ascension peak

[Wereboar]

Try to play with some real spellcasters. Just use 'damage all' spells (mind flail, earthquake, falling stars, even nuclear blast). Usually, after 3 rounds, only the two uniques are left.

[Kylospylon]

That's pretty impressive Wereboar. What level were you when you managed to do that?

[Wereboar]

It was with 5 - 6 character parties (once with the 4 specialized spellcasters and 2 bishops, once with the 4 and a bard). The later group was level 27 at the end, thus level 25 - 26 at this fight. The other were probably 1 - 2 levels lower, due to their bigger size (no RPCs).
I've played more spellcaster parties, but didn't trigger this fight every time.

I've also did this fight with a 4 character hybrid party (samuria, ninja, monk, ranger) that went for powercast using only spells - just to see it if can be done (expert ironman, as always). The must have been level 26-27 already at this point. I managed to kill anything without using mana stones or magic nectars. The rapax fell easy, the bitterwings too, but the level 36 scorchers that joined the battle resisted quite a lot, so my mana was very low after the fight.

[Wereboar]

Yesterday, i did the fight with a melee-oriented party (fighter, rogue, monk, bishop). But i killed all the initial army with spells (the others killed the summoned templars around me).

A level 7 mind flail from the level 25 bishop did 90 damage on average (more than from expected from the spell description - high powercast). A nuclear blast still did around 50. A level 5 mind flail from the monk was 30-40 damage (half the 'normal' value, since no powercast).

With 50 - 100 damage per spell from a pure spellcaster, you see that the 300+ hit points of the rapax will be gone very fast with several casters. And with a pure spellcaster party, the two uniques will die quickly with spells like concussion.

[Kylospylon]

I did the Rapax Army fight today, with 4 spellcasters all mindflaying, earthquaking etc..

It was quite easy to kill most of the Rapax, but some Cliff Sprites joined in the fun and kept casting Heal All, when they weren't casting Falling Stars at me, so some of the time I had to keep healing and buffing myself. All in all, it took about 12 rounds. My Demon daughter didn't seem to take much damage, and was the last to die. I was lvl 21.

Casting at level 6-7 was risky for most of my spell casters, and they fizzled and backfired a few times during the battle. I finished the game soon after around level 23. If I had waited until I was lvl 25+ until I took on the Rapax Army, it wouldn't have even been a fight. I guess I'm just impatient. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Wereboar]

I don't 'wait' for levels, except at game start (want to be level 2 for noxious slimes with low hit point characters, level 4-5 for gregor with weak parties). I just do the whole game (including the retros, the unexplored areas in Mt.Gigas, and the alliance - this are the parts i left out in some games).

For a 4 character party, level 26-28 is ormal for me at the end. Well, there are a few points where i might gain more xp than other players:

1. I don't become templar before heading for ascension peak. So the rapax stay hostile, and i have some extra fights at about 3 visits to ferro (not more, since i usually don't rest anymore at that stage).
2. I kill the rapax in the away camp when i do the rescue.
3. I want to 'map' the areas properly (without leaving black spots or badly mapped edges). This in particular means that i have to follow each path 3 times at ascension peak (once for mapping one side of the road, back for the other side, and up again to reach the temple, unless i have set a portal there). Since xp is high at ascension peak, that alone is probably at least one level.
4. I do the swamp and the mine tunnels quite late (unless i forget the tunnels, which happens a lot). In the swamp, i usually encouter many groups of level 20 oozites when i'm level ~16, so great experience. In Mine tunnels, there are mostly tantoo wasps and high level slimes.

[rbeane1]

I usually just turncoat the daughter and go straight for the prince and kill him.
it is a long fight any way you do it.

[Wereboar]

And i usually don't trigger the fight (don't have two artifacts with me at one time, except for the away camp). But with spellcasters, i like the fight.

[Gadgeteer Tom]

Yesterday, my Gadgeteer slaughtered the Rapax Army, we ran up close (between the Prince and the Al-spaun-whatever) and negatair knocked off the Prince along with most of the Army, then as new Templars were spawned - just froze them and turned loose my 'Superman-enhanced' Elementals (although I screwed up and let one run away in fear - I failed to run him down and cast 'Sane Mind' so could not summon another from that caster...grrr) while I hacked away at al-whatever.

Insanity can help quite a bit if enough Rapax survive...

[Kylospylon]

Actually Wereboar, I think you're right. My first few parties ascended around lvl 28 or so, but I guess that for a while now I haven't 'mapped' or explored the game world as thoroughly, because I know where everything is I guess.

This would explain why my games are finishing sooner and sooner, I think that maybe, at last, this game is starting to bore me. I must have played it over 20 times by now, not including many early restarts. It's a shame that games of this calibre are so few and far between (if there even are any).

This was my first turn-based RPG game I had ever played, and man did I suck when I first began it, but now, after many hours of play, I can finally say that I suck slightly less. [img]smile.gif[/img]