Because balance is overrated.
02 Jan 2024 - XSYS Team
Heroes: Herringway (Arbiter), Joe (Amara, Scion), Rue (Wrathguard), oakandlinden (Arcanimist), Dragoshi (Decider), with Misty (Sharker) drop
This was the most intense fight we’ve held yet, and the first one where I really felt the heroes start to sweat.
At first, three Genome SOLDIERS jumped in. But after a few turns, they started using the skill Graft Materia to transform, changing their secondary classes to Junction: Lion, Junction: Mantis, and Junction: Condor for way more powerful attacks! Still, the heroes cleared them out efficiently, because Mook CT’s on-hit CT reduction allowed them to keep the SOLDIERs’ very high speed under control.
So I threw six more at them. And one of them used Graft Materia: Scorpion to turn into a giant mechanical scorpion, and also grafted Lion so the center of the boss could keep buffing its parts and allies with Shining Roar.
The sheer amount of damage kept up the pressure, making this a real trial by fire for oakandlinden’s first fight– but with some pointers from Amara, and strategic barriers from Herringway, the heroes were able to keep up the healing and keep the boss team from being able to take down Dragoshi, despite focusing heavily on him.
Joe figured out a loop in Scion that made the dude completely invulnerable– turns out dealing multi-target damage allowed you to spend all your Voltage to fill all your Voltage, and Step Evade being reusable once a turn was super busted against a field of 1-TP enemies. I’ve since patched all this, but good work finding it!
Near the end, Aeris (played by our own Doctor Okazaki) showed up and lended a hand with the Wanderer in Red supporter class– but the heroes had it pretty well in hand already, making me stand the scorpion back up just so we could watch its health bar get deleted a second time from two massive player nukes in a row. Ahhh, good times.
I awarded 250 pyroxene, 250 tomestones, and 1000 nuyen for the victory. See you all in late January for Disc 2!