The hoar-mammoth

The hoar-mammoth
Scenery 3 of 31 · the northern spur toward Sortheld harbour. Alone · Nightmare · Lightbringer.

You meet the first boss with only your two starting spells, and The standing light roots you while you hold it. The moment the mammoth rears for Coming down, let go of Cast. On Nightmare that warning is shorter, and walking out is the only escape.

What you hold

Two spells, exactly. A solo hero gets one spell draft per boss and nothing after ordinary sceneries, and the first draft comes after this fight. So the Lightbringer arrives with the starting pair and nothing else:

• Tap: Plain Sight: a holy Bolt with 2 charges, one back every 16 s. It lights the body it hits for a short window, and anyone standing inside that light leaves with Empower. Alone, that means you: step into the light to collect it. The Bolt also carries a Mark, but on Nightmare a boss ignores every control status, Mark included. The light and the Empower still work.
• Hold: The standing light: a holy Beam from a 9 s pool. It keeps running only while it is landing damage on an enemy. You cannot move while channelling.

There is no draft and no build to choose here, and every test run used this pair.

Talents

You have 2 talent points, one for each scenery cleared. They are your choice. The runs put both into The Mercy (Lightbringer talents), bought in this order:

1. The Colour That Pays ×1: holy spells deal 3% more damage per point.
2. While It Is Landing ×1: your channels deal 3% more damage per point.

Each point went to the deepest open row, a new talent before a second rank; rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points, so with 2 only the first row is open.

The fight

Controls (keyboard / pad): move with WASD / left stick, and aim with the mouse / right stick. Cast is Left mouse / South; hold it to channel. Jump is Space / North and blink is Shift / East. Next spell is E or → / R1 or D-pad right.

1. Opening. The mammoth walks at you across open shelf. Start with Plain Sight, then hold The standing light on it.
2. The order is fixed at first. After its first close attack it uses Coming down, then Furrow. After that its normal rotation takes over.
3. Coming down (answer: walk out). It rears and lands where it was looking. Release Cast and walk clear. On Nightmare you get 1.15 s instead of 1.6 s. Where it lands it breaks the ice sheet, and broken plate gives your feet their grip back, while unbroken ice costs you control. Draw it onto the ice, then fight from the broken plate.
4. Furrow (answer: strafe). A long straight line ploughs toward you. Step sideways off the line rather than running down it.
5. Turf wave (answer: jump). A low front travels toward you. Jump it (Space / North). It only comes while the mammoth stands on bare heath, never while it is on the ice.
6. Tusking (answer: kite). It has no warning: it is the price of standing close to the mammoth's head, and it repeats on a loop. Plain Sight's light forms close around the lit body, so collect Empower quickly and step back out.
7. Tap or hold. The standing light is your damage: the runs averaged about 25 holds and 6 Plain Sight casts per fight.
8. The end. No phases, no adds, and no change when it is hurt. The fight ends when it dies. The runs took 58 to 87 seconds.

What goes wrong

• Standing close. The style that fought close lost the most: its lowest point was 80.5% health. The run that kept range at the lower skill level never fell below 89.7%.
• Channelling through a tell. The standing light holds you in place. If you start a hold as the mammoth rears, you have no time left to walk out.
• Nightmare. You cannot pause, bosses ignore control, and some attacks have only one escape. Health is 100 and resets each scenery. Alone, nobody revives you: going down ends the fight Defeated, and you can retry the room.

Tested

We ran 60 automated runs on the shipped rules: three play styles (keep range, fight close, dodge first) at two skill levels, each repeated over ten draft orders. There is no draft yet at this boss, so the ten draft orders played identically, and that makes six distinct fights. All 60 cleared. The fastest took 58.0 s and the slowest 86.6 s. The hero's health never fell below 80.5%. 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 Lightbringer alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 1 min 26 s of game time.