MT 342 - What a Twist!

You have earned the What a Twist! achievement!

You completed the Less-Than-Habitable Heavy Armor Course without a single death fruit penetrating your armor. That’s kind of a miracle since all of them still hit you. Really, you just sat there and ate all those attacks. Don’t get us wrong, the way you kept passionately rotating your hips to sway into just the right angle to deflect the pointy bits was starting to awaken something inside of us, but why didn’t you use your shield?

Anywho, this achievement replaces your I Don’t Attack You, You Attack Me achievement, and before you start whining, you can pick which one to keep. Seriously, though, go back and read the old one, it’s terrible for you now and you were barely using it.

What a Twist!: While wearing heavy armor and blocking an attack, you may stun the attacker for 1 second. This effect has a five-minute cooldown.

I read the new effect and had to admit it did look better at first glance. I went back to refresh my memory of I Don’t Attack You, You Attack Me.

So long as you did not attack first, an enemy becomes stunned for one second the first time they deal damage to you with either a melee weapon or a part of their body. An entity stunned in this way may not be affected by this skill again until the next dawn. Certain skills and abilities may prevent this effect.

Given a choice between them, What a Twist! was better for my current build. It wasn’t reliant on taking damage, something that was becoming increasingly difficult to do. I preferred taking the initiative in fights and the new achievement didn’t demand I avoid making the first move. Finally, it applied to all attacks instead of a limited subset, and I could choose when to trigger it. There were plenty of ways for an enemy to negate the stun, but it would hit more reliably.

I moved on from that to check out my Heavy Armor options, quickly spotting the one I wanted listed third. I looked over the other two, but neither were as appealing. The first evo increased my Toxicity threshold, meaning it would take more Toxicity before it started dealing damage, and it also gave me a minor boost to healing. I had 50% resistance to Toxicity already, a decent threshold due to my Fortitude, and the healing buff would be a drop in the bucket at this point.

The second option gave me conditional immunity to being Distracted or Mesmerized. That was nice, but the third option also buffed my resistance to mental effects, along with doing some other helpful stuff. Picking the third option was an easy choice.

The first part of the evolution was a raw defensive boost.

Resilient Alloys 2

Choose a second class of damage reduction for the Resilient Alloys evolution.

Resilient Alloys 1 gave me a buff to my Divine DR equal to my Heavy Armor skill level. Right now it accounted for around 20% of my mitigation towards Divine attacks. The second class of DR I wanted was Spiritual. That defense was being propped up by my decent Wisdom score. My Exposure Therapy – Corruption achievement gave me some resistance to Spectral damage, but it was still time to give my Spiritual defenses another boost if they were going to keep up with everything else.

Technically, Mystical was still my lowest defense, but the DR wasn’t the only factor. Beyond the damage reduction, the new evolution also gave me two extra buffs, based on my selections.

You gain the following benefits for each damage archetype Resilient Alloys protects you from.

Spiritual: Add your Heavy Armor skill level to your social defense against the first social attack made against you each minute.

Divine: The heavy armor you are wearing is considered sacred to all deities that are the source of any stacks of Blessed you currently have. Any Righteous damage from such deities treats you as sacred as well, causing that damage to be converted into healing. Whenever you would take Wicked damage from a deity to which you are sacred, you may instead deal that damage to any entity you can perceive.

The buff from Spiritual was a powerful boost to my defense against most mind-affecting abilities. I already had a hardy bundle of ways to halt debuffs, along with a few immunities, but the right kind of social attack could thread its way through all of my prevention. This bonus would nearly double my social defense for one attack, helping me endure the opening salvo so I could delete or explode whoever was threatening my sanity. Alternatively, it gave me time to fire Varrin in their direction and forget about it.

The boost from Divine was more complex. Righteous damage dealt double damage to profane entities, but it healed sacred entities. Xim’s fire dealt Righteous damage and currently cleansed allies instead of harming them. With this, her fire would not only cleanse me but heal me as well. That healing would then get doubled by Body of Asclepius, and our enemies would weep tears of molten rage.

Wicked damage didn’t inherently benefit sacred entities in any specific way, but this evo allowed sacred entities to redirect any Wicked damage they might suffer to anything they could perceive. That could lead to some interesting combos, not that I expected to be blessed by any Wicked deities. Of course, Chalgoth was bumming around with Ember, so getting some Divine smooches from such a god wasn’t out of the question. Still, it was less likely to matter for me.

Being sacred had various other benefits as well, based on the deity and skill being used. For example, Consecrate would give me twice as much DR if I were sacred to the caster’s god. I also knew of some buffs that would empower the defender of a sacred object. It was good stuff all around, and I found my continued trend towards becoming some kind of agnostic paladin amusing. Not in a heretical way, though.

Hopefully.

I was sure that Xim was going to love it.

While I was making my selection, Guar had wandered out into the nearby treeline that marked the final stretch of this Dungeon. I checked on Major Kai, seeing that he was crossing the obstacle course while avoiding most of the fruits, but his journey was occasionally punctuated by a harsh gong. He’d be a few minutes longer, so I followed after Guar. Once I got close, I noticed that something had grabbed his attention.

“What do you make of this?” he asked. “I don’t remember seeing this the last time through.”

He was standing next to a circular platform, about ten feet in diameter. There were unfamiliar glyphs carved into it, the text formed into concentric circles. It looked vaguely like some mana weaves I’d seen, but none of the symbols were familiar.

“Curious,” said Grotto. My familiar had crawled out from beneath his shields to peek over my shoulder. “This language is from a prior generation. One moment.” He floated from my back and hovered over the platform. “Ah, yes. One would not expect a Delver to understand this, that would be terrible design, but there is System integration.” He looked back at me. “Come here and stand on the platform.”

I shrugged and did as he asked, getting a notification when I had both feet planted in the circle.

Entrance to the Less-Than-Habitable Megadungeon

Listen, you guys named the forest, we’re just doing our best with what you’ve given us.

This is a Labyrinth.

Level Range: 16 - 24

Max Capacity: 8 parties

There are currently 3 parties within this territory of the Labyrinth.

Escalation: Strongly Recommended

This entrance will take you to the Blunt Weapons section of the Megadungeon.

Due to current conditions within the Labyrinth, it is currently functioning on a modified ruleset, as follows:

This Labyrinth has multiple obelisks and no time limit. Exit portals will be provided whenever an obelisk is successfully activated, whereupon up to 5 Delvers may choose to either exit via the portal or stay within the Labyrinth to pursue additional obelisks and rewards. Exit portals disappear after 1 hour unless all obelisks have been activated.

Each obelisk will grant its reward to a maximum of 5 Delvers, after which it will become dormant.

WARNING: This Labyrinth is under siege. Certain functions may be inoperable.

There is currently one emergency objective within this Labyrinth.

All rewards have been enhanced.

My eyes grew wider as I scanned through the text.

“Whoa,” said Guar. The golden-eyed Littan had stepped up beside me. “This looks like trouble. Who do you think is inside already?”

The noise behind us stopped as Major Kai finished crossing the obstacle course. Only a few of the fruits had struck true, and the Littan officer grunted as he began extracting their needled points from his torso.

We soon heard the rapid-fire chime of fruits being deflected as Varrin began his own run. While the big guy worked his way through, Guar called out to Major Kai, who jogged over to check in. He stepped up onto the platform at Guar’s suggestion and started reading through the notifications.

“I doubt any of our groups went in,” I said. “Tavio wouldn’t have people diving into this until we were all on the same page about it.”

“What part of the rules are modified?” asked Guar.

“It looks like it changed the way the obelisks interact with people inside the Labyrinth. The rules we got during the phase transition said each obelisk would reward one party. This says each obelisk will reward 5 Delvers. Same with the portals. It makes it less party-dependent and more focused on individuals.”

“Less cohesion, more competition,” Guar added.

Major Kai crossed his arms, then sent out a message across the psycomms.

“Earworm: Everybody’s still working through their normal Dungeon, sir. Nobody’s seen anything about a Labyrinth, and if they do they’ll be waiting on orders from you or the colonel.”

“How can a Labyrinth be under siege?” Kai asked.

“My party’s Creation Delve had a c’thon and a psychopath wrecking the place from the inside,” I said. “If I had to bet, I’d say it’s something like that.”

“Maybe Charl’s infecting the place,” said Guar. “That’s probably what the emergency objective is about.” He raised his arms and stretched, then did a few mobility checks on his armor. “We need to kill that guy anyway, and if it gets us ‘enhanced’ rewards, whatever that means, then I’m here for it.”

I stepped down from the platform and scrutinized the nearby forest floor. I could make out two more platforms like the one beside me. I headed to the next closest one and checked it as well.

This entrance will take you to the Blades section of the Megadungeon.

While I did that, Major Kai headed to the third platform and inspected it.

“Piercing!” he shouted back to us.

Varrin came into view, so I returned to the main clearing. The big guy made the death fruit course look trivial despite it being his first time through. He didn’t even appear to be reacting, but predicting. He moved in such a way that he was already in position to dodge or deflect before the next tropical attack even began.

Once he’d made it out, he took off his helm and turned to look back at the deadly gauntlet.

“Does the Dungeon make things easier for your first run?” he asked. “Some kind of training, perhaps, so that you can learn how it works?” He turned to see me looking at him with disgust at his natural aptitude. “I suppose not,” he said. Then his eyes flicked downward and he grunted. “An achievement. It’s for conquering the course on my first attempt. Let’s see…” He went through some System text I couldn’t see. “A two-second stun when I block. Hmm, that’s fairly useless to me.”

I cleared my throat. “Two seconds, you say?”

“Yes, a bit of a waste. It would have been much better for you.” He looked at Guar and Major Kai, who approached from the treeline. “Did anyone else get an achievement?”

I pulled off my own helm so that I could then take off my ass-dope shades so that I could then rub my eyes in frustration.

I was in the middle of letting out a long, hissing breath when my spatial senses went haywire. I dropped my hand to look up, still seeing only the dense canopy. Beyond it, miles upon miles of new space were appearing, then getting squashed down until they were only inches wide, relative to myself. The heavens continued compressing at an absurd rate, the entire thing twisted violently, and ‘up’ became a flat, horizontal plane. It made me feel like the sky was literally about to fall.

I’d crouched down by reflex, and after a moment of being stunned by the titanic forces at work, I threw Gracorvus overhead. I commanded its plates to separate and float apart slightly to create a grid wide enough to cover all four of us. Everyone reacted to my move with their own preparations, but after a few seconds, nothing else happened. Major Kai’s eyes darted in my direction before returning to the sky.

“What did you see?” he asked.

I slowly stood back upright, concentrating on the distortion. It wasn’t a flat plane, I realized, but had a slight curve. It was so minor as to nearly appear flat, and I only noticed it because of how much distance had been packed into so small a space.

“This may not make much sense,” I said, “but it feels like the sky is on the other side of the planet right now.”

Guar made a thoughtful grumble. “You’re right. All you’ve done is confuse me.”

“Do you mean that our sky departed to the other side of the planet?” asked Varrin. “Or that the sky on the other side of the planet has come to us?”

A fierce wind blew through the forest, tree branches groaning as they bent beneath the gale. The canopy rocked from side to side, and sinister clouds could be seen peeking through the leaves, part of a heaving mass that swept across the sky like a dark, polluted river. There was a bright flash of lightning, but the bolt never found the ground, disappearing into the spatial compression. Despite its apparent closeness, no thunder ever followed. Aside from the noise being made by the powerful wind tearing through the forest, the cataclysmic storm overhead was silent. I doubted it was even the source of the wind.

You are now entering the Less-Than-Habitable Megadungeon.

You are currently in the Heavy Armor section.

This Labyrinth is now at capacity.

Primary objective: Navigate the Megadungeon to enter the Chasm.

Secondary objective: Activate multiple obelisks to receive escalating rewards.

“Well, that’s something to see!” Guar shouted over the wind before checking his notifications. “Oh, look! I called it!”

Emergency Objective: Eliminate the United.