A few minutes later the first patrol came around the corner of the nearest hut. There was a brief moment of surprise for both groups before the action began. Tiny rushed forward, getting the attention of the orcs and warg as one of the orcs shouted a cry for help. Alburet came up behind Tiny to start buffing the Destroyer while Fluff, the Bobs, and Stacia waited for the new adds to show up. A few seconds slater a group of six orcs came around the other side of the hut, where Gerald was waiting to pick them up.
Stacia, Fluffball and both Bobs targeted Gerald’s first target and after the second hit from Gerald started their damage on the mob. Alburet stayed with Tiny, knowing he would need to reapply his heal over time since Marysue couldn’t use her healing magic on the demon. After a minute Alburet was able to turn to help the others, leaving Tiny with the last orc from the patrol at half life. As he turned to the rest of the group he saw they had killed three of the Orcs and were working on the last three. It didn’t take long for the Orcs to die, once they were down the group paused to allow their health and mana to regen.
“Huh. That was easier than the groups I did it with in the beta,” Gerald said grudgingly. “Having an off tank really does help out and the second imp is making up for the lack of damage from Stacia. Still don’t understand how we can even have an NPC in the party, though.”
Alburet just shrugged, “Got me, but I wouldn’t trade any of my party for another damage dealer.”
Marysue looted the corpses, noting silently that Stacia was getting an even cut from the mobs. Once the loot was distributed they moved on to find the second patrol. It didn’t take long to find the second patrol group that went around the palisade. It was almost a complete rinse and repeat of the last group, except this time the group that added in had a shaman which meant it had to be focused down first. There were still four adds up by the time Alburet was able to switch over and help out.
“Outside of the one area damage spell the shaman got off before he died, none of you is taking damage beside Gerald and Tiny.” Marysue said with a smile after the fight, “makes my job much easier.”
“And now we just go door to door and see if they want cookies,” Fluff interjected with a straight face.
“Thin mints, Mr. Orc, would you like a box?” Alburet asked with a chuckle.
Gerald rolled his eyes, “Cute and all, but can we just move on with this?”
Marysue giggled, “I thought it was funny, but since he’s getting into one of his moods we should probably move on.”
Gerald grumbled as he advanced to the nearest hut and took up position next to the door, waiting for the others to get ready. Alburet directed Tiny to wait by the window in case a mob tried to get away from them. Once everyone was ready Gerald nodded, signaling Alburet to open the door. Alburet pushed the door open, allowing the others to rush into the room ahead of him. Four mobs got to their feet grabbing weapons as Gerald closed the distance with them. Two Orcs with shields, one with a two handed axe and one with a bow who ran for the window.
Alburet glanced at the window just in time to see Tiny step into the way with his shield up, bouncing the orc back into the hut as it went airborne. Laughing, Alburet closed in on the Orc Archer, slashing with his axe. His attack landed squarely on the orc’s back, getting a critical for attacking the spine since the orc was only wearing leather armor. The archer left the bow on the floor, coming up with his short sword slashing at Alburet, who had stepped back. Tiny roared at the orc through the window, taunting the mob back to him which let Alburet step in again with another strike of his axe to the orc’s back. The second attack clipped the orc in the head for another critical strike, shaving another four hundred plus health off the creature.
That pulled aggro off of Tiny, causing Alburet to step back as he knew Tiny wouldn’t be able to taunt again for another few seconds. Luckily for Alburet, Gerald taunted the orc over to him before it had a chance to attack. Both Bobs turned on the archer and began to pile on the fire damage, killing it in short order. When the archer died Alburet was able to join the others in focus killing the targets that Gerald called out one by one.
Alburet handed flasks of tea to Stacia and Fluff, taking his last one for himself. When Gerald looked at him askance he explained. “Staving off the twelve hour debuff, and these were my last drinks.”
“Why not just dip out for a few seconds instead?” Gerald asked shaking his head. “I mean, that’s just tossing coin away like that.”
“I don’t mind and it stops anything going wrong with the log in,” Alburet replied, hoping he sounded convincing enough.
“Remember when DrFrank got locked out yesterday when we were doing the goblin fort again?” Marysue said, “Alburet has a good point in that regard.”
They moved on shortly after that, going from hut to hut and killing everything with little difficulty. The only issue came on the last hut when they found eight orcs and three of them were shamans. The three shamans were able to hold them off by healing each other while the other five Orcs all jumped on Gerald. Cussing, Gerald used his big stun ability with the half hour cooldown to stun all the orcs for five seconds. In that window the group was able to annihilate one of the shamans. Down to only two healers, the group was able to take them out as the healing was finally low enough to let them do it. Eventually the Orcs all lay dead, as the party all sat down panting while they recovered their health and mana.
“I had to use a mana potion just after you killed the first shaman, and even then I was almost out again at the end.” Marysue said as she looked the group over, “I’m glad it ended when it did. Also, thanks Tiny for giving Gerald a few seconds of respite there at the end.”
“You are welcome,” Tiny rumbled, smiling at her in return. His many sharp teeth gleamed in the light of the torches that had come to life when the sun set a few minutes ago.
“Well, we just have the chief left,” Gerald said, “This still went better than the four runs I did during the beta.”
“Glad to be of service,” Alburet chuckled. “I don’t think my class is as weak as people think.”
“You have a lot of utility that most don’t think about,” Gerald agreed. “Even then, it’s low utility, the sap strength thing for instance. It doesn’t work on these Orcs like it did on the goblins, sadly.”
“True, but I come with damage in Bob, an off tank in Tiny and next level I’ll have crowd control in the succubus. With all that I’m almost my own little party.”
“You only lack good healing,” Marysue pointed out. “If you had that then Tiny would be really good.”
“Yeah, all I got is a low end heal over time right now. Who knows? Maybe I get something better later,” Alburet agreed. “So what about the boss, Gerald?”
“Okay, the chieftain has one add of each type minus the berserker, but has two shamans. The chieftain is a level twenty berserker, so he’ll have the hp and abilities to be worried about. During the beta he had an area stun, an area interrupt, a high damage cooldown ability that I’ll need to use my mitigation on and lastly a buff for his allies that mitigates damage that they take.” Gerald shook his head, “The two shamans need to die first and he’ll blow his group mitigation ability on them once one of them hits half life. So we need to focus one, let him pop off his ability then continue to burn that one down. I think Tiny should pick up the other adds and hold them as long as he can. The boss is going to hurt me like fuck and Mary will have to focus almost exclusively on me. Once one of the shamans go down we switch to the other one, then the other adds, then lastly the boss.”
“I can bring up a second Tiny instead of a second Bob, to help keep the adds occupied longer. I think we can burn the shaman down without a second Bob without too much problem,” Alburet suggested.