Walk Through

The "Affirmation of the Forsaken" map, home of the Thrashers, is set up as a linear dungeon. You start in a broken down entry room. The only place to breathe, buff, and think. Eerie, green light glows out of cracks in wall. The thrashers can be heard making their odd grunts and squelching noises in the area beyond. Do not attempt to go through the Thrashers area by yourself, and if you die here it will be very difficult to regain your belongings.

The entrance to the literal "grind" of the Thrasher encounter is to the right. If you change your mind (I will think no less of you), you can still turn around, go up the stairs, and then cast blink in Marion Crypt 2, back to Crypt 1, cast blink again and finally back to fresh air.

Ready? Ok, good. There is a clear entrance-way in the wall - step through it - there is then a small step down that leads to a tunnel carved through the rock. Once you step down into the tunnel, you will be unable to go back and must fight your way out.

As you first go down this tunnel, you will come to metal bars protruding from the ground. The bars don't raise until the first Thrasher is killed. If you don't see it, turn around - it's falling, screaming, out of the hole in the ceiling and flailing it's deranged limbs at you.

That was fun right? Now that it's dead, the bars will lower and you will be able to enter the next tunnel.

Continue through to each area - there are gates in two locations - at the beginning and middle. The entire beginning through middle tunnel is filled with Thrashers. You can run past them, but some of them may follow you into the middle area and trap you. It is a good idea to continue to watch your back regardless, as they do respawn in the tunnels.

Once you get to the end of the first major tunnel, you will see a gray room below you - jump down here when everyone in your party is ready. Three Thrashers will immediately appear and begin attacking the first person to enter. This person should immediately run to the Northwest corner (the crumbled section) and log off. The Thrashers will lose their aggro, and the remaining members of the party can jump down and prepare for the battle. Once the person logs on again, only ONE of the Thrashers will aggro, and the party can focus fire each Thrasher one by one.

After the sunken room is cleared, the second metal gate will open. There will be several thrashers in the next area already waiting for you.

Go to the Northwest corner, right at the bottom of the staircase, to make the Thrashers collect in the tunnel, allowing you and your party to fight them one or two at a time using a focus fire tactic.

Do not let anyone stay behind in the small gray room at the bottom of the staircase - the gate will lock again shortly after ONE person goes up through the opened gate, and the three insane Thrashers will re-spawn immediately and kill whoever is near them. Stick together.

After this upper room is empty, there will be one final long tunnel. This tunnel is much more narrow than the first and it is best to use a focus fire technique so as not to overwhelm your party.

You will have a small period of time to regroup, and you will see a chamber with a staircase leading to a strange, marked green door. This is the room the Thrashers guard. Apparently King Far'Nohl had nothing better for these things to do and wanted to give them a menial job of some kind, lest they go all GOLEM on Tos...but I digress.

The technique here is to jump down into the final room guarded by the three Thrashers and immediately run to the recessed wall towards the WEST, right at the bottom of the staircase (on the left). You will be safe in this corner and be able to use the same Aggro>Log Off>Log On>Focus Fire tactic to quickly clear the room of the last of the Thrashers.

The end of the dungeon features a chest, which will randomly spawn *GOOD LOOT* as soon as you open up the last door. The loot contents are detailed below.

If you don't take the items in the chest they will still be there the next time you go through the Thrasher's dungeon and make it to the end (as long as the room has not reset by you leaving).

You can now jump back down through the hole in the wall, into the entrance chamber and choose to continue killing Thrashers and grabbing loot, or returning back to the safety of Marion.

Notes on Navigating the Thrasher's Dungeon:

1) Once you've killed a room in the dungeon, Thrashers won't spawn there until you leave it. Use this to your advantage and make sure that you're fully healed before you move on to the next area.

2) Never try to stand at the entrance to a room in the dungeon and kill the thrashers from there. The room is coded so that if you try this, the Thrashers behind you will re-spawn and you'll get attacked from both sides!!!

3) Bring a fencing weapon! Mystics and Nerudite Swords work well, and a Shally Ded Neru might be great. Don't try to use a Spirit Hammer, the Thrashers resist them and will shrug it off. Don't worry about breaking your Mystic, as Thrashers drop them quite often.

4) Come light. Thrashers drop a LOT of loot. They'll drop enough BDS that you will come out on top, even taking into account a fair amount of downtime for healing. Just be sure that you have plenty of Bless, SS, and Magic Shield regs.

5) Bring a Chalice/Rescue pot. If you get penned in MC3 (which is quite possible even for built characters) you won't have any way to get out except for Rescue...or Death.

6) Bring a friend or two or three! Three to four people seems to be the optimum group size. Too many people and you may get stuck behind one another and wind up having more than one near-death experience, and the loot and experience gained through fighting the Thrashers will be diluted.

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Advanced Thrasher Fighting Techniques, courtesy of Gar (101).

These techniques assume that you are in MC3 alone [not suggested]. They are still valid in a group setting.

There are a few strategies which work; mystic swords being the worst. I'll rank these in order of effectiveness.

1: Dual-Jof Touch of flame. Thrashers stagger from fire and drop keys. Bring a crapload of JoFs with you; they're lightweight and basically free. Pump to-hit rate as much as possible; be Jonas, use bless or forces of light. This ANNIHILATES Thrashers. This is best used in conjunction with #2. You'll need Armor of Gort [Kraanan 5] if you're not using #2.

2: Dazzle. Bring 300+ emeralds. These are also lightweight. Thrashers drop enough purples that you'll actually get more than you use. You can start off with the purps you got from Statues.

3: Kraanan-dedicated BLIND long sword. Blind long swords are garbage and often drop in the chest. You'll have no qualms about using it on thrashers, and, believe me, any time that a thrasher is not hitting you is a good time. You'll still need Gort.

4: Kraanan-ded Nerudite Sword or Mystic Sword. If you're using this strategy, you better have some way of healing yourself, because you're going to get raped every fight. You'll need Gort.

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Thrasher Chest Loot

c/o Gar (101)

20 BDS
50 Entroot berries
20 Inky-Cap mushrooms
20 Yrxl Sap
25k shillings
3-Sided Prism (Extremely Rare)
Rose
Shrine Dedication Items (Tears, Sweat, Water, Blood, Lies)
Magic Mystic
Magic Hammer
Magic Axe
Magic Long Sword
Magic Scimitar
Plate Armor
Fine or True Lute

The magic weapons are always purge, blind, hold, bonk, GMT, or enormous justice.

Between 1-4 slots of items will appear in the chest at a time, and the loot seems to rotate - meaning, you will not see 50 entroot berries in the chest two times in a row [Mayhem].