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Giggling Charming
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Everyone's asleep. I dare not move.
I don't mind. I need to conserve mana and I need to think.
I wrapped up the camp-fire discussion up by going over the rest of the day's events. I explained about Alkaline's new curse eating ability. It definitely deserves some investigation, but I want to wait until she's old enough to explain to her why we'd be burying her in curses. Reisarf is the only one practised in curses, but Merud seemed interested enough to try to cobble together something.
Moriko managed to search the local area. Nothing large or aggressive nearby. She did emphasise that her fieldcraft is basic and this is an unfamiliar land to her however. She thought she saw signs of something bigger down the mountain, there's a stream. She did have a complaint that Chakarchelou is not trained at all. He'd usually stay near her but not understand any of her commands.
>I may be a bit out of touch with how things are going, but could you use the raw mana that your heart leaks as a component in a trap? How long does that stuff stay around?
There's better uses for it. A base for potions, for a start. It shouldn't interact with clay or stone and slowly evaporate if left exposed to open air. There should perhaps be a phial full of it presently at equilibrium. I should start bottling it, contingent on enough suitable containers. It keeps for a long time if stored properly.
>I don't like option 2. Minions need to be managed, organized, sought out. There's logistics. And accelerating Alkaline's development would increase her demands on time, and make the margins on raising her well tighter. I don't think we have can afford the manhours (golemgalhours) that would pull away from other work right now.
This is true. Since supplies and space and time are all currently limited, this will have to be shelved for the moment.
>I like the other two approaches. You need more mana, and working in concert with your fighters to establish a boss encounter will build team relations, strengthen them, and prepare them to graduate to mid-bosses or other roles.
I can work on mana for the moment by being very particular with the arrangement of treasure in my temporary Heart Chamber to squeeze every bit of power I can out of the earth-pulse. I am, once again, tempted to open that chest right away but with such an incomplete layout I'd mainly cause a significant spike in monster activity. Once we have a working set of reinforcement spells to use for defence and a proper chamber set up, I'll open it.
>Now with bosses, would the end dungeon boss have to be the same every time or would you switch off with the others so you can rest as well?
Rotation is best. Repeated reinforcement or repeated defeat puts a lot of strain on the body and also this means variation in tactics.
>Moriko is going to be the final boss. Deem doesn't want to be the boss herself.
I never said that.
>Reinforcement makes a good fighter better, and Deem needed the reinforcements to stand against Moriko. Moriko with reinforcements would be REALLY strong.
Not exactly. She's much higher level than I am. In terms of raw strength, the benefits would be subdued.
So for now I need to start casting the groundwork for what spells to experiment with tomorrow. I have less mana to spare for this boss practice than I did for the duel with Moriko. I have to reserve mana for golems.
As I have experienced, Moriko's a very effective all-rounder. She's mobile, she has powerful and accurate physical attacks and she has several uncommon special abilities, allowing her to temporarily raise her already high attributes, assess enemies, break through strong defences and interrupt spells. Defensively she's focused on evasion and could hold her own against two strong simultaneous enemies. However, she has no ranged attacks, she's lightly armoured and she would have trouble fighting off debilitating effects.
Reisarf has a number of vulnerabilities. He's small, physically weak, lacking in stamina and he has bad aim. This is offset by his powerful magic and rapid casting. His Spatial Warp allows him to teleport away from attackers and his curses focus on restricting mobility. Curse effects bypass his low accuracy, his attack magic focuses on strong explosive or multi-projectile attacks and they are quite damaging. Stargazer helps defend him from physical attacks, acts as a spell focus and opens other possibilities with her ability to operate separately. After being fed some of Reisarf's mana, she's almost as effective as a second combatant of his level. With that in mind, I would assess his main weaknesses as being ranged attacks, enemies with high mobility and prolonged battles.
It's a little problematic that Moriko is much stronger than Reisarf. I might need to pull in someone else to help stress test things in an actual duel.
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