I should have known with a name like Blood Monastery there’d be heaps of trouble thereabouts. When the image of WOW’s Scarlet Monastery popped into my head, that should have been the first clue. But it wasn’t. I was doing inventory management while the game auto navigated me to the NPC I needed to meet at the location. A friendly quest NPC that doubled as the Node Manager. I did not suspect she was on a hill deep inside enemy territory.
By the time I realized the NPCs along the road leading to her location weren’t friendly, my mount and I were being accosted on all sides. I’d have known if I was looking at the mini map but I wasn’t. And as far as I can tell, you can’t see NPC alignment or their levels by looking at them. What I did know, is that I was hemorrhaging and pinned in. Every woman for herself! It might be a long walk to a stable master if my mount died but better that than me dying too.
I dismounted, activated my shield and teleported forward. Accounting for the fact that instant casts aren’t as instant as they might be in other games, there’s a GCD in between each one, trying to save myself didn’t occur as quickly as the situation demanded. Nevertheless I got free of the pack.
Most of the mobs lurched after me. I froze the ones closest to me and quickly healed myself. I popped a mana potion and began a reign of destruction - Fireball III... Explosion… Meteor… The ground trembled beneath my feet. I was low on health again, a few of them having reached me in between spells.
I evaded backward and cast a perfunctory Lightning Strike purely to unleash Residual Thunder. The screen shook and the world around me became blurry, as LS shot lightning through everything around me, rattling the fiber of the earth. Nothing was left standing except me and my horse. I sprinted to her and got the hell out of there. Damn the loot.
I left the dirt-of-death the game wanted to take to reach the quest NPC. I picked my way through the brush and rocky terrain that ran parallel instead. I arrived at her little encampment toward the top. Typical MMO trope that she could somehow survive up here with her tent and campfire, surrounded by the madness leaching out from the Blood Monastery in the foreground. Okay, sure. I turned in my quest and picked up a couple more. One required killing NPCs along the road toward the monastery. The other in the heart of it. Well this was going to be interesting solo.
Down the hill and getting in was difficult but doable. Once inside it was sheer madness. Between the number of mobs and how quickly they spawn, to the cannons atop the ruins shooting poison, to finding what you needed inside and other players running around trying to do the same. F it, I just started killing anything and everything that was moving. It was that or be killed. No time to be polite about who tapped the mob first or be specific to your quest. It was start killing things very quickly or be overrun and die! Battlements, crates and cages exploded. Cannons toppled down. BDO has destructible environments. It was craziness. Absolute insanity. LOL
I wish I’d have taken video or screenshots but there was no time to think about it. I was too busy evading, shooting magic arrow on the run and finding enough time in between to throw down my big damage AOE spells. Wow. When it was over I scrambled and climbed around the ruined castle to get back to the NPC. I wasn’t up for fighting my way out, down and back up to where she was hiding. WHEW! That was hands-down the most exhilarating combat I’ve experienced so far in BDO. It felt like a bad pull in a WOW raid, except it’s operating as intended. smile
I have a few more quests to return to the heart of darkness but I'll save those for another day. It's time to frolic in the sunshine for a while and do some manual harvesting and takes some pictures.
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