Mist of Shadows
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Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 16
🕑 Added 2021-11-06 05:12:21 +0000 UTCSherrel pulled her attention away from the pile of blood elf bodies that Uber and Leet were stripping for loot and looked at Wings. "Now that we've hit level seventy are we going to hit one of the dungeons?"
Ziz turned to look at Taylor. "How long will it take to craft some halfway decent gear?"
Taylor glanced up from the dungeon guide she'd downloaded on her phone. "That depends on what you consider halfway decent gear."
Ziz walked over to check Taylor's phone. "We just need enough gear to keep everyone from instantly splattering to random attacks and traps."
"Imbued netherweave outfits would be a decent start, they have a decent amount of intelligence and stamina in Warcraft which would probably translate to magic and stamina," Taylor mused as she swapped back to her tailoring guide.
"What's the difference between the netherweave and raid gear?" Ember asked.
Leet shrugged. "No mana regeneration, elemental resistances or haste and they have less bonus spell damage or healing. They're basically the minimum you want to walk into a level seventy instance with."
Taylor glanced over the list of materials she'd need. "It should take me an hour or two to grind until I can make enough for everyone."
Amy grinned as she thought about Chevalier's power. "I've got a better idea, let's talk to our blacksmith and see if he can combine some items and make some high end gear, it shouldn't take more than an hour or two and we'll have gear fit for slaughtering a raid."
"You realize some of us can't use plate or mail, right?" Leet asked.
"I'm aware. We should be able to make cloth armor with all of the advantages of plate without any of the problems," Amy replied smugly.
"How?" Leet asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Our friend can sort of temporarily merge his equipment and take the best properties." Amy gestured at Taylor. "Skitter can turn symbiotes into gear or equipment into symbiotes provided I've created a symbiote that matches the slot we're playing with. We have another friend that can copy symbiotes which means we should be able to mass produce extremely powerful gear."
"Okay, you win," Leet admitted as he glanced between Amy and Skitter. "You're the gods of cheating."
Taylor glanced at Amy. "Assuming the idea actually works."
"We managed to turn one of the symbiotes into gloves and back and Chevalier managed to merge his gear which means we're probably good to go," Amy pointed out. "Worst case, we'll have to skip Chevalier's trick and stick with duplicating epic gear."
[Speaking of cheating, we should look for creatures with fire immunity while they're crafting so we can make the symbiotes immune to fire], Shaper suggested.
[Good point], Admin agreed.
"Not a bad idea," Taylor mused as she ran a search for Onyxia's Lair. "Okay, Onyxia's Lair is in Dustwallow Marsh. That's close to Theramore, do you want me to grab the portal when I grab the rest of my spells so you can swing by to pick up fire immunity or do you want to teleport there and skip the trouble?"
Amy shook her head. "I've got multiple symbiotes and none of the dragons should attack me as long as I don't attack them, I might as well save myself the flight."
Ziz grinned as she glanced towards the entrance to the last dungeon. "Cool, that gives me a chance to check out the Magister's Terrace and see if I can get anything interesting to add to our collection of gear."
"Does that mean the rest of us can check out your mansion?" Uber asked, looking forward to working on crafting for a bit.
"Sure, I'll teleport to Ironforge and grab the portal so you can catch up on your training then Admin can summon me and I'll open a portal to Ironforge. My hearthstone is up which means I can teleport back to the mansion and summon Admin. We'll give it ten minutes and start summoning people to the mansion." Taylor showed Amy the map for Onyxia's Lair.
Leet grinned. "Cool, that gives us a chance to trade supplies and schematics with Armsmaster."
"Got it. If I'm not back in twenty minutes, summon me." Amy activated her symbiote's teleport ability and teleported to just outside of Onyxia's lair before she could change her mind. She jumped backwards when she appeared in front of a large lizard with the upper half of a draconic looking humanoid where the head and neck should have been. "Hello?"
The Onyxian Warder stared at the strange elf that had just appeared in front of it, not sure why he didn't feel like ripping her apart and roasting her over a fire like the various other intruders over the years. "Yes?"
"Can I talk you into trading immunities, I want to copy your fire immunity, are you interested in picking up immunity to frost damage?" Amy asked, figuring immunities were worth more than gold to the monster.
The warder considered the trade for a couple of seconds. "How long does it last?"
"It's permanent," Amy replied.
"What do you need to do to copy my fire immunity?" the warder asked, wondering if it was worth it.
Amy shrugged. "I just need to touch your hand."
"If you're lying, I'll rip you apart after having some fun with you," the warder warned her.
"I'm not lying," Amy assured him as he held out his hand, not particularly amused by the creature's threats. She touched his leathery fingers and used her power to sort through his genetics, looking for the bit that would give her access to fire immunity.
[Fire immunity!] Shaper told Admin cheerfully.
[Nice, that should make some of the dungeons a lot easier], Admin replied as she looked through the list of the mobs in Magister's Terrace on Taylor's phone.
[That's the idea. Can you borrow Skitter's phone and look for monsters with interesting abilities I can copy?] Shaper asked hopefully.
[Sure, are you looking for anything specific?] Admin asked.
[Better flight or ways to mitigate physical damage would be a good start but I'm curious if you can find out anything about the areas that weren't in the beta], Shaper replied as Amy worked on giving the warden immunity to frost damage.
[I'll let you know if I find anything], Admin assured her as she pulled up a list of the various Warcraft expansions, figuring it was a good place to start.
0o0o0
"It wasn't that bad," Alec lied as he dodged Lisa's overly enthusiastic swing of a fire poker.
"Bullshit!" Lisa shouted as she swung again.
"To be fair, I didn't know you'd get stuck like that," Alec replied as he danced out of the way.
"Would it have mattered?" Aisha asked 'helpfully', rather amused by the entire situation.
"Not really," Alec admitted, then tossed himself out of the way when Lisa went berserk and started swinging the poker wildly.
"Do you think she realizes that actually hitting him with the poker isn't going to accomplish anything because of the level difference?" Vicky asked, watching the shenanigans.
"I don't think she cares," Aisha replied with amusement as she took a couple of steps back.
Alec tossed up a shield then grabbed the fire poker. "Enough, you're going to hit something important-" he collapsed when Lisa kicked him in the nuts, dropping him to the ground.
"If it makes you feel better, I'm sure Amy can fix your physical issues," Vicky offered, fairly sure she hadn't actually managed to hurt him considering he'd tossed up a shield before he'd grabbed the poker and she could still see the outline around him.
"I'm fairly sure he deserved that," Aisha said as she swiped the fire poker from Lisa's hands before she hit Alec in the nuts or head with something he wouldn't be able to walk off.
"Fine," Lisa grumbled then turned to look at Vicky. "When is she getting back?"
"As soon as they're done running around blowing things up," Vicky turned and looked as the door to the lounge opened, revealing Amy. "Or you know, now."
Amy stared when she walked into the lounge and noticed Lisa. "Bad rolls or personal issues?"
Lisa gestured angrily at Alec. "It's his fault, he screwed my character up."
"To be fair, I didn't know we were going to get stuck in a simulation," Alec admitted.
"You still screwed up my reroll ability," Lisa complained.
"That wasn't my fault, it glitched," Alec complained. "I'm not that much of an asshole."
"Why should I believe you?" Lisa demanded.
"I don't need my saves erased," Alec replied as he pushed himself to his feet.
"He's got a point," Lisa's second head pointed out.
"Fine," Lisa grumbled, willing to concede the point. "Can you fix it?"
"I've fixed worse, probably," Amy muttered the last part as she walked over to get a closer look at Lisa. "What race are you supposed to be?"
"It says multi-headed demon on the sheet," Lisa admitted.
Amy shook her head. "Let me rephrase that, what race do you want to be?"
"I like the extra class but my second head is a bit annoying," Lisa complained.
"You try being stuck with a know it all without being able to move your body, I can't even do the you're slapping yourself joke," Lisa's second head complained. "On the other hand, you should probably fix the demon bit, most people around here barely tolerate warlocks."
"In that case, we can leave the second head," Amy mused.
"What are my options?" Lisa asked.
"I can fix the mutations and turn you into an upgraded void elf, you'll get immunity from your spells being interrupted, partial flight, better magic reserves and a decent shadow teleport ability. Not to mention the ability to open a vault interface every hour," Amy offered.
"Partial flight?" Lisa asked.
Amy shrugged. "You get thirty seconds of flight with a minute long cooldown."
Lisa frowned as she pictured falling out of the air because she got the timing wrong. "In other words, it's rather useless for long distances."
"Until we get a wingsuit or hang glider or something to that effect," Amy suggested.
Aisha grinned as she thought about flying around the city. "We can probably talk one of the tinkers or tailors into making something when they've got time."
Lisa weighed the advantages and disadvantages of keeping her second head for a few seconds before deciding it was worth keeping, mostly because she was another set of eyes and gave her access to the shaman class. "Fine, if my other head doesn't behave, we can revisit the issue. What other upgrades do you have?"
"I have the ability to give people immunity to arcane, cold, fire, nature, and shadow damage," Amy replied smugly.
"I'll take it, all of it," Lisa replied, figuring it would help keep her safe. "Wait, are there downsides?"
"There's a small chance of anal seepage," Aisha offered sarcastically.
Amy snorted. "Don't listen to her, she's lying. I'm not a hack."
"Can you give people a brute rating?" Alec asked.
"Not unless you want to look like a scaled monster," Amy replied, fairly sure the 10% boost to health that came with her enhanced void elf package didn't count.
Alec glanced at Lisa. "Yeah, we should probably avoid looking like circus freaks."
Lisa glared at Alec, making a mental note to delete his saves when she got back.
"Where did you get the rest of the immunities?" Vicky asked.
"I got the fire immunity from one of Onyxia's minions, the arcane from a netherdrake in Outlands and the nature immunity from a green dragon in a dungeon in a swamp," Amy replied, happy that everything had gone smoothly.
Vicky laughed. "I'm next."
"As soon as I fix Tats' issues," Amy replied as she used her ability to change people's species to get the genetics for a multi-headed void elf with Lisa's genetics, figuring that would be the best place to start.
"Can you turn down her aggression meter?" Alec asked hopefully.
"Nope, sorry, I don't do brains," Amy replied as she swapped Lisa back so she could start making modifications and fixing the mutations she'd gotten stuck with.
0o0o0
Ziz wasn't particularly impressed by the giant four legged demon that was supposed to be the second boss, mostly because he didn't seem to have a viable defense against someone picking him up with telekinesis, spinning him around and upside down then bashing his head into the ground repeatedly.
Technically, his ability to cast burn probably counted as a defense as the spell was getting nastier as it ramped up but he was losing health at a steady rate and his spell hadn't reached the point where it was cutting through her durability. She grabbed the giant metal blades that had replaced his hands and ripped them off with her telekinesis, figuring they could melt them for crafting materials.
Ziz grinned when the demon died and loot dropped. "Hopefully they dropped something we can use," she mused as she flew over and picked up the mace that had appeared. "Reign of Misery, gives 24 points of stamina, 25 magic, 30 haste and 266 spell power. I'll probably have to find some healing gear to combine the bonuses but it's a decent start."
She stuck the mace in her inventory then picked up the platemail leggings. "Felstrength Legplates, 1735 armor, hopefully they can swap it to something I can wear," she mused as she put the greaves in her inventory then flew over and grabbed the tokens and gold from the demon's corpse. She used her telekinesis to break the demon's giant blades into pieces small enough that she could fit them in her bag of holding then did the same to the demon's armor, figuring it would be useful for something.
Ziz collected the bits of metal then flew up into the air and headed for the next area, absently grabbing the various demons and blood elves with her telekinesis and smashing them into the ground head first.
0o0o0
Dennis watched as the pair of gauntlets Chevalier was holding faded then vanished, causing two of the fingers on Chevalier's gloves to turn purple and the thumb to turn into a silvery metallic cloth. "Is it working?"
"It feels slippery," Chevalier replied as he dropped his heavily modified gloves into Skitter's transmogrification window.
[That's because the energy fields keep changing], Overlay complained as she worked on holding all of the strange elements in place.
Taylor selected her symbiote gloves pattern and hit the button, changing the strange looking gloves into a fleshy symbiote that looked like something out of a horror movie. "You're up."
[All of the pieces are gone], Overlay complained, not sure why changing things into a symbiote removed all of the bits and pieces she was manipulating.
Noelle quickly reached out and touched the symbiote gloves Chevalier was wearing then activated her power and made a copy. She waited a couple of seconds to see if the duplicated symbiote was going to lunge at someone or do anything particularly suspect then picked them up and stuck them in her inventory so she could look at the description. "Huh, that worked better than I was expecting."
"Does that mean we can create artifacts?" Dennis asked, hoping they could avoid having to run raids for a couple of months to get enough gear to defeat the last dungeon.
Noelle shook her head. "I'm fairly sure artifacts are at least vaguely balanced."
"Is your copy soul bound?" Chevalier asked as he put the gloves on and looked at the changes on his character sheet.
"Not that I can tell," Noelle replied after double checking the description. She dropped the two symbiotes on her gloves equipment slot and grinned when they appeared on her hands. "They also don't have a level restriction."
"How's the project…" Amy trailed off as she walked into the tailoring room and noticed the creepy looking gloves that Noelle and Chevalier were wearing. "Any luck?"
"More than I was expecting," Noelle admitted as she checked her various totals, wanting to make sure the gloves were actually working.
"They're a combination of the basic symbiote and the netherweave and felsteel gloves with the armor of plate and the ease of use of cloth," Chevalier explained. "I should be able to make additional improvements as long as we're careful."
Amy grinned as held out her hand. "Can I touch them?"
Noelle activated her power and created another copy of the gloves which appeared in front of her and dropped to the workbench. "Have fun," she offered as she took a step back to give Amy more space.
Amy walked over and picked up the gloves and smiled when her power started organizing everything and she realized she was going to have a lot of fun copying properties between symbiotes.
[Best host ever!] Shaper squealed as she dug into the symbiote's genetics.
Taylor smiled at the doll that was sitting on Amy's shoulder. "Do we want to see what happens if we change them back to normal gloves?"
"We probably should," Chevalier said as he pulled his gloves off and handed them to Taylor.
Taylor dropped the symbiote gloves into her transmogrification window and selected a pattern for black mage silk gloves. She quickly glanced over the magical qualities the symbiote gave then hit the button, changing the 'alien' flesh into black silk. She compared the results then tossed the gloves back to Chevalier. "We should probably talk to Stalker about making some leather gear for agility and various combat bonuses."
Amy pulled her attention away from the alien genetics. "I'll work on making symbiotes for all of the equipment slots."
"What about weapons?" Dennis asked, curious what she'd come up with.
Amy shrugged. "I should be able to make a living bone sword or dagger with fleshy bits for the back of the blade and hilt."
Dennis shook his head. "That's not exactly durable."
"I've scanned dragons," Amy replied smugly.
"Objection withdrawn," Dennis admitted. "Besides, it just has to last long enough to scrap the level requirements and let Noelle copy it."
"It certainly beats trying to farm enough weapons for the entire group," Noelle pointed out.
"Speaking of weapons, do you think copying a weapons trainer would break the class lockout on them teaching us?" Taylor asked.
"It's worth a shot now that you have portals," Noelle mused, fairly sure it was worth trying. "If nothing else, it would save us from having to go into the capitals and deal with the idiots."
"We should do the same thing with the profession trainers," Dennis suggested. "I'd love to be able to snap my fingers and give everyone my schematics rather than writing them out by hand."
"That's because you're lazy," Amy pointed out.
"I'm not lazy, it's just a lot of complicated and detailed work. You have to basically draw the glyphs in a way that won't charge them magically while giving enough detail that you can convert the design into something that will and you need to include all of the information for enchanting everything without activating the enchanting bits. It would be a lot easier to have a skill or something that would just let me teach people like the class and profession trainers," Dennis complained, knowing you could find the schematics in dungeons.
"It would certainly make it easier. If nothing else, we can probably talk Leet into making a printer," Taylor suggested.
"You think he can?" Dennis asked hopefully.
Taylor shrugged. "Do you think he's ever made a copy machine?"
"Probably not," Dennis admitted after thinking about Uber and Leet's various shows.
"How long do you think it would take to find a trainer and haul them back here?" Chevalier asked, figuring that would be more useful than a printer that would probably explode after a couple of dozen uses.
"Warp would be able to drastically decrease the time," Noelle said thoughtfully.
[Ask Rachel, she opened a void portal to Darkshire], Admin suggested.
Taylor glanced at Admin's head. "That makes it easier."
"What makes it easier?" Dennis asked as he glanced between Skitter and Admin's heads, wishing he could hear the other half of the conversation.
"Rachel can open void portals which don't have the same restrictions as the mage portals," Taylor replied as she pulled her phone out of her inventory.
"Where do I find Rachel?" Noelle asked, figuring she'd get started.
[She's working on her enchanting in the workshop], Admin offered.
"She's in the workshop," Taylor replied as she headed for the door. "We might as well head to the courtyard."
"Works for me," Chevalier said as he followed Taylor, figuring he had more smithing to do.
0o0o0
'It's just a simulation, your clones aren't insane any more and you're not hurting anyone,' Noelle told herself as she walked over to the night elf with pale blue hair that was standing on the practice yard waiting for students, poked her on the hand and created a naked copy of the weapon master.
lyenia Moonfire stared at her naked duplicate for a couple of seconds then looked at Noelle. "There's a reason we banished all of the mages from the city, take your jokes elsewhere unless you want to pay me to teach you to use a weapon."
"Sorry, my master has a warped sense of humor," Noelle lied as she walked back towards Rachel.
The duplicate stuck her tongue out at her original then followed Noelle with a bounce in her steps. "What's the plan boss?"
"Can you teach me to use weapons?" Noelle asked, hoping that the ability to train people wasn't just a weird script that required being the original.
"I can teach you how to use bows, daggers, fist weapons, staves and throwing weapons, which do you prefer?" the duplicate asked, curious about her master.
"All of them, how much do you charge?" Noelle asked.
The duplicate grinned at Noelle. "Spank my ass and we'll call it even boss."
'At least perverted clones are better than homicidal clones,' Noelle mused as she 'lightly' swatted her minion's behind.
The duplicate grinned at Noelle then used her teaching spell to unlock the various weapon skills she could teach Noelle. "That should do it."
"Can you teach mages to use a bow?" Rachel asked.
The duplicate glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. "I can teach anyone my skills, I'm just not supposed to because of guild rules but I don't currently work for the guild."
"Does that mean you can teach us the spell you use to teach people your skills?" Noelle asked.
"Technically," the duplicate admitted in a whisper. "But I'm fairly sure the guild would try to kill me if they found out, are you going to make it worth the risk?"
"We're heading to a mansion filled with attractive girls, does that help?" Noelle asked, having noticed the way her minion was looking at her.
"When do we leave?" the duplicate asked cheerfully.
Rachel gestured and opened a portal back to Skitter's mansion, looking forward to picking up the rest of the weapon skills. "After you."
0o0o0
Ziz pulled her attention away from the floating vendor window when she got a popup notice informing her that Admin had summoned her and that she had two minutes to hit the accept button to teleport her to the location she was summoned at. 'You'd think they'd at least tell you where you're getting summoned.' She finished trading the tokens she'd collected from the bosses she'd killed and hit accept.
Taylor smiled at Wings when she appeared in the courtyard. "Did you find anything interesting?"
Wings glanced at the line of people that were talking to a naked night elf in the middle of the courtyard then focused on Skitter. "I picked up a casting mace, a gavel that boosts healing by 500 points, some tank leggings, caster boots and a belt that are part of a set and a belt with resilience on it that should help defend against other players and critical strikes. I also found a blacksmithing pattern for a pair of greaves with 280 points of armor penetration which means we'll be able to ignore a decent amount of everythings armor."
"Nice, Amy's working on making some symbiote weapons so I can grab patterns. That should let us duplicate everything and break the soul binding with a bit of work," Taylor explained, looking forward to seeing how much they could push things.
"If it helps, my unique skill lets me move qualities between items," Lisa spoke up from her place in line.
Taylor turned and stared at Lisa. "Restrictions?"
"The qualities don't stack," Lisa admitted. "For example, if both items give bonus stamina only the best bonus will apply."
"How many bonuses can you move around?" Noelle asked as she walked over from where she'd been working on a ring.
Lisa turned to look at Noelle. "I haven't run into a limit, the only downsides are the item I steal the quality from is destroyed and the item I give the quality to has its item level and level requirement recalculated based on the bonus points which means I'll need Skitter's help to push it to an unreasonable level."
Taylor grinned. "In that case, we should probably see just how overpowered we can make our gear."
Comments
Mist of Shadows
That's generally a good rule of thumb yeah.
Jasruv Lundux
If you don't want people to utterly break your system, don't trap them in it.
Bable Zmith
Nice
