Guardians of Terraria II: The World of Calamity

Episode 30.2 - Toxic Wisdom

Robyn took to the skies to avoid the Old Duke's first charge. It ended up shooting straight below her, its speed and how close it came surprising her. Its next attack was at Sid, who made a dodge to the left as it charged towards him, but then it turned around in mid-air and charged a third time, this time successfully hitting Sid, though he immediately drunk a healing potion to top his health back up. His summons went after the Old Duke as it hovered up above him and began spitting a set of spiky balls.

Robyn fired at the Old Duke while Sid took its attention. It unleashed another set of charges. Sid flew straight upwards to dodge its first one, and it turned around to charge again. For a moment it looked like it would overshoot Sid, but his flight trajectory meant he ended up colliding with the boss, taking even more damage.

The fact that the Old Duke was predicting their movements rather than just directly aiming for where they were already made it seem much more threatening to Robyn. Not necessarily stronger, but clearly smarter. Wiser with its age.

"Magic mirror out!" she shouted, noticing Sid's health had dropped quite low. "I'll get it to come after me!"

Sid did so, he and his summons all disappearing in a flurry of sparks. He would have teleported a few hundred blocks away to the shelter, so once he had regenerated his health he'd be back.

Robyn fired her Telluric Glare at the Old Duke. It roared at her, firing a wave of flying brown sharks at her. Most of the sharks got obliterated by her arrows, exploding in radiant blasts of light. Then the Old Duke charged for her, and she dodged to the left. As she was expecting, it went to charge at her again, but she drastically changed direction at the same time, causing the Old Duke to completely miss.

She risked a glance at its health count. It had almost a million max health, but had strangely only lost about 40,000 so far. Surely their weapons were stronger than that?

The Old Duke fired some more spikey-ball projectiles at Robyn, which she moved to avoid. She was expecting it to charge toward her again, but strangely it seemed to stop moving, hovering in the air and letting out a low huff.

It's tired, she realised. The Old Duke was definitely no spring chicken, after all. She took advantage of the Duke's moment of weakness to pour an endless wave of radiant arrows into it. She saw Renee turn visible nearby, standing on the turquoise water of the Sulphurous Sea, and throwing her Ghoulish Gouger.

After about five seconds the Old Duke roared and charged forward. This time it went for Renee, but she too seemed to have noticed how the Old Duke attacked. Robyn saw the Old Duke had actually taken quite a lot of damage while it had been fatigued – it was down to 750,000 health.

This was an endurance fight. They just had to last long enough for the Old Duke to tire out in order to deal damage. And its attack patterns, while very strong and smart, were actually not that overwhelming or tricky compared to some other bosses like Providence.

Sid returned shortly after, but right after he did, the Old Duke gave a louder roar, its eyes starting to glow yellow.

It flew towards Renee, who only narrowly dodged its charge, then it flew in a series of large loops. Spiky balls flew everywhere, and some sort of green-and-purple vortex began forming in the air.

As Robyn watched the vortex grow easily larger than the Old Duke himself, she began to feel wind pulling at her, towards the vortex. She made to fly away, taking a blow from an Old Duke charge in the process.

Not this again! she thought.

Luckily the vortex's effects seemed to become negligible once she flew far enough away from it. The Old Duke launched some flying sharks at her and vomited some flying chunks of viscous guck. She made to dodge the projectiles, but didn't notice the Old Duke following up the attack with another long charge that rammed into her.

Focus!

Luckily the Old Duke tired out around then, allowing she, Renee and Sid's summons to rain more attacks onto it to bring its health down further. It charged towards Sid next, who dodged to the left but had to do some frantic flying to avoid being sucked into the vortex he'd flown a bit too close to. Renee caught the Old Duke's attention to cover for him.

The fight continued. The Old Duke's eyes grew brighter and brighter, some of the scales along its body doing the same, as it lost health. Its attacks became faster, but more frantic, more desperate to gore one of them and chow down for breakfast.

But it was not to be. Soon their weapons managed to bring its health all the way down, and it fell to pieces with a high-pitched squeal.

Sid landed underneath where it had died to catch its drops.

"Hey, it dropped a summon weapon! The Cadaverous Carrion!" He swung a staff that was basically the Old Duke's head on a stick. Robyn was expecting some sort of miniature Old Duke minion to match the Profaned Guardians, but instead a gooey brown-and-purple lump rose up from one of the islands. It formed itself into the shape of the Old Duke's head, dripping with greenish-yellow dribble, and it began burping out sulphuric sharks, rapid-fire, that arced through the air towards a slime.

"That looks a bit gross," Sandy said.

"Absolutely disgusting!" the Cloud Elemental exclaimed.

"Putrid! Foul!" Sandhee shouted.

"I dare not imagine how toxic that amalgam is," Anahita added.

The Brimstone Elemental just made a discontented grunt, but it seemed that for once, the Elementals all agreed on something.

"Anyway..." Sid said, "Maybe we can finally drop down into the Abyss without getting interrupted!"

That familiar anxiety wrought its way back into Robyn.

But she knew they were going to have to do this in order to stand a chance against Lord Yharim.

I guess that's one life lesson. Even if things seem nightmarishly difficult, sometimes you just have to buckle in and do it, even if you know you'll only stand a chance.

I won't interrupt this profound paragraph by asking you to vote. Or did I?