Dreaming General

"Locked in a nightmare slumber, he is tortured by failures both real, and imagined."

- The Academic

The Dreaming General is the Cadaver enemy Lair boss within The General's Keep, found in the Tangle.

An armored colossus forged in the fire of a hundred battles, he was once a champion of men; a gifted tactician and warrior that would've met the cultists of the mountain on the field of battle and stemmed the tide of their corruption. Alas, that day never came. Trapped within the walls of his mind by a curse that couldn't be fought with swords and arrows, he sleeps on, tortured by his failure. End his suffering, and grant his soul the rest he longs for.

Description
The Dreaming General is the region boss of the Tangle. He has high damaging single and multi target attacks, stress and is accompanied by the Tap Root, which can inflict, an unique token that deals Damage over Time while also forcing the target to use a skill that stresses out the party.

Combat Skills
The Dreaming General's attacks are comprised of heavily damaging attacks that inflict stress, and can hit any rank.

Tap Root
When a hero has a token and takes their turn, whatever skills they have equipped will be hidden and they will be forced to use 'Whispering Darkness.

Strategy & Advice
The General is an endurance test, a stress hazard, and a control fight all in one. His large health pool will allow him to put significant stress on your heroes before he goes down, though he doesn't have the greatest ability to kill heroes. Unsettling Whispers can be dealt with by putting taunt on heroes like Leper, Man At Arms, or Hellion, all of whom have Taunt and Stress healing moves. The Waking Dead is his main way of disrupting a formation, depending on who he targets and how much you're willing to let them get hurt. Nightmare is almost never seen unless the boss succeeds in disrupting you enough to prevent you from hitting the root. If you are hit by Nightmare, be ready to heal and use the removed roots to recover or clear the fight before the General can follow up on his advantage.

Alongside the General is the Taproot, an invulnerable fixture to Rank 4 that starts the fight by dropping vines on the Heroes. Afterwards, at the start of every round it will drop 2 vines onto 2 different heroes. Hitting the root will cause it to retract 1 vine from a random hero, so 2 hits on the Taproot will remove all vines added that round. However, if it gets hit twice since the beginning of the fight or the last Waking Dead, it will use Soil Stirs to target 2 ranks for Waking Dead. Because of this, care needs to be taken on when you hit the Taproot as to prevent runaway vine generation and minimize the amount of Waking Dead's that the General will use.

As a General Strategy for the General, the fight can have it's threat minimized by following a specific routine;


 * 1) Round 1: Ignore the Taproot completely and attack the boss or prepare for the fight.
 * 2) Round 2: Attack the Taproot only once. This will retract 1 vine on a random hero.
 * 3) Round 3: Attack the Taproot for as many heroes that have more than 1 vine. This could be either 3 times for 3 heroes with 2 vines or twice for 1 hero with 2 vines and 1 hero with 3 and entangled. On this round, the Taproot will use Soil Stirs, but it won't be used on this Round.
 * 4) Round 4: Prepare for Waking Dead and hit the Taproot once this round.
 * 5) Round 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the boss is killed.