The reading at brenvask

The reading at brenvask
Scenery 11 of 31 · Brenvask, the Skara-narrows relay. Alone · Nightmare · Sage.

Stay off the stone plinth around the mast at the centre of the court. On Nightmare, stepping onto it alone starts the reading's second phase at once, whatever its health.

What you hold

Alone at scenery 11 you have had four boss drafts (after sceneries 3, 5, 7 and 9), so you hold six spells: your two starting spells plus one per draft. A draft spent on an upgrade ranks a spell up instead of adding one.

• Tap: Prepared Ground. A heavy holy drop: press once to throw it, again to bring it down on its shadow. 1 charge, back every 36 s.
• Hold: Long mercy. A beam that heals allies and hurts enemies. You cannot move while it runs.

Each draft deals four cards. Card one is always one of the Sage's own spells. From the third draft on, one card upgrades a spell you already hold. The rule: At each boss draft take, in this order: a new damage, control or summon spell; if none is offered, an upgrade of a damage, control or summon spell you hold; if neither, any new spell. Between two equal cards, take the Sage's own. The Sage's card one was a healing spell in all 40 tested drafts, and every run passed it over for a random card. The build we used:

1. Draft 1: Afterfrost. A frost halt that leaves weaken.
2. Draft 2: The understudy. An arcane halt that leaves a temporary body.
3. Draft 3: Hoarshard, taken over the Afterfrost upgrade. A light frost bolt with 3 charges.
4. Draft 4: Shatterpoint, again over the Afterfrost upgrade. A heavy frost bolt, 3 shots, that leaves vulnerability.

The reading resists arcane and takes 25% more damage from void. All ten draft orders cleared. Two of them spent a draft on an upgrade (Long one, Winterdrag) and held five spells. The fastest build was Sinkhole, Bindweed, Gloomlance and Underfoot, at 210–264 s. The slowest, Anchor, Creepingfloe, Stillair and Candleshot, took two control picks and needed 484–770 s.

Talents

You have 10 points, and the runs put all of them into the Correction tree. The talent screen accepted every purchase, in this order:

1. Gold Either Way ×2: holy spells deal 3% more damage per point.
2. Oftener ×2: bolt spells recharge 3% faster per point.
3. Past Full ×1: 2% of your healing past full health becomes a shield per point.
4. The Heavy Half ×2: heavy spells (the 1-charge ones) recharge 3% faster per point.
5. The Place He Stands ×2: you raise fallen allies 4% faster per point.
6. Nothing to Repair ×1: deal 4% more holy damage per point while every living ally is at full health.

Talents are your choice. Each point went into the deepest open row, a new talent before a second rank; rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points in that tree, the ultimate at 20. Alone you have nobody to raise, so The Place He Stands does nothing for you; it is in the list only because the rule filled the row.

The fight

1. One of the Stilled is in the court with the reading (Held ground: kite; Kept light: strafe). When the reading dies, the fight ends and the Stilled falls with it.
2. Draw (arcane beam, every 10–12 s): strafe. On Nightmare you get 2.0 s of warning.
3. Halyard (bolt, every 14–16 s): blink (Shift / East).
4. Four attacks come once each: Ground sweep (jump: Space / North), Shutter count (strafe), Standing value (kite) and Unanswered signal (kite).
5. At 50% health, or as soon as you stand on the mast plinth, phase two adds Circumference (beam, walk out, once) and Taking of a body (beam, every 25–30 s; strafe).
6. Long mercy carries the damage: the build we used cast it 213–279 times a fight. Hold cast (Left mouse / South) between Draws, and let go to strafe.
7. Put Shatterpoint on the reading before your heavy hits. Drop Prepared Ground whenever it is back, and fire Hoarshard on the move. Switch spells with E/Q or R1/L1.
8. No ground telegraph caught the Sage in any run. The health lost came from aimed beams and bolts, so keep strafing.

What goes wrong

• No run was lost, but every play style fell to about 54–55% in at least one build. The build we used twice dropped to 77%.
• On Nightmare the reading ignores every control status: mark, weaken, slow, root and stun. Afterfrost's weaken and Hoarshard's slow do nothing to it, though their damage counts. Shatterpoint's vulnerability is not a control status, and it lands.
• Nightmare has no pause. Alone, going down ends the fight as Defeated, and you retry the room with full health.

Tested

We ran 60 automated fights on the shipped rules, with legal talent purchases: ten draft orders, three play styles and two skill levels. All 60 cleared, and none went down. The fastest took 210 s and the slowest 770 s. The lowest health in any run was 54%. The build we used took 342–548 s. These were automated test runs, not human play.

Screenshots

One complete fight in the current build, played by an automated test player with the game's normal controls: the Sage alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 7 min 48 s of game time.