Teddy Bear Again
Generally speaking, it's not easy for adventurers to clear a dungeon. During the clearing process, they often need to understand the boss's skills and tactics, and through continuous summarizing experience, they can eventually defeat the boss and clear the dungeon. Wiping out is a common occurrence in this process, and sometimes it takes dozens of times to find the correct tactics to kill the boss.
Therefore, during the initial exploration phase, not only is it difficult to gain much from running dungeons, but it also requires a significant investment of resources. Not only do equipment need repair, potions need to be purchased, and various supplies are indispensable, not to mention the fact that equipment will be lost after a wipe.
However, once you enter the FARM stage (FARM, which in online games usually refers to repeatedly clearing a dungeon to obtain equipment, is typically considered to have entered the FARM stage only when you have completely mastered a dungeon and can easily conquer it; before that, it is the exploration stage), the previous investment will be quickly recouped.
The more dungeons an adventurer's guild can farm, the faster it accumulates equipment, and the stronger and more cohesive the guild becomes. Because of this, adventurer's guilds and bosses are actually in a relationship of mutual hostility and mutual benefit. In particular, those bosses that can be easily farmed and have very good loot are extremely valuable resources, which is why adventurers sometimes prevent heroic players from killing dungeon bosses.
Of course, it's not always necessary to try repeatedly to clear a dungeon. Sometimes, adventurers encounter a dungeon and conquer it in a day, or even in one go. Generally, this is either because the dungeon is too easy—like Sgelari's Lair —or because the adventurers are too strong. The teams Xiao Yu saw in the video clearly belonged to the latter category.
Lady Xiwadelin is clearly not a weak boss. Xiao Yu had seen her skills before. Her ability to Mutated Resurrection is a real headache for adventurers, but it's not without a way to counter it. All you need to do is keep the summoned Naga Warrior far away so that Lady Xiwadelin can't revive them.
However, the 'Old God’s Gift' skill is more troublesome; there's no way to dodge it.
In addition, in the third phase, Lady Xiwadelin will also Summon Son of N'Zoth Summon Son of N'Zoth, which is a very annoying skill. Therefore, Xiao Yu was very curious to know how these adventurers defeated Lady Xiwadelin.
He looked at the video's description and learned that the three teams that defeated Lady Xiwadelin came from three different factions: the main force of the Glory War Soul guild, the main force of the Heavenly Kingdom Dynasty guild, and an adventure group called the Moonlight Travel Group, which consisted of solo high-level players (adventure groups are small organizations below guilds, with a maximum of 40 members, and are usually temporary organizations).
All three teams made repeated attempts, with the fewest losing three or four times and the most losing more than ten times, but in any case, they all finally succeeded in defeating Lady Xiwadelin.
When dealing with the [Mutated Resurrection] skill, their tactics were all the same: send hunters from their teams to pull the Naga Warrior away to prevent them from being resurrected. However, when facing the [Old God’s Gift] skill, the three teams responded in different ways.
The main team of For Glory War Soul chose to have the lowest-level player in the team strip naked and be brought to low health during the battle before consuming Lady Xiwadelin's Old God’s Gift. This way, even if the controlled player's strength was greatly increased, it wouldn't make them much stronger. After all, an adventurer's strength largely depends on their equipment. Without equipment and with low health, they could easily be killed in a single round of focused fire. The only loss was a teammate.
The choice made by the main force of the Heavenly Kingdom Dynasty was quite ingenious. Everyone in the team drank the Undead Potion. The effect of this potion is that it makes those who drink it default to being Undead creatures for a period of time, thus making them immune to the effect of the [Old God’s Gift] skill. As for why they found that the Undead are immune to [Old God’s Gift], it was a result of repeated experiments.
Then Xiao Yu opened the video of the adventure group called the Moonlight Travel Group. To Xiao Yu's surprise, he saw several familiar faces in the third group.
Water Falls Without a Trace, Night Elf Mage, Level 51.
Fish That Doesn't Eat Cats, Night Elf Hunter, Level 49.
Besides that, there was another old acquaintance he never expected: a huge bear named Teddy.
He met this Teddy back when they were fighting the Goblin boss in Nightwhisper Village. They attacked Nightwhisper Village together, but then they got separated and no one knew what happened to him. Unexpectedly, Teddy became the adventurer's pet and has already reached level 49.
With a touch of curiosity, Xiao Yu opened the video.
To his dismay, probably because it was an elite template when it was captured, and its beast attributes were relatively strong, Teddy's combat power was even stronger than that of adventurers of the same level, so the main tank of this team was this bear.
The other level 52 Warrior in the team could only take on the second tank position, which must have been quite frustrating for him.
This team's composition was incredibly fierce. Except for Fish That Doesn't Eat Cats, everyone else was above level 50. Their equipment was top-notch, and their skills were flawless, making them even stronger than the main teams from the previous guilds, Glory War Soul and Heavenly Kingdom Dynasty. In the video, when fighting the mobs and the first few bosses, they almost crushed the first four bosses.
This left Xiao Yu somewhat bewildered; when did such a ferocious individual become a common sight among casual players?
Furthermore, the tactics this team used when facing the [Old God’s Gift] skill were quite remarkable. The Night Elf Priest in the team directly used [Elune's Light of Protection]. This skill grants teammates within a certain range complete immunity to mental spells. As far as Xiao Yu knew, this skill was one of the ultimate skills of the Moon Priestess. Only those who had advanced to the Moon Priestess level and completed the related legendary quest to obtain Elune's Blessing could learn it. To say that Priest could obtain Elune's Blessing was one in ten thousand would be an exaggeration, and to say it was one in a thousand would be a conservative estimate. It seemed that the people in this team were either super rich, super skilled players, or both.
Regarding the skill [Summon Son of N'Zoth], all three teams made the exact same choice—to brute force it. This Son of N'Zoth possesses the ability to Drain Life from multiple enemies; the more adventurers on the field, the faster the life drain occurs. There are no clever tricks to deal with it; the only way is for the team to rely on sheer strength to kill it. As long as the equipment is good enough and the damage output is high enough, dealing more damage than the amount of life it drains will kill it. Conversely, if the damage output is insufficient and the life drain is too fast, then there's no way to get past it.
All three teams successfully defeated Son of N'Zoth and Lady Xiwadelin with their powerful damage output, clearing the dungeon.
Next, Xiao Yu pulled up a walkthrough video of the Elemental Proving Ground and started watching it.
All three teams entered the Elemental Proving Ground, but received different treatment. The main teams of Glory War Soul and Heavenly Kingdom Dynasty, being the main teams of their respective guilds, were clearly high-powered players and studios, unlikely to spend money to lower the difficulty. Therefore, they unsurprisingly enjoyed the A package treatment, which meant facing the three strongest bosses.
Adventure groups composed of individual players, who are perceived as having a wealthy lifestyle, are treated as part of a "B package"—a combination of weak, medium, and strong bosses.
Currently, only three characters can be considered powerful bosses: Wotkud, Agnes, and Xiao Yu.
Among them, Wotkud is a 1-skull level BOSS, Azathoth is a 3-skull level BOSS, while Agnes is only a high-level BOSS template, the same level as the template of Big Water Cunt. Despite this, Agnes's advantages are obvious. First, her single-target damage is very high, making it very easy to kill the tank. Once the tank is dead, the rest are easy targets. Second, she has Stealth ability, appearing and disappearing on the battlefield. As long as the Taunt is not in place, she can easily sneak to the back row to attack the healer. Third, she has a powerful restriction skill in the third phase, which gives her a great advantage when fighting adventurers.
Wotkud is a traditional Water Elemental boss, but it has high base stats, high health, high level, and astonishing combat power.
However, despite their strength, they are not invincible. As mentioned before, as long as the equipment is good enough, the level is high enough, the teamwork is good enough, and the raw strength is sufficient, it is still possible to defeat these two bosses. These three teams obviously meet this requirement, but the third boss is not so simple.
Azathoth is a 3-skull-level boss with exceptionally high stats. Moreover, his skills have mutated, dealing damage of various attributes, making him difficult to counter. In particular, his Deep Sea Maelstrom + Biting Wind Protection skill combination—one pulls enemies in, the other blows them into the air—creates a seamless control effect that even Azathoth himself can't figure out how adventurers can break.
To his surprise, someone actually found a solution.
For Glory War Soul is quite unique. After being wiped out several times, as soon as they finished fighting, before Azathoth could even use his abilities, they took advantage of the brief time they were out of combat to run to a corner of the arena and start building a wall.