The encirclement was like a snake coiled up into a circle, hence players call it the "Snake Formation."
Snake Formation was one of the many ancient Chinese formations for fighting against a smaller group of people. Its essence was to surround the enemies and destroy them in a fast and effortless manner.
Formations were flexible and could be changed to adapt to the situation. However, the low intelligence monsters in game only followed the simple strategy of surrounding their enemy. As such, Fearless was able to exploit its weakness.
In this headquarters defence quest, monsters outnumbered the players by 40 times. That was quadruple the number of monsters required to use the Snake Formation.
The snakes were small, but there were over 30 000 of them. That was enough to surround the guild"s headquarter several times over. However, that did not matter, as the snakes could only attack through the gates of the headquarter.
The headquarter was a square shaped building with four gates. The walls at the four sides were immune to the monsters" attack. This meant that there were four areas of immunity.
Just like Vainglory said, if they were to build the headquarter at at advantageous position, the snakes could only surround them from 180 degrees, covering three gates and two areas of immunity. But if they were to allow the monsters to surround them from all four sides, the monsters would have to cover twice the area, and become restricted by the four areas of immunity.
In that case, it would lower the density of the monsters" encirclement by half. That would lower the stress on the players by over half as well.
There were many intelligent players in a big guild like Sanguine Alliance,such as Sanguine Stormbringer. As soon as Fearless said to set up the headquarters in the centre of the map, he knew what Fearless was up to.
Sanguine Warflag was not smart, but he could take advices well. After listening to Fearless, he built the headquarter in the centre of the map without hesitation.
After the headquarter was erected, the system began the 10 minutes countdown to the start of the defence quest.
Fearless was pleased with Sanguine Warflag"s decisiveness. After all the time he spent in a corrupted environment like Quan Zhen Sect, such a down to earth guy seemed adorably silly to him.
Seeing as how Sanguine Warflag trusted him, Fearless gave him his full support as well. He divided the players into eight groups to defend the four gates.
With Fearless" irregular personality, the eight groups were nothing like the typical formation where the tanks stayed at the front and the healers and damage dealers were at the back.
The Sanguine Alliance crowd was definitely unwilling to be commanded by Fearless, but disobeying him meant disobeying Sanguine Warflag. Everyone had no choice but to follow his command.
Under Fearless" command, every two groups were to guard a gate. The groups formed up into two cone shaped formation, as if a big "m" was guarding the gate.
Apart from the 240 Archers that Fearless specifically requested, the other jobs were fairly even in numbers.
Based on past experience in campaign dungeons, Sanguine Warflag had chosen jobs that were more advantageous for the quest.
For example, Sanguine Warflag learnt from Fearless to put the Crusaders behind the Guardians. This allowed the Crusaders who were typically useless in teamfights to maximise their effectiveness in having long reach.
The Guardians were the first layer in the "m", followed by spear wielding Crusaders. They were backed by healers, damage dealers and crowd controllers. The large numbers of Archers all the way at the back would be the main damage dealers.
The "m" formation contained way more technicalities than the typical formation. It was fairly messy while the players were trying to get into the formation.
The Sanguine Alliance crowd was already displeased with Fearless. When Fearless commanded them to form up in such a weird way, they despised him even more.
Fearless could not be bothered to explain the technicalities. As for the rest of Quan Zhen Sect, they were happy to see others sneering and jeering at Fearless.
Sanguine Warflag and Sanguine Stormbringer stood out to calm the rest down. As core members of Sanguine Alliance, they were the only ones who had experienced the power of Fearless" formation.
"Fearless, this is an interesting formation, what"s its name?" Sanguine Warflag asked curiously.
"Trigram Formation" Fearless responded indifferently.
"It"s amazing!" Sanguine Warflag could not stop praising.
"Oh? You can tell what"s amazing about this formation?" Fearless was surprised and asked Sanguine Warflag.
Sanguine Warflag turned red instantly with the question, "I..I can"t tell. But it sounds amazing just from its name."
"Sigh…" Fearless looked lonely all of a sudden.
He thought Sanguine Warflag understood his formation, only to find out the opposite.
"This isn"t amazing at all. This Trigram Formation is merely an imitation of the original formation. It"s at best a defensive formation. The real Trigram Formation would have eight sides, and it would be able to trap twice the number of the monsters here...I would never be able to learn the essence of it…" Fearless said regretfully as he shook his head.
Sanguine Warflag could not be more puzzled, but he could tell that Fearless was talking about another formation that was even stronger.
Sanguine Warflag was astonished to realise that there were such profound knowledge in the world... even in a game. He felt like he wasted his time playing games in the past.
With Sanguine Stormbringer"s help, the formation was finally completed. Fearless even purposefully arranged the experienced ones like Sanguine Warflag and Sanguine Stormbringer into the groups as leaders. These core players all had experience with the "m" formation, and they could control it well.
The people from Sanguine Alliance looked at each other, not knowing whether to cry or laugh. They still did not understand what was the point of such a formation.
It was now three minutes away from the start of the defence quest.
When the Sanguine Alliance players saw the Quan Zhen Sect members standing around at the back of the groups, they started ranting at Fearless again, "Are you going to stand there and watch while we kill the monsters?"
The Sanguine Alliance players knew that Sanguine Warflag had spent money to recruit Fearless, so they did not want to see the money going to waste.
Fearless just replied casually, "Just get in your position. We have our own roles to fulfill!"