Tlosk's Colosseum Walkthrough

This article should be considered as an appendix to the main Colosseum article. There are myriad possible strategies to beating the Colosseum, this is simply one of them.

Formations

Spread

Players take up the positions of the clock

Time Saver - Assign positions before starting, so everyone knows exactly where to be, and to insure that your mages are in positions that maximize their wall spell coverage. Ideally you'll have mages in the 3, 6, 9, and 12 positions, with the other mages firing diagonally across the room. Also make sure your archers are spread out, that way they are less likely to target the same creatures.

Time Saver - Archers are key to beating spawns in the Spread formation, by anticipating which creatures aren't going to be in the path of the wall spells and killing them. Archers and melees that target doomed creatures (ones well in the path of wall spells) do more harm than good by blocking the wall spells.

Crossfire (XFIRE)

Half your group stands in the SE corner with their backs to the eastern wall, standing shoulder to shoulder. The other half stands in a line just west of the door, also shoulder to shoulder. The reason for standing near the door instead of against the west wall is this insures that all monsters will show on everyone's radar, for selection when finishing them off with bolts. Archers should focus on killing any creatures that won't be hit by the fists. Those standing by the door will sometimes have one or more creatures get behind them, slide to the side to allow the fists coming west to hit them (and also to allow them to run past you into the crossfire area).

Time Saver - While it's against most people's inclination, doing giving up offense to help the team can really save time. An example on Crossfire is melees that heal and restam mages for some rooms where mages get hammered (mukkir, olthoi swarm demons, etc). Mages that do 10x the damage a melee can do that has to take precious seconds to heal or replenish their mana while a melee is picking away ineffectively at something is far from optimal.

Southeast Corner (SE CNR)

There is one subvariant of this formation that is used with the Tremendous Monougas in room 18. TMs have a very long melee reach, you can use this to your advantage by putting everyone in the very corner except two archers, who stand about 6 feet apart a little ways away from the corner. This allows the tusker fists to launch and almost all of them will hit the TMs (a few may hit the posts but it's far superior to any other formation for this room). The mages can still be hit by the TMs, the purpose is not to protect them, it's to insure there is enough space between them and the monougas for the Tusker Fist spells to always launch successfully.

Time Saver - Have one mage bludgeon vuln all three, and a different mage vuln for cold and imperil (if a melee or archer has high enough life magic they are ideal vulners here). All other mages should start casting Tusker Fist as soon as the the posts are in place and the bell is rung.

Rares

True Rares are ideal, they last 15 minutes and are stronger, however Spectral Rares are more easily obtained and work well enough. It is possible to beat Colosseum without any rares, but requires a seasoned, optimally configured group, something that gets harder and harder to put together as time goes by and more people get flagged for Diemos. There is a fair amount of flexibility in rare usage, depending on how good your group is. For example some mages might skip the first rare if they have no problem landing on the Ruschk and Mukkir (you do greater damage with the rare though). Or you might have all your mages vuln the Olthoi Demons for 20-30 sec instead of having melees use life rares and vuln them. Or perhaps have a grenadier vuln them. And the magic resist rare can be saved if few or no virindi are attacking you in #14. There are some rares that can substitute as well, such as a Focus or Willpower rare instead of Magic Resist and Defender instead of Melee Defense. The bottom line is everyone in the group should be clear on what rares will be expected to be used and when they should be used before the run begins. A local message is now given when a rare is used (normal or spectral) so usage can be verified.

Suggested Rare Usage

Mage	Archer	Melee
War Magic - #12 Ruschk Magic Resist - #14 Virindi War Magic - #15 Falatacot Melee Def - #16 Swarm Demons	Magic Resist - #14 Virindi Life Magic - #16 Swarm Demons Bow/Xbow - #17 Annihilators	Magic Resist - #14 Virindi Melee Def - #16 Swarm Demons Weapon Rare - #17 Annihilators

General Tips

Beating the spawns. Most rooms have two types of spawns, and each spawn is broken up into two parts. If you kill all of the creatures in the first part, the second part is skipped, this can save a lot of time, some rooms more than others.

Rooms

These instructions are for Rare runs, for alternate strategies that are more effective on coin runs or when your group isn't fully powered see here.

#18

Spawn	3 Tremendous Monougas	3 Tremendous Monougas	1 Elite Guardian	3 Elite Guardian	6 Elite Guardian
Weapons:	Archer: Composite Bow, Spectral Chill Arrows Melee: Cold Armor Rending Mage: Bludgeon Critical Strike		Archer: Composite Bow, Spectral Chill Arrows Melee: Cold Armor Rending Mage: Cold Critical Strike
Notes:	On entering the room, everyone goes to the southeast corner except two archers that stand as posts (see formation). Ring the bell as soon as posts are in place, one mage does bludgeon vulns, another does imperil and cold vuln. Mages shoot Tusker Fists from corner towards the middle of the room (Northwest). Archers attack, melees can attack or replenish stamina/health/mana of mages. Almost all of your fists should hit (a few may hit a post). If misfiring the posts are too close to the corner. Although archers are preferable as posts, melees can substitute if they don't attack (never move from the post spot, can still replenish mages though). If a monouga gets past the posts they are too far apart.		Everyone goes to the north wall in the middle (so you're by the door if time is close). One mage does Imperils, one mage does Cold Vulns, rest attack. Try to attack the same one to quickly thin them out. These drop decent loot, but be sure to use the door before the time is up.

In Game Directions

The following text has been optimized for space so it will all fit on a single page of parchment. If you place the parchment on a hotkey, you can then assign a key to that hotkey space to quickly access it. Also if you have a secondary character copy and paste the text onto a new parchment, you can use the 2nd parchment to copy and past text without it entering edit mode (so no need to click another area to get out of text edit mode).

Coin Run Strategies

For most rooms the strategies are the same as for a rare run (and importantly serve as practice). However there are a few rooms where it can be beneficial to alter your strategy when you're not using rares, or do not have the firepower to make it all the way to the final rooms.

Arena 12

• When using rares the Mukkir drop so fast healing isn't much of an issue. Without rares though, mages are at much higher risk of death. Melees can help a lot more by healing mages than by fighting.

Arena 14

• This is an advanced technique, use at your own risk. If many in your party are lower level and would be in danger of dying you can send a single person into 14 (someone that is high level and preferably has some PK experience). Everyone else waits in room 13. The person rings the bell, waits for the second wave of virindi to spawn (after about 10 seconds) then tells the others to come in. Every single virindi will target the person that went in to ring the bell. The target person skitters and jitters around the room doing nothing but healing. This allows the rest of the party to attack without danger as long as the target can stay alive (it sounds hard, but I've done it a lot and it's not as hard as it sounds). For the second round of virindi you won't be able to do this, but you'll still have your full group (unlike if you lose half your party in the first round, then the second round comes and wipes out the rest). Again, this is just if you have a lot of lower levels and would have a lot of deaths.
• If your group is higher level, instead of doing ring spells like on a rare run, it can be faster (and less dangerous) to focus on thinning them out quickly. The keys to this are attacking the same ones and double vulning for the archers and melees so they can use Armor Render weapons. Clear the quiddioxes first. It's critical for melees to watch for ones that get vulned and attack those, don't keep attacking ones that are unvulned waiting for a mage to vuln it.
• If a lot of virindi are targeting you, it is preferable for you to stop fighting and just heal. You are extremely valuable as a target. If you die you are doing the same damage as if you were just healing (zero) but if you are dead the ones that were targeting you are now targeting those left in the room, making them take time to heal and possibly dying also.

Arena 16

• Instead of a Spread formation, use Crossfire with bludgeon rending wands, archers attack throwers and melees can either attack, or preferably heal mages.
• If your group is well practiced and high level, Crossfire can still be effective (especially if you are going for 3 or 4 coins). Everyone that can do so should bludgeon vuln for the first half minute then start the tusker fists. Assign one mage to be a finisher, the Swarm Demons have insanely high health regeneration, so the finisher cycles through them looking for ones with low health, then uses arcs to finish them off. Because the fists are very random, and early on there are so many that some of them will rarely get hit, you can lose a lot of the damage you caused because they regenerate it back.
• If your group isn't able to handle the Demon Swarms in a Crossfire without dying, or spending most of your time healing, use the SE Corner formation. This is vastly safer and reasonably fast. Everyone targets the same one (to avoid fighting against their regeneration). One easy way to all target the same one is focus on the closest one on the left that's touching the south wall. When that one dies, attack the one that replaces it (also on left, touching south wall). Assign one mage to bludgeon vuln, and one to imperil. Melees can attack here because mages take little damage.

Acknowledgments

These techniques were developed over many many Colosseum runs on the Harvestgain server. Contributors include (among others):

• Begley (Padain)
• Crog
• Dakmor Kavu
• Kromwell (Apocalyptic Doom)
• Laser (Paine)
• Paul Mua'dib
• Tlosk (Xithrak)
• Trade Mule