Improved Faldorn (spoilers, but who cares)

[SpongeBobTheDestoyer]

What do you think about the odds if

1) the challenging druid was able to keep his or her equipment during the fight, or

2) you could say screw the laws of the ritual and have any member of your party fight Faldorn

I don't know how the game engine or modding works so maybe those aren't even possible fixes, but if they were it might make for a fair fight.

Your above strategy is a bit of a lengthy process. A high level Sorceror with 3 remove magics in a sequencer equipped with the Robe of Vecna could let them loose as soon as Faldorn goes red and have her dispelled while Jaheira is casting Insect Plague. Jaheira's Insects will hit her before she can cast and then you could run like hell with Jaheira while hitting the Arena with AoE spells. Do remove magics and AoE spells make their way into the Arena BTW? I've never tried.

[ 06-24-2004, 04:33 AM: Message edited by: SpongeBobTheDestoyer ]

[Assassin]

Or... Hardiness and Armor of Faith stack. Slap them on Jaheira, and all of the Green Protection scrolls you can get. Improved Haste, Haste, and the Boots of Speed. Regeneration, and IH will double-time Regeneration. Iron Skins. Cure Disease (it works versus NB?!) to get rid of the blindness (I'll take your word on it). Shapeshift to Fire Elemental, and Critical Hit HLA. Waste Faldorn. [img]smile.gif[/img]

This is all purely theorectical, because I've never actually played the Druid Grove component, becuase I never knew it existed until a couple of days ago. (sticking with reinstalling, trusting that weimer wouldn't stick anything n ew in. [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by SpongeBobTheDestoyer: What do you think about the odds if 1) the challenging druid was able to keep his or her equipment during the fight,

That's a good way of allowing more variety into the fight--since Druids are stuck at Levels 13 and 14 for pretty much all of SoA, allowing items is pretty much the only way of taking past achivements into account. I see nothing wrong with Jaheira equipped with Armor of the Hart and the Sentinel Shield, or Cernd with Shadow Dragon Scale and the Ring of Gaxx.

2) you could say screw the laws of the ritual and have any member of your party fight Faldorn

Violating the ritual would mean that either
A) Good luck, Faldorn's immortal except against another Druid, or
B) She isn't immortal, which would trash a nice bit of roleplay that I wouldn't like to lose. I've always held all of the Druid Grove mumbo-jumbo to mean that Faldorn is tapping into the power of the ley lines to call forth the Earth Mother's power into the highest local Druid, thus making her invincible. It's only a challenge of Druid vs. Druid that can confuse the Mother, thus causing her to not bestow her power at all, thus making Faldorn....pretty much just another Druid. A Level 15 Druid, all right, but nothing otherwise special about her. (Which, of course, raises the question of what the hell Faldorn did to jump all the way up to ToB levels by the time the rest of the BG1 crew can even get to the Druid Grove, but we'll probably have to live with that.)

A high level Sorceror with 3 remove magics in a sequencer equipped with the Robe of Vecna could let them loose as soon as Faldorn goes red and have her dispelled while Jaheira is casting Insect Plague. Jaheira's Insects will hit her before she can cast and then you could run like hell with Jaheira while hitting the Arena with AoE spells.

True, but Jaheira will most likely die to friendly fire if you don't have her shielded with Otiluke's. And that means she won't be able to cast anything once she's in the arena. Don't disregard those Spirit Animals, either: The Wolves can Level Drain you, and the Bears can inflict Fear. (Weimer has steered clear of the Spirit Snakes, for some reason.)

Do remove magics and AoE spells make their way into the Arena BTW? I've never tried.

I obviously sure as hell hope they do.

Originally posted by Assassin: Or... Hardiness and Armor of Faith stack. Slap them on Jaheira, and all of the Green Protection scrolls you can get. Improved Haste, Haste, and the Boots of Speed. Regeneration, and IH will double-time Regeneration. Shapeshift to Fire Elemental, and Critical Hit HLA. Waste Faldorn.

A good starter idea, but when you realize that Faldorn's got 6 castings of Ironskins, immunity to Fire, the ability to cast Regeneration on her own account, and more attacks per round than Jaheira does....I think you'll begin to grasp the futility of the situation.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

I don't think Remove Magics or other AoE spells make it into the arena, come to think of it... I believe I tried it once and it didn't work. I hope for your sakes that I'm wrong.

[Nerull]

Unless Weimer changed it, AoE spells do not reach in the circle. I've tried that on several occasions and it never worked for me.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

And correct me if I'm wrong... but doesn't Otiluke's Resilient Sphere also hold its target? That means she can't cast anything on herself...

[SixOfSpades]

If no AoE spells can cross the "wall," then pretty much the only option is to have a party Sorcerer (or Mage, if you've done WK) continually casting Wish. Is it me, or should Weimer have noticed something was slightly amiss when Improved Faldorn became more difficult to beat than Improved Irenicus?

My alternative plan of attack involves Jaheira sitting in the Sphere until Faldorn's Nature's Beauties and FireStorms are gone, and then casting things like Insect Plague and Storm of Vengeance on herself--they might not make it out of the Sphere, but it's worth a shot--and then summoning up a storm (Conjure Animals, Greater Elemental Summoning). The Summons should appear next to Jaheira if she casts the spells on herself, and since they're not in the Sphere they should be free to attack.

I strongly doubt that Otiluke's Holds its target--but if it is, you can always use Free Action.

Of course, I can't speak with certainty on this, not having put any of it into action--but I will. My Nalia is currently Level 16, have patience.

[Assassin]

I strongly doubt that Otiluke's Holds its target--but if it is, you can always use Free Action.

Fixed in Baldurdash.

[Imrahil]

I was thinking about this today & came up with a couple of things to try using weimer-cheese to beat weimer-cheese (it'll take me a while to get back there to try these out, so if anyone wants to, please do)...

- Can Solaufein Dimension Door into the pit? I know it's very cheesy to pass items into the pit, but if Sola can DD in, he could "legitimately" carry some Druid-friendly items in with him, right? And then help out with fight...

- What about Improved Kitthix? Can it DD into the pit to help with the fight, even if summoned outside the pit?

... &, getting away from weimer-cheese...

- How about targeted Summons? those that you can pick the spawning point - can someone outside the pit summon a Planetar (or whatever, that's very high level) into the pit?

- my last run through I didn't have Jaheira & didn't feel like levelling up Cernd, so I CTRL-J'ed my Thief into the pit, set a bunch of traps, CTRL-J'ed him out, then let Cernd fight it out with the benefit of the massive trap damage & he won - extremely cheesy/cheating, but only slightly more so than just CTRL-Y'ing Faldorn, which seems equally justified.

Even if any of those work, it still means clearing the Druid Grove is a "right before confronting Irenicus" battle, which is silly.

(while I'm at it, I'd just like to say that Improved Druid Grove rules, while Improved Faldorn utterly sucks)

- Imrahil

[Assassin]

Check out this topic:

http://forums.pocketplane.net/index.php?topic=15435.0

It outlines what some people have done that works, though quite a few involve cheese.

The winning strategy without cheese:

This is what I did - I had my PC - kensai dualled to druid at 12 with grand mastery in quarterstaffs and I was at 12/13 level. I had my PC drink a potion of cloud giant strength, a potion of invulnerability, 2 potions of magic protection effectively raising the magic resistance to 100, a potion of magic shielding and had improved haste cast on him by Aerie. Then I had spells of chant, defensive harmony, and bless on the PC before allowing him to take on Faldorn. Grabbed the staff immediately and pounded her with everything my PC had. Even so I had to reload three times before, I hit the right strategy in the fight - as when to recast my PC's ironskins twice during the fight. Once I disrupted her heal spell, the rest was easy. Before she could recover to recast her ironskins, she was dead. This is a monstrously tough battle and I think there are a few things that are extremely unfair. 1) The dread wolves land right on the staff so you have to lead them away from the staff before you can get it. suggested change - the staff should begin in the challenger's inventory - come on, Faldorn did not have to run for the staff even during the Bio version - she started with the staff in her hand. 2) She can be casting a spell and still attacks - even Demogorgon cannot do this. This is blatantly unfair. She should either cast a spell or attack - she should not be able to to both simultaneously. 3) Her number of attacks is far too high - 4 per round. A dual wielding fighter class PC at the end of ToB does not have that many attacks. suggested change - reduce the number of attacks to 3 or 2.5 All in all, it is a very challenging fight - thanks to Wes Weimer for creating it. Regards, Maidros

And something that I never thought about...

I cheesed Feldorn casting teleport field with my 12/13/15 fighter/mage/ thief

[ 06-29-2004, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: Assassin ]