Bonemist: A death poll for the 3 month hardcore league (circa v1.2)

Beyond Spawns ...
Beyond mobs are pretty tanky at low levels and they spawn fairly often, as all Beyond players pretty quickly found out. So far I've left no Beyond mobs alive. But, kiting was routinely needed to turn one big battle against a Beyond spawn into a series of smaller battles. The frequency with which they spawn is a key reason that Bonemist was level 14(!) before reaching Brutus.

Brutus ...
The new Brutus fight seems quite fun. It's definitely more dynamic than before, and in a good way. It didn't last very long this time, though, because Bonemist was just too high level for him to put up much resistance.

Masters ...
The first mission with Haku was offered in normal Mud Flats. I found it interesting, but also quite confusing because his missions are so different from usual gameplay. It took a couple of minutes of getting hammered, after putting the spirit on Bonemist's back, to figure out that mobs were being resurrected and they were hitting Bonemist. Eventually I figured out that it was the Karui Spirit resurrecting mobs and I got her out alive.

It's a very good thing that I deliberately over-leveled Bonemist before attempting this. This death poll would have ended very early if I had not, as I had no idea what I was doing.

Life = 275; ES = 116; Mana = 172

Beyond ...
Beyond mobs still sometimes require kiting, but less now than when there was a surplus of life regen auras. The spawns are generally more fun to fight now, with their life regen having been reduced.

I abandoned the first Alira fight because the hasted chaos degen Beyond mobs showed up, along with (I believe) a righteous fire / flame surge rare. The second time I managed to spread out how mobs die, so that no Beyond mobs showed up and Alira went down. I defeated all three bandits, in the end, to get the extra passive point.


Merveil and Vaal ...
The new Merveil fight is much more dynamic now. It was fun and it took a little longer than in the past.

I wasn't certain whether Beyond mobs would spawn for Vaal. So, I pressed the attack with him as much as possible, to keep down the number of adds. He went down quite quickly to a barrage of fire traps, zombies, and spirits.


Masters ...
I've completed a Tora mission and two Catalina missions, all of which were easy. I failed an Elrion mission because I don't currently have the DPS to keep mobs from killing the relics.

My original plan was to level up Haku ASAP, to help with the leveling process. But, the catch 22 is that the defensive aspects of Bonemist's passives and gear aren't very strong yet, and so I'm not currently taking Haku's “in the field” missions.

I'll treat Haku as a long term project, instead of as a “rush” priority.

Life = 579; ES = 388; Mana = 347, resists are 50ish fire, 30ish cold, 75 lite, 0 chaos