Virgil Tarikoss – the Conclusion

Previous posts in the SF:  1, 2, 3

Team members of Strike Force Charon:  Mister Ravenous (Brute, CoI), Charity at Home (Corrupter, CoI), Venenata (Dominator, CoI), Barbarity (Brute, Entropy), Face of Destruction (Stalker, ?), Lord Maleficus (Stalker, ?), Black Pharoh (MM, Sanguine Society)

Wrapped up the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force tonight, in a 2-hour run on the final mission.  Compared to my original experience, it went swimmingly, in part because of foreknowledge, in part because we were a much more balanced (level-wise) team, and in part because, well, we just rocked.  Spoilers below.

The “classic” clever tactic, until recently, was to click on the altars via Invis/Hide, get Bat’Zul and his demons in fighting Inferno and his gang, and mop up the left-overs.  We tried that again this time, knowing that Invis/Hide are now suppressed when you click on glowies.  The first altar worked, but the next two the scouts got swarmed by Hangers-On of Bat’Zul.

So, back to the old-fashioned tactics again.  Maybe.  Someone (Margie?) came up with the idea of trying to taunt/draw/pull Infernal out of the main hallway and into the lava pit room — either to hurt him with lava, draw him from his mobs, or engage him with the Hoi-Polloi of Bat’Zul.  BP tried that, and actually managed to get some of the CoT at the end of the corridor engaged with Infernal and his back ranks — but his zombies also managed to draw aggro, which meant that even after he TPed back
(barely alive), the Legacy Chain and Infernal were upon us.

So, a big, brutal battle, with Ravvy going toe-to-toe with Infernal for a short bit, dropping, temp-rezzing (huzzah), attacking some more, dying when the greens ran out, hopping back from hospital — to find that everyone was dead or out of the room.  Whew.

But, we’d cleared everyone but Infernal and one minion.  And when we deliberately and calmly and bought up Inspirations at the CoI base, and double-buffed our flames outside the mish and in, we basically waded in, wore Infernal down, and beat him.  Huzzah.

(In the first picture, we have a shot of Rav, Barbarity, Mal and one of BP’s zombies, at least, pounding on Infernal.)

Wave attack of Rabble of Bat’Zul took us a bit by surprise, but we prevailed.

Then we started slowly but surely clearing out the Miscellaneous Grunts of Bat’Zul from the arms of the cave around the lava pit.  During tihs time, I finally dinged 20 — huzzah!  That made life a bit easier as well, but we didn’t have too miuch problem.

Got to the last altar, and set things up.  My recollection was that Bat’Zul arose as soon as the last altar was broken.  So we left a stalker back at it, someone at the lava pit end of the entrance hall to pull Bat’Zul in, and everone else stationed further down.

Hrm.  Turned out that the last altar simply triggered another two or three waves of Those Guys of Bat’Zul, which we successfully fended off. That was the cue for the Big Guy to finally appear. 

And, as with the previous attack, it was pretty simple and straight-forward.   Get him out of the lava pit (where he regents and summons imps), and then pound on him a lot.  Good control/debuffing from Ven and BP, good heals from Charity, and lots of punching, and Batz went down pretty darned quickly.

(The Bat’Zul pic shows him where Rav actually knocked him on his demonic ass.  Fun.  He also spent a lot of time wrapped up in monstrous thorny vines.)

SOs all around, a ton of badges, and loud huzzahs.  And pictures, of course. 

After saying good night and all, Rav and Charity went out on a couple of mishes to finish off her run to 20, then we parked them for the evening.

Highest ranked CoV toons.  Makes me wonder what we’ll do with them next.