Earthlock - Part 12 - Gobsmacked
4That was fast. The goblin with the handle we were pursuing led us straight to the boss! Here is one more type of goblin, the GobKing. As you may have figured, he's the one commanding all these goblins to cause mischief in the area that nobody has been able to resolve. But these guys are the heroes of a video game, and solving the unsolvable is but a daily occurrence.
You might remember how much trouble I had with Varlük. Well, they're going to step it up here, and this is where I actually encountered a Game Over because, for a reason I wasn't too clear about, the GobKing kept on getting stronger and stronger until he could nearly one-shot the entire party with overwhelming strength. I had a feeling Ive being added to the party was exactly what was needed to keep the GobKing in check, though I couldn't figure out what it could be. (By the way, you can see up-close images of the heroes' weapons in the Game Over screen, such as Amon's knife and blaster, Gnart's mortar and pestle, and what I'm guessing is Ive's gauntlet, though it looks kind of small.
Mercifully though, Frogboy, now that he's free to assist the main characters, can provide advice on how to fight these bosses if you lose to them at least once. The advice gets progressively more complicated AND less useful with time, but this is the first boss, to my knowledge, where such advice is given, and he'll tell you outright what to do.
As it seems, GobKing has a unique rage meter. This fills up whenever short-range moves are used on him but does not increase when targeted by projectile attacks. The meter is depicted as a series of starbursts beneath his HP gauge, and GobKing will occasionally spend them to deal more damage for a few turns (depicted with a red aura on his head). The more starbursts there are, the more damage he'll do. This means your best scheme is to have Amon in his Blaster stance, Ive in her Slinger stance, Olia in her Veteran stance, and Gnart in either stance depending on which is more useful. It also means you should enter this battle with plenty of ammunition for both Amon and Ive. So I decided I would fight through minimizing GobKing's rage meter, though it seems the stun from Ive's Thunder Lance still increased it to some extent. This fight might have been easier had I used Ive's regular lances. Not sure. Bear in mind, though, that GobKing can raise his rage on his own, though it costs him a turn to do so, and he'll need another turn to cash in his rage chips. Still a lot lower than when I'd keep inadvertently building it up and sealing our fate.
The defeat of the GobKing has not only cleared the areas prior of goblins (though not subsequent areas), but it also leads Olia to the third machine part (out of four), a bird to free, and access to the mines, which is...more of the Zabirum region. But this is the last one before the next region.