A new staff, a new spell, and my first defeat…

I am just loving this game!!

At the recommendation of The Friendly Necromancer I checked out the Ascendant Staff in the crown shop.  I had a few extra crown rolling around my school chest, so I bought it!  It’s very shiny and it gives you a power pip right away, first turn.  I don’t think that’s as handy right now, because all my spells are one pip or less, but I think as soon as I get a good damage spell with a 2 or 3 pip cost, it’s going to be great!  The spell it comes with is zero casting cost spell that does 70 balance damage – not as much damage as the other spells in the starter wand, but those were all one pip, so I can throw this spell five times for zero cost!  It’s pretty cool!

My New Ascendant Staff

As I said in an earlier post I took Life as my second school, and my first spell was Imp, an odd little creature who apparently sings so badly, he physically hurts the beings he’s singing for.  Being life damage I find he’s very effective against the roaming skeletons and other death-related minions roaming about.  I don’t have any ‘blade’ spells for life to boost his damage, I’ll have to look into that!

Finally, after equipping my new staff, putting my deck together, and adding in some treasure cards, I was ready to fight Rattlebones.  Or at least I thought I was.  Turns out I wasn’t.  I took out his dark fairy lackey easily enough with a fire blade and a firecat, but by the time I had her taken out, I was at half health and Mr. Rattlebones was pounding on me pretty effectively.  I got a hit in on him but it wasn’t enough – before I could cast my Pixie healing spell, I was defeated and woke up groggy and disoriented in downtown Wizard City, thankful I was still wearing pants.

I was not to be deterred, though – I regained all my health and mana thanks to the handy floating wisps, then headed right back to Rattlebone’s tower.  I had a different strategy this time and so I hit myself with a Fire Blade and then hit Rattelbones himself with a Fire Cat – I remembered in my first fight that this was enough to kill the Dark Fairy, and Rattlebones had the same amount of health.  If I took him out first, I figured I’d take out most of the heavy damage he was dealing and then take the Dark Fairy out at my leisure.  Executing on this new strategy I learned a new and important lesson regarding combat in The Spiral…

Boss monsters have armor.  Or at least you can’t to as much damage to a boss monster as you can to a non-boss monster with the same spell combination.  I didn’t take him out, and he was un-thrilled with my attempt.  Fortunately, I used one of my new staff blast spells to take him out next turn, and I had defeated my first boss!!

By this time I was below half my health and the Dark Fairy had hit me with my own Firecat – not fair! – so I used my healing spell and got back up to full health before I started i her.  Then it was just a matter of fire blade and Fire Kitty and I had my very first Boss Fight victory!  I got ‘Rattlebones Footwraps’ as the Boss drop, the little Australian zebra guy told me these were special, but they’re death school only so I guess I’ll sell them or something.