Incline Knights of the Chalice finally on Steam

Is the toughness feat hp per level or like a flat +4 like it is in d20? At any rate, 10 con is miserable for a mage. Warriors can skimp with their bigger hit dice, d4 hit dice only give 2.5 hp on average, so 28 is about normal for 10 con. 16 will give you an extra 3 per level, pretty much doubling that.

As for that fight/area, I can't remember it well. That's the dungeon with all the gnolls? I had 3 mages so it was a fireball steamroll. It's obviously too late now, but initiative is the second most important thing for a mage after hp precisely so they get to alpha strike enemies instead of the other way around. Put your next feat towards that if you haven't already and get your mage some decent AC even if it gives him 5 or 10% spell fail chance. Better to fail a spell 1 in 10 times than to die to an arrow 3 in 10 times. I'm not sure what sort of tactics fit a 2 warrior party, but I'd assume the battles last a lot longer so stuff like web,grease, wall of stone and haste are all top priorities.

 

A mage with 28 hp in that fight is doomed to die everytime. You could try and equip a displacement cloack and hope for the best.

 

I did a thing on this once where I bored everyone to death with it by just repeatedly nuking everything to death with fireball spam.

 

My bad, maybe it's a sign i should try the new update.
Well, you got good advices already, +CON, initiative (improve ini feat), blur/displacement cloak and AC.

Also, target enemy archers first as your mage will always be their main target.
You chose the right path trying not to cheese the game but i'm afraid 10 base CON for your mage was a step too far, maybe starting from scratch isn't a bad idea because there will be plenty of fights where your mage isn't going to survive the first turn, i'm afraid.

 

My first playthrough I went with a single mage and I managed to deal with the various ambushes only because I pumped his constitution as much as I could, with a base 16 and giving him always the best constitution boosting items and the best saving throws boosting mantle. Otherwise, the rain of arrows at the beginng of each ambush would have been enough to obliterate him every single time, especially when they started spamming death arrows.

 

My party was K K C W and my wizard was a total glass cannon with low starting constitution, often she gained 1 hp per level up. I beat Tyrannixus with that party but was burnt out by that time and didn't try the final bonus fight that much, so I didn't beat that. Not sure if I could anyway.

When my cleric got the resurrection spell, I often had to resurrect my wizard a few times per battle in tougher battles. I remember that somewhere around the sand pit area I had to play with 3 chars for a while (I think it was after the sand pit though). IIRC my wizard was turned to stone by a medusa or something and I didn't have means to reverse it then (and couldn't go back to town for a while) but I thought fuck it and pushed on instead of reloading. Was pretty fun in hindsight. I do remember that the sand pit fight was a royal pain in the ass and one of the hardest fights in the game for my party. I don't remember how I beat it though, cause it was around 10 years ago.

IMO the difficulty peaks around that point in the game, the content after that area (until Tyrannixus) gets significantly easier. At least that was the case for me.

Just loaded up my final save from after beating Tyrannixus to check my wizard's constitution, it's 12 by that time, but 6 comes from the Amulet of Health, so her natural CON is 6. I may have increased it a few times when levelling up so her starting CON may have been even lower. She has 88 HP when the Amulet of Health is equipped and 28 HP when I unequip the amulet.

I couldn't be arsed to reroll much when I made my wizard, so when I got a roll with max INT and good DEX, I thought fuck it and went along with it.

TL;DR: It's possible to reach and beat Tyrannixus when you only have one wizard with abysmal CON but I'm not so sure about the final bonus fight.

 

You could just use that anti-death spell, I forget the the name, to negate all those death-based attacked. That was in the game, right? It's been years. I personally don't recall using it, mostly because my solution to everything was "nuke all the things".

I mean, they *SAY* Evocation is a terribly inefficient way to kill enemies compared to save-or-die, but in Vidya Game form, I have NEVER found that to be true: Enemies tend to be frequently immune to save-or-die based attacks, but very few enemies are just arbitrarily immune to damage. If an enemy has damage immunity at all, it will be thematic to type and thus highly predictable. So between reliance on hit-or-miss attacks which may simply never work no matter how many times you try it, vs. damage, which pretty much always works if you use enough, I tend to just nuke everything.

Firepower: The difference between life and death.

 

Yeah, but, since you can't pre-buff, your mage still needs to survive the first round and, during ambushes, the entire enemy group gets to attack before you at least once.

 

I grabbed this game and while it's adorable, the default font is a creation of a clearly deranged person. For anyone interested, I've created a replacement which makes reading text actually bearable (IMO). Just look at this comparison and decide for yourself.

DISCLAIMER: This is only for 960x720 window resolution. The text will be garbled in small window or in full screen.

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To use this font, drop files from the archive to GRAPHICS directory, replacing the original ones (make a backup first!).

Download link: https://ufile.io/f1ft63y3

 

The part with giants is the most boring sheit since the ice caves with big bugs from IWD. I'm totally overpowered for those gnoll fights I keep getting. The Iron Golem was the only challenge for the last few hours. My mage no longer has 28hp at lvl 9. He has about 80. I have so much hp no one can deal with me, and if they can, I have my cleric. I keep fighting basic grunts, healing with my unlimited wand of healing, and progressing further.
Are there any more interesting, tactically challenging fights awaiting me, or is it? Because I'm serously considering going back to the storyfag camp right about now.

Level scaling is needed. Jebus.

I wasn't gridning, I'd skipped about 80% of ambushes, I have random hp per lvl...

 

Yeah, the second half is definitely easier, but there are some interesting encounters later on. Keep playing, it's worth it.

 

The giants gets trivial at some point but there's plenty of challenges ahead, if you feel like you're the boss of it all, just keep a separate save and go to the most eastern tower.

And let us all pray for your soul ...

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Be aware that if you make it, you'll out-level half of the remaining content when you get out so you can always get back to your previous save, even without this, you'll get some nice challenges, dragons and golems everywhere, Vrooks and shit.

 

I just finished this and it was really fucking good. I sure hope the sequel actually gets released even though the tabletop token appearance ain't my thing. Screw that optional battle though, I'd have to replay the entire game with a specially made party to pull that off.

What are some other games that are like this? The Steam Deep Dive is 100% useless and now I want more. I was thinking about Dark Sun since I never finished that, but there has to be more.

 

You can beat the last optional battle with 2 knights. I wasted 10 hours trying, but it's definitely possible.

 

You certainly should replay Shattered Lands.
You probably already played ToEE + Temple+ but if you didn't ... The short Icewind Dale conversion demo in toEE engine is interesting too. (Only one area + a cave besides the starting village)

Pool of Radiance - Ruins of Myth Drannor is decent, if you can make it work. (some config would get the invisible character bug, i do and i couldn't fix it)
Prelude to Darkness is really good if you have a high tolerance to the "return to desktop" feature (and save often)
Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager; i love Shattered Lands but couldn't get past the beginning with this one, not sure why though, you should try it though.