The slag-founder

The slag-founder
Scenery 29 of 31 · Vorthskarr's slag-ground and walls. Alone · Nightmare · Inquisitor.

Two tap-pits lie on the straight line between the entrance and the founder. On Nightmare, a single step over a pit's lip takes you down, and alone that ends the fight. Walk around them.

What you hold

You reach the slag-founder holding 15 spells. That is your two starting spells plus one spell from each of the thirteen boss drafts before it. Taking an upgrade ranks up a spell you already have instead of adding one. One tested draft order took two upgrades and held 13.

• Tap: The Vow. No damage on its own. For a short window, every enemy your damage touches is cited, and a cited enemy takes a shadow hit when its next cast goes off. It is not a control status, so it works on the founder on Nightmare.
• Hold: The plain reading. A shadow Beam. You cannot move while channelling.

Each draft deals four cards. Card one is always one of the Inquisitor's own spells, and from the third draft on one card is an upgrade. The rest are random. 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 Inquisitor's own.

The build we used. Card-one picks: hollowpoint and gloomlance. Three Inquisitor spells came as other cards: afterfrost, tatters and remainder. The rest were random cards: the weight, tether, ballast, the grain, wayshrine, second thought, the handover and dry air. It cleared all six of its runs. It was also the slowest (10 to 18 minutes): it held the most control spells, and on Nightmare those do nothing to the founder.

The three losses. Three draft orders each lost one run of six, in a different style each time, and each cleared its other five, so no build is to blame. All three came early, at 4.1, 6.7 and 7.4 minutes, while the adds are still arriving; only 8 of the 57 clears finished that fast. Solo losses in this room trace to enemies in close contact.

Talents

You have 28 talent points, and the runs put all of them into the Charge tree. Talents are your choice. Each point went to the deepest open row, a new talent before a second rank; rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points, the ultimate at 20. In the order bought:

• The Colour He Works in ×2: shadow +3% per point.
• His Own Skin ×2: 2% less damage per point.
• It Finds the Crack ×1: shadow hits have a 5% chance to apply a small vulnerability.
• The Flight Time ×2: projectiles fly 3% faster per point.
• Named in Advance ×2: 4% less damage per point of the element that has hurt you most.
• While It Is Winding Up ×1: +4% shadow to casting enemies.
• He Does Not Step Out ×2: +4% shadow per point to a caster whose telegraph you stand in.
• The Last of the Window ×2: up to +4% shadow per point to a casting enemy, rising as the cast lands.
• Deeper Than It Shows ×1: your vulnerability is 4% stronger.
• The Hold He Keeps ×4: Beams +3% per point.
• Refiled ×4: a second shadow hit on a vulnerable caster may refresh its vulnerability.
• The Whole Shape of It ×4: vulnerability on a casting enemy also lands on everyone inside its telegraph.
• The Charge Stands ×1: a shadow hit on a casting enemy makes casters vulnerable for 6 s (24 s cooldown).

Vulnerability is not a control status, so it works on the founder.

The fight

1. You enter at the west end of the floor and the founder starts at the far end. Step off the centre line before you advance, because both tap-pits are on it.
2. Open with The Vow, then put damage on the founder so its casts pay you.
3. Adds come from the slag: clinker-walkers (Kept heat: kite; Shed mass: strafe) and the unfinished (Committed swing: strafe). A forge-salamander joins at 65% (Lit spill: walk out). Keep moving so nothing stays on you. They stop arriving below 35%, and any still standing die with the founder.
4. Phase one has seven abilities: The pour (walk out), Slag run (strafe), Clinker cast (strafe), Curtain spall (strafe), Tap run (jump), Founder close (kite) and Runoff line (blink).
5. At 65% the founder adds Heavy pour (walk out), Both taps (jump), Live ridges (strafe) and Course line (walk out). Course line burns the foot of the long wall while the founder stands near it.
6. At 35% it adds Gantry run (strafe), The shove (strafe), Over the side (walk out), Wall spall (strafe) and Stairhead (kite).
7. Walk-out tells caught the Inquisitor 889 times across the runs but cost only 38 health in total; jump and strafe tells cost none. He Does Not Step Out pays extra while you stand in the founder's telegraph, but only stand there if you can take the hit.
8. Heavy pour can be stopped by standing on the rim of the tap-pit it draws toward. That rim is one metre from a lip that downs you on Nightmare. The runs never tried it.
9. A blink never lands you in a pit; only walking does. Keys: blink (Shift / East), jump (Space / North), cast (Left mouse / South, hold to channel), next and previous spell (E/Q / R1/L1).

What goes wrong

• Walking into a tap-pit: an instant wipe on Nightmare. Defeated means retrying the room.
• Bodies in contact during the first seven minutes, when all three losses happened.
• Nightmare has no pause.

Tested

60 automated runs on the shipped rules: ten random draft orders, three play styles and two skill levels. 57 cleared. The fastest clear took 4.8 minutes and the slowest 17.6. The lowest health in a cleared run was 33%. 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 Inquisitor alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 10 min 15 s of game time.