After Bukubukuchagama, Warrior Takemikazuchi spoke up:
“I came here because this was what I wanted to do. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’ve always wanted to predict the foe’s tactics in a battle with no clear means of victory. Plus, if I’m backed up by you guys, that move of mine might…”
“Ohhh! The Bright King[5] Combo? It’s certainly possible, no it’s definitely possible, Ken-yan!” Nishiki Enrai exclaimed in excitement.
“Bukubukuchagama can manipulate karma values, and Yamaiko’s super-tier spell works on people with positive karma too! Come on, Momonga-san, help us out!”
The attacker and attacker cum seeker were practically shouting in joy.
Momonga had heard of the Bright King Combo. If pulled off successfully, it would push their DPS through the roof. It was a move that was worthy of being called an ultimate attack, but at the same time, it could only be used once a day, and the boss would enrage due to the depletion of its health. Therefore, if they got the timing wrong when paring down its health, the move would not succeed.
“We’ll also need to see how much of its health we can burn off in a short time. You can handle that, right, Ulbert-san?”
“Indeed. Since you let me conserve all my MP, I plan to spend it all on damage… but of course, I’ll follow Bukubukuchagama-san’s directions for hate management.”
“Looking forward to it~”
“All right, then next up…”
Momonga continued explaining after seeing that everyone had calmed down.
“…This is probably the most important thing, but we won’t be able to retreat from this fight.”
A prickly sensation of nervousness flooded through him. They had one shot at this. They had to bet everything on that one shot.
Boss battles typically took place in a separate map, and there were some boss battles which allowed players to retreat from the fight. Therefore, most players would do so if they felt things were getting dangerous. Of course, the enemy would recover all their lost HP, so it would be best not to use trump cards and the like before retreating.
“Really, they don’t want newcomers to beat this dungeon in one go.”
“Ah, there’s almost nobody who could beat this dungeon blind anyway.”
“Then, Momonga-san, I have two questions. Did anyone lose their buffs when they went in?”
“That didn’t seem to have happened.”
“I see… then, will we have time to buff up inside?”
“No chance. The boss appears immediately and attacks.”
“So we’re fighting without knowledge or preparation? This is tough.”
“—The battle’s over before it’s even begun.”
“Ohhh! You sound just like him, Momonga-san!”
It was accompanied by a giggle.
“Just so. The deck is stacked pretty high against us. However, I feel our team can do it. Right, guys?”
Bukubukuchagama’s statement was met with approval all around.
In a grateful tone, Momonga announced:
“Then, I’ll let everyone else know that our party will be the last ones in.”
“Thank you. Then, another problem is that we know nothing about the enemy’s attacks… Though since we’ve encountered nothing but undead all the way here, the boss might end up being some other type of creature, right? No, those shitty developers would definitely do something like that.”
“Since we don’t know enough about this fight, we can’t assemble the proper elemental enchants… so how about something that’s wide-spectrum but low-potency? No matter what, we can’t learn without taking a hit. Plus, we have to worry about hate resets…”
“We could use food to buff our basic stats. Would you mind sparing me some for resistances?”
“I’m not making undead to add to the damage rotations, but I’ll be using them as meatshields when the time comes. I won’t use them to attack.”
Everyone loudly discussed their preparations for this battle, and when it was over, Momonga had received confirmation that the other two teams had started their respective battles.
“Then — shall we?”
Bukubukuchagama oozed forward, a shield in each hand.
Various magic items floated into view within her pink body. When slimes were equipped with magic items — with the exception of hand-held items — they were not shown on their exterior, but within their bodies.
Incidentally, in Yggdrasil one could equip magic items in the following slots: head, face, body, three pieces of jewellery apart from one’s rings, underclothing, arms, hands, left and right rings, waist, legs and feet. Even a suit of full plate armor only counted as taking up the body slot.
“Then, we’re going for it. One-sixth of a raid boss.”
“Don’t go into your rotations right away, watch the enemy’s attacks first. I’ll manage our hate, so please listen to my instructions. You guys don’t need me to tell you this, right?”
Five ‘evil grin’ emoticons were their response to Bukubukuchagama’s provocation.
They had played together for a long time now. All of them knew what they could and could not do.
With Bukubukuchagama leading the way, the party entered the magic circle.
They ended up in a room that resembled a colosseum. The walls were high and curved into a dome. Since there was a roof, there probably would not be any flying monsters dropping in on them.
Next, they inspected the ground beneath their feet. It seemed to be regular dirt, with no sign of traps.
Still, they could not be careless. Altering the terrain was a common tactic of raid bosses.
They needed to have a response for anything the enemy tried to do. If they knew what the enemy was capable of from the start, they could take steps to foil the enemy action, or even turn it to their advantage.
One could also use the super-tier spell ‘The Creation’ to directly alter the circumstances to their advantage, but all super-tier spells had an unavoidable cooldown time whenever they were cast. Therefore, the trump card of super-tier magic could only be used when it was absolutely vital.
Momonga and friends turned their eyes in unison, to the massive being that stood in the center of the room like a wrathful Nio[6] statue.
It was a boss which stood nearly five meters tall, with six arms, and it resembled an Asura[7]. From the exquisite craftsmanship of its armor, they could guess that it boasted a strong defense.
Four of its six arms held melee weapons — a sword, an axe, a spear and a club, each wreathed in an aura of fire, cold, electricity and acid respectively. Its remaining two hands held a bow. All this suggested that it was a physical attacker with multiple elemental attacks. Though it did not seem to be undead, it was still a boss monster, and those boasted a plethora of resistances. It certainly did not seem like the sort of creature which could be felled by an instant-death attack.
There were very few monsters in Yggdrasil with attacks that were vastly different from what their appearances suggested. However, there were many enemies whose moves could not be predicted. Still, this boss seemed like a special case.
Most monsters were generated by the same rules used for generating player characters. Even the magic they used was the same. The values derived from their basic stats — such as HP — were also of a similar nature.
In Yggdrasil there were two major patterns of raid bosses.
The main problem with designing boss encounters in Yggdrasil was that the players had the same skills and spells that monsters did, but during raid boss encounters, there would be 30 players facing a single monster. Even if with enhanced stats, one monster would still be obliterated by sheer weight of numbers, which meant that there was no challenge at all.
As such, two main patterns of boss encounters appeared to address this issue.
The first was to meet numbers with numbers. Sometimes the boss would come with minions, or the boss arena would constantly spawn monsters. In this approach, the boss was usually not very strong. In some cases it would only have several times the HP of a player character.
6
The Nio are Japanese war gods who defend the Buddha. Like the Myo-O, they are fierce in appearance.