The set battles (southern wilderness temple, Nessie, Souleater, Al Sedexus, etc.) are all tough, but they all have strategies for beating them. Far and away the toughest battles I ever had in this game were the random encounters in the early-mid game. Like, the first time I took my low level party up the path to the mines, and got swarmed by tanto wasps that cut me to pieces. Or after I beat the Rattkin breeders and the game spawned packs of Rattkin goons and archers that I had no choice but to fight through on those narrow walkways (I hate the Rattkin tree!). Or running into a pack of squids in the underwater tunnels, so I switch direction, take the left fork, and run into a bunch of psi sharks. Or my level 5 party against a bunch of weeds that blinded everyone on the first turn. I even remember a bunch of mountain sprites spawning in one of the retro dungeons, and I barely beat them. Fighting my way through Rapax castle with my advanced party was easier than any of these earlier fights. Yes, the toughest fights are the ones that don't get all the headlines in this game.

I've never noticed eye for an eye reflect back gaze attacks, even when the gaze exactly duplicates a spell effect. Anyone else have a different observation to make here?

<$0.02>And either way I doubt if it would be effective against armegazers. I've found that eye for an eye gets less effective the more powerful the opponent. Unlike baseball where "good pitching will always stop good hitting, and vice versa," as monster levels get higher, their magic resistances seem to improve at a steeper rate than ability to harm you with spells. Therefore, although eye for an eye will generally "freeze" a group of rapax warmages that has just 'freeze all' at you, it rarely in my experience affects demons, djinn, gazers, mountain sprites and the like (although sometimes it does, but at diminishing rates as the monsters get more powerful).< /$0.02>

[ 04-30-2003, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: jsalsb ]

Well, i think sometimes eye for an eye is effective even against high-level monsters. I had adamantine unicorns kill themselves with quicksand, djinni of the clouds with their own death clouds, and other greater demons drove themself insane with pandemonium.
But normal damage spells reflected don't do real damage, compared with the damage you can deal with weapons at this stage.

That's more success than I've usually had with eye for an eye. I've seen it work occasionally with high level opponents, but I've never seen a death cloud backfire on a djinn. That must have been quite satisfying!

Oh, and I just noticed last night, the ArmeGazers are worth 5.6 million exp each! Is this the highest exp monster in the game?