n a decision I may later regret, I opted to ‘skip’ the entire zone of Blades Edge Mountains on the grounds that mountains, even with a flying mount, annoy the crap out of me. I lazily flew over the ranges of treacherously spiky mountains—the place is really kind of cool to visit, but I didn’t want to quest there. I briefly considered dungeoning, but ultimately decided I was way too intoxicated to be anything other than a pure liability to four random strangers. Instead, I kept flapping towards the wondrous realm of Netherstorm.
According to lore I skimmed through, Netherstorm was once a lush and verdant land before something-something happened (well, I did say I skimmed) and now the whole place is shot to hell. The zone is comprised of about nine large purple islands in floating space, devoid of nearly every form of natural plant life. The exception to this is a number of giant magical force bubbles created by the space-liches that function as giant bio-domes a la Sandy Cheeks. The whole of the land is otherwise crawling with nightmarish creatures seemingly formed of pure mana. It can be a rough place for a mage, with many critters that drain mana at astonishing rates. Add to this a distinct Sci-Fi flavor with the goblin engineers who have set up a city called Area 52 that serves as the main trade hub for the zone and you’ve got a pretty cool, if moderately dangerous, place to hunt.
I landed, took stock of the situation, and set my home to Area 52. After listening to the locals gripe about anything and everything, I began my usual games of killtenrats and Hunt the MacGuffin™. Fearsome spectral boogeymen (and boogeyladies, presumably…I’m an equal opportunity exorcist/murderer) were slain, unobtanium was obtained, a tiny mech was escorted through a city of ghosts, and the plans of Dr. Boom were foiled. The last was the most fun I’ve had in the zone thus far.
Dr. Boom was the goblin equivalent to a supervillain with literally half a million hit points (the average monster has about 6-8k at my level and the worst boss I’ve faced in a dungeon only had about 90k) and spammed dynamite and bombs doing a thousand points a hit. If that weren’t enough, Dr. Boom constantly releases tiny walking bombs that were apparently stolen from Bowser. The questgiver armed me with ten special bombs, so my victory was assured! Cough. Here’s how that went down:
Strev gets into combat range and is nuked into oblivion three seconds later. That could’ve gone better. I reviewed my quest strategy helper and it noted there was a safe spot to stand allowing you to bomb with impunity, so I took my spirit to the spot mentioned and respawned. Three seconds later, I was dead again and pulling up the guide once more and read through more comments to discover they had fixed that in a patch by extending his aggro range. Terrific. After arriving back at the Lair of Boom, I read the rest of the comments and someone had found another spot on top of a barrel that wasn’t fixed. Hoping for the best, I moved over to it and respawned.
I immediately got an “Entering Combat!” splash message, but no splash damage. Doctor Boom was angrily glaring at me, but not attacking. Victory would yet be mine! Each bomb I threw knocked off nearly 90k points of health and I was saddened by knowing I wasn’t going to be able to use the bombs for any other purpose. After a few godnukes, Doctor Bomb’s tyrannous rule was broken!
Returning to camp, I was hailed a minor hero and with half of level 67 under my belt I called it a night.
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