Lu Li collected around forty scarabs, which was enough to complete the quest twice. The drop rate in Nightmare mode was very high - on average, every single monster would drop one quest item. If this was Elite mode, everyone would probably only receive enough quest items to complete the quest once.
These forty quest items were worth about 400 gold coins, or in other words, it was 40,000 dollars.
During the few weeks where this dungeon matched the mainstream player levels, the gold-collecting players would have better income. Unfortunately, players were only allowed to enter Elite mode dungeons once a week, otherwise, they would be rich already.
Azure Sea Breeze planned to purchase some scarabs to level up; he had earned quite a bit of money recently.
Moonlight had similar plans too; he wasn't a fan of leveling. His current levels were mostly gained from his time spent in the battlegrounds, but compared to expert level players, his level wasn't really an advantage at all.
Square Root 3 was busy trying to purchase more scarabs as well. If he purchased enough of these quest items, Lu Li decided that he might take the shortcut too.
There wasn't anything for him to hesitate about the situation. If he didn't participate, he could likely keep his number one spot on the level rankings.
The maximum number of times that the players could complete the quest was a hundred.
While a player was level 35, they could gain around half a level by completing this quest 20 times. As such, if they handed in the quest a hundred times, they could only hit a maximum of level 37.
For a player like Lu Li, who was almost level 39, he might not even reach level 40 with the maximum number of quests.
Lu Li began instructing everyone on where to position themselves.
"Everyone, position yourselves four yards apart from each other. Remnant Dream, make sure no one is standing between your pet and you, otherwise, the disease will spread to the others when your pet dies."
Theka would be an easy boss, as long as they positioned themselves well.
Its first skill was a debuff that dealt damage every second and reduced attributes.
This wasn't too much to handle, as long as your equipment was decent.
The most important aspects of this skill was that it was contagious. If players stood too close to each other, the debuff would spread in a radius of three yards, and it could also stack.
The situation would become dangerous if a player had more than three stacks.
The other skill was Theka's Summon. When Theka's health reached 30%, it would summon Skeletal Warriors from the corpse of the bugs.
Theka's Summon was a skill that belonged in Nightmare mode.
In Elite mode, Theka would use Theka Transform when it reached 30% of his remaining health.
It would turn into a giant scarab, becoming immune to all physical and shadow damage. This meant that classes like Warriors, Thieves, Warlocks and Shadow Priests couldn't deal any damage to it.
At the same time, any scarabs that remained alive would attack the players.
In Elite mode, as long as you killed all the scarabs, things would be fine. However, in Nightmare mode the scarabs would fight for Theka regardless of whether they were dead or alive.
"March, group fear!" Lu Li shouted.
March Rain had a much better game sense than her brother. She walked over to cast a Soul Shriek and all the monsters caught in it began to scatter.
Without the instructions from Lu Li, Lonesome Flower casted Arcane Explosion, while the others helped with their own group damage spells. Even Lu Li used his Fan of Knives.
Countless knives were tossed outwards from him, dealing damage to the monsters that they hit.
Unfortunately, the damage wasn't too significant.
Moonlight's Whirlwind was very useful in a situation like this. This spell dealt high damage and also provided him with good mobility. However, he became the target of the monsters when he got too close to them, so March Rain had to follow behind and heal him.
At this point, the Boss was immune to shadow and physical damage.
The main tank couldn't hold the aggro, so the other classes couldn't output damage either. Lu Li and the others gave up on attacking the Boss and started killing the monsters instead.
On the first cast of Invigorate, the strength of the monsters doubled.
On the second cast of Invigorate, the monsters' strength doubled again. These monsters had now grown strong enough to reach the standard of Elites.
If too many monsters remained after the third cast of Invigorate, they were guaranteed to wipe at this first Boss.
"Spread out and try to hit all the monsters. Don't panic - stay focused on your skills and try to hit as many monsters as you can," Lu Li instructed.
Invigorate had already been cast on these skeleton monsters twice. They were only a few dozen seconds away from the third Invigorate, and there were still many monsters left.
"Use your equipment effects, increase your damage, use anything you have! You don't need to hold back anything for later." If the team wiped, there would be no point in keeping these skills.
Everyone understood how urgent the situation was and they all began to use their strongest abilities.
Lu Li didn't have many of these special effects, but his damage wasn't low in the first place. He could kill one monster within three seconds, so he was still positively contributing to the team.
"Thirteen, twelve, ten, alright, nine…" Lu Li kept calculating the time and finally took the monsters down to nine before the third Invigorate was casted. They wouldn't definitely wipe if more than ten monsters remained, but the chances were still quite significant.
"Stop. Wandering, hold onto the monsters. Who's still doing damage? Do you want to lose points?" Lu Li yelled, catching everyone by surprise.
The third attribute that was given to the monsters by Invigorate was critical strike chance.
Wandering was the secondary tank. His equipment was built for defense and he also had damage reduction, so he could tank these monsters.
After this wave of monsters had been successfully killed, Theka became an easy target.
A few minutes later, he became a pile of dust of dust on the floor.
He had already been dead for too long, so his corpse returned to the ground. The only thing that kept him battling was his will. After he died, his will disappeared and his body instantly went through centuries of time.
The experience given was quite decent; this was Nightmare mode after all. However, it still wasn't enough for Lu Li to reach level 39. He probably had to wait for the next boss.
No one received any extra skill points either; skill points were even rarer than rare materials. Moreover, the dungeon had already been previously completed and this wasn't the First Clear.
"Alright, Remnant Dream, go loot the items," Lu Li said.
"Alright, I'll show you guys my magic." Remnant Dream didn't mind how dirty this pile of dust was and eagerly looted the corpse.