P4RTYStoppa: Two Setups, One Kill

P4RTYStoppa spends a lot of time hunting, scanning kingdoms, looking for the next target worth jumping to. He is not the type to wait until everything lines up perfectly before making a move. Sometimes that means spending more than planned, sometimes it means adapting on the fly. This hunt had a bit of both.

It started when Herr Knispel, a hunter friend of party, came across something big in K243. The target was sitting unbubble with around 2 billion power, which was already enough to make anyone stop and look twice. Knispel shared the report and offered party the work. A target that size doesn't stay open forever, so P4RTY didn't think about it too long. He was going in.

The target name was NESSAJ from N2D alliance. Looking through the scout, P4RTY could see straight away that this one needed a bit of thinking. NESSAJ had infantry sitting on the front line and spear troops deeper inside the castle. The wall wasn't particularly strong, but the troop count was big enough that rushing in without a plan would be sloppy. He needed to handle this in the right order.

Most of the time P4RTY goes straight to his spear setup. That's his bread and butter. But with infantry sitting at the front, hitting with spears first didn't make sense. He decided to open the hunt with infantry instead, clear the front line, and then switch to spear for the rest. More work, but a cleaner result if he pulled it off right.

He ported into K243 and sent the first infantry attack. The report came back fast. NESSAJ took serious damage right away and the wall wasn't doing much to slow things down. P4RTY healed and went again. Second hit pushed even deeper, more infantry gone, power dropping fast. The approach was already proving itself. For a 2 billion castle, it wasn't holding the way it probably should have been.

Third infantry attack went out and cleared most of what was left on the front line. That part of the job was done. But when P4RTY went to check his commanders before switching to spear, he noticed something that made him stop for a second. 2 of his commanders still had spear weapons equipped. He had sent three infantry attacks with the wrong weapons on two of his commanders the whole time. It was one of those small mistakes that only registers after the damage is already done. A bit annoying, but looking at the reports, it hadn't actually cost him much. The hits had been strong despite the wrong setup, which said something about how well the infantry formation had worked even without everything being perfect. He fixed the presets, shook it off, and moved on.

With the infantry side cleared, P4RTY switched to spear and started working through the back half of the castle. Fourth attack landed clean. NESSAJ was getting weaker and the wall still wasn't putting up much resistance. Fifth attack kept the pressure on. There were still enough troops inside to keep P4RTY paying attention, because with a target this big you don't start relaxing until the lord is actually captured.

Sixth attack pushed NESSAJ close to zero. The reports had been consistently good from the first hit, and P4RTY could already tell the end was close. What Knispel had found was turning into a very solid hunt.

The seventh attack finished it. NESSAJ's defense had been taking damage since the very first hit and by that point there was simply nothing left to hold with. The castle dropped to zero and P4RTY grabbed the lord on that final march. Seven solos in total, three with infantry to clear the front and four with spear to finish the job. Done.

Let's take a moment to look at what made this work. NESSAJ had two different troop types defending the castle, and P4RTY matched each one with the right formation in the right order. Starting with infantry to clear the front line before switching to spear was the correct read, and it showed in the reports from the very beginning. The wall wasn't strong enough to compensate for the gear situation, and once P4RTY started hitting in the right sequence, the castle never really had a chance to hold. The weapon mistake on those first three attacks could have been a bigger problem, but the infantry weakness formation was strong enough that it didn't matter in the end.

Merit came back at just over 51 million. A strong number from one target and a jump back into sixth place in the overall merit rankings, putting P4RTY back on the first page. That part was good. Not just because of the kill, but because it meant the hunt had moved him forward in a way that mattered.