Nox Part 26: Attacking from Below

Описание: I drop through the hole in the ground and fall into an underground cavern. We now have to follow the path here to Grok Torr—the city has an underground level to it—while battling the various creatures that live under the surface. I begin going forward, and we’re intercepted by Cave Spiders and Giant Leeches. Fortunately, Lighting can quickly dispatch all of these creepy crawlies, and I finish off this first batch of them with little trouble. I continue down the path and we face several more of these critters, but there’s little threat—we’ve actually reached a point where these enemies don’t give experience anymore because we’ve reached a higher level than them. However, we do come to a side cave with a genuinely formidable opponent: a Black Bear. Black Bears are smaller and less dangerous than their Grizzly cousins, but they’re still quite dangerous. I hit this one with Slow and quickly retreat to hit it with Lightning, successfully killing it. The cave has some gold and a Giant Leech Beast Scroll—the latter is useless to us since we already got one, so I just drop it.

After defeating the Black Bear and looting the cave, I follow the path north. We defeat some Giant Leeches and I backtrack to a mana crystal to recharge our magic, then resume our march forward. After killing some more Cave Spiders and clearing out a second cave occupied by a Black Bear, we come across a small switch. Flipping it opens a barrier that lets us continue, and we find ourselves at a three-way fork in the road. We can choose to go either straight ahead, to the left, or to the right. Straight ahead is the path to Grok Torr, but first I want to make sure I clear out the side areas, so we’ll be doing some extra exploring. I start by going down the path on the left, and it’s populated with giant Scorpions. There are a lot of them, and their durability makes them significantly tougher opponents than the Spiders we killed earlier. Nevertheless, by making careful use of the Slow-Lightning tactic we eventually clear out this entire area without getting poisoned by any of the Scorpions, not an easy task. Next up is the side area to the right, which has plenty of Ogresses. We’ve been fighting Ogresses throughout the mission and these aren’t any more difficult, especially since they only attack a few at a time. The Slow-Lightning combo still works great, and I methodically eliminate the Ogresses while picking up their axes after they’re killed.

The area eventually dead-ends into a fairly dangerous crusher area, but I head in regardless to claim the very valuable Ogress Beast Scroll. We successfully get the scroll and get out, but the crusher took a lot of our health. Luckily, there are two steaks lying nearby that I eat to get back to mostly healthy. With that, I backtrack to the intersection and begin the march to Grok Torr’s underground area itself. We’re intercepted by two Ogresses before I even get very far, so I quickly retreat and kill them both with Lightning. I decide to drop our captured axes—we’ve reached our weight limit again—and advance forward to finally spot the underground city walls. Unfortunately, we still can’t get in the front door—there’s a double gate that’s locked. This time, though, we’ll be able to unlock them. There are two side rooms accessible through open gates in the sides of the city wall, and in each of these rooms is a switch that unlocks one of the gates. Naturally, these side rooms are heavily protected by Ogresses, but at this point fighting them is second nature. Using the usual tactics, I clear out the opposition in both rooms and flip both switches. Heading back to the front door, both gates have now disappeared and we can enter Grok Torr proper at leisure. The interior of the city, though, is sure to be even more strongly defended.