Goshnar's Taints

Goshnar's Taints
Version	12.40.9997 July 13, 2020 Summer Update 2020
Status	Active

Goshnar's Taints are Special Conditions during which the character will suffer from one to five penalties while inside any of the Soul War Quest areas. There are five increasing levels of Goshnar's Taints, and they apply both penalties as well as rewards, like more experience from monsters in the quest area and the chance to drop Bag You Desires from monsters.

Goshnar's Taints

Players will receive taints after killing each of the bosses in the Soul War Quest areas. The penalties are always received in the same order, regardless of the boss that was killed. Killing the same boss repeatedly will not add a new taint, so to receive all five of them players must kill all five bosses. Taints are only triggered inside the quest areas, including the bosses, being harmless outside of these areas. In order to check from which bosses a character has the taints from, they can ask a Flickering Soul about shards. If a character deals damage to a boss but dies during the fight, it will still get the taint, as long as the rest of the team is able to finish the boss (this also applies for the final boss and finishing the quest).

The five Goshnar's Taints are:

1. 10% chance that a creature teleports to you.
2. 0.5% chance that a new creature spawns near you if you hit another creature.
3. Receive 15% increased damage.
4. 10% chance that a creature will fully heal itself instead of dying.
5. Loss of 10% of your current hit points and your mana every 10 seconds.

Goshnar's Taints Mechanics

First Taint

10% chance that a creature teleports to you:

• In every hunting ground there is one dedicated monster that has this ability. Each creature also has a unique sound it makes before teleporting:
  • Claustrophobic Inferno: Brachiodemon (Burn in hell!)
  • Mirrored Nightmare: Many Faces (Hands off my comrades!)
  • Ebb and Flow: Bony Sea Devil (Get out the way!)
  • Furious Crater: Cloak of Terror (I am your terror!)
  • Rotten Wasteland: Branchy Crawler (My growth is your death!)
  • Boss rooms: Dreadful Harvester, Spiteful Spitters (You have been chosen for a harvest!)
• The monsters check every 2 seconds if a character with this penalty is in range. If that is the case, the monster will teleport to the farthest character within its range (which may be just outside the player's visible game-window).
  • This character will get a 10s cooldown that is not visible for the players. If another monster tries to teleport to this character during this cooldown, the teleport will be cancelled.
  • Because of this, usually the Paladin will try to stay far from the Knight's box in order to be the teleporting target.
• Two seconds before teleporting, a warning effect will appear on both the creature and the target. In the hunting grounds, it is a Death Effect. During boss fights, it is a Purple Electricity Effect.
• If the players react quickly after seeing the death effect and use a Magic Wall Rune on the same tile the target player was when the effect appeared, the teleporting will be cancelled.
• Although the monsters move as if teleported, their path can actually be blocked and they will only teleport to places that are reachable as if they were walking through a map click. Therefore, for example, if a player closes or magic walls house entrances in Mirrored Nightmare, the creatures will teleport to the closest spot reachable outside of the house. This also means creatures can be teleported to stair spots, causing them to go up or down one map level. However, this is only applicable if the path is trapped before the teleport indication happened, meaning if a player inside a house gets the teleport indication and only then magic walls the door, the monster will still appear inside.

Second Taint

0.5% chance that a new creature spawns near you if you hit another creature:

• Attacking any creature in the Soul War Quest areas may trigger this taint. The creatures that will spawn will always be the same, and are the same as the creatures affected by the first taint. Furthermore, before spawning there will also be a unique sound next to the target player:
  • Claustrophobic Inferno: Brachiodemon (Don't hurt my friends!)
  • Mirrored Nightmare: Many Faces (Face off!)
  • Ebb and Flow: Bony Sea Devil (The flood will wash you away!)
  • Furious Crater: Cloak of Terror (Down to the crater!)
  • Rotten Wasteland: Branchy Crawler (Rot in hell!)
  • Boss rooms: Dreadful Harvester (Fear for your soul!)
• Damage dealt through fields and damage over time (such as burning) do not trigger this effect.
• There is a 30 seconds cooldown on the character for this taint to proc. If a second spawn is triggered during this cooldown, it will be cancelled.
• If the creature that triggered the taint dies before the new creature spawns, the spawn will not happen.
• Similar to the first taint, a Teleport Effect appears when this taint is triggered and three seconds before the actual spawn takes place.
• Unlike the first taint, this teleport cannot be prevent by using Magic Walls or any other method.
• The creature that spawns has the same stats (Hit Points, Experience Points, loot) as naturally-spawning creatures of the same type.
• Creatures spawned through this taint will despawn after 10 minutes if they are not killed. Twenty seconds before disappearing, the creature will give out a warning: My time is ticking away.

Third Taint

Receive 15% increased damage.

• This extra damage applies to every damage taken by players as long as they are in one of the Soul War Quest areas.

Fourth Taint

10% chance that a creature will fully heal itself instead of dying.

• Every monster in the Soul War Quest areas has this ability.
• During boss fights, this taint can also be triggered by Dreadful Harvesters.
• This taint is triggered the moment the creature takes what was going to be the killing blow. There is no way to prevent it from happening.
• When a creature heals because of this taint, the following orange text is displayed: Health restored by the mystic powers of Zarganash!

Fifth Taint

Loss of 10% of your current hit points and your mana every 10 seconds.

• This taint is simple, but also very severe. It prevents all characters from sustaining a Mana pool that is much higher than 10 times the recovering power of their best Mana Potions.
• Having Magic Shield or an Energy Ring equipped will not prevent the 10% hit points from being lost.
• There is no protection that will mitigate this damage. It does not show up as damage values on the screen, or in the Input Analyzer. The characters just directly lose their health/mana.

How to get rid of Goshnar's Taints

The default method to get rid of the Taints is to defeat the final boss of the quest, Goshnar's Megalomania. In case one of the team members dies during the fight but the team manages to complete it, their taints will still be reset.

If the team fails to defeat the boss, the last two penalties will be removed from each player, and the progress of two random bosses is erased. The bosses to be repeated are defined randomly, but they will be the same for the whole party.

Finally, players can also reset their taints by talking to the Flickering Soul about penalties or taints. Every time they gain or lose taints, they need to wait two weeks before being able to reset them. (Note that killing the same boss repeatedly does not add a new taint and thus does not renew this two-week timer.)

Bag You Desire

One advantage to being tainted by Goshnar is that it affects the chances of looting a Bag You Desire from any Soul War Quest creatures they kill, as well as an increased chance when killing any of the five access bosses. The chance increases with the amount of taints. The Bag You Desire is always dropped inside a Reward Container, so there is no risk of leaving it behind in the creature's corpse. These are the rules:

• Having at least one penalty on the character will affect the chances of looting Bag You Desire from both bosses and regular creatures.
  • When fighting bosses, there is already a small chance without any penalties, but more penalties increase the chance. Killing the same boss repeatedly will not raise the drop chance.
  • When fighting common monsters, there is no chance without any penalties. Accumulating more penalties increases the drop chance.
  • The participation requirements are low enough that every member of the party has a chance to drop the Bag You Desire (based on their individual amount of Taints), as opposed to only the highest damage dealer having a chance.
• Every time you kill the final boss, Goshnar's Megalomania, without getting a Bag You Desire, the drop chance will increase slightly.
  • When a player drops a Bag You Desire, the drop chance will reset to the initial low value.

Goshnar's Tribute

Added one year after the Goshnar's Taints were implemented, on June 01, 2021, the Goshnar's Tribute influences experience and loot gain of parties hunting with taints in Soul War areas, as long as all members have at least one Goshnar's Taint on them. In a party, the member with the lowest number of taints will be the reference for Goshnar's tribute and determines the boost for the whole party. Therefore, if one player has no taints, no member of the party will receive benefits.

Each taint grants an experience boost of 4.5%. Additional taints raise another 4.5% on the previous value, multiplicatively. For example, the XP for a monster with 10.000 base XP would be:

• 1 taint: 10.450 = 10.000 × 1.045 (+4.5%)
• 2 taints 10.920 = 10.000 × 1.045² (+9.2%)
• 3 taints: 11.412 = 10.000 × 1.045³ (+14.1%)
• 4 taints: 11.925 = 10.000 × 1.045⁴ (+19.2%)
• 5 taints: 12.462 = 10.000 × 1.045⁵ (+24.6%)

Furthermore, each taint also gives players a 4.5% chance for a second loot roll. In this case, the bonus of additional taints is additive, not multiplicative, so each taint will increase the chance linearly: 4.5% > 9% > 13.5% > 18% > 22.5%. However, these boosts only apply to normal loot and do not affect the chances of dropping a Bag You Desire.

Highscores

For the Highscores, each kill of the five access bosses of the Soul War Quest (Goshnar's Malice, Goshnar's Greed, Goshnar's Spite, Goshnar's Cruelty, Goshnar's Hatred) will increase that character's highscore by 1 point. Killing the final boss, Goshnar's Megalomania, will increase the character's highscore by 10 points.