Swine Prince

The Swine Prince/King/God is a Beast boss that appears in the Warrens.

Ancestor's Memoirs: The Swine Prince
"The ways and rituals of blood sacrifice are difficult to master. Those from beyond require a physical vessel if they are to make the crossing into our reality. The timing of the chants is imperative: without the proper utterances at precise intervals, the process can fail spectacularly.

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My first attempts at summoning were crude, and the results disappointing. I soon found, however, that the type and condition of the host's meat was a critical factor. The best results came from pigs, whose flesh is most like that of man.

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The great thing I had managed to bring through was brutish and stupid. Moreover, it required prodigious amounts of meat to sustain itself. But this was only a trifling concern. Afterall, I had a village full of it.

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History
The Ancestor attempted to summon beings from the "outer spheres," with his initial attempts failing. He decided to try using pigs as vessels, resulting in the creation of the swinefolk. He eventually managed to summon a particularly powerful entity, and the pig it possessed grew to a gargantuan size. The Ancestor moved the resulting abomination into the Warrens, where it now rules over the swine due to being larger and stronger than the rest of them.

Behaviour
The Swine Prince always appears taking up rank 1, 2 and 3, with Wilbur taking up rank 4. Wilbur can be moved though it is ill advised.

During battle, Wilbur will use End This One or End These Two on one or two of your heroes. This marks your heroes for extra damage from the Swine Prince's attacks, as well as targets your specific heroes to the Swine Prince's attacks.

An Arbalest with the Flare ability can clear the mark off of a hero; if this leaves no heroes marked, the Swine Prince will use Wild Flailing instead of Obliterate Body, for substantially less and manageable damage. If two heroes were marked, clearing the mark from one will result in only the remaining marked hero being targeted by Obliterate Body, instead of both. Additionally, if one of the marked heroes has been stunned by Wilbur, Flare will clear the stun and prevent that hero from missing a turn.

Note that hitting Wilbur with any damaging attack whilst the Swine Prince is still alive results in immediate retaliation by the Swine Prince in the form of all the heroes being attacked for increased damage. Therefore the best ways to manage Wilbur is to either clear the marks with an Arbalest each round as above (hoping Wilbur doesn't stun the Arbalest).

Wilbur can be killed to stop the marking of your heroes, however, this will result in the Swine Prince attacking all of your heroes every turn for increased damage (as you have no hope of outhealing this, it will result in a total wipe very quickly unless you kill the Prince or retreat)

After the Swine Prince is defeated, the heroes will also have to defeat Wilbur. Wilbur will use Squeal, which does one to two points of damage, but mainly inflicts stress damage on your heroes.

Abilities
* When a Hero uses an ability on Wilbur, Swine Prince will automatically perform Enraged Destruction after that action, ignoring any status effects already on it (stun etc.). If Wilbur dies he will use it every turn. Swine Prince will not perform Enraged Destruction if Wilbur is left alone.

Strategy
The most important thing to remember in this fight: don't target Wilbur first. The Plague Doctor's Blinding Gas can stun him without enraging the Swine Prince, but in all other cases attacking Wilbur will invite disaster.

The Swine Prince, for his part, is a powerful but predictable damage dealer. Since his Obliterate attacks can only land on marks, they can be mitigated by Man-at-Arms' Defender, or prevented by Arbalest's Flare. He's also weak to debuffs and it's possible to stack damage debuff on him - having two Occultists/Lepers/Vestals on debuff duty is enough to lower his damage to manageable levels.

This fight is all about firepower: you want to kill the Swine Prince as quickly as possible. As such, the Leper is an excellent pick for this fight, due to his heavy damage, strong self-heal, and the fact he can increase his PROT with Withstand. This can be stacked with Antiquarian's Protect Me to great effect. Another effective technique is to utilize the synergy between the Grave Robbers and Antiquarian: keeping 1-2 stacks of Toxin Trickery or Shadow Fade coupled with Protect Me provides a significant dodge + PROT buff to half of the team, and can reduce incoming damage significantly. For this to be most effective the Antiquarian should be in position 2, with the Grave Robber in position 3.

If you defeat the Swine Prince, you will be credited with completing the quest even if you flee the fight without finishing Wilbur off. In point of fact, you will be credited with completion even if Wilbur manages to kill your party outright - though this is, of course, far from ideal. In any case, if you're on the ropes near the end of the fight, consider retreating: Wilbur's full-party attack is easily capable of finishing off someone on Death's Door.

Extra numbers: Using the Arbalest's "Rallying Flare" every round will reduce the Swine Prince's average damage output by about 70% (71.5% to be exact, assuming average dodge of heroes to be 26.61 at Champion level and equal chance of Obliterate Masses/Body). This damage output reduction is primarily due to removing of marks, but also due to removing the Obliterate Masses ability (hence cannot target two targets for additional damage) and reducing the accuracy of the Swine Prince.

Trivia

 * The Swine Prince needs Wilbur to tell him who to attack because he is blind.
 * The Ancestor using pigs as vessels for creatures from "outer spheres" is potentially intended as a reference to Legion, a demonic amalgam from the Bible who begged Jesus to allow them to possess a sounder of swine instead of being sent back to hell.
 * Due to its relation to Wilbur, the swine prince may be somewhat inspired by the Dunwich Horror, the monstrous brother of Wilbur Whateley.