KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Darth Roxor]

Monkor is a late bloomer in my experience. He's kind of shit early on, but becomes veeeeeery useful once he gets a bunch of the class-specific talents. Though in my party he was more of a support melee (mostly grap machine), I barely ever used him for actual damage dealing iirc.

 

[Darth Canoli]

My bad, i mixed the fighter with the monk, that's why he went down so fast, cleared everything but pizarra and came back with the monk and the wizard (he's the kobold, i wanted the trident badly), it was close but it worked, surprise, summon skeleton, spam sleep ...

Forgot about the cleric and octopussy, would have done the trick too, probably.

Pizarra fight is just a great cleave fest + stomp (they got to level 3 after the pool) + squiddy and eventually some sleep and more stomp.

Well, this party isn't so bad after all.

 

[Darth Canoli]

So, about KotC 2 "impossible" fights without rolling initiative or reloading x billion times.

Having a druid gets you a lot of surprise rounds instead of getting surprised.
Having a Half Giant also helps
Psion/Wiz/cleric as well.

To some extend, less useful/popular races like drake or salamander have interesting options every now and then.

Party building is also important, the race/class combo is really important for fighter types depending on what you plan to do and if you have no plan, that's why it's so hard...

Difficult battles so far:

Chapter 1
Optionnal fights:
- Pizarra: This one boils down to initiative, as long as you have one fighter type with great cleave and some summons, you need one/two guys winning the initiative roll to lock pizarra and the witch, your great cleave guy has to be in a position where he can make the most of it, so surrounded by targets with low HP

- Sharkman druid: In this one it's not about initiative, this is the really hard one, you'll need your two best/most useful characters.
Wizard and cleric with sleep works well + one fighter with a good AC or a cleric with the octopuss; can't remember the domain and another caster like the wizard or a druid.

- The fight when you get out of the pool.
Here, you can be webbed or entangled (not sure which, entangled i think) which can turn the fight into a game over or at least a slaughter and you don't want to lose anyone at this point.
So, again, you need someone useful winning the initiative roll (not the entire party ONE guy) to either use a crowd control spell, or a fighter with high movement charging the mages or a powerful summon.

Chapter 2
The minotaur: you just need a psionicist with some useful single target debuff, this one is tough because of the spell deprivation but you can avoid it if you have a half giant in the party.

The following fight is also hard but with a druid, your party get the surprise round, which changes everything.

Mimics and elementals are nothing special, sure, elementals can surprise you once on a first playthrough, it's a good thing, then, you just spread and corner the fuckers.

The Crypt is nothing special until you get to the Vampire (wasn't there 2 vampires? I only got one this time), quicksand is ideal, otherwise fire spells or missiles and eventually a summon to keep him busy and not get drained, the fucker drained 2 levels from my mage knight.

Didn't get farther yet during this playthrough.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Chapter 2

Optional fights
- The Salamander (CR 8) + Huge fire elemental (CR 5) while your 2 party members are CR 3 i believe.
If The salamander crits twice in a row (or just twice on something else than a summon) you're probably screwed, If your mage/cleric depending on who you brought doesn't get the initiative, you're probably screwed too.
I picked Monk + Cleric, at this point, the monk hits like a paralytic marmot.
cleric > silence / Octopuss x4 / the throwing stones spell is actually very good at dealing damage

Only one reload here, which makes it 2 total so far (1 sharkman shaman, one here) and if i made it with that terrible duo, anything should work.
I think a wizard is a way better pick due to all the ice scrolls lying around, ice lance among them (ice dmg + stun)

- The Djinn (CR ?)
Got lucky here, winning the initiative with the psionicist and landing an energy stun first turn, the djinn only got to act once and didn't kill anyone.
This one boils down to initiative and having a couple useful spells to throw at him and then flanking him and putting him down fast.

So far, only optional fights are unfair but not unwinnable, Pizarra fight being optional too, you could align with Yanos and skip it.

Also, i picked the gold (80K) it's really important if you want a skewer weapon and you do (60K gold cost)

Then, you sell everything you don't need (save before) enchant (skewer) one weapon for your best fighter or your lamest but with a high attack bonus nonetheless.
Better to do it with one guy with the higher xp bonus, if took one for both the salamander and the sharkman, he's the one crafting.

Skewer is going to carry you through the entire chapter 3 (aside from the lich and the spider queen, both optional)

 

[Darth Roxor]

If the moon crypt is optional according to you, I'd LOVE to see you tackle the goblin arena with sticks and stones at level 4

 

[Darth Canoli]

If the moon crypt is optional according to you, I'd LOVE to see you tackle the goblin arena with sticks and stones at level 4

You can side with the goblins from the west (greens?) with or without help ...

That simple.

But i agree, it's a kind of optional area you don't want to skip, unlike the sharkman fight.

 

[xuerebx]

Now that the game has been out for a couple of months, would you recommend it Darth Canoli? I followed this thread upon release and I remember tons of bugs and crashes being reported, as well as frustration with the 'initiative' system. By way of some background - I really enjoyed KOTC 1.

 

[NJClaw]

You are giving an opinion so biased that it's almost unreal.

When you say "you need one guy to win the initiative", what you really mean is "you need one guy to win the initiative AND the enemies to fail their saves". Take the first Pizarra fight:

- Pizarra: This one boils down to initiative, as long as you have one fighter type with great cleave and some summons, you need one/two guys winning the initiative roll to lock pizarra and the witch, your great cleave guy has to be in a position where he can make the most of it, so surrounded by targets with low HP

Here at least you acknowledge that you need to disable both Pizarra and the witch in the first round to win, but you make it seem like it's only a matter of winning the initiative, when it's definitely not. If one of them doesn't fail her save against your disabling spell, you probably have to reload.

- The Salamander (CR 8) + Huge fire elemental (CR 5) while your 2 party members are CR 3 i believe.
If The salamander crits twice in a row (or just twice on something else than a summon) you're probably screwed, If your mage/cleric depending on who you brought doesn't get the initiative, you're probably screwed too.
I picked Monk + Cleric, at this point, the monk hits like a paralytic marmot.
cleric > silence / Octopuss / the throwing stones spell is actually very good at dealing damage

Only one reload here, which makes it 2 total so far (1 sharkman shaman, one here) and if i made it with that terrible duo, anything should work.
I think a wizard is a way better pick due to all the ice scrolls lying around, ice lance among them (ice dmg + stun)

Nice job minimizing the problems of this encounter. The salamander doesn't need to crit twice in a row, because he can kill both characters with a single spell. If the enemy decides to use his fireball, your characters can't possibly sustain the damage, and you have only one choice: to reload. Luckily, most of the times he just decides to skip the spell and immediately get in melee range, but doing that he is basically choosing not to win the encounter on the spot for no reason whatsoever.

You are also relying on the strongest early game cleric domain for some of these encounters. That's not a great way to prove that the game is actually easy and well balanced.

So far, only optional fights are unfair but not unwinnable, Pizarra fight being optional too, you could align with Yanos and skip it.

"Everything is optional" is not a good excuse for poorly designed encounters. Of course fights are not unwinnable, nobody is saying that they are, but you have to realize that "hey, there's a dialogue option with which you submit to the evil guy and skip a difficult encounter" doesn't mean that having to reload until you win the initiative and the enemies fail their saves is suddenly an ok design choice.

Don't get me wrong, I love KotC2 despite its flaws and I'm hyped for the next modules, but crusading for Pierre while downplaying all of the game's flaws seems pointless to me.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Now that the game has been out for a couple of months, would you recommend it Darth Canoli? I followed this thread upon release and I remember tons of bugs and crashes being reported, as well as frustration with the 'initiative' system. By way of some background - I really enjoyed KOTC 1.

Well, it's similar, bugs are long gone, at least for me but i don't use quicksave (which might be bugged or not)

As for the difficulty, there is a lot of difficulty options so if it's too hard, try to optimize your party and think it ahead, if it's not enough, use some options.
I think it's a great tactical/RPG but i just hope next modules will go further down the RPG path (open world with lots of interesting optional quests)

From my point of view, you can't go wrong either way because Hearkenwold by Dorateen is about to be released ( in a couple of month?)

I remember a lot of unfair fights in KotC too, in KotC 2, there is way more feats, classes and races, you have to get the most of it to make the game easier, if you don't optimize your party, you're screwed.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Here at least you acknowledge that you need to disable both Pizarra and the witch in the first round to win, but you make it seem like it's only a matter of winning the initiative, when it's definitely not. If one of them doesn't fail her save against your disabling spell, you probably have to reload.

Actually, you don't need to disable any of them because both of them are back against a wall (lava for Pizarra) so you just need to get a good summon or a warrior on the opposite side and they're screwed.

Chapter 2

Optional fights
- The Salamander (CR 8) + Huge fire elemental (CR 5) while your 2 party members are CR 3 i believe.
If The salamander crits twice in a row (or just twice on something else than a summon) you're probably screwed, If your mage/cleric depending on who you brought doesn't get the initiative, you're probably screwed too.
I picked Monk + Cleric, at this point, the monk hits like a paralytic marmot.
cleric > silence / Octopuss x4 / the throwing stones spell is actually very good at dealing damage

Only one reload here, which makes it 2 total so far (1 sharkman shaman, one here) and if i made it with that terrible duo, anything should work.
I think a wizard is a way better pick due to all the ice scrolls lying around, ice lance among them (ice dmg + stun)

Nice job minimizing the problems of this encounter. The salamander doesn't need to crit twice in a row, because he can kill both characters with a single spell. If the enemy decides to use his fireball, your characters can't possibly sustain the damage, and you have only one choice: to reload. Luckily, most of the times he just decides to skip the spell and immediately get in melee range, but doing that he is basically choosing not to win the encounter on the spot for no reason whatsoever.

You are also relying on the strongest early game cleric domain for some of these encounters. That's not a great way to prove that the game is actually easy and well balanced.

You missed something important, i believe...
You just have to lock the right area and the salamander can never cast a single spell.

Also, i'm not saying it's balanced, i believe i said optional fights are unfair but not unwinnable.
I'd pick that over balance without blinking as long as the combat system is as good as in KotC 2.

And yes, i picked the most "powerful" domain for the early game but it's going to be useless soon enough so it's a trade off.

 

[NJClaw]

You missed something important, i believe...
You just have to lock the right area and the salamander can never cast a single spell

So your:

If your mage/cleric depending on who you brought doesn't get the initiative, you're probably screwed too.

Actually means "if your mage/cleric depending on who you brought doesn't get the initiative, you are CERTAINLY screwed too". This sounds dangerously like "you need to reload until you win the initiative".

Actually, you don't need to disable any of them because both of them are back against a wall (lava for Pizarra) so you just need to get a good summon of a warrior on the opposite side and they're screwed.

Again, you are downplaying it to an unbelievable level. A good summon does almost nothing to them, unless we are talking about very specific cleric domains. I've never been able to reliably lock them down with my melee guys, but maybe I haven't pursued that route for enough time. I'm quite skeptic of how this would play out, but maybe I'll try it next time I play. Have you considered streaming your playthrough? That would give a lot more weight to your "the game doesn't require as much reloading as you people say" stance.

 

[Darth Canoli]

For the salamander fight, you just need ice lance + a good fighter, neither silence nor the octopuss are required but i'm playing with what i have and sure, if the salamander wins the initiative and fireball you, you're screwed, it's level 13...

Makes it two fights so far that rely on reloads and some tactics (or more reloads if you just trying shit without thinking)

I barely skype, i'm not going record anything, i can't even make the screenshots work with KotC 2 (ALT+X and printsceen just take a screenshot of my desktop ...)

 

[cruelio]

Been enjoying this recurring series “people who have already played the game and read everything about it on the forum swearing you don’t need to reload to win fights and then reloading to win fights”.

 

[NJClaw]

For the salamander fight, you just need ice lance + a good fighter

I think a wizard is a way better pick due to all the ice scrolls lying around, ice lance among them (ice dmg + stun)

Just to put things into perspective, especially for people who haven't played the game, what you are suggesting is to use a spell that (setting aside the chance to hit) roughly has a 30% chance of stunning the salamander:

Spoiler

Not only that, but this even makes the wizard a way better pick than the cleric! Can't imagine the chances with the cleric, then...

 

[Darth Canoli]

I guess you didn't pick spell focus conjuration and greater spell focus conjuration ?
Did you use the +2 int circlet on your wizard?
How much int? 18?

I never used this spell on the salamander so thanks for the feedback, it works quite well usually i was sure it was the right spell to use.

Don't get me wrong, cleric + a good fighter works, my monk wasn't very useful here but i wanted to keep the fighter downstairs against the babaus and the mage knight had 2 or 3 level drained so my cleric / monk duo wasn't all i got.

Silence works all the time though, i just launched it again and after using a single octopuss this time, i just stoned the salamander to death (2x spells magic stone = 5 stones thrown at the salamander) so he was dead after 3 turns and 2 more turns for the fire elemental.

I don't want to do the babau fight right now to try with a wizard or a psionicist + fighter.

Been enjoying this recurring series “people who have already played the game and read everything about it on the forum swearing you don’t need to reload to win fights and then reloading to win fights”.

Some people here pretend they reloaded 10+ times every fight to win them, either it's a lie or they play wizards with 6 int and 20 str and fighters with 20 int and 6 str...
It's probably this.

Some fights might need one reload, perhaps more if you're really unlucky but they're only optional fights...

 

[NJClaw]

I guess you didn't pick spell focus conjuration and greater spell focus conjuration ?
Did you use the +2 int circlet on your wizard?
How much int? 18?

The character has Int 22 (20 base + 2 from the circlet). With both Spell Focus feats, the chance of stunning the salamander would be 40%. If you factor in the fact that you have to actually hit him (85% chance with Dex 18 and ignoring the -20% if the target is engaged in melee), the chance of actually stunning him with a single cast is 34%. But to ignore that -4 penalty you need Precise Shot, and, since you can't renounce to Improved Initiative, to get that and its requirement you need to drop Greater Spell Focus, dropping the chance of stunning him to less than 30%. And you will be stuck with Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot for the entire playthrough.

Some fights might need one reload, perhaps more if you're really unlucky but they're only optional fights...

Come on, you can't be serious. You're acting like having to reload more than once is a rare occurrence, when it actually is the norm in this game. I know that it's possible to go through it without reloading, but you need complete and perfect knowledge about the challenges you are going to face, and even with that you still need a ton of luck. And I still can't understand this fixation with the fights being optional. First: the game has no plot whatsoever, so it's hard to know what is optional and what isn't. The only way of discovering what encounters are optional would be, once again, constantly reloading to find the optimal path. Second: you still need the experience to tackle the mandatory fights. Third: that's not a valid excuse for poor encounter design.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Come on, you can't be serious. You're acting like having to reload more than once is a rare occurrence, when it actually is the norm in this game. I know that it's possible to go through it without reloading, but you need complete and perfect knowledge about the challenges you are going to face, and even with that you still need a ton of luck. And I still can't understand this fixation with the fights being optional. First: the game has no plot whatsoever, so it's hard to know what is optional and what isn't. The only way of discovering what encounters are optional would be, once again, constantly reloading to find the optimal path. Second: you still need the experience to tackle the mandatory fights. Third: that's not a valid excuse for poor encounter design.

In ToEE, if you try to sneak and loot the chest in the fire Temple, you'll have to fightthe high commander and a shitload of these Salamanders.
In the water temple, if you just sided with the air temple or if you just stay there too long, you could either get attacked by water temple bugbears or the water high priest and his leviathan, the only way to beat that thing is to stay in the bugbears room and clean it up and then take it on either from a distance or distracting him with some summons.

I'm not even talking about Iuz fight and Zuggtmoy one.
And also the frog king fight, because more often than not, you're underlevelled when you reach that point and your party will be wiped out a couple of times probably.

The Salamander fight is one of those.
You fail, you start over or you pick a save before the crypt and try to tackle the goblins, siding with the green against the grey is a viable option and an easy way through it.

Then, with the reward, you can prepare yourself for the crypt or skip it.

I don't know about you but that's what i like in ToEE, fighting against impossible odds and that's what i like in KotC and KotC 2.

Then again, any character with a high initiative and silence will almost trivialize the Salamander fight...

I didn't try everything, far from it, silence works, i use it, sue me!
Still, i'm quite sure other spells work just as well and there's probably some psionicist and maybe druid tools that works too.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Chapter 2

The Goblin arena
5 options there you side with either the grey or the green goblins and you fight alone or alongside them, last option being taking them all on, maybe there is something with this option and Erzimon, now i think of it, it picked it this time but without Erz in my active party and got nothing (10.5K xp still and the loot)

Options by difficulty from easiest

• Fighting with the Green against Grey Gobs
• " " " Grey against the Green gobs
• Fighting alone against the Grey gobs
• Fighting them all (they fight each other) --> worst reward, except maybe if Erzimon is in your active party?
  
• Fighting alone against the Green gobs

Even if you side with the Green and get access to their camp and store, you can fight them by talking with the King.

This fight can turn into a huge mess, specially if you fight everyone, target goblin mages and rangers first, protect your mages with your fighters and let the second wave come after you, psionicist electric cone works rather well, the minotaur cleans the air if you use fogs.

The minotaur and the naga champion are the biggest threats once the goblin mages and rangers are gone but they can't rush you because of their huge allies blocking the path, lucky you...

The Goblin King
Maybe there's a way to avoid getting sruprised or not, i'll have to double check but if you sided with the green and initiate the fight afterward, your party isn't surprised.
Otherwise, better try something good with your formation, if your squishy mages get the back-lines, they'll be cornered and your frontline will be too busy to help them so this is tough.

Resilient grease in the king's corridor works like a charm or stinking cloud, the priority being the two rangers though, little fuckers, so if you have a fast fighter, now is the time to make a good use of him while the other holds the scorpion.
Then grease or stinking cloud on the king's pass and then wipe out the frogs and their acolytes while surviving the giant scorpion...
This one reminds me of ToEE King Frog's fight.

 

[Darth Roxor]

If you have a druid in your party, rejoice, you won't get surprised!

This is either fake news or a very recent addition. I had a druid in my first party and there was no way of avoiding this surprise.

 

[Trash Player]

Little bit of probability: a plan with 20% success rate would more often than not work in 4 tries, i.e. 100%-(80%)^4=59%.
Mileage may vary, or so they say, however. D20 cannot withstand that much pressure without having a sizable amount of players
feeling stripped out of agency, imo.

 

[Darth Canoli]

This is either fake news or a very recent addition. I had a druid in my first party and there was no way of avoiding this surprise.

Are you sure?
I was sure my party wasn't surprised so either it's the druid or the death knight and i don't think it's the death knight.
I remember the druid nuking the frogs still in their lair.

Or maybe that's when i initiated the fight by talking to the Gob king, well, it's worth a double check.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Are you sure?

Yes, because my strategy for the goblin king with that party was always to launch quicksand into the king's corridor with my alpha psyker druid, and the only way of starting it was to stroll into the big hall and get "Suddenly enemies run out of everywhere!"

There is no surprise only if you engage him from dialogue if you didn't fight the greens in the arena, or at least that's how it used to be.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fixed, still, i think i remember a message warning me from a possible ambush, will check next playthrough around v1.15 probably ^^'

 

[Tacgnol]

Been enjoying this recurring series “people who have already played the game and read everything about it on the forum swearing you don’t need to reload to win fights and then reloading to win fights”.

Also as a lulzy reminder, the game's biggest defender hasn't even finished the game and is arguing with multiple people that have.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Also as a lulzy reminder, the game's biggest defender hasn't even finished the game and is arguing with multiple people that have.

He's also offering a light walkthrough, which goes way beyond your whinny contribution.