The Keep:Killing Bosses As Fast As Possible

The Keep: Index > The Mage's Tower > Killing Bosses As Fast As Possible

So you want to complete boss quests quickly eh? It is not a task for the feint of heart, and doing it alone, is not an option. But if that is what you want, there is a way to do so.

The technique

1. Be a Mage
2. Always wear the best INT gear that you have.
   • If you don't have a piece of INT gear for a slot equip STR gear in that slot.
   • If you have multiple pieces of gear with the highest INT for a slot, but one has STR as well, equip that.
3. Whenever you have enough mana cast Burst Of Flames, unless any of the following is true:
   • There is no boss quest active.
   • You have done enough damage to kill the boss when you next cron
   • You believe that your damage, combined with the damage you think your party will do when they cron is enough to kill the boss.
4. Never spend mana on anything else, unless your mana is full, or would overfill on your next cron.
5. Do tasks normally

This technique assumes that you are doing all of your tasks reliably.

Properly setting up bosses

The game always keeps track of the damage that your tasks and skills do, even if there is no active boss. This means that damage is never wasted unless your cron while there is no boss active.

Because of this it is best to wait until right at the end of the day to start a boss. This gives your party more opportunity to join the quest, which means more people will do damage and more people will get rewards. As long as you start the quest before anyone crons for the next day there is no waste.

It is not possible to do more than one quest per day, since you can only cron once per day.

Wait isn't a Warrior better?

No. There are 2 main factors to this.

Task Value reduces damage

STR increases the amount of damage that you do each time you complete a task. This is one of the few places that does use diminishing returns. So the more STR you have the better.

However STR is not the only factor in boss damage. The game tracks a special state for each task called Task Value. This is separate from your streak value, and is not visible in game. However the color of the task is based on the values, red tasks have lower value, blue has higher value. Doing a task increases its value, and while that sounds like a good thing. A higher task value actually decreases the rewards a task gives you, as well as how much damage you deal for completing the task. This system is designed to encourage players to become more reliable at the tasks they aren't doing enough, since those tasks have more rewards and deal more damage.

The opposing effect though, means that if you are doing all of your tasks reliably, your tasks will have high value (be very blue), and this will massively reduce the damage that you do significantly. Because of this it takes very high STR values to do significant amounts of damage from tasks. Therefor STR builds in general aren't great for damage, and Brutal Smash scaled off of STR

Brutal Smash Has Diminishing Returns

This means that as you increase your STR the amount of damage you get out of Brutal Smash increases less and less. This combined with the task value problem really limits the amount of damage a warrior can output.

But why is Mage so much better?

Burst of flames is the best skill in the game

Burst of flames scales linearly with INT. Increasing your INT will always result in your damage increasing at the same rate no matter how high. Burst of flames also grants xp, giving more xp for higher task value. This means if you are reliably doing your tasks you are getting more xp, not less, unlike everything else that cares about task value.

This is not to say though that Burst of Flames deals more damage. In fact a Warrior with 200 STR casting Brutal Smash will deal 40 damage, while a Mage casting Burst of Flames with 200 INT will only deal half of that. What makes this combination so good is that...

INT is the best stat in the game

INT increases the amount of maximum mana you have. This scaling is another one of the rare cases where diminishing returns is not used. This means increasing your INT will always give you more mana.

Everything in the game that gives you mana (once your max mana is more than 100), gives you a percentage of your max mana, not a fixed number. However, skills cost a fixed amount of mana to cast. This means having more INT means you always get more mana, which means you can cast any skill more often. This is why you want to be wearing the best INT armor most of the time.

Additionally more INT gives you more experience with each task, meaning you will level up faster, meaning you can get more INT faster, meaning you can cast Burst of Flames more, meaning you have more PER, meaning you get more gold. Get it?

Because of this while the previous level 200 Mage vs Warrior scenario has the mage dealing half of the damage each cast. The mage can cast Burst of Flames more than 14 times as often.

Some more technical notes

The math here is actually really complicated, so much so that it is actually easier to simulate and measure than to calculate.

I have put together a Google Colab that breaks down the damage of different skills and boss damage. It has a module that can simulate the optimal strategy for warriors and mages accounting for armor, critical hit, and constant maximum task value. It even simulates every arrangement of STR and INT for each level so find the best stat balance at every level.

A simulation of the optimal damage each class can do in a day. Assumes that the player does 30 tasks, casts their damage spell as much as possible, and all tasks have the maximum task value.

In practice Warriors do deal more damage up until around level 150. But this depends on what armor you have available to you and how many tasks you do each day.

What next?

So you slaughtered all of the bosses in the game, probably multiple times even. Looted their corpses of their belongings and celebrated in the bounty.

What have you done!

Most of these were animals. Attacking because you approached them, and they were scared. They were right to be too, look at yourself. LOOK AT YOURSELF.

Wearing bright shiny armor, caring a giant glowing rod. Covered in the blood of their brethren. You thought you were in the right.

You, thought you, were in the right?

Did you do this to defend people, to clear the area of dangerous creatures.

Or did you do this for loot.

What have you done.

Maybe you can distract yourself by seeking out the games other achievements, perhaps something that doesn't involve slaughtering innocent creatures, you monster.