Man.... that Bishop Alexander fight (on Tactician)...
I don't think this warrants a spoiler tag, but just a heads up anyway, this is a boss fight of Act I.
I had to cheese so hard to have any chance at beating this fight, and finally did it after more than 2 hours. And I was lucky or I wouldn't have made it.
So if you enter the fight the normal way from the main entrance, you will probably be down a character before the worm even spawns.
Thus, you take the right path, zap some more shriekers (I did it with the Tyrant's helm for a suprise fight that gives you a pretty nice improved Tyrant's helm) and you get that awesome narrow corridor to lure the enemies into, which even has a convenient oil barrel.
Standard cheese tactic on Tactician.
At this point, this would become a pretty interesting fight, because even with that corridor, all the enemies are one level above you (I don't think you can reach level 8 on the island, I explored all of the map and think I did everything, still I'm level 7) and they are PUMPED armor- and HP-wise. And one is floating. And two (at least) can teleport around one way or another. So, it would be tough anyway.
Then, after round 5 (or at the start?), that massive 1000+HP worm spawns to wreak total havoc. If this worm would actually attack your enemies, too, it might be somewhat fair.
But this game seems to work heavily with some kind of aggression and/or priority target system. Basically, if the worm even SEES one of your own party, he will attack you or even worse, teleport to you knocking everyone around down. I tried this more than five times, the worm did never attack a magister if seeing one of your chars. And his vomit attack deals massive damage AND there will be cursed surfaces all around.
Here's what I did to stand any chance at all:
I had only two people in the corridor. One to start the fight, then bounce back, another to destroy the barrel and wait behind the door to set the oil on fire once some chars are there.
The other two characters hide behind the big statue in the room where the shriekers were - for about two rounds.
Then, one of them (one who can teleport) goes left via the main doorway to lure two or so melee guys to come that way. When they do, teleport back to hide behind the statue.
This (at least for me) caused a situation where the magister troops are split into two groups. One walking towards the statue room, one kinda stuck in the oiled/burning corridor.
Now, lucky event number one happened: The worm tends to spawn where multiple characters are (no matter if you or Magister), mine spawned directly next to the Bishop and the two Backstabbers who were on their way through the main doorway towards the shrieker & statue room. Lucky me! It did not see any of my characters, so it focused on the magisters.
Worm & those three magisters duked it out for a couple rounds while one of my chars spent his turns going out of hiding, shooting one of the magister troops then moving back into hiding.
The other one helped the last two characters dealing with the magisters stuck in the corridor.
Lucky event number two: The winged metamorph magister was stuck at his starting location throughout the entire combat as she was too far away from anything. I suspect a pathfinding bug that might be fixed eventually.
My chars could deal with the magisters in the corridor about the same time the three other Magisters finished the worm (obviously weakened from the encounter, but only a little).
So it comes to three Magisters (including the Bishop) vs my guys in that Shrieker room.
That was actually a fun and well-balanced fight. I had to revive characters twice (stocked up on those scrolls beforehand
), but eventually did it and could then easily deal with the stuck metamorph magister.
Now... is there any way to deal with this encounter without resorting to these extreme cheese tactics (and hoping for luck in the worm spawn location)?
I was glad I won the fight, but it didn't really feel like a fairly earned victory.
I don't think this warrants a spoiler tag, but just a heads up anyway, this is a boss fight of Act I.
I had to cheese so hard to have any chance at beating this fight, and finally did it after more than 2 hours. And I was lucky or I wouldn't have made it.
So if you enter the fight the normal way from the main entrance, you will probably be down a character before the worm even spawns.
Thus, you take the right path, zap some more shriekers (I did it with the Tyrant's helm for a suprise fight that gives you a pretty nice improved Tyrant's helm) and you get that awesome narrow corridor to lure the enemies into, which even has a convenient oil barrel.
Standard cheese tactic on Tactician.
At this point, this would become a pretty interesting fight, because even with that corridor, all the enemies are one level above you (I don't think you can reach level 8 on the island, I explored all of the map and think I did everything, still I'm level 7) and they are PUMPED armor- and HP-wise. And one is floating. And two (at least) can teleport around one way or another. So, it would be tough anyway.
Then, after round 5 (or at the start?), that massive 1000+HP worm spawns to wreak total havoc. If this worm would actually attack your enemies, too, it might be somewhat fair.
But this game seems to work heavily with some kind of aggression and/or priority target system. Basically, if the worm even SEES one of your own party, he will attack you or even worse, teleport to you knocking everyone around down. I tried this more than five times, the worm did never attack a magister if seeing one of your chars. And his vomit attack deals massive damage AND there will be cursed surfaces all around.
Here's what I did to stand any chance at all:
I had only two people in the corridor. One to start the fight, then bounce back, another to destroy the barrel and wait behind the door to set the oil on fire once some chars are there.
The other two characters hide behind the big statue in the room where the shriekers were - for about two rounds.
Then, one of them (one who can teleport) goes left via the main doorway to lure two or so melee guys to come that way. When they do, teleport back to hide behind the statue.
This (at least for me) caused a situation where the magister troops are split into two groups. One walking towards the statue room, one kinda stuck in the oiled/burning corridor.
Now, lucky event number one happened: The worm tends to spawn where multiple characters are (no matter if you or Magister), mine spawned directly next to the Bishop and the two Backstabbers who were on their way through the main doorway towards the shrieker & statue room. Lucky me! It did not see any of my characters, so it focused on the magisters.
Worm & those three magisters duked it out for a couple rounds while one of my chars spent his turns going out of hiding, shooting one of the magister troops then moving back into hiding.
The other one helped the last two characters dealing with the magisters stuck in the corridor.
Lucky event number two: The winged metamorph magister was stuck at his starting location throughout the entire combat as she was too far away from anything. I suspect a pathfinding bug that might be fixed eventually.
My chars could deal with the magisters in the corridor about the same time the three other Magisters finished the worm (obviously weakened from the encounter, but only a little).
So it comes to three Magisters (including the Bishop) vs my guys in that Shrieker room.
That was actually a fun and well-balanced fight. I had to revive characters twice (stocked up on those scrolls beforehand
), but eventually did it and could then easily deal with the stuck metamorph magister.Now... is there any way to deal with this encounter without resorting to these extreme cheese tactics (and hoping for luck in the worm spawn location)?
I was glad I won the fight, but it didn't really feel like a fairly earned victory.
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He pulled gheist's and assassin's aggro away + managed to get some decent damage in on them before going down. All in all it was a huge mess. I lost Fane pretty early but the rest managed to survive up until the last part, I got careless with my positioning when only Archer and Poly lady were left to deal with. Lohse went down and then it was finally over.
