The Great Thief

The little needle was one of its attacking methods and wasn’t that easily destroyed. Actually, it could be said that it was impossible to destroy it. Otherwise, this Boss would be too easy.

Furthermore, it wasn’t fighting alone – there were still two more Crypt Guardians.

The Crypt Guardians looked quite similar to their Boss, but with slightly smaller heads. Lu Li gave Wandering the responsibility of holding the Crypt Guardians’ aggro and assigned a group of healers to heal him.

Looking over at the Boss, Azure Sea Breeze was already tanking its’ heavy strikes. Anub’Rekhan had a pair of lethal and razor sharp claws. However, the damage dealt by them was rather average. Azure Sea Breeze only lost around 1000 HP with every hit. This meant that this Boss was likely to have many skills in its arsenal.

In the beginning, everyone was still deciding whether or not they should kill the Boss’ minions.

This was because not all minions could be killed, and not all minions needed to be killed. However, when the Boss summoned another Crypt Guardian, even the most stupid players would know that they would need to kill the Guardians as soon as possible. Otherwise, the number of Crypt Guardians would rapidly grow, which would be devastating for them.

Lu Li counted the time that it took for the Boss to switch modes of attacking. From the beginning of the battle to summoning took around 100 seconds.

The first skill that indicated the change was Carrion Swarm. This skill slowed down the movement speed of the caster by 40%, while dealing and stacking Natural damage on surrounding enemies within 20 to 25 metres.

The allied Instance Dungeon team was greeted with their first squad wipe here. They realised that they needed to retreat when the skill was unleashed, but it was too late. The melee ranks were utterly destroyed. Without these players, they obviously would not be able to continue. This damage lasted from 10 to 15 seconds and it could keep stacking. Besides the Main Tank, no one else was able to withstand it.

“This actually has quite a simple solution. Breezy, just pull the Boss away from the Carrion Swarm, and wait until the skill ends, then pull him back here. March Rain and Hachi Chan, focus on healing Breezy. Use your longest-ranged healing skills. Don’t stand too close to the Boss,” Lu Li instructed.

“I discovered one of the Boss’ skills. Just then, when we died, the Boss would cast a skill at the corpses which summoned a lot of scarabs,” Sky Moon observed closely.

“Looks like we need to minimise our casualties,” Azure Sea Breeze responded solemnly.

Everyone ignored him. Of course they needed to minimise casualties!

If the players didn’t die, then the Boss would eventually die. All of his words were just words of stupidity. It would have been acceptable if he had said they needed to minimise the damage received. If players died, then they would need to prepare themselves for the wave of scarabs to follow.

After restarting the battle, everyone’s attention was on clearing out the Crypt Guardians.

The Crypt Guardians were rather powerful and their damage was not low either. They had a key skill, which was Toss Net. This would prevent players’ movements while accumulating a massive amount of aggro. The Main Tank was likely to lose aggro for a split second, so the Guardians would move towards the players he was protecting.

Lu Li arranged for Wandering and World’s Best Friend to tank the Crypt Guardians.

Even if they couldn’t kill the Guardians, the Boss would still summon a new Crypt Guardian after switching. If the Crypt Guardians weren’t dealt with, then even the most powerful squads would wipe.

With two tanks, it didn’t matter if people were hit by Toss Net. This setup was much more generous with mistakes. Truthfully speaking, Anub’Rekhan wasn’t that difficult to deal with. Lu Li thought that someone would have already taken the First Clear already.

Everyone was already level 60, so with the right team composition and exquisite items, the Boss would be a piece of cake if the mechanics weren’t too hard to deal with.

The skills that were more difficult to deal with were Impale and the summons. Impale was a skill that dealt 2500 or more damage in a line. The player would be knocked up, then receive further damage once they hit the ground. Therefore, players who couldn’t avoid the skill in time were likely to die.

If the dead players were not revived within 3 seconds, the Boss would summon scarabs from the corpses.

The Crypt Guardians’ corpses could also be used to summon scarabs. Three to five scarabs would be summoned at a time, and their attack speed would be extremely high. These scarabs were also immune to crowd control, which was the main cause of squad wipes. Lu Li arranged for the Mages to stand nearby the corpses of the Crypt Guardians. As soon as the scarabs were summoned, the Mages would quickly eliminate them using AoE skills.

The Guardians were dealt with by pulling the two of them away from each other. The first one would be killed, then the Mages would deal with the scarabs. Then, they would pull the other Crypt Guardian to the same place and do the same.

This way, the Mages didn’t need to run around. The ones who had to work harder were the Tanks.

Carrion Swarm!

This skill was labelled as the ‘squad-wipe specialist’. In the earlier days, Carrion Swarm even had an effect of slowing down movement speed as well. Once the players were hit by it, there was no chance for them to run away. Their movement speed would be constantly dropping, while the damage would constantly increase.

Even Lu Li was hit by it.

He was originally quite confident. He had high movement speed along with many escape skills. However, when he was hit by Carrion Swarm, he realised that this was different to what the strategy guide described.

Carrion Swarm didn’t even give the players a chance to respond with their skills. All skill animations were interrupted. Even if they managed to escape, the effects of Carrion Swarm would still be present on the players and it would bounce between them. Furthermore, their movement speed wouldn’t recover either. Their movement speed would instead be continually dropping, until the Carrion Swarm caught up with them.

Azure Sea Breeze was the only one holding the aggro of the Boss.

He already had an absurdly high amount of Natural Resistance, so Carrion Swarm didn’t affect him as much. Furthermore, most of his skills didn’t have an animation. Although it looked like he was suffering, if the healers did their jobs properly, squad wipes wouldn’t be a problem.

During this time, in order to protect the rest of the team, Lu Li arranged for a Hunter and Warlock to deal with them.

The Hunter would cast Aspect of the Pack, which increased the group’s movement speed. Remnant Dream’s skill would be able to increase everyone’s movement speed by 20%, which was enough for everyone to escape.

There was someone who needed to pay attention to this – Azure Sea Breeze. He needed to dispel the effects of the skill, otherwise, he would be stunned.

There was also the Warlock, who was able to inflict a Curse which slowed down Anub’Rekhan’s casting speed.

This time, the MVP was probably Hachi Chan.

She was in charge of healing the Main Tank, because of her class’ flexibility in different fighting situations. If she was hit by Impale, she could transform into a bear and tank it. When she was knocked up into the air, she would be able to transform into a leopard and land safely. Furthermore, she was moving with Breezy the entire time as she healed him, all the while perfectly maintaining the distance between her and the Carrion Swarm.

March Rain, in comparison, had a difficult time. Because Priests were not that mobile, she couldn’t outrun the Carrion Swarm, unless she began to run much earlier.

Lu Li was beginning to grow lazy while commanding in an Instance Dungeon.

For the Main Tanks, he gave the commanding right to Wandering. Wandering was now in charge of how they would pull the monsters. He allowed Sky Moon to have full responsibility over how the Mages operated and cleared out the scarabs, so he could just be on the sidelines and command over how the whole team operated as a whole.

After wiping four to five times, Anub’Rekhan was finally defeated.

The success came as a little bit of a surprise. The key part was that everyone had already worked together many times before, even as a combined group like this, so their team chemistry was actually very well-developed.