5.29.2014 Antagonists Dried Lake Map of Flames

Servant of a Frozen Fire - Ambush
Mods - Rare monsters have a Nemesis mod, Patches of burning ground
Quantity: +23%

Currency Expended:
1 Transmutation
4 Alteration
1 Augmentation

Currency Gained:
3 Transmutation
1 Alteration
7 Jewelers
1 Fusing
5 Chromatic
1 Chaos
8 Scrap
1 Whetstone

Maps Gained:
Grotto (L66)
Orchard (L66)
Spider's Lair (L68)

This was the first time I had played on Servant of a Frozen Fire since my last post.  I started out poorly by not applying my auras.  I normally run determination and clarity.  My first thought was that I was being hit really hard, then I realized what was wrong once I had run out of mana.  It was a bit of a scramble to find a safe spot to get enough mana to get clarity up, but once that was done things went pretty well.  Either the grotto or orchard map dropped early, so it's always nice to get that early map drop so that you're at worst keeping the size of the map pool constant.

Many undead populated the map, and the monsters which go around resurrecting undead were annoying.  The normal ones weren't bad, as long as I made sure to take care of them quickly and not leave them free to undo my work in clearing the map.  The magic ones were genuinely troublesome in that I really couldn't kill them quickly enough to keep them from resurrecting about a half dozen mobs that I had already killed.  The worst were yellow ones.  With a Nemesis mod, they were often a real challenge on their own.  Throw in the fact that they were restoring a small army of undead around them, they were serious trouble.  I'm not sure how I lived through one fight, but I managed to squeak through.  Perhaps the rng rewarded me for my survival by having that monster drop a level 68 spider's lair map.  My first map of that level!

The boss of the zone is a large degeneration rhoa.  You have to manage the degeneration carefully, but as long as you're careful, the boss really isn't too bad.  I like this map boss much better than The Blacksmith from the dunes map.  I did have to leave one rare monster behind though, so I didn't get a full clear.  That one had corrupting blood and life regen.  I was picking up 3 and 4 corruption stacks at a time using GMP, so there was no way I could have tried to out damage the life regen without accumulating a fatal stack of corrupted blood DOTs.

Overall, I liked the dried lake map, and was really happy with the loot I got.  It's a wide open zone, so it was a bit disorienting no seeing the edges of the map when I first started out.  I also leveled on this map.  I took a casting speed node, and it's a nice boost to my DPS.  I think I'm going to take a brief break from mapping to kill Piety.  I can pick up two more casting speed nodes with the reward for killing her, which should help my clear speed quite a bit.