The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Ashton

When the loot table popped up, Ashton let out a big sigh and slumped in his chair. He heard similar reactions from at least a couple others within their team.

"Why do the RNG gods hate me so?" he lamented.

"Dude, this is the fifth kill. What are the drop rates on your weapon?" Kieran asked. Five kills on the boss was far from an amount that she expected to guarantee a weapon, but it was also disheartening when there was nothing else of real use for the team in the boss's drops.

"He's guaranteed to drop a weapon every time, and the Codex is one of seven options. So…something like 15%?" Ash said. "Sorry, guys. I knew this wouldn't be a one and done, but I was hoping we'd get lucky in the first couple pulls."

"Nah, it's fine." Marissa laughed. "This is exactly what we signed up for, more or less."

"I'm not gonna complain." Nyx said, "I got the materials I needed for my boots, so I've already gotten 'paid' for this little excursion. Besides, it's not like Vaivru is really difficult."

"Nyx is right." Firo chipped in. Ashe smiled; the boy was definitely the quietest of the group so far, so it was good to hear him chip in here and there. "The fight isn't difficult, and it's not exactly draining any of our useful resources. I guess aside from you using good food buffs, anyway."

"I've got no problem using the good foods." Ash said. "Gathering ingredients is fun, and I've been stockpiling a huge mess of the current meta stuff. Besides, I would be shocked if they don't add in new meals with the raids, so I would imagine that the food we're using now will be obsolete in a few months."

"Good point." Firo said. "So, I really have no complaints. Vaivru isn't a super exciting boss fight or anything, but it's enjoyable enough. It lets me practice my rotation and aim."

"Well, the boss is back up in three minutes or so. It's too bad no one else has shown up. A second party would make things a bit easier." Marissa said.

And she was right. World bosses in Mag Mell would scale HP numbers based on the number of combatants, but the base mechanics of the fight wouldn't usually change much. If another group showed up, as long as there was another tank, it would take almost all the pressure off.

As it was, they were managing the tank buster and [Enflamed] debuff alright. The later busters were tricky, but so far it had only been a problem once. Aleister had gone down to a poorly timed [Debilitating Pierce] that didn't catch the buster. But Evie had been so fast on the [Resurrection] that there was barely even a bump to the pull.

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Caoimhe had taken a few big hits in place of the tank before Aleister recovered the threat, but honestly, that was fine. The rest of the pull went off without a hitch, and the death even reset Aleister's [Enflamed] stacks.

Honestly, the ease at which they finished that particular made Ash consider leaning over to Jazz and telling her to eat a buster on purpose so they could simply rez her without the stacks. But the penalty for using battle rezzes was significant enough that taking a death on purpose could go poorly if things spiraled afterwards.

The way Mag Mell handled in-battle resurrections was more similar to an action game than most MMOs in his experience. Depending on the rated difficulty of the fight, the team was basically given a number of charges that were shared amongst the party. They essentially functioned as lives, in addition to the cooldown that each individual resurrection type spell had.

In [Vaivru's] case, they had a total of three charges for the whole fight, which would be fair if they weren't overgeared for it. In addition, Mellody's resurrection spell was [Refrain], which had a three minute cooldown. Evie's resurrection spell as a [Soul] was actually just called [Resurrection], and had a two minute cooldown.

So if two of the party members went down in quick succession, they could probably recover the fight. But if a third went down, they would be sitting out for a while. And two minutes of someone being down could easily be a death sentence for the party if there were harder mechanics or body checks.

Ash wouldn't have said they lucked out with Aleister's first death - it was far more likely they would make it than not - but it was a risk they probably didn't need to take.

"How's the food timer?" Ash asked, shifting in his seat to get prepared for the next pull.

"I think we've got one more kill before we need to refresh." Evie said. Nyx and Marissa agreed.

"Alright. One more, then we refresh food. If we don't get the book to drop by the end of that round of food, I say we call it a night. Can always come back another time." Kieran said.

"No," Ash said resolutely, "One more and we get the drop. Then we go home."

"You're already home, dumbass." Jazz said, just to undercut the seriousness in his tone. "But yeah, last one. We get the drop here and call it a day."

"If we get the drop on the next pull, I want a rematch with Caoimhe in chess." Marissa said, and laughter followed. It completely diffused what little tension the group had.

"We all know what to do by now." Ash said as [Vaivru's] body popped back into existence on his hoard. "Let's get 'em."

Aleister was the first to charge into the room, before Ash had even called for the charge. Everyone else filtered in following the [Ebon's] lead and the battle was underway.

After fighting [Vaivru] so many times already, the party's teamwork was airtight. Everyone knew their job and how to do it, even moving before Ash's call outs. He kept them going, just in case someone tunnel visioned on their rotation, but he didn't suspect anyone would.

The fight proceeded cleanly. Caoimhe and Nyx were on top of baiting out the AoEs which kept [Vaivru's] tank busters delayed just a little bit. While it probably didn't make a huge difference, any safety nets they could make use of were an overall gain.

At least, so long as the baiting didn't make the DPS lose uptime. Which it didn't in this fight. They just had to slide left or right to avoid the damage, but didn't need to leave their attack range.

Everything went perfectly. It took seven and a half minutes of fighting to down the wyvern for a sixth time. Aleister took the final tank buster with six stacks of [Enflamed], which boosted the incoming damage by 180%. At that level of damage, it took most of the party's available mitigation tools to keep Aleister alive. And even then, his HP dropped well under 10%.

Thankfully, only the very last hit point truly matters.

By the time that final tank buster landed, [Vaivru] was down to under 10% itself. A final push of damage ended the fight before the eighth tank buster, which almost certainly would have caused trouble.

Once the wyvern died, the large treasure pile that spilled from behind the fortress portcullis became interactable. The whole party gathered up, as they had done every time so far.

"Feeling lucky?" Marissa joked.

"Not particularly…" Ash said. "Someone else wanna hit the loot?"

Everyone stood around the glowing pile of gold, gear, and treasure, simply staring.

"Well?" Kieran asked. "Who's feeling lucky?"

"I'm gonna do it." Firo said, and he took a few steps forward toward the cache. "I'm feelin' it."

"Yeah! You go, Firo!" Jazz shouted. Nyx began to chant Firo's name, and everyone joined in pretty quickly.

"Alright, alright," Firo laughed, "That's enough you guys."

They didn't stop. Nyx, in fact, chanted louder.

Firo stepped up to the glowing pile of loot, and clicked on it. When one member of a party interacted with a loot chest, they received a pop-up window that displayed the loot that the group had received. Everyone else had a minimized notification of new loot, but had to click on the notification to see the full window.

That short gap gave Firo enough time to react before everyone else.

"Oh, thank god." He breathed. "I am lucky."

Ash clicked open the loot window and sure enough, the [The Maneuver Codex] was staring him in the face, alongside several consumable items that the group may be able to make use of down the line.

"Ha! Just before the food needed to be refreshed too. Good shit, Firo." Nyx said happily.

"Well, with the book in hand, we can get the hell out of these damn Caverns, right?" Evie asked. "It's so dark and depressing down here."

"Yeah." Ash said with a grin. "I'm all set. And now my Omen will be more than good to go for raiding if we need it."

"Nice." Marissa said, "That leaves us with a few weeks worth of easy farming like this to get everyone else up to speed on whatever off-Paths they want, plus hopefully getting Fiona back in here regularly."

"Hopefully he's feeling up to it soon." Kieran said. "He's still pretty close to the schedule I had when I had my girls. Another two or three weeks and he should be able to find a couple hours to himself to join us a few times a week. It's really those first two or three months that are particularly brutal."

"Makes sense. A kid is no joke." Evie said. "I won't hold it against him. I don't think Nyx or Firo will either."

"Nah." Firo agreed.

"Nope." Nyx added. "If anything, I might judge him if he comes back and it sounds like he's leaving his wife to do all the heavy lifting."

Kieran snickered. "Nah, he wouldn't do that. And we wouldn't let him, anyway."

"Not without giving him a truckload of shit for it." Marissa said. "But he's not that type."

"Good." Nyx said. "Now let's get out of here before that bastard of a boss respawns."

The team filtered out of the room and back into the corridor before Firo began setting up a [Fae Circle]. [Fae Circles] were how fast travel functioned in Mag Mell; a player had to 'cast' one into existence, which could then be walked through to take you to wherever its destination was.

While every [Path] had the ability to cast [Fae Circles], the list of destinations available to magic-based [Paths] was much longer. Every [Path] could use a [Circle] to get to the major cities or other major hubs, but magic-based [Paths] also gained access to outposts and other smaller locations. It was one of the reasons that many people leveled at least one magic-based [Path], just for ease of travel.

"It's back to Falias." Firo said, as the portal sprung into existence in the center of the circle of stones he had created. "Unless we wanted to go somewhere else?"

"Falias works for me." Ash said.

"I believe I owe Bisky another thrashing in chess?" Kieran said, teasing.

"Oh, that's right!" Jazz said, laughing. "A certain someone decided she hadn't learned her lesson earlier - I forgot."

"Hey." Marissa said, sounding immediately defensive. "I really think I can take him this time."

Nyx chuckled and said, "Girl. Don't lie to yourself."