Source of Corruption - Solo?

So I'm down at the Waterfront, and quite enjoying it in this part of Zafaria. Actually, truth be told I like all of Zafaria pretty much. And there are plenty of different areas to explore. Even better when I come across a dungeon that is more than one fight to win. And that is when I was led to the "Black Palace" quest - defeat the Source of Corruption. Expecting to go into a fairly standard sort of fight, I was happy to see this one had slightly more meat to it.

Unfortunately the first effort ended in failure, no converts and the many death enemies in here meant that it was probably a foregone conclusion! Easy to know when a dungeon is more than a small battle - time to port back in differs significantly. In this case I had 30 minutes.... and I knew that going solo in this one might take a bit of time.

Looking over at Central you can easily see that there are few things to complete to earn the XP. First up are a couple of boss fights, Ice boss surrounded by 3 death minions - Oh what a joy this battle was going to be!

By the way, I didn't look up any tips or tricks in this battle. I like to try and figure it out myself, I just popped over to grab some images for the blog! The Ice boss fights were about as standard as they come. I had the added issue of all the minions being Death so plenty of converts in play in these battles.

Word to the wise though.... stick to the outside and go where the arrow tells you when you are moving around between fights. The minion battles are not required.

Once these boss battles are done you have to shatter some stones. I got caught in way too many side battles doing this part - so take care when you are finding each one!

As you move further into the dungeon, who just know that final boss fight is not too far away. I was expecting Ice, as this one had had plenty of Ice and Death all the way, but no - it was to be a Storm boss.

Time to defeat Tim-Tim-SnakeEye. Health-wise we are not talking the biggest boss, but Storm, well they have a pretty hard hits if they don't fizzle! And this is one of my favourite Storm Spells - a purple headed dragon slowly moving up out of the mist, then just staring, mocking you with the hit that is to come. I just had to take a pic!

Back to the battle, my health looked precarious fairly quickly in this one, and hits like this one didn't help. But the biggest issue was a Tower Shield. And yep, you've guessed it, not an ordinary Tower Shield - that would be far too easy! But you know what? A 90% Tower shield is bad enough, but one that is recast EVERY time you get rid of it - we had another cheating boss on our hands. So what was to be my strategy this time?

I immediately thought of Poison again. First round to get rid of the shield, then hit while it is missing. Hmmm. It didn't work. I had so many Pips spinning around me and no clue what to do. One thing that was certain, however was that I needed to heal to continue. I had packed 2 Fairy cards and 2 Sacrifice cards in my deck. I hardly ever heal myself, so don't tend to want to waste space with these cards. When the Fairy appeared I grabbed her with open arms and played a Fairy heal for probably the first time in months!

And that was when something curious happened....

Now I know enough to realise that this was a hint, and it showed when I healed (which as you can see was needed badly!). Then the best thing happened - the Tower shield evaporated. Hmmm. Time to play my 9 pip and get a real hit in.

Almost 4,000 and I'm back in the game. So healing helped me out. But I only had one more Fairy, and I need to get a boosted half-life back spell ready with as much back hit as possible ready for that Fairy. Blades and Feints were all I had, so I got them ready while I waited for that Fairy.

Getting a bit hairy now. My health is depleted and the Fairy is in hiding. But there was a Sacrifice there.
It would use my blades, it would most certainly defeat me, and bring me back losing my battle setup, but the real question is - Does it count as a heal? I had no option but to use it and see what happened - we were definitely at "Kill or be Killed" stage in this battle!

So I played it. I was defeated as expected, lost my pips, my aura and my blades, but I was healthy and that Tower shield was no more. I only needed 4-pips to run my Vampire and the result was good :)

This was a real risk to take at this stage in this dungeon, so I am really glad that it worked out well.

I love being able to do these fights solo - really makes you think through and apply a strategy, but I still have a couple of battles to do that I just can't solo. The Helephant Tower is one that I have tried solo a couple of times, but I know it is ultimately futile. I know I will need help. The other is Poseidon - the 2nd Aquila battle. I still think that maybe I can do this. I have got to the final battle twice solo'ing, just never completed that final battle. Time will tell, but I reckon I need to shout up a couple of friends for that Tower!

Anyway, that's it from me for now.

Have fun, until next time,
Tabitha