Stone Plague

*Reminder: Legion quests are the hardest and most challenging part of the game so remember to be patient!*

In Stone Plague, your party encounters a unique class of enemy – a cult that is inflicted by a horrible plague that turned their skin to, well, stone. Every enemy in this quest has massive levels of armor (20+), but also takes 12 bonus damage when inflicted by a critical hit. Not surprisingly, you want your party to be able to deal critical damage. It is also recommended that refresh yourself on the details of how critical damage and armor work.

**Battle Overviews:**

* **The first battle** is your introduction to the plague. It pits your party against three waves of plagued cultists (13 in total) in a close-quarters battle who will quickly close in on your starting position. Other than the uniqueness of the Stone Plague enemies, there’s nothing too special about this battle.

* **The second battle** is very similar to the first: three waves, 13 total enemies. However, the battlefield is much larger and the third wave brings three cultists to your back flank…so don’t retreat all the way to the bottom of the screen!

* **The third battle** is a single-wave battle, but features a plagued bear with quite a bit more HP than the standard cultist (and, like other bears, it also has the Ursine Rage ability). Keep the bear away with crowd control, or make sure you can tank a couple hits, since it won’t go down quickly!

* **The fourth and final battle** pits you against the lead cultist – a mage with high HP who is also inflicted by the plague. He is supported by many waves of foot soldiers who enter from the top and right sides of the battlefield. Take care to keep your HP up, because he does have Chthonic Tremors (and a lot of curses) in his spell repertoire! One of your best allies in this battle is the stone that protects the leftmost two ranks from his ranged attacks, allowing your ranged units to hide and defeat his minions before taking him out.

**Example Parties:**

There are *many* parties that can be successful here, as Mages, Archers, and Fighters all have great ways to get repeated critical hits, and Priests are fantastic support to enable this. And, since no enemy has an ability to destealth (other than the final boss), rogues (powered by Relentless) can also have success.

**AMP Approach for Mid-Level Players.** This party is for players first exploring the Legion Quests - it is built assuming non-purchased characters, no mythics, only craftable & versatile epic gear (so you're not wasting steel just for this level), and no epic abilities other than Blizzard (which are recommended to be the first 4 epics you craft). There are quite a few ways to approach this build - this particular one lets every character contribute to the carnage. It also features Gordian Seal, which is frequently overlooked but one of the best mage cards in the game - in this case, it will let you keep God's Fury or Precision on a character for an extra turn! This build uses Witness and River to stick with the spirit of the challenge, but Laarn's innate crit bonus is very useful here, and Eye of the Storm (craftable mythic mage weapon) gets you that extra crit chance so that Amras can deal the 20 damage to kill with just one attack!

See a video run through of this party in action here: https://youtu.be/Lmoaw\_zbreI

**MMP Crowd Control.** This party leverages two mages to pile on the crowd control, with Witness as the primary damage dealer (due to its innate critical boost, and daze-on-crit ability that helps keep cripple on enemies when they try to dispel debuffs), and a priest to support card drawing. With two mages, the possibility of having two blizzards active (along with Prophecy of Pain) is a great bonus, and it also allows one mage to cast blizzard (and contingency) while the other saves MP for Tremors. Rituals are included to decrease mana cost and increase range. Terror is included in this particular build, but it is by no means required for success.

In many cases, with this kind of party, it's frequently faster to reset the battle if your opening hand (or first draw after an Omens cast) doesn't leave you with enough control (e.g. Blizzard or Tremors), as it is very easy to get overwhelmed quickly.

See below for a level-by-level run through of the final challenge (vile damage) with this party:

Battle 1: https://youtu.be/tcidmXma2A4

Battle 2: https://youtu.be/v\_1FE6538jQ

Battle 3: https://youtu.be/eCEupk7Rnw4

Battle 4: https://youtu.be/TgLK927zm8M

Insanitys built a **beginner’s AMP** party (core/craftable equipment, no mythic abilities) that uses Laarn and Amras (as decribed above) and recorded his run through each of the battles below:

Battle1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmU6kWrpuw8

Battle 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5VHipxqJi4

Battle 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNjUg0EZRR8

Battle 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAm014M12ao