The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

The battle with [Firdraig] and [Garmiad] was no joke. Even with an NPC on their side functioning essentially as the main DPS, the battle was more of an ever-shifting set of priorities than Zoe had ever seen in a game before.

Well, maybe. She couldn't think of any other examples, at least.

Or perhaps it was more fitting to say she had never felt like the players had been shoved into a support role so fully, despite that role feeling about as difficult as any other fight would.

"Nyx, Pierce!"

"On it." She snapped her concentration back as she quickly targeted [Garmiad] with her [Debilitating Pierce]. The dragon had separated from [Firdraig] again, who had leapt off to attack [Scathach] directly. [Garmiad] was far from sitting idle, though. The beast was supporting its rider as well as it could, launching attacks to get in the party's way or otherwise causing trouble for their side.

It looked skyward, up at the big storm it had summoned above the city, and roared to call down a flurry of lightning bolts again. At most, it would be three bolts. If [Firdraig] was one of the three highest characters in the fight, he would get the lightning weapon buff. Otherwise, the party needed to be sure that their two tanks were always higher in the sky than everyone else, as well as one of the heartier DPS.

For their group, that meant Caoimhe, mostly. [Slayers] had one ability on a short cooldown that was a 10% personal mitigation for one hit. It was typically designed to be used against raid-wide damage, but they were repurposing it here for the lightning strikes because it plus a shield and mitigation from the healers allowed Caoimhe to survive the bolt of lighting.

And [Debilitating Pierce], of course.

As the lightning bolts hit the three targets, [Firdraig] slammed into [Scathach] with his lance. In a move they had seen before, as [Scathach] swept her blade at the boss, he flipped backward off her in a graceful, sweeping arc of flight. [Garmiad] spun with its tail to knock the party's melee members away before flying upward to catch the Fae.

"Get ready," Mellody said, as the party immediately shuffled into position for the mechanic that followed. The dragon, now flying higher than the rest of the combatants, aimed down and unleashed a massive cone of lightning.

They had figured out early on that if they stood too close to one another, the lightning had a chain effect and would jump from one person to another.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Zoe spun her camera over to watch Firo try to slide into his designated spot. He had apparently used [Blink] and overshot his position by a fair bit because he still wasn't used to including height in aiming the teleport.

It had put him far too close to Evie, who had reacted by trying to make more space by moving closer to Caoimhe, who had shifted a little toward Fiona to try to make some room.

Their entire small party had shifted, but Zoe could tell at a glance it wasn't enough. Fiona had even opted to fly straight upward, hoping to use the relative blank space above to make the gap big enough.

It worked for Fiona, at least. When the lighting rained down on the party, Firo, Evie, and Caoimhe were all slapped with the initial heavy damage from the attack and were assigned the [Arcing] debuff, which immediately activated and sent a secondary blast off at the nearest target.

Awkwardly, this left Firo's arc of electricity to fire off at Evie - as did Caoimhe's. Evie had shifted toward Caoimhe to make room for Firo, and ended up closer to Caoimhe, which left her blast arcing toward her instead of Firo.

Altogether, it left Evie and Caoimhe dead while Firo was apologizing profusely over voice. Cass and Caoimhe were just laughing about it though.

"No worries, let's just reset and try again."

"Yep." Caoimhe said. "And this time, Firo, use your legs."

"Not sure his legs will get him very far in the air, Caoimhe." Fiona snarked back.

"Shut up."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Get the adds, get the adds."

"I'm working on it!" Aleister shouted, trying to use every skill [Ebon's] had for mob control. It didn't matter how well they had gotten acquainted with the add mechanic in this fight, once the [Dire Wyvern] started appearing, things always got hectic.

With the fight taking place in three dimensions, the stupid adds could appear in literally any direction. They had seen the mechanic four times so far, and there didn't appear to be a reliable pattern to the spawns. The enemies just flew in from around the blockade of flying enemies.

At the same time as the adds were coming in, Fiona had to stand with [Scathach] to body block attacks from [Garmiad] while [Firdraig] struck at their ally from the dragon's back. [Scathach] may have been a beast on their side, but even she couldn't take two major threats at once.

It left Aleister scrambling to position roughly in the middle of things while trying to launch ranged attacks in every direction to hit the adds while trying to locate them all.

Firo and Bisky were doing their best to help, tagging whichever adds they saw while standing nearby Aleister to drag the enemies closer.

It was several seconds of utter chaos as everyone worked together to get the situation under control.

And once it was, it became a DPS race to take out the adds quickly, because Aleister was bound to get overwhelmed by the amount of adds attacking him at once. Even with multiple mitigation skills active, Aleister's HP bounced around so much that everyone was constantly on edge while watching the HP bar go between 10,000 to 2,000 to 9,000 to 1,000, to 10,000 and then to 3,000 and so on.

Any minor mistake could leave Aleister dead and falling out of the sky, and the wyverns free to munch their way through the rest of the party with little effort.

"I'm just about out of mit," Aleister said, while the DPS were doing their best to work their way through the adds.

"We've got you." Mellody said. "Just keep - oh, shit."

"Oh, shit? What 'oh, shit'?"

"Sorry!" Mellody dragged out the last syllable of the apology as Aleister's HP went from 8,000 to 2,000 and then to 0.

The adds promptly turned toward Firo, who did the most AoE damage, and practically ate him alive before moving on through the rest of the party.

"The heck was that?" Aleister fumed.

"I fat-fingered a button and targeted someone else with a major heal." Mellody said sheepishly. "By the time I retargeted you, the emergency quick heal wasn't enough. We needed something chunkier."

"And Evie?"

"Stopping Fiona from dying."

"I appreciate that!" Fiona laughed.

Someone, probably Aleister, took a deep breath and let it out in a big sigh.

"I think we need a mit and healing plan there."

"I think we do, too."

Zoe spent the following fifteen minutes half zoned out, only occasionally checking in on the conversation as the healers and tanks discussed which of their skills would be used and when, planning out a fair chunk of the relatively short add phase.

Zoe really wished that [Shroud] had some kind of disengage or teleport that wasn't targeted. [Shadow Slip] was great! When she needed to close the gap. But escaping danger? Nope, all she had for that was her legs. Or, she guessed, now her wings.

With multiple potential targets on the field, and the game being unclear which they should really focus on, things kept getting messy.

For the most part, [Scathach] stayed on top of [Firdraig] whether he was on his dragon mount or not. The party was almost positive that the fight was designed to rely on [Scathach] to do damage to the boss, so Zoe even appreciated the way she stuck to him.

However, the damn Fae and his dragon partner separated and reunited constantly throughout the second phase and it was obnoxious. Mag Mell had been designed to have three different types of fights, generally speaking. Or, at least, 99% of the fights in the game could be classified in one of three ways.

First, were straightforward, repeatable, learnable fights. Ones that used the same mechanics in the same order every time. Once the party members learned the fight, they were usually pretty easy.

Second, were the few true action-type battles. They were probably the most rare, and were usually used only for larger creatures and bosses that could give noticeable tells and wind-ups amongst the particle effects the game employed. These fights wouldn't usually employ actual mechanics so much as letting the boss' AI determine which attack to used based upon whatever factors were at play in the fight. They were also by far Zoe's favorite, because they allowed players to show the most skill in execution.

And third were the middle-of-road types. They would have mechanics and specific attack patterns designed to be learned and conquered, in a similar way to the first. But they would use those mechanics and attacks in a random order, or in response to the current situation.

[Firdraig] and [Garmiad] were clearly that kind, as once they were past the opening part of the fight and rejoined with [Scathach], things were different every time. And worst of all, [Firdraig] and [Garmiad] seemed to be operated by different but still communicating AI, which let them act independent of one another, but also work flawlessly together when they decided to.

Which was exactly what happened when Zoe had been attacking [Firdraig] with [Scathach] - which seemed to be the best option at the time - until [Garmiad] decided to throw a massive AoE toward her, Caoimhe, Fiona, and [Scathach].

The AoE was big, too. Which left all them running for their lives to reach the edge of the red sphere.

"Come on!"

"You guys can make it!"

The others cheered for them, trying to keep an eye on the melee crew while also fighting the damn lizard that had attacked in the first place.

Zoe looked up at her ceiling as the lightning blast went off and zeroed out Nyx's HP.

"Shroud needs a teleport." She whined. "Also, that attack pattern is bullshit."

"Well, it means we know for sure that that particular attack doesn't always target healers. Like it has the last four times." Fiona sounded just as tired of seemingly random mechanics as Zoe felt.

"At least we're learning?"

"At least it's not like Áine and all of her one trick gotcha mechanics." Aleister snorted.

"I actually might prefer that; at least they were reliable after we saw them once. This one feels like if the bosses decide it's time for us to die, we die. End of story." Bisky said. "On the other hand, this is a fun fight. I like the chaos of it all."

"Can't argue with that." Zoe said. She stretched her arms upward, arching her back with the stretch. Something in her shoulder popped, and she rolled the joint and then her neck. It felt good.

"I bet there's something we could do to bait certain mechanics. Positioning a certain way, or taking certain actions -"

"No one has time for that, Mello. Although I think you're probably right." Caoimhe said. "If we really wanted to, we could try some weirder formations tomorrow, but there's only so much the melee can do."

"If I'm not in knifing range, I get mad." Zoe turned her voice dark and threatening.

"Same. But for me it's…'swording range' doesn't sound as good." Caoimhe laughed.

"'Cutting range' sounds too bland," Fiona added. "Maybe 'slicing range'?"

"Slaying range?" Bisky offered. "Working off your Dedication and all. Given tyranting range doesn't quite work."

Fiona laughed, "What about Ty-Ranting range though? Hm?"

"We said you need to work on your dad jokes, remember? Just throwing them out at every opportunity makes it worse."

The last pull of the night went about as well as the others. The group was regularly getting into the latter portion of the fight where they were teaming up with [Scathach], but everything following that seemed to be a crap shoot.

Everyone needed to be on their toes because of the boss's unpredictability, and it seemed like that was more mentally draining than usual. The whole party was running on empty, and Zoe recognized that as soon as her mind started to wander more toward wanting to skip out on work the next day rather than being fully committed to the game.

Zoe could tell the others were out of it too. Fiona was missing [Perfect Blocks], Firo wasn't placing his AoE attacks as cleanly, Caoimhe was landing less [Punishments]. But by and large, the party was where they needed to be for positioning related mechanics despite playing sloppy.

When [Garmiad] prepped for his lightning strike attack, things went sideways. Zoe wasn't sure whether it was just bad positioning or if the group's attention span was truly just fried and at its limit, but it was Mellody and Evie that had happened to be the highest among everyone.

They got zapped by the strikes and removed from the field in an instant. The expected slew of muttered curses and sighs followed, especially when the dragon transitioned into a raid-wide. No one would survive the attack without having been healed to full, or some shielding. Even the tanks were hovering around half thanks to other damage before the attack went out.

Zoe though, thanks to her sloppy playing, had a particular skill available to her. [Perfect Veil] was a [Shroud] skill that had a medium length 30 second cooldown typically, and would shield the target against the next debuff. However, she had altered the skill to be a perfect dodge, essentially - it could only be used on herself but it avoided one instance of damage, unless it was an enrage.

It had a long cooldown at five minutes, but she regularly used it as assurance during her longer combos to ensure she could get the big final hit. She needed those big DPS numbers.

Playing sloppily on this last pull, though, she never bothered with it. So when she saw the raid-wide coming, she chuckled and hit the button.

The blast went out, taking out the rest of the party. Fiona, Aleister, Caoimhe, Firo, and Bisky went limp, still floating in the air for a moment while Nyx remained, untouched for the moment.

Zoe waited just a moment or two, while everyone else was sighing at the wipe.

"Now fall." She said, and watched as her party members each plummeted from the sky right on cue. And not a second later, she got absolutely blasted by a lightning breath attack from [Garmiad].

They may not have ended well, per se, but the party was at least in a good mood and laughing when they parted for the night.