Dungeons & Dragons Online Beta Journal #7

Turbine’s official Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach website has been updated with a seventh beta journal, this time offering a few combat strategies to help keep your party alive. Here’s a taste:

There are many opportunities to properly employ massed missile weapons. From the top of waterfalls/sloops, the whole party should shoot down at the enemy. Many dungeons and outdoor quests feature ideal terrain for this tactic, so use it. Find good positions for the party to rain a hail of arrows/bolts/daggers/throwing axes down on the enemy. Whenever the enemy does not have their own archers or ranged magic-users, start by softening them up with missile weapons. Target the casters: (cleric, shaman, wizard, sorcerer, witch doctor).

In many other dungeons (the Butcher’s Path and Waterworks, for example), the casters are among the most dangerous monsters, with the capacity to cause the most damage to the party.

Charge them, press them back, and continuously attack them so they can’t cast spells. The casters are often quite nimble; they jump and move out of melee range quickly, so press them and keep attacking, because it is possible for them to fail their concentration checks and lose their spell just as players can. When entering a room full of monsters, the casters are generally in the back on top of crates or any high ground they can use for clear line of sight. Some fighters should stay and protect your casters, but at least one melee character should attack that caster; otherwise, he can stand back there and just cast spell after spell (acid splash, magic missile, scorching ray, ray of enfeeblement, flame strike, fireball, and so forth). That caster will usually inflict the most damage to the party. At higher levels this becomes more critical as fireball after fireball will quickly decimate a party. You must kill the casters quickly!