By Michael Sagoe (mikedot)
With another CBT down and one more to go, it’s time for another showcase of my adventures in the world of Blade & Soul with me, your aspiring Kung Fu Master. This week, the community team at NCWest was looking to get their community down and dirty with a multi-server event called: “The Scorching Sands Open World PvP Event.” Players from all over, no matter which server they played on, would gather up at the scorching sands area with either a blackram marauder or bamboo guard uniform and battle it out for as long as possible.
It sounds like fun, and despite my character being low level, I was eager to bust some heads. With that said, I traveled far into the desert to find the location of the event, an hour or so before it began, and waited…
Calm before the storm, perhaps…
When it came closer to party time, more and more people showed up. Not wanting to waste anytime, people started to don their uniforms and attacked each other as soon as they could. Not wanting to interfere with the battles just yet, I stood back and watched the small crowds duel each other.
But shortly afterwards…
Just then, the GMs appeared on the scene: It was GM Babbletron and Rukkirii from the community team arriving to observe the available participates and fire off the starting pistol. It didn’t take long after that for chaos to ensue.
Wanting to be on the side of valor, I equipped my bamboo guard uniform first and jumped right in. Enemy players were spread all over the place with Destroyers and Summoners being the most visually apparent in the midst of all the action. Since I was a lower level player, I was looking to either assist stronger players with takedowns or seek out enemy players that were around my level, which did work for a short while, but after that, the pain train started coming in fast.
I ended up getting knocked out a few minutes or so after the battle started, but friendly players were always around to pick me back up, just so I can get back in and get knocked out again. Eventually, many friendly players got taken out themselves and weren’t around to pick me back up, so I had no choice but to resurrect back in town.
After a short respawn, I decided to switch sides just to see how different the odds would stack up, and it turns out that I was playing on the overpowered team all along. There were so many Bamboo guards compared to Blackram Marauders that it was nearly impossible for me to not get taken down in seconds. Friendly players did what they could to support each other, but it didn’t take long for them to get pulverized as well. Needless to say, but I was forced to take many dirt naps after switching sides.
Once the 30 minute mark had passed, the battles started to slow down a bit and people started to leave, which was understandable since the event mostly turned into a mindless brawl after that. Despite having some fun with it, I was kinda hoping that the GM team was going to set up something a bit more organized, like having both teams gather up on two sides of the field and then meet up in the middle to see which side would survive a head-on collision.
Still, I got the opportunity to greet a GM by snapping their neck, which is something I’d never imagine myself doing.
Once I was done with the event, I brought myself back to the mining down near the desert to complete some more quests, and found myself in another instanced area. The objective here was to reach the end of the cave and destroy some kind of active energy core, or something to that effect. As you’d expect an army of rock monsters intended to stop me, but more or less just became fodder as I smoothly crushed through the instance.
That was until I reached the first boss of the instance: A giant crystal beast who wields stone pillars to crush its enemies. Without hesitation, I went in guns blazing.
My lack of caution quickly got the best of me, as I was surrounded by mobs of stone monsters shortly after I tackled the boss. With the Kung-Fu Masters’ lacking AOE prowess, taking them all down while making sure the boss didn’t strike with a heavy attack was a challenge. And when I did manage to fight off all the mobs, I felt completely unstoppable.
But I was then quickly corrected…
Still determined, I crawled out of the monster’s attack range and prepared myself to try again.
This time, I was far more cautious, balancing out my evasive steps, counters and back-dashes before pouring on the damage. This time, I came out the victor.
First boss down, I blazed forward to the next one.
Here, I had reached the active core: A strange boss that fires bolts of energy at its attackers while summoning mobs that walk towards the center of the room. Without noticing the approaching mobs at first, I just began to wail on the boss without worry. I learned the hard way that if any of the monsters reach the center, the boss would perform a huge AOE blast, damaging and knocking players away.
Now learning from my fatal mistake, I had to constantly focus attention from the mobs and the boss every few seconds, giving my twitch skills a workout.
But then the boss threw a curveball at me by spawning the same boss from the last room. As the main boss stopped its assault, the sub-boss took over by chucking huge rocks at me while summoning even more minions to the cause. At that point, I felt like I was in over my head, as if this instance was designed for more than one person, but I kept at it and stayed determined.
After several minutes of combat, I managed to defeat the active core and beat the instance, all by myself as an AOE-lacking KFM, so it was only appropriate to celebrate with a dance.
Despite being a LV26 instance, it was very tough to solo on my own, but just the fact that soloing these instances is very much an option really shows just how much of a skill-based game Blade & Soul can be. I truly look forward to seeing what other challenges I can face all on my own.
Four down and one more to go! Look forward to my last impressions article on the B&S CBT as I try out other classes available in the game.
