Cryomancer
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After having done the fight, I have a few thoughts:
- I liked this fight a lot - it's definitely the hardest fight in the game thus far, but it's hard in a way that is mostly fair and there's a lot of moving parts that the player can control.
- Firstly, I really appreciate how all the bosses' rotations are consistently influenced by the player's actions throughout the entire fight, especially compared to the other party fights in the game which have fairly static rotations (as an example, the bosses of Chaos Slayers largely have their rotations determined on turn 1 with a few variations during the fight). Corvak's elemental alignment is dependent on player MP at certain points in the fight, Alteon's rotation changes entirely based on HP thresholds, Fluffy can interrupt his rotation every time he loses 25% HP, and Sepulchure transitions into an alternate Doomed rotation based on the amount of hits he lands on the player (and the buff he gets after he finishes his Doomed rotation also). Sepulchure's rotation being based on his hitcount adds some variance to the fight and requires the player to adapt whilst still remaining predictable in advance.
- As such, the player often has to actively manipulate the bosses' rotation so that the bosses' attacks can align with each other in favorable ways (i.e. Alteon and Corvak should ideally be using Energy attacks at the same turn, you can delay's Fluffy's first nuke by a few turns by getting him below a HP threshold, you can do something similar to delay Alteon's use of the more dangerous Dragon Spirits, etc.). This is also coupled with the Doom Energy buffs that Sepulchure gets after he finishes his Doomed rotation, and the different buffs Alteon and Corvak get from Rebel's Heart - until you get to the final phase of the fight where Sepulchure is alone, you ideally want to force Sepulchure into his Doomed rotation in such a way that Sepulchure gets Void Barrier as it's the least dangerous of his Doom Energy buffs, etc.
- Gearswap is rewarded as Alteon and Corvak both use Energy and they generally do more damage than Sepulchure (especially as the two gain Boost from Rebel's Heart), but Sepulchure's Doomed Pursuit means that a player has to be very thoughtful when swapping gear (the Doomed Pursuit buff is a lot more threatening in Sepulchure's Doomed rotation because his attacks have higher base damage), which in turn adds another dimension to the fight.
- The fight also manages to avoid the usual issue of Inn fights becoming significantly easier after one of the bosses is defeated by escalating the fight's difficulty as each boss is defeated - Fluffy's defeat inflicts -5 All, Alteon enrages once Corvak is defeated and you have to deal with his phase changes as he loses HP, and Sepulchure gets an enrage after Alteon is defeated. Speaking of Sepulchure...
- I really like how the fight ends and I think it's fitting in multiple ways - it not only references Doomknight's Dark Favor (and the final nuke also references Inner Darkness with the +100 Boost Sepulchure gives the player at the beginning of his final phase), but it's also thematically fitting for Sepulchure to accept immense power at a terrible price as that's quite literally what led to him becoming a villain in the first place.
- If there's one thing that I think could be removed from the fight, it's the MP drain - I don't think it adds much to the fight strategically (it can mess with Corvak's elemental alignment as that's based on the player's MP, but the player has other ways of influencing what elemental alignment Corvak gets, through either investing stat points into WIS or using a MP potion at a certain time), and I feel like it's the only part of the fight that's particularly restrictive. I feel like a few classes would theortically otherwise be able to do this fight without extra potions if optimized well enough (Deathknight in particular has done the fight with 2 HP potions, but 5 MP potions), but the MP drain means that most classes without a strong MP heal will at least need extra MP potions, even if they can do this fight with just the 2 base HP potions.
- I'm mixed on how the Necrotic Blade of Doom is handled as the fight reward. The special is incredibly powerful, but regarding the actual weapon itself, I feel like there aren't many scenarios where the player would use it over a different offensive weapon as the drawbacks are crippling - Unreal Doom weapons do more base damage once their +50 mainstat is taken into account, and Chaotic Blade of Swordhaven has additional Crit.
- Not relevant to the fight's mechanical design, but I also really appreciate how the hardest fight in the game is now something that is actually related to DragonFable, and not a different AE game. That being said, I think bosses that are this difficult and this complex should be used very sparingly, maybe once every few years - it works as the game's pinnacle of difficulty for its 20th anniversary, but certainly not for every Inn fight.
< Message edited by Cryomancer -- 6/9/2026 3:38:23 >
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