Battle Bards Episode 23: Epic Boss Fights!

A new episode of Battle Bards is up!

This is one show you don’t want to miss! If anything, you’d probably want to hear at least the, uh, unique intro. Let me just say right now, I blame Syl! The image below, incidentally, is also chosen JUST. FOR. HER.

Anyway, some of the bestest, most badass music in MMOs are the tunes that come on in-game when you’re fighting. We’re not talking just any scrub mob though, no way. This show is all about the EPIC boss fights, man! Of course, what one considers an epic boss is up for contention among the Bards, but Syp, Syl and I had a lot of fun recording this nonetheless and we hope you’ll have fun listening too.

LISTEN NOW

Episode 23 show notes

• Intro (including “Epic Boss Battle” from Elsword Online and “Boss Room 1” from Atlantica Online)
• “Ragnaros/Molten Core” from World of Warcraft (comp. Jason Hayes, Tracy W. Bush, Derek Duke and Glenn Stafford)
• “Mutants of Delta Bunker” from Defiance (comp. Bear McCreary)
• “Wizard City Boss Tower” from Wizard101 (comp. Unknown)
• “Tough Battle” from Final Fantasy XI (comp. Naoshi Mizuta)
• “Romulan Battle Suite” from Star Trek Online (comp. Kevin Manthei)
• “King Toad” from Guild Wars 2 (comp. Maclaine Diemer and Leif Chappelle)
• “Epic Raid Boss 2 / Zod” from DC Universe Online (comp. Tracy W. Bush)
• Which one did we like most?
• Mailbag: Scott, Thuan, and Alyndale
• Outro (“Victory!” from Guild Wars 2)

TSW Monday: The Night In Pictures

Last night’s session of The Secret World Monday was another mixed-bag for the Knights of Mercy. For the second week in a row, we had a large showing and was able to put together two groups for some scenario running and Aureus/Oreo farming. One twist, though — we thought we might be able to slip into a harder version of a solo scenario for some extra rewards. Unfortunately, our attempts to entire a Nightmare solo scenario with a group of 5 were ultimately cockblocked, to say nothing of our plans of entering a scenario with a raid…which didn’t work either, obviously! But hey, nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

If nothing else, it was an interesting experiment. That, my friends, is a picture of the simulation leaving half our raid behind. The suckers in our group were thus transported to a Elite Group scenario, of which we promptly got the hell out.

Please disregard the dead vampire. And awkward horse is awkward.

We are ever so eager to be in a raid group, aren’t we? And with the numbers that are consistently showing up for Secret Mondays, we definitely have enough to fill a full group. But even if we wanted to enter a raid dungeon for shits and giggles we wouldn’t be able to, not until we have everyone past the Gatekeeper. And as such, we will continue to run Elites until we do.

Which explains how we found ourselves in The Facility last night. Honestly, I remembered this dungeon as being a lot more fun. And it really wasn’t so bad, until like the dozenth time we were handed our butts by the computer core boss. Quite possibly the worst boss in the entire game, because so much is dependent on luck and being quick enough on your feet to not get balled or lasered. I still hate The Facility less than The Slaughterhouse though, by a wide margin.

But as ever, persistence pays off. The Facility was conquered in the late hours, and a couple more guildies are closer to completing their achievement. Now time to goof off…

I think we earned it.

And the other highlight of the night: I completed another deck, the Templar Magus. Two more decks to go and I can start working on the Panoptic Core. It’s always been slow going for me, playing TSW only once or twice a week, and it’s going to be even slower now with the new augmentation system added to eat up my AP. But on the bright side, there will always be something for me to do.

Showing off my new Magus outfit, as Sctrz looks on in awed admiration!

The Secret World Monday: Mixed Bag

I’ll be honest; with the flurry of running around in The Secret World, scouring Solomon Islands for stories, Cat God farming, Super Jack hunting, and just in general trying to pick up the last of the new clothing drops I still need from the Halloween update, I’ve completely forgotten that The Whispering Tide was still going on, and that people still need to run the filth portals to unlock the next stage in the event.

Thus, Secret Monday last night didn’t really have a theme. It was a night of ticking off things on our to-do lists. First, getting in some Nightmare runs of Cat God, because some people still need weapon upgrades and his QL 10.1 drops are too good to pass up. Not to mention there’s always a chance at the Amethyst Mouser, which I don’t know if I’m lucky or not, but I’ve seen drop more than half a dozen times. Of course, now that TenTentacles has finally gotten his purple kitty, it won’t be as fun to taunt him with it anymore.

Next up was running Elite Ankh for guildies who still need to finish the achievement in order to hit up the Gatekeeper. It’s definitely good to get as many people as possible Nightmare-mode ready, even though I wept at the prospect of heading into that dungeon. I’ve made it no secret that it’s not my favorite, though I have to admit after having gone through the hell that is The Slaughterhouse and The Facility, it’s hard to hate the Ankh all that much anymore.

In any case, last night’s run was the best and least painless one I’ve ever experienced. Oh all right, I’ll admit it, it was a blast! A lot of that credit goes to Rowanblaze, who was on healing duty and did an amazing job taking care of me.

And finally, into the filth portal five brave adventurers went…which was not me, because I sat out to get some extra words in for my NaNoWriMo. From the wails of pain I heard from Teamspeak though, it seems the dev’s increasing of the difficulty on NM mode can most definitely be felt. And for all that pain and suffering, you get to earn yourself ONE WHOLE EXTRA event token! Thanks, Funcom, as ever we grovel at your feet in thanks for your benevolence and boons!

All snark aside, we were all over the place last night…but ended up getting a lot done.

TSW Monday: Trials In Trick Or Treating

Thank you to everyone who came out for the fun last night.

As an MMO gamer, I love October because that’s when all the games roll out their Halloween events, but I gotta say, no one does it better than Funcom and The Secret World.

Since every day is spooky-day in TSW, when Halloween does come around, it’s like their Christmas. It seems no one wants to miss the game’s biggest event of the year, as evidenced by our guild turn-out last night. We could have filled a full raid and then some with everyone who showed up to check out the content.

Seems legit.

There was the old favorite, good old Mr. Cat God, who makes his return with a Nightmare version to boot. This investigative mission line remains one of my all time favorite Halloween quests in any MMO, and it was a pleasure to be able to do it again this year. Funcom really pulled out the big guns for TSW’s favorite holiday.

Finally got a good shot of the Cat God fight this year, which compared to last year’s was not as laggy and I wasn’t so panicky.

Since the Halloween update went live last Friday, we’ve been heading back in there again and again to try for purple-quality loot, even though so far he has dropped Amethyst Mousers more than anything else. I can’t complain about snagging a new pet though!

Purple kitty!

And then there’s the new. This year, the devs have added the “Stories of Solomon Island” chain, which takes you all over the New England zones to hunt down side quests and in the process learn more about the NPCs in the area. That is what we did as a group for Secret Monday, because we are conveniently able to do it all in a raid. It was actually quite fun returning to the earlier parts of the game.

But I still got mauled by Ak’abs.

This ultimately led us to the elusive, creepy, and sometimes buggy “Super Jack”, the big bad boss of this Halloween event. He’s quite the nasty beast, requiring what feels like most of the server to take him down, and that is how we ended our Secret Monday session. With a bunch of new clothing reward additions to my closet, several new achievements to my name and not to mention being a whole lot of AP richer, what a way to wrap out the night!

Carving Super Jack.

TSW Monday: Our Worst Nightmare

Our group members performing synchronized headstands for a very complicated and top-secret ritual.

At long last, the Knights of Mercy attempt Nightmare modes in The Secret World! Um, can it really be our worst if it’s our first? Wait, don’t answer that. One of my guildies says he’s had worse nights in Elites, but I don’t know; personally, I can’t remember having so much trouble a dungeon since the early days of this game when were were all in crappy gear and none of had any idea what was going on.

But first, it was pleasure before punishment. A group of us went back to the Savage Coast lair after receiving a tip how to do the final mission there, The Cover-up. Thank you for our commenter who showed us the way! I wish I had known setting off all the bombs at once then running like hell out of there was going to work, I would have tried that sooner! This called for a victory dance:

Judging from our dances, all of us are so behind on the times.

While we were in the area, we also called forth the three lair bosses and proceeded to beat the crap out of them for gear and achievements. Might as well put all those blueprint pieces that have been clogging up our inventory and bank spaces to good use.

A screenshot I borrowed from Maric, as usual taking pictures instead of DPSing 😉

And finally, the moment I was waiting for, five brave souls who were keyed for Nightmares (including yours truly) decided the time was nigh. As a group, we chose to attempt Polaris first, since it’s the earliest instance in the game and logic says to start there with Nightmares too. But logic, schmogic. Even then, it was major ouchies.

Granted, we did better than expected, seeing as I never thought we’d make it past the first boss. As it turned out, we did. We also blew through the second boss (our only one-shot of the evening) but as a very wise man once said, “Don’t get cocky.” We hit a snag on the third boss, henceforth known as “Mr. Crabs” because he also sure lives up to his name. He wiped the floor with us like 20 times (it was probably less, but it certainly felt like it) until we finally got him down, and even then we just barely squeaked by.

And what do you know, it IS over when the fat lady sings.

The fourth boss went down after that, but at this point we were all tired and none of us were up for tackling the container boss. We still occasionally wipe on him in Elite mode, I can only imagine the pain he’ll bring on Nightmare.

So our first Nightmare was in some ways a success, but in others also a reminder that we’re back to starting from scratch. For the most part, the encounters aren’t too different, with the exception of a couple added mechanics that are absolutely UNFORGIVING unless you learn to take care of it, i.e. with interrupts or cleanses. So much was practicing on getting the rhythm down, and the good news is we’re learning.

TSW: Nightmare Mode Unlocked

The Secret World Monday didn’t officially happen this week due to the Labor Day holiday, but I went online for a bit anyway after hearing that Pid got his Gatekeeper achievement unlocked, and I was thus inspired to try and do the same.

I was sooooo scared for it. You wouldn’t believe how much I’d hyped this fight up in my mind.

As it turned out, though, it wasn’t nowhere near as bad as I thought; from the first time I engaged him, ten minutes later I had him defeated. But that’s not to say it was easy! There were a ton of deaths in that short period of time while I repeatedly threw myself at him, tweaking my deck after each failed attempt. Thanks to pkudude99 and his comments last week as well as unfair.co’s guide, I had a good idea what I needed to increase my chances of success: a “healing tank” build, and at least two impair abilities.

I love how he’s clapping for me.

There were actually several times I died due to my own dumb mistakes, such as panicking and hitting the wrong button instead of the impair ability when he does his laser thing, resulting in being one-shotted. But after I got the interrupts down, the gatekeeper was a cinch. Of course, when the adds came out I just about cried, because AHHHH WHAT ELSE DOES THIS GAME WANT FROM ME?! It was a close one, as you can see above, because they nearly got me. Here’s a tip: take a health potion with you, because I stupidly didn’t, and having one would have spared me from almost having a heart attack.

This girl is now ready for Nightmare Mode dungeons!

TSW Monday: Locking Down The Facility

If at first you don’t succeed…give up whatever the hell you’re doing and just go do something easier! A good tenet to live by, right up there behind “Let’s wipe it!” if you’re one of the Knights of Mercy working at picking off Elite dungeons in The Secret World. It is thus I found myself in the Transylvanian dungeon called The Facility this week, after our demoralizing attempt at The Slaughterhouse last Monday.

One thing I found interesting in this place is the number of atypical encounters — for example, “boss fights” with no real boss per se, or fights that don’t really require an actual tank. As far as TSW goes, this dungeon probably features more diversity in mechanics that any of the other ones I’ve seen so far.

I feel a little bit like Goldilocks when I say I felt The Facility was “just right” for our purposes; at where our group was last night in terms of gear and experience, it wasn’t too difficult but it certainly wasn’t a cake walk either. The first two bosses went down quickly enough to give us the confidence we needed, and really, there was only one fight in there that I would label a pain in the ass. More practice, and we could probably get this one on farm.

Down the rabbit hole…

Of course, it also helped that one of our guildies had experience with the instance, saving us the time and tears which would normally be spent experimenting with and learning the fights. But perhaps the most impressive part of the evening was the one-man showdown by PaganRites on the final boss encounter, which technically led us to pull off that one-shot even with the rest of us smooshed by the end and watching the action over the “Dead Cam”.

Well, crap. Does this mean that none of us can ever make fun of Pagan for anything again?

PaganRites soloing the boss…like a boss.

So, another instance down, just two more to go. One of these days I’ll get back to you, Slaughterhouse…