“Oeeeee!”
“Yeeeehaaa!”
“Ahumph!”
I jump from one stone to the next. I then look around to make sure there are no enemies and turn back to make sure the Good Followers are following me properly before making the next jump.
“Ahyooou!”
Yeah, this is kind of boring. And the high tension of having less than five minutes to break the core plus the fact I can be ambushed at any time is killing me.
To break the tension, I’m having a little fun by making weird cries every time I jump. It also fits the crazy Mad Rat persona perfectly, so why not?
“Ughyaaaah!”
Hahaha! This is one of the Annoyers’ cries. If there’s any player who encountered them watching the match, I’m sure he’ll recognize this one.
“Yoshii!”
If only I could lay an egg right now…
I make a victory pose while I wait for the Good Followers to make the last jump. I’m going to save this part and upload a new ‘Mad Rat’s Eccentricities’ video soon.
“Finally reached the other shore! And still, no enemies found…”
I look at the clock. The game’s always displaying a clock that says how much time we have left for the match to end. In the top left corner, right on top of the HP and the other status bars.
“Barely four minutes left…”
I would like to do a little roleplay here, but if I do, I might get too absorbed in it and end up failing. I’ll have to hold myself back… I’ll need to hold myself back. It’ll be very, very hard.
It’s hard to advance because of the dense vegetation hindering our advance. But it also obscures us from our enemies at the same time. I mean, it’s hard to notice somebody sneaking in the dark when there are glowing flowers that catch all your attention and prevent you from seeing outside their light radius.
We safely reach our destination. The dungeon core is about twenty meters away, surrounded by several fairies flying around. And very close to it, facing the lake, there is…
“What the heck were they thinking!? Now I can understand why Ricard was pushed back so fast, and why I didn’t encounter any enemies until now… The crazy guys really made an all-in attack!”
It’s a dungeon portal. One of the three portals we had to create for the match is placed as close as possible to the dungeon core.
This allows them to go completely on the offense while still having the chance to defend the dungeon core in case it’s needed. They just need to send a few units back using this portal, because as long as there’s one unit alive within twenty meters of the core there’s no way for the enemy team to destroy it.
I’m sure neither Ricard nor Laura expected this. They’re fighting as if the enemies were playing similarly to us, and they are trying to stall for time with weaker forces than the enemies have. If they don’t notice the enemies sent almost all their units to attack us, they’ll be overwhelmed sooner or later.
This is bad. Really bad! If they see me trying to destroy the dungeon core and come back with reinforcements, the time limit will end and I’m not sure if we’re going to win or not…
If the enemies manage to defeat Ricard or Laura and reach the dungeon core, we’ll tie. Because I also defeated one of them. But if both of them die, or if Clara also dies… we’ll lose. I can’t allow reinforcements to come!
You can win the match by destroying the enemy core or killing all enemy players, of course. But you also win if your team was the one who got closer to the enemy core. And in case both teams reached similar positions, then the team who killed most enemy champions wins. Finally, if there’s a draw when the time ends, the first team to kill an enemy champion wins.
The winning conditions are designed in such a way that both defense and offense are viable options. It’s more dangerous to go on the offense, but it’s also easier to win with a successful attack. If you focus on defense, you’ll have a shorter time to make a counterattack, unless you manage to kill all enemy champions. Maybe your team won’t have time to reach anywhere close to where the enemies did before they retreated, and thus end up losing even if the other team took more losses.
The only saving grace is that they put the dungeon portal facing the lake instead of the dungeon core. I’m sure they did it to prevent us from seeing the dungeon core right next to the portal and come up with a strategy to sneak into it and have an easy win. But this is very good in my current situation because if I can prevent them from noticing I’m here, they won’t send any reinforcements and I should have enough time to kill the fairies and destroy the core.
I don’t know how well are the rest of my team doing, and we might lose the match. That’s why I must destroy the dungeon core: it’s the only way to secure our victory.
What should I do…?
I turn around at the Good Followers. Yeah… this is the only plan I can think of.
“You wait here for a minute and then launch an attack at the same time I do. I’ll go around to the dungeon portal and prevent the fairies from warning the other enemies of our presence.”
If I reach the other side in a minute, I should still have about three minutes to defeat everyone and destroy the dungeon core. This should be enough.
Oh, and just in case you misunderstood… There’s no way the dungeon mobs can understand complex commands like this one. What they can actually do is ‘stay still’ and ‘attack when I attack’. So yes, I said something impossible for them to do, but the real orders I gave them are simple enough for them to follow.
I use the bushes and flowers to hide my presence as I walk to the other side of the dungeon core. I’m not too worried about being spotted as long as I stay away from the flowers’ light. But I didn’t take into account the time spent moving through them, and it takes more time to reach the dungeon portal than I expected.
“Only a little over two minutes…”
I don’t want to shout just in case there’s an enemy champion close to the portal on the other side, so there’s no other way than to make the first attack and wait for the Good Followers to join combat.
I cast Cold Blast, I don’t want to get everyone’s aggro with Chain Lightning. It’s also the first time I don’t want the immobilization status effect to be applied.
Why, you ask? Well…
My magic activates and a cold explosion happens right next to my victim. Luckily, it isn’t encased in ice and prepares itself for combat.
Then, the three Good Followers appear from the other side and attack the fairies. As I already expected, the fairies focus on them and completely ignore me.
Oh, I think I forgot to say… the one who received the Cold Blast wasn’t a fairy but one of the Good Followers! Hahaha! That’s why I hoped the immobilization wouldn’t activate, as well as the reason why the fairies aren’t attacking me.
I wanted the fairies to move as far as possible from the dungeon portal and the only way I could think of was to get my mobs to pull them away. But I also needed to be ready to stop any of them from calling reinforcements… so I had to make them wait. And the AI isn’t good enough to have such a complex behavior by default…
The only remaining option was to make them ‘attack when I attack’. I just never intended to attack a fairy.
So yeah, the three Good Followers engage the fairies after my first attack, one of them still covered with fine cold dust. It’s a hard fight for them because they have no ranged attacks and the enemies can fly.
Who am I trying to deceive? There’s no way they can win this if the fairies keep their distance.
Meanwhile, I wait for a good opportunity. I want to hit as many of them as possible with Chain Lightning to reduce the chances of them slipping away. Maybe I’m too cautious? They don’t show any sign of wanting to cross the portal to warn the enemy players, but I don’t want to risk it.
About thirty seconds pass and the battle changes. It looks like the fairies aren’t very smart. They have run out of MP and engaged in melee with the Good Followers.
My mobs are able to retaliate now, but the fairies still hold the numerical advantage as well as having better mobility. If I don’t join the battle soon, my mobs are going to die. They are under 50% HP after taking the initial spell barrage.
I know, I know… I said fairies like to play hide-and-seek and such things. But if the other team set them to ‘protect the dungeon core’, they can’t be as annoying as usual because they need to stay close to it. So their behavior changes too.
And this means two good things to me! First, the enemies didn’t improve their basic AI, so I can be sure they won’t call for reinforcements. Second, they are now closer to each other and I can use Chain Lightning effectively now.
“Chain Lighting!” I say in a low voice. I would usually shout it, even if there’s no need at all to say the name of the skills you use, but I’m scared of warning the enemy.
The lightning hits the first fairy and jumps to the closest ones. I don’t have the champion’s buff, and the fairies aren’t basic mobs, so not a single one of them ‘dies’. Though the first two ones are now at less than half HP, almost at a quarter.
But now I got their aggro, and they are coming here. Fuck! There are even two lucky fairies who were too far away and didn’t take any damage at all!
I distance myself from the portal and engage the fairies in melee. I don’t want to be unlucky and have one of them accidentally run inside the portal in the middle of the fight.
“Come here, you little shits!” I try to hit them with my staff, but they’re too fast. “Chain Lighting!”
Two of them drop after being hit by my spell, but the remaining five are still alive and attacking me. I’m lucky my mobs are still doing good and engage them in melee again.
“You’re supposed to be my guards! Why did it take you so long to help me!?”
Is it really that hard to have good followers? They are supposed to be way better than the Stitched, but they still make some stupid mistakes…
I’m being too strict here and I know it makes no sense. But only a minute remains and we’re still fighting! I’m getting anxious!
“Die already!”
I unintentionally shout. Oh shit! I hope the enemy players didn’t hear me!
One fairy dies to one of the Good Follower’s attacks, and another one falls to my Cold Blast. I don’t have enough MP to cast Chain Lighting again, so I must finish them with Cold Blasts.
Only three fairies remain! I’m so close to crushing the dungeon core!
It’s now that something strikes me like lighting. If I used Grand Finale, everything would be over by now.
“Why have I been so stupid!? If I had used it, I could have killed all fairies in an instant! And now I don’t have enough MP to cast it! Aaaagh! I hate myself!”
I don’t care anymore about being heard by the enemies. There are less than thirty seconds left. There’s literally no time for them to come if they haven’t noticed my attack yet. And if they already did, it doesn’t matter if they hear me again.
Another fairy falls to the poison damage and another one falls to the retaliation damage from my Lighting Shield. It doesn’t die, but a Good Follower takes advantage of the stun time to finish it.
There’s still the last fairy left, and I have no MP at all.
Twenty seconds. Nineteen, eighteen…
“Die! Die! Die!”
I wildly swing my staff around, trying to hit the last fairy. Everyone’s trying to attack the same fairy, who desperately avoids every attack.
Because we’re so close, I have to duck to avoid one of my mob’s mace attacks.
This game has friendly fire active all the time. The only thing monsters don’t do is target allied units with their attacks, but if you put yourself in the middle of it…
“Hey! Watch out! Don’t hit me with your attacks!”
I’m forced to make a weird movement to avoid the weapon’s path. And it’s during this movement that I feel my staff hitting something and I soon hear a *Plof!* sound.
I look below and see the last fairy’s corpse.
“Hahaha! I hit it while avoiding the attack when I couldn’t hit it with the normal attacks! Hahahaha! Wait, there’s no time to laugh now!”
During the fight, I’ve been moving in the dungeon core’s direction. So right now, I only have to rise my hand to crush it. Which I quickly do.
The dungeon core cracks and its fragments scatter through the air, releasing an intense purple light.
The victory screen appears in front of me. I don’t know what’s the situation inside our dungeon, but I managed to secure our victory!
“Fufufu! Hahaha! Everything worked as planned! Hahaha!”
I rise my arms and cast Chain Lighting into the air as I laugh. I was out of MP, but when the match finished, we recovered all our HP, MP, etc.
Remaining time… 8 seconds.
Wow! That was close! If I got distracted… I almost threw away our victory by laughing at my epic lucky staff hit!
“Hahaha! Nobody can stop me! Hahaha!”
But I’ll behave as if everything went according to plan and I didn’t forget about the Grand Finale skill.
Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing I didn’t use Grand Final because it’s now a secret for the following matches. Our team’s trump card is still unknown to the enemies!
“All went according to plan! Hahaha!”
You and I know it didn’t…. But I’ll take this secret to the grave.
The game teleports me out of the dungeon in a white flash.
After the ‘Followers, follow me!’ meme, the next one to appear in the DMA forums was Mad Rat’s surprised expression when killing the last fairy with the staff after ducking, with the ‘All went according to plan!’ text.
All those memes were in retaliation for the horrible experiences some players had in ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’. To vent out their anger. Andreu always believed they were to make fun of him, though he didn’t care at all.
“Oeeeee!”
“Yeeeehaaa!”
“Ahumph!”
I jump from one stone to the next. I then look around to make sure there are no enemies and turn back to make sure the Good Followers are following me properly before making the next jump.
“Ahyooou!”
Yeah, this is kind of boring. And the high tension of having less than five minutes to break the core plus the fact I can be ambushed at any time is killing me.
To break the tension, I’m having a little fun by making weird cries every time I jump. It also fits the crazy Mad Rat persona perfectly, so why not?
“Ughyaaaah!”
Hahaha! This is one of the Annoyers’ cries. If there’s any player who encountered them watching the match, I’m sure he’ll recognize this one.
“Yoshii!”
If only I could lay an egg right now…
I make a victory pose while I wait for the Good Followers to make the last jump. I’m going to save this part and upload a new ‘Mad Rat’s Eccentricities’ video soon.
“Finally reached the other shore! And still, no enemies found…”
I look at the clock. The game’s always displaying a clock that says how much time we have left for the match to end. In the top left corner, right on top of the HP and the other status bars.
“Barely four minutes left…”
I would like to do a little roleplay here, but if I do, I might get too absorbed in it and end up failing. I’ll have to hold myself back… I’ll need to hold myself back. It’ll be very, very hard.
It’s hard to advance because of the dense vegetation hindering our advance. But it also obscures us from our enemies at the same time. I mean, it’s hard to notice somebody sneaking in the dark when there are glowing flowers that catch all your attention and prevent you from seeing outside their light radius.
We safely reach our destination. The dungeon core is about twenty meters away, surrounded by several fairies flying around. And very close to it, facing the lake, there is…
“What the heck were they thinking!? Now I can understand why Ricard was pushed back so fast, and why I didn’t encounter any enemies until now… The crazy guys really made an all-in attack!”
It’s a dungeon portal. One of the three portals we had to create for the match is placed as close as possible to the dungeon core.
This allows them to go completely on the offense while still having the chance to defend the dungeon core in case it’s needed. They just need to send a few units back using this portal, because as long as there’s one unit alive within twenty meters of the core there’s no way for the enemy team to destroy it.
I’m sure neither Ricard nor Laura expected this. They’re fighting as if the enemies were playing similarly to us, and they are trying to stall for time with weaker forces than the enemies have. If they don’t notice the enemies sent almost all their units to attack us, they’ll be overwhelmed sooner or later.
This is bad. Really bad! If they see me trying to destroy the dungeon core and come back with reinforcements, the time limit will end and I’m not sure if we’re going to win or not…
If the enemies manage to defeat Ricard or Laura and reach the dungeon core, we’ll tie. Because I also defeated one of them. But if both of them die, or if Clara also dies… we’ll lose. I can’t allow reinforcements to come!
You can win the match by destroying the enemy core or killing all enemy players, of course. But you also win if your team was the one who got closer to the enemy core. And in case both teams reached similar positions, then the team who killed most enemy champions wins. Finally, if there’s a draw when the time ends, the first team to kill an enemy champion wins.
The winning conditions are designed in such a way that both defense and offense are viable options. It’s more dangerous to go on the offense, but it’s also easier to win with a successful attack. If you focus on defense, you’ll have a shorter time to make a counterattack, unless you manage to kill all enemy champions. Maybe your team won’t have time to reach anywhere close to where the enemies did before they retreated, and thus end up losing even if the other team took more losses.
The only saving grace is that they put the dungeon portal facing the lake instead of the dungeon core. I’m sure they did it to prevent us from seeing the dungeon core right next to the portal and come up with a strategy to sneak into it and have an easy win. But this is very good in my current situation because if I can prevent them from noticing I’m here, they won’t send any reinforcements and I should have enough time to kill the fairies and destroy the core.
I don’t know how well are the rest of my team doing, and we might lose the match. That’s why I must destroy the dungeon core: it’s the only way to secure our victory.
What should I do…?
I turn around at the Good Followers. Yeah… this is the only plan I can think of.
“You wait here for a minute and then launch an attack at the same time I do. I’ll go around to the dungeon portal and prevent the fairies from warning the other enemies of our presence.”
If I reach the other side in a minute, I should still have about three minutes to defeat everyone and destroy the dungeon core. This should be enough.
Oh, and just in case you misunderstood… There’s no way the dungeon mobs can understand complex commands like this one. What they can actually do is ‘stay still’ and ‘attack when I attack’. So yes, I said something impossible for them to do, but the real orders I gave them are simple enough for them to follow.
I use the bushes and flowers to hide my presence as I walk to the other side of the dungeon core. I’m not too worried about being spotted as long as I stay away from the flowers’ light. But I didn’t take into account the time spent moving through them, and it takes more time to reach the dungeon portal than I expected.
“Only a little over two minutes…”
I don’t want to shout just in case there’s an enemy champion close to the portal on the other side, so there’s no other way than to make the first attack and wait for the Good Followers to join combat.
I cast Cold Blast, I don’t want to get everyone’s aggro with Chain Lightning. It’s also the first time I don’t want the immobilization status effect to be applied.
Why, you ask? Well…
My magic activates and a cold explosion happens right next to my victim. Luckily, it isn’t encased in ice and prepares itself for combat.
Then, the three Good Followers appear from the other side and attack the fairies. As I already expected, the fairies focus on them and completely ignore me.
Oh, I think I forgot to say… the one who received the Cold Blast wasn’t a fairy but one of the Good Followers! Hahaha! That’s why I hoped the immobilization wouldn’t activate, as well as the reason why the fairies aren’t attacking me.
I wanted the fairies to move as far as possible from the dungeon portal and the only way I could think of was to get my mobs to pull them away. But I also needed to be ready to stop any of them from calling reinforcements… so I had to make them wait. And the AI isn’t good enough to have such a complex behavior by default…
The only remaining option was to make them ‘attack when I attack’. I just never intended to attack a fairy.
So yeah, the three Good Followers engage the fairies after my first attack, one of them still covered with fine cold dust. It’s a hard fight for them because they have no ranged attacks and the enemies can fly.
Who am I trying to deceive? There’s no way they can win this if the fairies keep their distance.
Meanwhile, I wait for a good opportunity. I want to hit as many of them as possible with Chain Lightning to reduce the chances of them slipping away. Maybe I’m too cautious? They don’t show any sign of wanting to cross the portal to warn the enemy players, but I don’t want to risk it.
About thirty seconds pass and the battle changes. It looks like the fairies aren’t very smart. They have run out of MP and engaged in melee with the Good Followers.
My mobs are able to retaliate now, but the fairies still hold the numerical advantage as well as having better mobility. If I don’t join the battle soon, my mobs are going to die. They are under 50% HP after taking the initial spell barrage.
I know, I know… I said fairies like to play hide-and-seek and such things. But if the other team set them to ‘protect the dungeon core’, they can’t be as annoying as usual because they need to stay close to it. So their behavior changes too.
And this means two good things to me! First, the enemies didn’t improve their basic AI, so I can be sure they won’t call for reinforcements. Second, they are now closer to each other and I can use Chain Lightning effectively now.
“Chain Lighting!” I say in a low voice. I would usually shout it, even if there’s no need at all to say the name of the skills you use, but I’m scared of warning the enemy.
The lightning hits the first fairy and jumps to the closest ones. I don’t have the champion’s buff, and the fairies aren’t basic mobs, so not a single one of them ‘dies’. Though the first two ones are now at less than half HP, almost at a quarter.
But now I got their aggro, and they are coming here. Fuck! There are even two lucky fairies who were too far away and didn’t take any damage at all!
I distance myself from the portal and engage the fairies in melee. I don’t want to be unlucky and have one of them accidentally run inside the portal in the middle of the fight.
“Come here, you little shits!” I try to hit them with my staff, but they’re too fast. “Chain Lighting!”
Two of them drop after being hit by my spell, but the remaining five are still alive and attacking me. I’m lucky my mobs are still doing good and engage them in melee again.
“You’re supposed to be my guards! Why did it take you so long to help me!?”
Is it really that hard to have good followers? They are supposed to be way better than the Stitched, but they still make some stupid mistakes…
I’m being too strict here and I know it makes no sense. But only a minute remains and we’re still fighting! I’m getting anxious!
“Die already!”
I unintentionally shout. Oh shit! I hope the enemy players didn’t hear me!
One fairy dies to one of the Good Follower’s attacks, and another one falls to my Cold Blast. I don’t have enough MP to cast Chain Lighting again, so I must finish them with Cold Blasts.
Only three fairies remain! I’m so close to crushing the dungeon core!
It’s now that something strikes me like lighting. If I used Grand Finale, everything would be over by now.
“Why have I been so stupid!? If I had used it, I could have killed all fairies in an instant! And now I don’t have enough MP to cast it! Aaaagh! I hate myself!”
I don’t care anymore about being heard by the enemies. There are less than thirty seconds left. There’s literally no time for them to come if they haven’t noticed my attack yet. And if they already did, it doesn’t matter if they hear me again.
Another fairy falls to the poison damage and another one falls to the retaliation damage from my Lighting Shield. It doesn’t die, but a Good Follower takes advantage of the stun time to finish it.
There’s still the last fairy left, and I have no MP at all.
Twenty seconds. Nineteen, eighteen…
“Die! Die! Die!”
I wildly swing my staff around, trying to hit the last fairy. Everyone’s trying to attack the same fairy, who desperately avoids every attack.
Because we’re so close, I have to duck to avoid one of my mob’s mace attacks.
This game has friendly fire active all the time. The only thing monsters don’t do is target allied units with their attacks, but if you put yourself in the middle of it…
“Hey! Watch out! Don’t hit me with your attacks!”
I’m forced to make a weird movement to avoid the weapon’s path. And it’s during this movement that I feel my staff hitting something and I soon hear a *Plof!* sound.
I look below and see the last fairy’s corpse.
“Hahaha! I hit it while avoiding the attack when I couldn’t hit it with the normal attacks! Hahahaha! Wait, there’s no time to laugh now!”
During the fight, I’ve been moving in the dungeon core’s direction. So right now, I only have to rise my hand to crush it. Which I quickly do.
The dungeon core cracks and its fragments scatter through the air, releasing an intense purple light.
The victory screen appears in front of me. I don’t know what’s the situation inside our dungeon, but I managed to secure our victory!
“Fufufu! Hahaha! Everything worked as planned! Hahaha!”
I rise my arms and cast Chain Lighting into the air as I laugh. I was out of MP, but when the match finished, we recovered all our HP, MP, etc.
Remaining time… 8 seconds.
Wow! That was close! If I got distracted… I almost threw away our victory by laughing at my epic lucky staff hit!
“Hahaha! Nobody can stop me! Hahaha!”
But I’ll behave as if everything went according to plan and I didn’t forget about the Grand Finale skill.
Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing I didn’t use Grand Final because it’s now a secret for the following matches. Our team’s trump card is still unknown to the enemies!
“All went according to plan! Hahaha!”
You and I know it didn’t…. But I’ll take this secret to the grave.
The game teleports me out of the dungeon in a white flash.
After the ‘Followers, follow me!’ meme, the next one to appear in the DMA forums was Mad Rat’s surprised expression when killing the last fairy with the staff after ducking, with the ‘All went according to plan!’ text.
All those memes were in retaliation for the horrible experiences some players had in ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’. To vent out their anger. Andreu always believed they were to make fun of him, though he didn’t care at all.
