I Love Rock n' Troll

One of the first quests I obtained from Whitegate on the day that ToAU came out was to assess the weaknesses of the ToAU Beastmen and to report my findings back to the guards, so that they can launch an effective assault on them.

In over two years I had not even begun to attempt this quest but I had accepted a quest to investigate the Mamool Ja. Teila on the other hand, had accepted a quest to investigate the Trolls, and this involved popping a Troll PUP NM called a Speculator on Mount Zhayolm. This one is pretty tough to solo, even for a L75 RDM (as the Automaton hits very hard), so I agreed to help her.

The idea was that as the Troll double-hits (Hand-to-Hand), it would eat through my shadows (I still don’t have Ni), so Teila was to solo the Troll whilst I kite the Automaton until the Troll was defeated. So we popped the NM and out he came with no Automaton. At this point we both duo’d the Troll.

Eventually he summoned his Automaton (a PLD) and I switched targets to get its attention, whereupon I began kiting it around Mount Zhayolm.

I switched to my Evasion build and everything went really well for some time until my shadows went down a bit sooner than normal and my timer wasn’t up yet. I just completely lost the flow and no matter what I couldn’t get Utsusemi up again. Hit down into red (over 100 a punch), I had to Flee into Halvung.

When I came back out Teila had the hate of both, and because she began Curing me back up it became difficult to peel it off her. As a result I ended up meleeing it alongside her and although I was able to knock it down substantially, I couldn’t evade its attacks and I went down when it had a sliver of life left.

Fortunately, Teila finished off the Speculator at this point but to our horror the Automaton didn’t vanish. Teila was in red life at this point so I Reraised up and Trick Attacked her to take it down quick – we finished off both with around 50hp or less.

This fight was very hard to duo, mainly because of the Automaton and for the fact that the Troll regularly used Rock Smash on Teila to Petrify her, meaning she could not reapply Utsusemi or Stoneskin. I filmed it from start to finish and although the whole fight too around 15 minutes I had to cut it down to just over nine for YouTube.

You can watch the fight here.

After that it was the usual slog in Campaign for an hour or two before logging for the night.