Remnant: from the Ashes - Shroud

[Part of our Remnant from the Ashes story]

Evil plant like beings nicknamed the "root" are taking over the multiverse and it is up to us at the small outpost of Ward 13 to stop them. Given the task of finding "the founder" we set out into the city which is infested with the plant men who are supported by black cloaked archers. These things are annoying as their arrows apply a bleed effect that needs a bandage to cure if they hit and a cloud of rot that needs a potion to cure if they miss. Furthermore, like most other non-heavy root units they can teleport (or burrow whatever) at will.

While traversing the sewers to fight roundish goblins a boss type of these archers shows up: Shroud, who is not just stronger HP wise but has an added ability of "orbital bombardment" which doesn't even need line of sight! There is an audible cue when this happens though, and that's the signal to RUN (specifically not into where a team mate was standing before). Only after upgrading our gear (and both DL and I getting the heal mod as well on the long guns) do we fight it off... only to run into again in its boss chamber!

This time Shroud summons endless waves of root (who technically are our ammo resupply but are annoying nonetheless) and has plenty of space to run. DL quickly works out that Shroud is weak to melee so I focus on chasing down the archer to apply the "hammer to the face" technique while he and Jim focus on crowd control (and obviously shooting Shroud in the head when time permits). As the melee focused guy, I can confidently say there is a semi-safe spot to attack Shroud at: point blank. If it doesn't have any summons nearby its only two valid counters are to teleport away or to do orbital bombardment as the other bow attacks start out too far / I clipped through its bow. To move faster, practice the slide (which is sprint + duck).

Ultimately its the orbital bombardment evasion that is key. Once we started calling out "run" over chat, and learning when NOT to try revive each other with Dragon Hearts, we finally laid low this evil archer.