The Great Thief

The third Epic item was Imperial Qiraji Armaments, which was a quest item.

On the journey from the third Boss to the fourth Boss, Frankriss the Unyielding, there were the elite Vekniss Soldiers and the non-elite Vekniss Drones. If they got wiped while fighting them, they would have to start all over again. However, after they killed Frankriss, they wouldn’t be able to farm these insects anymore.

But this meant that every time they got wiped, they had to start by fighting these monsters again.

This was a very annoying process in obtaining the First Clear.

Unfortunately, there was no choice. The Instance Dungeon was designed in this way, so they just had to not get wiped.

If they could do it one go, then they wouldn’t have to worry about it.

These two were new monsters. The Vekniss Soldiers could grant a ‘powerless charge’ debuff, which reduced movement speed by 60%. However, those who were affected by this debuff had to keep moving forwards as they could still tank for the others. These monsters were easily dealt with if they simply cast some area of effect skills.

The Vekniss Drones weren’t even an elite unit, so there was no difficulty in defeating them.

Although it didn’t seem like these monsters were particularly powerful, they weren’t any easier to defeat than the previous monsters. This was a very similar situation to the ‘Trap House’ in Blackwing’s Nest between the second and third Bosses. These soldiers and drones were very fast, and you had to kill one every 30 seconds.

The difference between this and the ‘trap house’ was that the soldiers could be pulled by the Warriors, which kept the fighting close together. If they were too scattered, the monsters might leave and call for reinforcements. This also meant that they had to kill the monsters they encountered as quickly as possible.

The entire team would try to hug a wall to avoid being surrounded by the insects. Once some of the elite insects dropped, the team had to quickly press forwards.

Lu Li would often shout, “Come to me! Keep up!”

Just before the last wave of monsters at Frankriss’ hall, you could take a break. There was a small slope on the left where everyone could gather and remain undiscovered by the Vekniss Drones. Before they approached the Boss, they would prepare their buffs there. The Warlocks could also transport people who died on the way to that location.

In general, the Mages were the ones casting the area of effect skills, so they needed to regenerate their mana.

The fourth Boss was called Frankriss the Unyielding.

In reality, no matter how unyielding this Boss was, it couldn’t be as unyielding as the players. They never gave up, even if they were about to die.

The players who were selected for these Dungeon runs were very patient. Some even enjoyed the feeling of dying, because the glory of defeating the Boss and taking the First Clear was more than enough to make up for their present suffering.

They hadn’t spend much time on the previous Boss, but they had spent half of the day just travelling to Frankriss.

This Boss had four skills, and one of them was called Fatal Wounds. This was a stackable skill that reduced the target’s ability to receive healing by 10%. When cast, it was similar to Opportune Strike, where the people in front of the Boss would be affected. Therefore, within reason, they had to avoid standing there.

The only exception was the Main Tank Azure Sea Breeze; he obviously didn’t count as a person.

The second skill spawned Vekniss Hatchlings. Frankriss would hatch a large number of Vekniss worms throughout the battle, which were stronger than those outside.

They were also immune to all crowd control skills, except Fear and Sleep.

Spawn of Frankriss was another skill that would summon even more minions into the battle arena. These monsters had very strong attacks that could one-shot Cloth-armored players. They dealt over 1700 damage to the Plate-Armor players and were also immune to all crowd control except Sleep.

The last skill was Webspinning. For every new Hatchling or Spawn that was created, Frankriss would randomly send a player to one of the four corners of the hall and Root them for 8 seconds.

Frankriss’ skills were probably worse than Kurinnaxx’s in the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj, because the hatchlings were very strong and there was no limit to them.

In order to defeat Frankriss before the mobs overwhelmed them, they needed to work harder on their damage output.

Unlike Kurinnaxx, Lu Li rotated three defensive players for the Boss. He wanted to avoid gaining a lethal number of Fatal Wounds stacks and also mitigate the issues of a tank being sent into a corner.

The constant stacking of Fatal Wounds would eventually cause the tank’s death, so when they received a certain number, they had to swap with another tank.

Most of them would be stacked onto the Main Tank, but they would swap to another tank every once in a while so that the stacks would reset. After that, the Main Tank would rejoin the battle at the front.

The Thieves and Hunters’ pets were attacking Frankriss from the side. They couldn’t stand in front because they would gain more Fatal Wounds stakcs.

Since they couldn’t always rotate Azure Sea Breeze out in time, he started drinking Rage Potions so that they could maximise their damage output.

The Mages, Hunters and Warlocks frantically attacked Frankriss as the Thieves and the Hunter’s pets were occupying him and his hatchlings.

In the battle, they would all surround Frankriss to ensure that they would take care of as many of the hatchlings as possible.

They wouldn’t worry about any missed hatchlings as the Warriors would take care of those.

When Frankriss used Spawn of Frankriss, one of them would pull the mobs and there would be a healer assigned to that person. However, all the damage output players would then focus on killing Frankriss as quickly as possible. The longer they dragged it on for, the more mobs would appear and the greater the likelihood that an accident would occur.

Because the hatchlings could be affected by Fear, Lu Li had brought in many Warlocks.

Chaining their Fears was an important part of the process, and there were five Warlocks working together to achieve this. The first Warlock’s Fear was especially important.

Generally, they would start when there were four hatchlings because the area of effect Fear had a 1.5 channel time.

If a Warlock made a mistake, it didn’t mean they would get wiped, but casualties were inevitable.

The Main Tank was also a focus of this battle, as they had to have enough quality equipment and skills to ensure that Frankriss and all the spawned mobs stayed in place.

This time, they had brought in all their best Main Tanks. Azure Sea Breeze had to pull Frankriss’ aggro as quickly as possible. After doing that, he also had to make sure to keep the Boss still even when rotating with the other tanks. Too much movement would affect the efficiency of the Thieves’ Backstab.

This time, they had finally brought along more Thieves than just Lu Li and Water Fairy.

Lu Li brought four Thieves into the battle. As long as those four Thieves focused on attacking the Boss, their stuns could save the game.

It wasn’t obvious in the current version of the game, but Wings of Dawn would later do this Boss with 15 Thieves. It wasn’t that efficient, but it was an impressive strategy.

However, Lu Li didn’t have enough capable Thieves to execute that strategy.