Factions Abound: Training Montage

The next few days in Dungeons Below felt more like a montage than the usual flow of gameplay. Merrick was placed in charge of training up the Faction's spellcasting classes to get ready for the next Faction War. However, that turned out to be a much easier task than he initially anticipated.

The only real struggle came from the fact that there were no two similar spellcasting builds in the group. Not including Merrick, there were two Adepts, an Alchemist, an Apprentice, an Arcanist, a Field Scholar, a Mage, a Magus, a Necromancer, and an Oracle. Out of the ten, there were only two that shared a Class but they had approached their skills entirely differently; not to mention that they specialized in different elements.

The first Adept fell into the Air Element with a specialization in Lightning. They used their magic in the closest that Merrick had seen to his own. It seemed like they were building to unlock the Arcane Thief class based on the way they moved. The other Adept fell into the Water Element with a specialization in Ice. Focused purely on defense, they were like a Northern Ice Wall.

The core of the struggle was solved by having them operate in pairs rather than individually. Since there were five spellcasters that were only passively considered combat casting classes, Merrick paired them with the clearly combat oriented spellcasters. Merrick did his best to pair them in complementary fashion as well.

It took some time to get everyone on board but eventually, they ended up with the following pairings:

The Lightning Adept and the Field Scholar. The Necromancer and the Arcanist. The Magus and the Ice Adept. The Alchemist and the Mage. The Oracle and the Apprentice.

Half of their training involved the pairs working together. They had to learn how to share energy, how one Adventurer could offer up energy or in some cases a completed spell for the other to release. It all depended on synergy. Merrick had learned it from a book but as a mostly Solo Adventurer, it did not benefit him outside of his relationship to his Dust Mephit Crudle.

It was refreshing to see the pairs take to the skill. After a whole day of training, they were all at least skilled enough to share energy while some were able to share entire spells from their specific Class with their partner. The best example was the pairing of the Necromancer and the Arcanist. Since the Necromancer Class dealt with Life Energy directly and the Arcanist laid out Magic Laws that affected how energy could be used, they were able to lean on each other quickly.

The worst example, the pair that could only just barely share energy was the Alchemist and the Mage. It did not help that the Mage was antisocial and the Alchemist was sort of elitist.

Outside of their own personalities, the two Classes were just not compatible. The Mage, much like Merrick, was all about improvising with the resources available. The Alchemist, on the other hand, had to gather reagents and ingredients ahead of time. Once gathered, the energy was then imbued into the reagents to make an even more powerful magic item than a regular Adventurer could craft.

In the end, even they found a way to work together. So it was not a complete failure in Merrick's mind. There was no way to know exactly how the spellcasters would be deployed, that would ultimately come down to Thom's strategy and the variables of battle on the day of the Faction War.

For that reason, Merrick also had them play hot potato with a molten ball of arcane energy. The thought was only half joking. In a similar fashion to how they operated as a pair, with one supplying energy and the other using it, Merrick had them work as one team of ten.

The goal was for one spellcaster to find a way to gather the energy from the other ten spellcasters, Merrick included himself in this one. Each spellcaster had to find the nuance of their skills to absorb and properly use the energy. For the combat spellcasters it was much easier and felt more like the War Casting of older games.

For the support spellcasters, though, it was more difficult. Though even they were able to pull through before the end of the day. It was a rousing success that led to raised spirits. As they packed up the training grounds for the day, Merrick wondered if the spellcasters had held Alric's resentment toward him. If they had, it did not seem to be lingering now.

When they broke apart after training, they did so for nearly a whole day of in-game time. It was planned as a decent sleep break in the real world and allowed some in-game rest hours for daily activities. Even if the Faction War was coming up soon, they still needed to grow their characters and grind their skills.

Merrick gave them each a challenge appropriate to their Class. Whether it was to acquire a piece of Mythic Gear, unlock a new skill, or gain a new proficiency, each spellcaster needed to improve personally and not just as a member of the Faction.

After the success of the first day, nothing seemed impossible to the ten spellcasters with Merrick at their lead. To start the second day, they did mainly the same training. For two hours they practiced with their partner, further increasing their Arcane Synergy to the point that nearly all pairs received a skill by that name.

After the paired training, Merrick had them gather together for another game of arcane hot potato. It went smoother than the day before so he moved toward a new goal and turned it into a true game of hot potato. Once Merrick built up the borrowed arcane energy, he weaved it into a shape that could flow between the spellcasters. Then they passed it back and forth in an exercise that felt more like tai chi or yoga than spellcasting.

The Arcane Synergy skill was joined by a new one called Arcane Symmetry. Each member of the Faction's spellcasting group now had a severe buff to Arcane Energy Control when working with another spellcaster as well as a moderate buff to Arcane Energy Resistance. They were finally ready to start learning spells.

Merrick would have found a different way to accomplish it, but it was easier thanks to one of the Field Scholar's skills: Knowledge Share.

It allowed Merrick to take the Lightning Bolt spell from his Mage's Journal and share it with the other spellcasters. Now they each had an offensive spell. For a moment, Merrick worried that the knowledge would be his downfall. The Lightning Bolt had been his ace up his sleeve for a while, no other Adventurer had had a similar spell in terms of destructive force that was easy to cast.

It turns out that all Mages had a specialized ace up their sleeve. Nile, the other Mage, had an experimental spell that had originally been mistaken for a starting spell. His spell was called Dragon Scale and it summoned a hovering shield of arcane energy that moved independent of the spellcaster to block a single attack.

The only other spell that could be shared with the Field Scholar's skill was one of the base spells from the Arcanist: Energy Dampen. It was an area of effect that made it difficult to cast spells because the energy itself was limited. Not only did Merrick gain a new defensive spell by sharing, he also gained a new debuff. It was worth the risk to lose his own ace.

The days passed quickly. The Faction War had seemed to be looming on the horizon for so long but then it was suddenly upon them. As Merrick headed to the location, he was stopped by the War Officiant from the last War. He recognized the armor immediately. There was no good reason for the Mouseion representative to be blocking his path now.