisky and Firo had both opened with single target attacks against the mage on the left, but they were similarly intercepted.

"Ugh, still blocking everything." Firo groaned. "I'm transitioning to AoEs."

"Get 'em." Bisky said, doing the same. While her AoEs did significantly less damage than Firo's, some damage was still better than none.

The real issue was that no one had the opportunity to try to stop the casters from casting their newest spells. Both shone with the silvery glow that Zoe had come to associate with Fae magic, but no one had any idea what to expect out of the next section they were in.

When the cast finished, ornate-looking mirrors popped up all over the field. They were facing in seemingly random directions, but were at least notably all in some cardinal or intercardinal facing - so not truly random.

More than that, though, the edges of the entire platform were similarly surrounded by mirrors. The designs of those on the platform and surrounding it were slightly different, which made Zoe guess that one mage made one set, and vice versa. Strangely, the ones on the inside looked almost ghostly, while the outside ones looked more solid.

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"I recognize that sort of pattern." Caoimhe said.

"Same." Fiona agreed.

"I imagine we all do." Firo said. "It's like a laser puzzle."

Zoe had recognized it too. Putting the surrounding mirrors aside, the ones on the platform were clearly reminiscent of a classic game puzzle type that revolved around bouncing a laser off mirrors to direct it from one side of a room to a specific spot.

But there were a lot of mirrors - far more than would be necessary for a puzzle like that. And it didn't explain the ones that surrounded the platform.

"Oh, this is going to be another AoE-fest, isn't it?" Cass asked with a sigh.

"Almost certainly." Aleister agreed.

"But why the -"

Mellody was cut off when the actual mechanic began. Zoe had assumed Mellody was going to ask about the differences in the mirrors, but the question was answered almost immediately.

The mages shifted just slightly from their position at the south to line up with some of the inner mirrors. They didn't get a full cast animation, only channeling some magic into their staves, before pointing them forward.

Each of the mages spawned a red line AoE that traveled forward, and bounced as expected off the mirror it hit, then into another mirror, and so on. The two AoEs traced a rather complex pattern into the ground, bouncing around the mirrors. The marker made it look like the attack would have travel time, and would expect players to move around the moving blast of energy.

At the same time, the archer in the north targeted Mellody with an arrow. Once again, the line AoE was generated as expected, but it completely ignored the mirrors scattered around the platform. Instead, when it met the mirrors on the edges of the platform, it bounced off those, creating a dizzying zig-zag AoE around the field, all at the same time as the mages' lines. The arrow attack moved much faster though.

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"That's a lot to remember." Zoe said, trying to commit her safe spots to memory. At a minimum, she felt like she'd need to move six or seven times for the single round of AoEs, because they doubled back over spaces so often.

"Thanks, I hate it." Aleister muttered, but Zoe was secretly excited. She really liked fights that had so many AoEs flying around. Trying to minimize her movement and squeeze out DPS was fun.

"Ha, I dunno, I kinda like it!" Cass said, and Zoe smiled. At least her girlfriend felt the same as she did.

A dopey grin spread over Zoe's face as she tried to focus, dodging the attacks as they zipped across the field.

Unfamiliar with the speed at which the attacks traveled, not to mention being unprepared for the speed differences between them, half the party got clipped. Zoe's concentration had slipped, leading her to step into what was going to be a safe spot too early, taking a hit from the arrow attack. Similarly, Firo wasn't prepared for how fast the arrow was moving, and failed to avoid it after the first bounce.

Meanwhile, Fiona and Mellody both got clipped by the mage's beam attack. It looked like Fiona had deliberately stood in it, while Mellody had danced back and forth between two spots, seemingly unsure which was going to be safe - he chose wrong.

Zoe quickly checked her new debuff, courtesy of the arrow. It was a damage over time poison effect, with a built in [Confusion] effect that jumbled up her buttons. She was lucky that moving into the last safe spot was where she got clipped, because she wouldn't be able to move anywhere with any certainty for a bit.

Firo had not been so lucky. Once the attacks finished and Zoe looked back to the party status, Firo was dead, having accidentally stepped into another AoE by accident. He was complaining about the "goddamn confusion", so it wasn't hard to see what happened.

Fiona and Mellody had both survived, but were suffering from their own debuff.

"DoT with confusion on the arrow." Zoe said quickly, since she didn't hear Firo say what it was.

"Oh, right, sorry." Firo apologized.

"The beam is a burn with the shocked effect." Fiona said.

"Lovely. So, basically, if you get hit by one it makes it a lot harder to avoid the next one." Bisky said. And she was right. It was common enough design for the game, but using a debuff like [Shocked], which would periodically freeze up your character while under the effect, was par for the course.

"Confusion for that is really brutal though." Caoimhe said. "That's more like death sentence territory, not just punishment."

[Confusion] as a status was particularly brutal. It never lasted very long because it was so damning, but the effect randomly swapped every reasonable input the player had. Playing on keyboard and mouse, it made the mouse tracking directions change randomly, and every key on the keyboard was swapped for another.

It wasn't even as simple as making the W-A-S-D keys swap around either. The forward movement from the W key could be moved to the M key, while the backward movement on S moved to Tab. It even included the left and right mouse buttons. The only keys that were off limits were the function keys, like the operating system key or F1, F2, and so on. And it was different every time, so there was no preparing for it. When it came to needing to dodge after being [Confused] the optimal strategy was basically to faceroll over the keyboard and hope to get lucky.

"Now what?" Cass said, as she [Resurrected] Firo. "Just pummel the shield guy until he dies?"

"Does he even take damage?" Bisky asked.

"Not from the - oh, wait." Caoimhe chuckled. In the excitement over the AoEs, the melee hadn't actually tried to get around the shield that was facing them, only attempting strikes from the front which had done essentially zero damage. When Caoimhe tried to slip around behind the shieldbearer, though, the enemy turned with her.

"Well, crap." Caoimhe sighed.

"Wait, I got you." Zoe said, and immediately attacked the shieldbearer's back, which had been turned to face her now. Her initial attack landed and did reduced, but still existent damage. The enemy immediately spun to face her, though, and even smacked her with a counter skill that dealt decent damage. It was almost half her total HP.

"Shit, that hurt."

"Tanks?" Caoimhe asked.

"Yeah, yeah." Aleister said, stepping up and hitting the enemy with a few skills in succession. The damage triggered the enmity swap, as well as Aleister getting smacked with the counter. It only did about 20% of her HP in damage though.

Caoimhe tentatively smacked the shieldbearer's back again, but this time the enemy remained focused on Aleister.

"Looks like enmity works."

"Be careful. I bet high damage skills will proc the counter." Fiona said. "It feels that way at least."

"Right."

Everyone focused on the shieldbearer, hoping to burn him down quickly. The party, even all focused on just him, wasn't doing a lot of damage. No one was in a burst phase, admittedly, but even then, it didn't feel like they were doing as much damage as they should.

"It's like he has tank stats. Dude is chunky." Caoimhe said.

"No kidding."

"Eyes up, we got the next round of AoEs." Bisky called. She was far back enough that she had a pretty wide view of the battlefield, which helped immensely with seeing what was happening next.

The mages were prepping another round of their beam attack, and the archer was quickly flying around to a new position. Two seconds later, the AoEs began their flashing across the ground, tracing out the new pattern.

Zoe growled as the danger zone passed over where she was a number of times - she was going to need to move a lot. Which was fun, but she was about to lose a bunch of damage. She did what little she could as the attacks flew by around her. She squeezed in her shorter attacks between her adjustments to stay out of danger, trying to move as little as possible while retaining the safe spots.

It worked for her, but the whole party wasn't so lucky. Bisky made a mistake, quickly got flustered after the first one, and stepped into a second one which took her out. The tanks managed to avoid getting hit entirely, knowing now that taking either one was a bad idea. However, Mellody misjudged the arrow's speed, stepping toward safety just a moment too late, which ended with the healer going down.

Mellody's groan immediately sounded over the chat as the [Confusion] status did its job.

"I'm just gonna say that I was out of that stupid AoE and shouldn't have gotten hit."

"Lag?"

"Lag."

"Always blame the lag."

"Good game."

"Best game."

As the deluge of snark came over the chat, Zoe laughed. They knew with Mellody going down, this pull was a wipe. They had no resurrection for another few minutes and Evie couldn't hold out on her own for that long.

Then Zoe remembered what Fiona had said during one of the earlier pulls, and used a quick dash to leap off the side of the tower.

"What?"

"Nyx?"

"All good! It's a wipe anyway!" She called as Nyx plummeted to the ground, where she really was just swarmed by enemy Fae. They attacked her so brutally that even with most of her HP, she lasted all of three seconds by the time she reached the ground. The way they descended on her like rabid dogs or piranha gave her a good laugh, though.