The mound-head

The mound-head
Scenery 27 of 31 · the Mokrar clan-territory, inner forest. Alone · Nightmare · Plaguebringer.

The mound-head never moves, and on Nightmare it ignores every control status: mark, weaken, slow, root and stun. Your rot and your ground still hurt it in full. Save rust's weaken and any slows or roots for the mound-brood.

What you hold

You reach the mound-head holding 14 spells. That is your two starting spells plus one spell from each of the twelve boss drafts before it. Taking an upgrade ranks up a spell you already have instead of adding one. Two of the ten tested draft orders did this, holding 13 and 12 spells, and both cleared every run.

• Tap: The Cordon. A decay Halt: press again to stop it, and it leaves a ring of decay on the ground.
• Hold: The widening. A decay Beam that grows wider the longer you hold it. You cannot move while channelling.

Each draft deals four cards. Card one is always one of the Plaguebringer's own spells, and from the third draft on one card is an upgrade. The rest are random. The Plaguebringer's own pool is only five spells, so after the first few drafts card one is usually an upgrade, and most of your new spells come from the random cards. 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 Plaguebringer's own.

The build we used. Card-one picks: the sink, rust and sepsis. The other nine drafts passed over an upgrade on card one and took a random card: sheer weight, the undertow, pinned, comes back, close quarters, glacierlance, smother, alongside and the summon painter.

If the deal differs: it did in all ten draft orders, and all ten cleared every run. They held three to five of the Plaguebringer's own spells, and the rest were whatever came up: summons such as digger, long one and relay; Drops; other heroes' beams. On Nightmare the head ignores the slow on smother and sheer weight and the root on pinned, so treat those as damage plus control for the brood.

Talents

You have 26 talent points, and talents are your choice. The runs put all of them into the Carried tree, each point in the deepest open row, a new talent before a second rank. Rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points in the tree, the ultimate at 20. In the order bought:

• One Colour Held ×2: a second element on a body deals 3% more combo damage per point.
• What He Throws ×2: Bolts +3% per point.
• It Gets There ×1: projectiles fly 3% faster.
• Still Standing When It Lets Go ×2: enemy statuses wear off 2% sooner per point.
• Other Peoples Floors ×2: 5% less damage from pools and burning ground per point.
• It Bites Harder ×1: your damage over time is 4% stronger.
• Out of Reach ×2: +4% decay per point to enemies outside all your ground.
• Nothing Down ×2: +4% decay per point while none of your ground is down.
• Nothing Between Us ×1: +4% decay to enemies with none of your ground between you.
• By Hand ×4: your melee leaves a short rot.
• It Was Already on Him ×3: hits on a rotting enemy have a 5% chance per point to deal 50% more.
• All of It Carries ×3: more of your attacks leave a half-strength rot.
• Everything the Floor Missed ×1: rots every enemy outside your ground on your first cast while three stand there (30 s cooldown).

The fight

1. Your Halts and Drops land where you put them.
2. Mound-brood come at you: six in all when you are alone, at most two at a time. Their Worry asks you to kite, and their Shed mass asks you to strafe. Your weakens, slows and roots work on them.
3. Phase one has seven abilities: Root run (strafe), Mat heave (walk out), Splinter cast (strafe), Seep reach (blink), Ramp buck (jump), Mound close (kite) and Still mat (kite; leaves slow).
4. At 70% health the head adds Ring gives (jump), Ring warmth (kite), Ramp close (blink) and Run scar (walk out).
5. At 35% it adds Rime line (strafe; leaves slow), Pan shatter (jump) and Last warmth (walk out). No new brood arrive after this point.
6. In the runs, walk-out tells landed 158 times across all 60 runs but cost only 54 health in total. Jump tells landed 3 times for none.
7. Hold The widening only while nothing is telegraphed under you, then let go to move. Keys: cast (Left mouse / South, hold to channel), melee for By Hand's rot (Right mouse / West), jump (Space / North), blink (Shift / East).
8. The fight ends the moment the head falls. Any brood still standing die with it.

What goes wrong

• Staying close costs health. The style that fought up close finished in 3.6 to 7.3 minutes but fell as low as 17%. The style that dodged everything never fell below 84%.
• Alone, going down ends the fight: nobody can revive you, and the room is lost. Nightmare has no pause.

Tested

60 automated runs on the shipped rules: ten random draft orders, three play styles and two skill levels. All 60 cleared. The fastest took 3.6 minutes and the slowest 9.9. The lowest health in any run was 17%. 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 Plaguebringer alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 6 min 31 s of game time.