Though the method Balthazar devised in the short amount of time that he had was a safe one it was obviously one which had a very slow pace. Only by being in stealth could a player approach these monsters of the canine family even if they are sleeping. Else they risk being detected.
Apart from that, every member of the team needed to be very careful and had to maintain quite a distance from the wolves as they waited for Shadow to initiate the attack. This was a very inefficient way to handle a dungeon.
But for the others it was still an acceptable option as they got an experience of 50 total for each wolf and also it provided them with wolf meat and a few white trash equipment from them. As they moved along the tunnel, they found a few iron ore veins on the way which Tang immediately set to mining them.
As they reached the first cavern in which Balthazar saw the blackrock warg, he immediately cleared the nearby wolves with his team and then walked into the cavern.
The cavern was about 300 sq feet large and in an oval shape. There was nothing in the cavern except for the warg sleeping at its center. The warg woke up when the team put their first step into the cavern.
Only after it stood up did the team realize the size of the monster they were dealing with. It stood more than 5 feet tall and had limbs about 10 centimeters thick. It was definitely one of the biggest creatures the team had seen. Only the goblin champion was close to it. Clearly, the warg had recognized them as soon as they stepped in the cavern and was about to howl.
Luckily, Shadow was already in stealth beside the warg and managed to use cheap shot on it before it dd howl. "Come in and attack directly," said Shadow calling Tang and Blinding to join him. Tang and Blinding both had shields and could be effective in holding it down and even stunning it with their shield attacks.
Though they managed to reduce the health of the Warg by 1000 points in the four seconds of the stun duration, it wasn't easy to hold the Warg after the stun expired in the small place that they were.
The wargs had two prominent attacks they were famous for. One was swiping its large claws at the player. This had a strong knockback effect and required a shield bearing tank to counter it. It could also inflict a bleed effect on the player
The other was charging toward the players to bite. The best way to respond to this is to evade the attack by jumping away. Even when blocked by a shield the warg would simply jump on the player pinning him on the ground and continue its attempt to bite him till someone attacks it.
If in case the warg manages to bite a player because he failed to evade or block, it would try to shake the player until it is hit on its head. As long as it keeps shaking the player, he would lose health and even after that the player would be inflicted with the bleed effect.
It was always best to fight the wargs in a relatively wide space. Especially when there are more than one of them. The warg was an extremely strong quick creature and its large size coupled with the small place they were in, made it quite hard to even escape the warg's attacks.
There are very few tactics to handling a warg in an enclosed space, but Balthazar immediately thought of one that could be used by the team. The two tanks are very important for this, along with someone quick that could save the tanks from being mauled by the warg. Both the tanks take on the swipe attacks from opposite sides of the warg. Whenever it charges and pins down a tank or bites any player, an assassin and swordsman need to attack the warg to let the player escape.
Tang could taunt the warg in case it tries to attack another member allowing them to reduce unwanted scenarios. Shadow quickly commanded both Tang and Blinding according to his tactics in order to hold down the warg in the cavern and carefully managed to kill the warg without much loss of health and MP
By the time they killed, their first warg in the cavern it had been 15 minutes. The dungeon was named 'Cave of Wargs' and it was bound to have a lot more wargs in it. At the pace, they were going it is going to take a lot of time to reach the end.
But their harvest wasn't bad either. All the monster provided at least wolf/warg meat which could be used for cooking. The warg also provided a pair of level 5 blackiron plate armor gauntlets which could be used be paladin or guardian.
But the best harvest was the iron ore veins and Blackrock crystal veins they found in the cavern. After they killed the warg, Merlin was the first to notice the ore veins. He immediately lit a torch to check if there were more as Tang pulled out a handheld drill, she got at the goblin camp from her inventory and began to mine them.
Though their method was slow they continued in this way and killed six more wargs sleeping in small caverns branching from the central tunnel of the dungeon till they reached the end of the tunnel. They found treasure chests being protected by the last four wargs. It took about 90 minutes for them to do this.
"We need to find a better way than this to make our way through the tunnel. It is taking too long in this manner," said Quiet Fire looking at Merlin. Shadow's way is a viable option, but it has its drawback. She hoped that Merlin could have a better idea than the one they were using.
"What are you looking at me for? With the team composition that we have it is hard to find another tactic to go through the tunnel. We need another thief or some way to silence the wolves to speed up our movement. But two tanks are necessary to handle the wargs," said Merlin.
Seeing the Merlin also supported Shadow, Quiet Fire couldn't do anything. "I don't want to go through the dungeon another time like this. We need to at the very least find another member to go with us," said Quiet Fire.
"I feel the same," said Blinding White and Tang in unison. They had been extremely busy with tanking the warg and this was harder than tanking most monsters as the warg always pushed them down pinning them between the floor and itself.
"Ya, we will try to get a hold of another member before we repeat the dungeon," said Merlin. He was also a bit tired of the monotonous manner of clearing the dungeon. "But let us first try to finish the dungeon, shall we?"
Shadow already went into stealth and had a look at the large enclosure at the end of the tunnel where he had the fight with Arsenus. The altar that was used by Arsenus was being used by another worgen summoner to summon Wargs. There were already two Wargs in there walking around the enclosure and another warg which wore armor near the worgen. The armored warg was even larger than the wargs they fought all this time.
[Varthus] (Worgen Summoner)
Level 6;
HP: 2500;
[Armored Blackrock Warg] (Special elite)
Level 6;
HP: 3000;
He quickly came back to the team and reported that there were more wargs in the enclosure. But even though there are two wargs and an armored warg, it wouldn't be very hard because they have enough space in there for the players to maintain a decent distance from the wargs which allowed the players to evade with better chances.
It was decided that Tang, Little White Feet and Merlin would attack one Warg while Blinding White and Quiet Fire would attack another, while Shadow would help both of the smaller groups. They didn't think it was advisable for him to attack the worgen while the armored warg was guarding him.
As they entered the two wargs actively ran towards them while the armored warg stayed still by the worgen as expected by them. They quickly separated in the way planned before and Shadow sneaked behind the warg with Blinding and Quiet Fire to attack with cheap shot.
After that he ran to the other warg and immediately put it in stun in the same way. Though the armored warg was currently just standing by the worgen guarding him for now. They doubted that it would continue to do so once one of the wargs died.
So, they planned to have reduce the health of the two wargs by equal amount so that they would be able to kill them both in quick succession. Even if the armored warg actively attacks them after one of the warg died, they would be able to kill the other immediately and they all can concentrate on the armored warg.
With this idea the continued to slowly deplete the health of the wargs. Within 5 minutes they managed to take down one of the wargs. But to their surprise, the armored warg wouldn't budge from its place. Shadow quickly looted the warg and started attacking the other warg when Merlin interrupted him pointing towards the worgen.
As he turned around, he saw another warg coming out of the portal by the worgen summoner. The worgen was simply summoning another wart to replace the one they killed and the armored warg was still at the same place. The same thing happened when they killed the second warg. Another warg was just summoned to take its place.
"If this is going to happen repeatedly, we have no chance of finishing this dungeon. We would need another plan," said Quiet Fire as she saw another warg replacing the second warg.
"Let us continue to kill the wargs, a few more times. It might give us a different result and in case you noticed the MP bar, it's reducing by one eighth for each warg being summoned. I doubt it would continue to summon more wargs after that," said Merlin pointing at the summoner. "But if we slow down our DPS, it would recover mana."
Balthazar was surprised that Merlin noticed and quickly decided that it is best to continue with killing the wargs, even when the rest were getting dejected by the reappearance of the wargs that they killed. He realized that Merlin is a quite experienced in playing the games almost as much as him, maybe even better.
After Merlin pointed out that it might that the limit to the number of wargs they would need to fight before they fight the armored one, they decided to continue with the same tactic the used to kill the first two wargs.
They quickly split up and continued with their plan of attack. The wargs summoned also gave them more chances to practice evading and collaborating in smaller groups of two or three members. Both Merlin and Shadow Tyrant considered this a very good opportunity as not many chances come to train at the early stages of the game.
By the time the managed to slay the ninth warg, the worgen decided to stop summoning wargs and mounted the armored warg. The armored warg gave a long and deep howl before it ran towards the team
who were frantically attacking the last remaining blackrock warg.
"Tang and Shadow go and see if you can distract it," said Merlin taking lead. He had already realized that though Shadow has a few good ideas and is adept at games, he is avoiding leading the team. He decided to be lead them anyways and did it since the goblin camp clearance quest. So, he started to actively do it.
Tang ran away from the rest of the team and used the taunt skill perfectly managing to shift the armored warg's aggro. The armored warg charged towards her. With all the practice she had with the other wargs she deftly evaded the charge.
But she forgot that there was a worgen controlling it. Even though she jumped away at the right time, the worgen made the warg slow down for a second to make it turn and follow Tang. It continued to charge after the turn, jumped on Tang and managed to pin down Tang beneath her own shield.
Seeing Tang pinned beneath Shadow immediately ran to the armored warg and tried to hit it on the head to get it off Tang. But the worgen on the back of it interfered stopping his attack with a whip blast. The whip blast is a skill of the summoners sounds quite similar to dark whip but has an entirely different purpose.
The whip blast is a rare skill which can be learnt by the summoner and elementalist occupations. It is used best in close combat. These occupations are mainly long range and this skill allows them to protet themselves at close range. The whip blast explodes when it comes in contact with the opponent and has a strong knock-back and blinding effects due to the blast along with damage.
The whip blast cast by Varthus knocked Shadow back far and blinded. The armored warg continued in its attempt to bite Tang who was struggling to duck beneath her shield to evade the wargs teeth.
On the other side, the remaining members to the team managed to take down the last warg and started to run towards them to attack the worgen and the armored warg. By the time they came into the range of the armored warg, it had already bit Tang and was trashing her around.
Merlin quickly cast Terror wave to confuse the warg and Quiet Fire sent a Fire bolt on to the warg's face when it was confused causing it to remove its hold on Tang. Little White feet started healing Tang while Blinding started to tank.
But though they tried the best to attack the warg was very fast and with the worgen directing its attacks it wasn't easy to evade it. Even the attacks weren't much effective due to the high defence of the armored warg, on top of which the summoner frequently used whip blast to attack and light shield to block.
They were continuously losing health and if this continues, they were soon going to get killed one after the other. These kinds of scenarios usually lead to multiple player deaths and without a proper tactic even a team wipe. At this stage when everyone is trying to get the first clear award, it's best if they manage to finish the last monster in this attempt without any delay.