Bosses in RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg | Tabletop Tutorial Island P5
Welcome to the final Tabletop Tutorial Island post, ‘Scapers! And just in time, too — the RuneScape Kingdoms Kickstarter launches in only 7 days, on Tuesday 31st May!
If you haven’t followed the Kickstarter already, go do that now. Want a peek at what’s included first? Check out the pledge level reveal.
Back with us? Then here’s what we’ve covered so far:
- Part 1 - Game Overview
- Part 2 - Skilling
- Part 3 - Exploration
- Part 4 - Capes, Quest, and the Vault Deck
And now you’re finally ready, ‘Scapers. It’s time to leave Tutorial Island and learn how to battle a boss! But first…
Mini Spotlights: TzTok-Jad and Wise Old Man!
After you encounter Draynor and Delrith, the third campaign in your RuneScape Kingdoms board game will pit you against a primal force of heat and rage…
TzTok-Jad — or, ‘Jad’ for short — is the biggest and baddest thing you’ll face in the TzHaar Fight Caves. But where does Jad come into the story of the board game, you ask? You’ll have to play to find out!
Truth be told, Jad may not be the most willing participant in this tale. Either way, you’ll need to outlast his rage to have any chance of facing the real villain of this story…
No, the Wise Old Man isn’t the villain! He can help you defeat some of them, though. With his spectacles and party hat, the Wise Old Man has one of the most recognisable faces in all of Gielinor. A retired adventurer himself, he’s a formidable wizard and a powerful ally.
Although you’ll find him in the TzKal-Zuk Expansion, the Wise Old Man (or, Dionysius, as he’s sometimes known), can be enlisted to aid you during any of your campaigns, by delaying rising danger and sharing ancient knowledge of questionable origins…
Facing Bosses in RuneScape Kingdoms
by Jamie Perkins (Product Owner)
As we covered in Part 1, the RuneScape Kingdoms core game is made up of four campaigns. And at the end of each campaign, there’s a boss lying in wait!
Let’s take the Vampyre Slayer campaign as an example. If you take a look at the campaign board below, you’ll see the final campaign quest instructs one adventurer to travel to Draynor Manor:
Boss Board and Terrain
Most of your adventures will happen on the main game board, giving you a bird’s eye view of the action. But boss fights? Those happen face-to-face! Flip the campaign board over and you’ll find a 3x3 grid set on the boss’s home turf.
Boss fights come with terrain cards unique to that boss, a little something like this:
As you’ve probably guessed from the above, the final showdown with Count Draynor takes place in the deep, dark crypt beneath Draynor Manor… yikes!
Okay, that’s all well and good. But how do boss encounters actually work?
How Boss Encounters Work
Just like you do in the main exploration phase of the campaign, each player will take turns, but the choices you have in the boss phase are different. And they’re not just different to the exploration phase. They even vary from one boss to the next!
When it’s your turn, you can move and use one skill. Each skill has a different action that’ll help you defeat the boss — whether that’s inflicting damage, affecting the terrain, or even pushing the boss around the board.
Let’s look at some examples from the Count Draynor encounter:
As you’d expect, using your melee skill will let you do some damage. (Pssst! Big hint time: This battle will be much easier if you grabbed the stake earlier in the campaign…)
Because finding resources involves spending a lot of time looking at the ground, the experience you gain in gathering can help you navigate unfamiliar terrain. So, you can use your gathering skill to move other adventurers out of harm’s way, or even push Count Draynor so he’s right where you want him. Sometimes position can mean the difference between life and and saying “hello” to Death. If you find yourself in a sticky spot, using this at the right time could be crucial!
But skills don’t always do the same thing from one fight to the next. Depending on which skills you’ve trained, your role in the boss encounters might change.
In one encounter, it might be your job to deal damage to the boss. In another, you might find yourself defending the group instead, or distracting the boss by taunting them while your ally prepares to strike.
That means every adventurer has a role to play in the success of your campaigns, no matter which skills they’ve chosen to train — and those roles can change from one boss encounter to the next!
Boss Behaviours and Initiative
Before anyone takes a turn — including the boss — you’ll need to determine who goes first. And second. And third. And so on.
That’s right! In boss encounters, you can actually see what’s going to happen next, helping you plan ahead. In the same way as playing a video game helps you learn a boss’s behaviour patterns, the board game gives you the chance to interpret the flow of battle and devise a winning strategy.
Here’s how it works:
Initiative Track
Each adventurer has an initiative card. These cards are laid out in a row at random, with a random boss behaviour card after each one. Here’s an example:
From left to right, players take their turn when their initiative card is next in line. But between player turns, the boss gets to exact their revenge!
With ‘Bloodlust’, Count Draynor leaps forwards and attacks any adventurers foolish enough to have lingered in the same space. Each unlucky adventurer takes a defence skill test, and those who fail suffer three wounds. Not only that: Count Draynor heals a wound, too!
Now, with that in mind, player turn order feels pretty important, don’tcha think? Luckily, the thieving skill lets you change things in your favour:
Using sleight of hand, you can shift cards on the initiative track, giving your group the chance to act before Count Draynor retaliates. Although, it might sometimes be advantageous to move after Count Draynor, too…
Where to Go Next
Well, ‘Scapers, that concludes our Tabletop Tutorial Island series! Hopefully, that’s given you a good idea of how boss encounters work in RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg, ready for the Kickstarter to launch on May 31st!
Want to back the game on Kickstarter? Follow the campaign now so you’re ready for launch!
Want to get hyped with other ‘Scapers? Join the Facebook group!
Want to see how the game plays? Then check out the quick digital walkthrough videos on the RuneScape and Old School RuneScape YouTube channels!
