Exclusive Instance Guide: The Children of Creeps

As an avid and seasoned raider, I have spent countless nights staring down the menacing eyes of Sauron’s elite forces. From the fear-mongering foes that haunt the heinous hollows of the Chetwood, to the lingering leviathan which lurks in the low levels of Lake Evendim, I’ve pretty much seen (and conquered) them all.

Therefore, it was of no surprise when SSG reached out to me so I could take a first look at a new series of challenges coming soonish to a server near you. Naturally, they told me to keep my lips sealed, but they said nothing about sheathing my keyboard. Thus, I present to you…

The Children of Creeps!

Just as Tolkien acknowledged Hurin’s offspring, SSG decided it would be an interesting take to face the children of several bosses we have battled in the past. Fueled by the defeat of their guardian (sometimes by a Guardian), these tyrannical tykes are out for vengeance – or at least to tell on us.

Before playing the instance, I was promised that our heroes are not out to spill juvenile blood. Our mission is to merely humiliate and send them crawling back beneath the feet of their remaining chaperone.

Though SSG would probably request I don’t expose any details, I kinda feel like I already let the balrog out of the mine on this one. As such, I feel it my duty to share a walkthrough of the bosses you should expect to see within the Children of Creeps (CoC, for short). Some may include a walkthrough strategy, while others don’t quite have the battled hooked up in their current state. Note that while this is a single instanced area, traveling from room to room may result in a scenario from another locale of Middle Earth.

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Boss 1 – Clara Oakheart

We’ve all experienced the *ahem* joys of dealing with Sara Oakheart. Whenever the player had the privilege of being in the presence of this elderly lady, you could basically put her on /follow and come back an hour later (only to find she just made it up half a flight of stairs).

In your various dialogues, she probably never told you about her twin sister, Clara. Though the two had become separated at a fairly early age due to family troubles, Sara and Clara maintained a tender familial relationship and would consistently keep in touch via raven.

Clara has heard your snickers behind Sara’s back, and knows about your snide remarks on her sister’s pacing. As it happens, Clara is very much into speed walking and high-octane track & field activities, and she is out to whoop you in an obstacle course of her own construction.

The entire boss room is comprised of a set route of hurdles you must overcome, which include but are not limited to:

• Fence posts over boiling lava (don’t question it)
• Procedurally-generated tunnel maze, created from stacks of unused Scrolls of Renewal
• Pole vaulting (using a replica of Sara’s staff, naturally)
• Racing through a mire of sludge from the Rushock Bog (who’s slow now?)
• Charging over barriers of goat droppings (don’t pocket any!)

Get to the finish line before Clara and you may earn yourself a very sweet pair of kicks, as well as the bragging rights in outracing multiple Oakheart. Oakhearts? Oakheartian?

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Boss 2 – Lilch Gam

Make it to the next room to face your next challenge – Lilch Gam. Daughter of Helch Gam (and granddaughter of Belch), she’s even more of a tentacled blob than her dad. Spending most of her free time in front of a TV and listening to her favorite band, Carn Doom, she is ticked that you took out her dad. After all, Helch’s lifetime of grabbing passing Free Peoples and emptying out their wallets to pay for the cable bill was put to an end the day you turned him into sashimi.

The room consists of a large green pond of poisonous slime, surrounded by a series of broadcast towers and satellite dishes. As you approach one of the turrets of technology, she will immediately respond with a series of tentacles in your face. Slap away the tentacles, push over the tower, and rush out to scold Lilch right to her face.

She’ll throw a temper tantrum, at which point you need to get away from her before you are spotted by her grandfather (lingering down below, putting together a model airship while gumming on a pruned corpse). Continue around the room, severing her various cable citadels and ridiculing Lilch for her nonsense taste in music and general disconnect to the real world. Eventually, after destroying all her sources of networking and taking away her TV privileges, she’ll cry and whine all the way down to her grandpa.

Conquering this squabbling match will earn you the Kaboodle of Lilch, which you can take with you to decorate in your house.

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Boss 3 – Sous Chef Kiaim

I bet you’re hungry after taking on the Sprout of Slime. To satiate your appetite, next on the agenda is Sous Chef Kiaim. Son of esteemed cook Vrarz (who you once faced in Fil Gashan), he wishes nothing more than to follow in his daddy’s footsteps and become a great culinary artist. His creative dishes are only matched by the quick wit he displays in his taunts during the fight:

• “Would you like that Easy-Bake seared?”
• “I’ll make Play-Doh out of you!”
• “If you can’t handle the fun, get out of my kitchen!”
• “Have you tried… the Creepy Crawlies?”

This is a fairly straight-forward match against the sous vide slinger. You will begin by fighting several of his line cooks, eager to kick you in the shins and whack you with plastic spoons. Once you dispatch his henchboys, Kiaim will swap between tossing all sorts of kitchen utensils and a variety of meals at your face.

Not all of the dishes were hooked into the system quite yet, but I was told that the final version will have more than 20 possible platters of food. These will consist of all forms of debuffs (make sure you have debuff pots, or know the placement of your debuff skill – you’ll need it) that is promised to make your character dizzy, cry, heave, and other forms of incapacitation. Maybe he should stick to Easy Mac…

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Boss 4 – Bogbereth’s Brood

Ever watch Arachnophobia and have nightmares afterward? Yeh, you might want to let someone else take care of the next room for ya. Otherwise, for all you John Goodman-inspired exterminators, this next boss should be right up your alley.

Thanks to a neat piece of tech which allows SSG to fully duplicate your current personal homestead, a copy will be created for this instance (those without a personal home on that server will have a generically-decorated house in the instance). This will serve as the battleground for an army of antagonized arachnids, swarming in to try and take permanent residence in your abode.

Specifically, these are the remaining children once left displaced after you dispatched Bogbereth in Angmar. Her brood was much more wide-spread than many had realized, and all those many, many eyes fixated upon you the day your fellowship decapitated their mother.

Essentially a swarm battle, you will be faced with wave after wave of spiders. You will need to defend the various rooms as the battle wages on. Though a flamethrower or perhaps dynamite may seem to be the easiest way to go, you’re fighting for the right to remain in your home (plus the exits are sealed with a thick coating of web). A variety of traps are at your disposal, from pesticides to rain so you can wash them right out. However, your foes are also equipped with the means to ensnare and poison you, so keep an eye out for a variety of debuffs.

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Boss 5 – Dargnákh’s Rug Rats Unleashed

You may recall facing Dargnákh, a frenzied troll that tore straight through several camps of Saruman’s orcs that were stupid enough to capture him in the first place. Things didn’t turn out all that well for the troll in the end, but little did we know that he had recently fathered two newborns shortly before being captured (no wonder he was so eager to get out).

Now these two little “ogres” (named Murz and Barg) have reached a new exciting time in their lives – they are mastering the subtle art of walking, and they are an abundance of trouble. From running into trees to cannonballing into the neighbor’s mud pit, they’re pretty much a hazard to everyone (including themselves).

One fateful day, they managed to waddle into the kitchen and work as a team to snag a hold of the cookie jar (recently filled with delicious Snickerdunlendings). If you thought Dargnákh was a freight train, you haven’t seen the wall-bounding hysteria that are Murz and Barg after they devoured the entire jar. Now, they are on a wrecking ball path heading straight for Galtrev, and you have been tasked to aid with diverting them away.

Unfortunately, the fight has not been sequenced quite yet, so all I saw were the two trolls positioned near one of the gates to Galtrev. From the sounds of it, there will be a lot of dual-based attacks with the pair. You’ll need to lure them away from one another by enticing one at a time with various sweets, provided by the Dunlending inhabitants. That’ll ramp up their energy, but it may be the only wait to split them long enough to eventually wear them down into a sugar coma.

Expect to defend Galtrev pretty heavily, or else it may end up as one of the most convenient one-stop-shop ruins in Middle Earth!

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Boss 6 – The Three Nieces

On to the final boss. Err, bosses? Am I seeing triple? Nah, make it to the top of the tower, and you’ll be met by three nieces whose uncles you have crossed paths in one form or another. You will face each girl three times, for a total of nine phases to defeat this finale. The order is randomized, but you will never have the same boss twice in a row. Below is a brief summary of strategies to achieve success.

Delphine, Niece of Dulgabeth

If you thought Dugabeth was the Mouth, you haven’t met his niece. She could talk your ear off (literally) and just keep going. She doesn’t go anywhere without her phone and plenty of spare portable chargers. Upon initiating battle, two new bars will appear on the screen and one begins to fill up as Delphine talks. You will need to reply to her messages with the correct choice in order to reduce her speech rage bar, and fill up the second, flabbergasted bar. If the speech rage bar fills up, you will be incapacitated. However, if you manage to fill up the flabbergasted bar, Delphine’s tongue will be twisted and you will secure the phase.

Questions range from a variety of in-game topics, so I hope you’ve been reading your quest text!

Sarina, Niece of Saruman

The brains of the gang, her uncle taught her the five times table at an early age (of course everything equaled five). This affinity for multiplying has allowed Sarina to create copies of her form to torment her foes. Luckily, you can use her enjoyment of the game Duck Duck Goose to your benefit. Upon tapping the head of the “goose”, you’ll need to make a full loop around the group (dodging slowing attacks from the others). The true form of Sarina will trip over her laces. Get this done three times and she’ll need to shuffle off to the corner to bunny ears herself back to full strength.

Lisa, Niece of Sauron

Lisa’s actually really nice. The only ring of power she has ever equipped was one of those mood rings she got at a mall kiosk. Lisa’s not quite sure why she’s here – Delpine called and told her to come over ’cause they were going to see a movie (some Orlando Bloom flick), and Lisa got suckered into joining the battle. She will not at all be hostile toward you, so there is no need to respond as such. This phase will likely end up being a lot of awkward feet shuffling, contain a lack of eye contact, and eventually one of the other nieces will pull Lisa back to take their turn. Consider it a good time to refill your beverage of choice or check the clock to realize you should have eaten dinner four hours ago.

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All in all, it was not a terribly tough instance, considering how high the bar had been set battling for spots this April on that Hobnanigans field. Completing the instance will earn you the title “Scorn of the Children.” Final loot rewards have not been implemented yet. I told them they’d be fools to not include a variety of LI rewards, in particular some delicious Empowerment Scrolls. I wish you best of luck in your run of this instance, and may your day be filled with plenty of kidding around.