Toughest challenge (that is possible)?

[Mr Creosote]

Originally posted by el_kalkylus: Mr Creo, I see it's good you have already done the challenge, except for some details...one big detail is the reloading part.

Not quite sure what you mean by reloading - after battles?
When I played the char party after the fist part of the game up to Arnika I probably didnt have to reload more than half a dozen times due to tough fights, only at the temple and a couple of other places where I tried different strategies, and when I occassionally got surprised because I had been complacent about restoring health etc after a tough battle and then carried on when I should have rested etc. I found that my Fighter became VERY strong and rarely took any meaningful damage, just the occassional magic attack but as the game went on almost nothing could touch him.
I think the game is tougher to play with small parties when one first plays the game but as ones skills at playing the game improve in many ways its actually easier to play with smaller parties. I was though VERY dissapointed that magic especially offensive magic had been so downgraded in the game as to be almost irrelevant. In Wiz7 I just loved Nuke blast but in Wiz 8 it was a waste of time. I was also dissapointed with Samurai, no matter how well buffed a Sam never (at least in my experience) would be as good as a Fighter, crits just suck.
I really like this game and have played it far too much the last months and having a rest from playing it but I will get back to it - I want to play thru solo as a Fighter - will be tough due to lack of magic attack resistance, but worth a shot!

[el_kalkylus]

You should try it if it's so easy like you say.

About magic: I have tested this alot. It's all about how good mythology skill you have. Then, you can check the resistances and concentrate on the enemies weak resistances. Then magic is much more effective than melee in most cases. The monsters that aren't affected by magic are usually only one or two at a time, and can easily be killed by one melee guy.

[Mr Creosote]

Originally posted by el_kalkylus: About magic: I have tested this alot. It's all about how good mythology skill you have. Then, you can check the resistances and concentrate on the enemies weak resistances. Then magic is much more effective than melee in most cases. The monsters that aren't affected by magic are usually only one or two at a time, and can easily be killed by one melee guy.

Excellent strategy and one that had never occured to me to try, thanks for the tip - when I next play I shall definitely use this strategy, thank goodness offensive magic does work, I had almost given up on it.

[el_kalkylus]

You're welcome.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

[Wereboar]

The monsters that aren't affected by magic are usually only one or two at a time, and can easily be killed by one melee guy.

The monsters that aren't affected by magic are probably one or two in the game, it seems

I have a 5 spellcaster party running. There are only two enemies that i didn't kill with offensive magic:
A golem (granite?) at character level 11 - killed him with razor cloaks.
And El Dorado. Killed him with two elementals.
To my surprise, even Nessie has a resistance hole.

Just for testing, i killed a group of rapax warlocks without water magic. They were 2-3 levels above my level, and 115% resistances everywhere. For me, it looks like power cast helps a lot.

[el_kalkylus]

Originally posted by Wereboar: I have a 5 spellcaster party running. For me, it looks like power cast helps a lot.

Yeah, same here. Powercast seem to make a big difference. At leást at lower levels.

[el_kalkylus]

To sum it up:

The toughest (reasonable) challenge so far should be:

* Expert difficulty
* Ironman mode
* 2-3 characters. (2 is possible?)
* No skill training
* No money making
* No trynton fountain
* No experience mining (i.e look for easy monsters to get exp)
* Most important thing...NO RELOADS! (it is actually possible to reload on ironman, so I have to have this limit too)

I followed these limits with my 4-character party (valk, bish, bish, bish), and it was not that hard. They died at level 13 when the umpani ship crashed, kinda stupid mistake.

If you follow these limits, you should have played the game at least one time before so you know about character development and where items are in the game.

[kolvir]

Although it's frutratig sometimes that damage magic (esp. HP reducing) is pretty weak, I think it makes the game more interesting: you have to think of specific tactics for each encounters rather than always nuking. Indeed powercast seems to increase spells' power a lot. I noticed that my bishop with a high powercast did so much more damage than my samurai using the same spell at level 7.

Also the resistances are not to be taken too litterally it seems. Some monsters (maybe all) with a 100+ resistance are quite susceptible to high damage with some spells (like concussion). On the other hand monsters with high resistance to some kind of magic will (it seems) very seldom be incapacitated by spell of that magic and certainly very seldom killed. At least it seems so. So don't waste time casting death wish on monsters with high resistance to divine magic. Or am I wrong ? Too bad Sirtech does not publish the complete formulas (for resistances, damage ...) in some guide.

Mythology is quite useful indeed and in fact it seems to develop rather well by itself, well not always as quickly as I wanted in the beginning but one can at least check the monsters stats in some table. Well, that's assuming you can at least identify the monsters which does require some Mythology since "cousins" which look alike have different resistances.

[ 08-20-2002, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: kolvir ]

[Rhea]

Originally posted by el_kalkylus: To sum it up: The toughest (reasonable) challenge so far should be: * Expert difficulty * Ironman mode * 2-3 characters. (2 is possible?) * No skill training * No money making * No trynton fountain * No experience mining (i.e look for easy monsters to get exp) * Most important thing...NO RELOADS! (it is actually possible to reload on ironman, so I have to have this limit too) I followed these limits with my 4-character party (valk, bish, bish, bish), and it was not that hard. They died at level 13 when the umpani ship crashed, kinda stupid mistake. If you follow these limits, you should have played the game at least one time before so you know about character development and where items are in the game.

I would add that I just started a thread here:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=15&t=00280 6#000000

The toughest challenge is to randomly generate a party, then play as outlined above (PLUS no class changes). When the last man dies you generate another party and start over. It makes for some comical combinations (Faerie Valkyrie, for instance, who took three levels just to get some attribute points to distribute!).

I'm finding it both might big fun and highly addictive. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Edited to add: the randomly generated parties are usually 4-6 people (it's hard to survive with 2 or 3 randomly generated characters, for obvious reasons).

[ 08-23-2002, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: Rhea ]

[el_kalkylus]

I just finished the game! I followed my rules for the challenge except one, (setting a portal beside the Trynton fountain). Here is the party:

* Dracon ninja (lvl 17)/fighter - (str, dex then spd and sns) - close combat, polearm, throwing, stealth and locks & traps
* Elf bishop - (int, pie) - divinity, alchemy and psionic
* Elf mage (lvl 7)/bishop - (int, sns then spd, pie) - wizardry, mythology and then divinity

The reason why I had my ninja develop polearm skill, was because it is an extended weapon. This helps to protect the bishops against melee fighters with extended reach.

--------------------SPOILERS ABOUT THE GAME: ---------------------------------

Monastery: (level 1-7)
No problem, except against Gregor. With the ninjas autopenetration ability, the noxious slimes died quickly and couldn't harm anyone. Then of course everyone leveled up fast (because they were only 3 characters) and could cast spells more effectively. The ninjas dracon breath made it somewhat easier too sometimes.

Arnika road: (level 7)
By this time, the mage had fireball, noxious fumes, missile shield and web, while the bishop had guardian angel and web + some non-combat spells. When I didn't see far ahead of me, I pressed combat mode and moved to see if anything was ahead. If the coast was clear, I continued. That way, I could always get to gaps and fight monsters one at a time, so it was not much trouble on the road with the spells I had.

Arnika: (level 7-9)
I needed money! So I went around almost all of Arnika looking for things to sell. This meant that I had to face alot of monsters, and sleep alot, which meant I had to face even more monsters that respawned. Finally though, I had the money I needed for some spell-books and powders, and got out of Arnika.

Arnika-Trynton road: (level 9)
I just ran through it, because I had x-ray. When I found gaps and monsters ahead, I lured them over to the gap, or rested in the gaps and woke up with hordes of monsters waiting for me. Then I killed them and moved on. The usual tactic was to cast guardian angel on the ninja, and have both bishops cast spells like fireball, noxious fumes, whipping rocks etc.

Trynton tree: (level 9-11)
There are two very hard monsters in Trynton that is better to run past than to go through, leaf sprites and crawling creepers. The crawling creepers are not as hard as the leaf sprites, but they can be very dangerous to my bishops. I tried to avoid these creatures as best as I could, and ran directly to the fourth bough.
In fourth bough, I had to kill oak saplings to get spiked spear. I felt ready at level 10 when I had element shield and superman (safe at power 3), and managed to kill them. With this glourious win, I felt confident and went to kill Don at ratkin tree. He was of course not easy to kill, I must have spent at least 80 rounds to try to kill him, but I finally made it. The stealth skill, extended reach, guardian angel and superman was the key to this win.

The swamp: (level 11)
I had to be real cautious here. Just like Trynton tree, previous IM parties have died in the swamp. So my tactic was to not get too far into the swamp, but lure monsters to the beginning of the swamp. If things would get too tough, my team could easily retreat by walking backwards a bit, to the Trynton map.
When I thought I had killed enough groups, I went farther into the swamp and ran to Crock as fast as possible. I stopped by to kill that ironskin crocodile too, just for fun.

Marten's bluff: (level 11-12?)
There is a great portal here, so my bishop set a portal (even though he didn't have return to portal yet). I bought 3 more spell books, found some items, killed a rapax assassin, and took the idol needed for Trynton. Sauron (mage/bishop) disappeared, so I had to go to Crock again.

The Swamp:
I agreed to do Crock's little quest, and went out looking for the frog. I didn't have x-ray without the mage (after a while), so I tried to stay close to the river. I fought some easy millipedes, killed the frog, then went back. I was very cautious all the time, and pressed close combat alot to look ahead. After alot of effort and running back and forth, I finally made it back to Crock to collect my reward. Sauron cast "return to portal" .

Trynton tree:
Placed the idol, killed the bat.

Umpani base camp, northern wilderness:
Bought some more spell-books, did some "umpani training", fought the Hogar-guardian and got my "return to portal"! That means I had two portals, one in Trynton and one in Marten's bluff which I could use as much as I wanted.

Marten's bluff: (level 14)
Z'ant was so nice to give me all that experience points for so little effort, that I did all his quests. Finally he asked me to kill the umpanis!

Umpani mine tunnels: (level 14-15)
I ran as fast as I could to the spaceport. There was an Umpani commander guarding the panel. I looked around, nobody except him was there, so I killed the commander. He was tough! When he was dead, I still only saw green dots, so I crashed the ship and portalled myself out of there (gained 100.000 exp for the crash). Z'ant was very pleased, so he gave me alot of money and 600.000 exp!

Mountain wilderness: (level 15):
Bought the dreadspear from Bela, then went to the waterfall to get some expensive items to sell. The party started to get really powerful, so I headed to rapax rift.

Rapax rift: (level 15-16)
My intention was to go to the rift while the rapax were still weak. I mean, in previous games I never had to face warlords or warmages before level 18, but this time it was different. I had to face them too, and the fights lasted for a long time. Finally, I arrived to (and killed) El-dorado, which kept killing my bishops over and over until I ran out of resurrection powders. Then I killed Al-sedexus.

Rapax castle: (level 16-18)
Inside the castle, I had to fight at least 30 casters (samurais, warmages and warlords), and about 30 fighters (archers, bowmen, berserkers and veterans) until I reached the upper floor and could become a templar. I managed to kill them all thanks to the defensive spells of my bishops, and the offensive spells of my mage (and of course my ninja with extended reach).
After becoming a templar, I had no difficulty getting all the expensive items in the castle, so my ninja could change to a fighter and wear a very expensive armour. I deactivated the bomb and killed Al-sedexus again.

After this, the game was very easy. Bayjin, underwater area, sea caves and mountain wilderness-dungeon felt like a little picnic. It was quite nice to feel the power though.

Ascensions peak: (level 20-26)
I had a little problem when I was surrounded by 30 rapax templar, but after I managed to freeze half of them and , resurrect, cure paralyzis, unconsciousness, health, stamina etc, I got control of the situation and managed to win.
Other than that, there were 5 tree monsters that kept casting earth quake at power 7. They were also tough. I got 1.5 million experience points from this fight, which is the most I got for one fight in the game.

This was a fun game, and it was very challenging the first levels. After rapax castle it became almost silly though.

[ 10-12-2002, 09:41 PM: Message edited by: el_kalkylus ]