Weaver, Guardian of the Venom Diamond

Ok, so I've picked myself a guardian and I'm setting to work making a miniquest/boss fight

Weaver, Guardian of the Venom Diamond

-Background
Weaver is a Spyder - an evolutionary offshoot of normal spiders caused by prolonged exposure to the venom diamond. Powerful even when she was an ordinary spider, as a Spyder, she is ferociously strong: the 8 feet expected on a spider have been replaced by 8 venom tipped spikes, on her abdomen she has a stinger which is also venom tipped, her huge jaws contain (you guessed it) venom and her spine is protected by venom-green armored plates. In short, she is the essence of venom. Oh, and she's about the size of a dragon.

To make matters worse, in the webbed world where Weaver has been guarding her diamond, she has been breeding

So where is Weaver's lair? I can tell you that its entrance lies deep in the Skavid caves of the Feldip Hills, however, your character will have to find that out for himself

-Skills and Quests Required
Slayer (level undecided)
Firemaking (level undecided)
Agility (level undecided)
Smithing (level undecided)


-Reaching the Boss
So I don't know whether there's a central character guiding you to the diamonds, or whatever, but somehow your character will learn of a retired slayer master known as Orelus - the only man to visit Weaver's lair and return.
To find and fight Weaver, you'll have to track him down.

-The Boss Fight

You don't have to have guiding character; the six mirrors that you used in D.T. will provide the necessary clue.

Can it be any clue? 'Cause for my story line to work, the mirror can't point straight at the diamond...

lol. Remember in D.T., it just showed you the general area of the guardian? But for mine I decided something different; you peer into the mirror, but all you see is some fur stuck in a crack, then you are mugged and taken through forcefully to Xercus as a ghost.

Well in that case, I'll have the mirror point at Orelus' hut. I'm thinking he'll be hiding away in Tiranwaan (no idea if I spelt that right...) for his retirement

go for it!

Well, "Watchtower" is an obvious requirement. Zogre Flesh Eaters also works.

But remember that Venom spells disease the target, lowering all its stats (even non-combat!) You could give her a poison, but think of involving non-combat skills for the fight: burning the web she's sticking to,

Watchtower and Zogre Flesh Eaters were indeed planned requirements. Sticking Orelus' hut in elven lands gives me regicide as a requirement too, that'll probably do for quest requirements unless the plot demands more.

As for skills, right now, herblore is obvious - the player will need a stronger version of Relicyn's (sp?) balm. A specialist weapon might be needed too, that gives me smithing.

I like the idea of requiring skills in the lair and having disease drain them. That could make things very fun
For that, firemaking (good call Handeath), agility and slayer make the most sense to me. I'll take some more time to decide on the levels they should be...

decide after you write the quest. I know for one of my quests when you ignite a building... well... I required like 82 firemaking... (hehe... ) when it was originally planned be like 70....

but assign general levels then just write

Preparing for a fight

The Mirror directs you to a hut in the elven lands. Go there, and you will find Orelus, a retired slayer master. Ask him if he knows of any diamonds, and he will inform you that he encountered the guardian of one, the Venom Diamond, and in attempting to slay it, he was gravely injured, causing his shameful retirement.

Convince him to help you try and kill her. He will tell you that you'll need a special type of lamp to see in Weaver's lair without setting fire to the webs, as well as a special type of anti-poison to deal with her poison.
He will tell the player to mine a special metal called pyrite found in a nearby clearing, and smith it into a lamp.
He will also give the player some enchanted regangue seeds, to grow a special herb which, combined with unicorn horn dust, will create a special antipoison that can cure Weaver's venom. There is a farming patch outside his house, and the seeds, being enchanted, grow almost instantly.

Orelus will warn you that Weaver as been spawning, and tells you to come prepared for a long, endurance battle.

He will ask you to meet him at the entrance to the Feldip Hill's Skavid Caves, where he will guide you through them, to Weaver's lair, deep within.

Meet him as requested, and tell him you're ready to go. The two of you will enter the caves and emerge in a large, webbed cavern.

Weaver ambushes you, snatching Orelus and proclaiming victory after a 12 year wait. She informs you that she has no desire to kill you, and sets her children upon you.

The Boss Fight

Weaver's Boss Fight is a test of the player's endurance.
The boss itself isn't too hard. Around level 200 with straight-forward combat, aside from the poisoning.

However, Weaver lies in a section of the lair that's out of the player's reach. To get her to come to you, you'll have to piss her off by killing a significant amount of her children, the Spyders.

Each Spyder is level 78, attacks with melee or ranged and has a unique poison that saps all the player's skills, including health, prayer and combat stats.

The player has to endure 100 of these creatures in a multicombat zone, and emerge from the battle with enough supplies remaining to take on the boss.

To make matters worse, the special lamp sometimes gets extinguished, will your firemaking level be high enough to relight it?

Likewise, agility is required to even move over the cobwebbed caves. If your agility is sapped too low, you'll be stuck on the spot until you raise it again.

Oh yeah, if you leave, your killcount is reset. Bad luck.

Once you've killed 100 Spyders, Weaver will emerge. She uses the same poison as her children, but hits hard with both melee and ranged attacks. Making things even harder, 10 Spyders will assist her in the battle.

Kill her, and in her gory, explosive death, the Venom Diamond will be sent flying from her body. Without it, the remaining Spyders will die and the webs will dissolve. allowing the player to freely walk freely around the cave.

Aftermath

Grab the diamond and talk to Orelus. He's bound in webs and badly poisoned. He will thank you for your help, telling you he can die happy, having seen his old adversary defeated.

He warns you that you have many tough battles ahead of you, and gifts you an XP lamp to aid you in your quest. He then dies, and the player leaves him, the lair and the Spyders behind, forging on with their quest.

I am sad that Orelus died, you can add a scene where the player gives him a proper burial

Fighting off 100 spyders plus a boss seems a little too harsh... maybe reduce the amount to around 40 to 60. If not, reduce their level.

Or give a bank to res-stock, or a ghost musician

Just something to rebalance it.

My issue is the reward, compared to what other guardians give, measly Xp is a joke!

I suggest that Orcus' dying gift should be the cloak that helped him get so close to defeating Weaver: the Swordswarm Cloak.

It gives no stats, but a nice passive: you deal 20% of the damage you deal to your target to each other enemy in a 3x3 box around you.

maybe a chance to inflict the damage...

A bank is an absolute no. It's a test of endurance, a bank would ruin it.

I could be persuaded to lower the level of the Spyders, or the amount, but frankly I don't think I need to.
Any self-respecting slayer can camp out at a task for well over 100 kills, for monsters of well over level 78. I'm almost certain that I, at level one hundred and twenty-something, could do this - I've done very similar before on slayer tasks, 200 greater demons in 1 go, well over 100 bloodveld (level 76) in one, and literally hundreds of fire giants in 1 go.
Consider all the things you can use to help you nowadays. A cannon, an aura, a familiar, extra large potion flasks, Guthan's armour. I manage the slayer tasks I was talking about without them all.
How hard are these bosses meant to be?



And as for the reward, I'm having a little search through the rewards for other guardians, and you're right. My reward is crap. I should've done my research before choosing it.

The new rewards are:
The Slayer Cloak, a statless cloak that gives you a chance to deal 20% of the damage you hit on one monster to all adjacent monsters on slayer tasks only (that's in keeping with the theme and should sort out any balancing issues)
Keep the enchanted regangue seeds, allowing the player to make specialist antipoison potions that work against both poison and disease
30000 slayer XP, 10k smithing, firemaking, farming, agility and herblore XP granted "as Orelus imparts his wisdom upon you"

well for people around level 100 like me, I have trouble reaching that 100 mark in one go. I can do about 75 to 95 fire giants in one go...and that is pushing an emptying of supplies, 0 prayer points, and like 250 LP.

Well, how hard are these bosses meant to be? Should a level 100 be able to do them?

Frankly, I think there is some discreptancy among us on the difficulty of the bosses. Read through other boss walkthroughs and see what I mean.

Well, since level 110's are known to have defeated Nomad, maybe make it challenging for for people for every level. Like on a level gradient. The spyders for example could be level 100+ for level 138 people, whereas they could be around level 65 for people like me. Because if it is an endurance test, then blocking out people of a certain combat level would make this quest undoable. Keeping the level gradient, however, can keep the fight in proportion.

EDIT: I mean, yeah. There is. My boss fight is just a single dude with a few skeletal helpers running around like Nomad. However, he is challenging enough to complete in one go. (Or with multiple attempts depending on your level.)

I hate the idea of making bosses easier for lower level players and harder for higher level players. The whole point of an MMORPG is that if you don't have a level for something, you have to work to get the level. I simply will not make the boss variable depending on level.

Compare this to the fight caves, where you kill:
48 level 22s
40 level 45s
36 level 90s
34 level 180s
33 level 360s
and 1 level 702

It's doable, I promise. It's about endurance. That means level helps, but it isn't everything. It's about being smart and picking the right set up too. Using blood spells, Guthans, a cannon or the Vampirism Aura all make this considerably easy - and at level 100 you could do it if you use those. There are prayer potions specially designed for endurance too.

I honestly think, for a quest as epic as this, I'm not being too hard. I don't really see how you can complain about "blocking out people of a certain combat level". It's a combat based quest, if we tried to include people of all levels, we'd have level 3s doing this without putting any effort in.

In the fight caves, you have nothing to loose. In here however, it is different, but if you have it proportionally difficult, then the difficulty would remain constant.

Hm... I could use bloods. Perhaps make the spyders have a proportionally low LP and defense but high strength and attack?

Ah, so your problem is the possibility of loosing items. That's easily rectified.

Most boss fights these days are what I call "semi-safe". That is, unless you're an absolute idiot, dying won't loose you anything. In Nomad's Requiem, for example, you spawn about 10 steps away from where your grave spawns, should you die. In Branches of Darkmeyer, you always keep your teleport to Darkmeyer along with the robes required to freely walk around there, so no matter where you spawn, you'll be able to get to your gravestone in under 30 seconds. And in Firemaker's Curse, every time you die, you loose nothing and spawn in the previous room with one of the other characters claiming to have rescued you from the brink of death. I'll put in a similar mechanism if it puts your mind at ease.

I'm still not making difficulty proportional to level.

Okay. That at least makes it more reasonable.

Now, if you die, would that force you to restart the battle, or start where you left off?