matrim
Star Hero
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Post by matrim on Mar 27, 2016 11:57:50 GMT -5
Just finished the battle at the end of CoD. This is the 4th time for me but every time I do it I realize that I had forgotten how difficult it is. The battle dynamics are so cool and challenging, they have made me mourn the loss of one ironman party, another died there but that was my exploration group that was allowed to die. Getting my 2 ironman groups through there was a nail biting experience and I just have to commend you guys on how you keep strategy fresh after literally hundreds of fights. Thanks for the experience TBs. Wish me luck on your C8 fight!
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Post by Rashar on Mar 27, 2016 12:31:01 GMT -5
That was a cool battle indeed only played it on easy and was never in real danger.
Tactic I used on easy mode was:
kyera: etheral anguish on ghoul lord and w/e is in the same aoe, then retreat. Kjartan: choking ash on ghoul lord and w/e is in the same aoe, then retreat. Vraes: threaten ghoul lord, start attacking him. Tamilin: offer suppurt with ranged onslaught and torrent of steel while making sure she is out of range of archers and not the closest to any melee enemy.
Ghoul lord needs to die 1st, then ghouls and dogs need to die as they reposition after having made full attacks and thus they can threaten other heroes. After that it was just sending in Vraes to kill skeleton archers while stripping ap from wraiths. Nothing that does melee attacks was able to hit my Vraes on easy mode so I kill the wraiths first since they also reposition.
After killing the 2nd wraith, part 2 of the fight starts and I lost Tam.
I went left side to the blue seer lord, killed him in 2 rounds and I lost Kjartan. At this point Vraes has all buffs and can just use incantations to keep the buffs up if the fight will last longer. He could not be hit by skeletons with melee attacks and skeleton archers missed 95% of the time aswell, so I diced and sliced all the trash while franticly keeping kyera out of harms way. The red seer lord spawning from right after being stripped from his ap by kyera only had 1 attack and did 330-ish damage on average per attack and his hit ratio was probably 90%. With just my kyera and Vraes I was only able to get etheral anguish on the seer lord that made Vraes miss a few times but nothing scary. When I had the seer lord left it took 6-7 rounds orso to kill him.
In hindsight on easymode I should have killed all trash kited the seer lords together then after cursing both of them killed one of them so it would be easier to deal with the 2nd one. However on higher difficulties even with 1 attack I imagine they deal a shit ton of damage.
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Post by fallen on Mar 27, 2016 13:24:24 GMT -5
matrim - thank you for the kind words! The game includes 368 monster variations using 16 distinct AI types ... we've worked hard to keep it a moving target, and I'm glad you enjoy it! Thanks for your support
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Post by fallen on Mar 27, 2016 21:17:59 GMT -5
matrim - thanks again. Read this a second time today and sent me back to work harder!
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Post by anrdaemon on Mar 27, 2016 21:26:08 GMT -5
"I was reading, and reading, and reading…" The last fight in CoD left me… "unprepared" would be an understatement. When I saw Tamilin running ahead it was not a big deal. With her mobility I was confident I could bring her back any time. But when I lost her ported onto pillar… THAT was a setback. >.< In that party, Tamilin was about the only DD character I could rely upon. Or had confidence with, at the very least. Had to adapt fast and think on my toes. The fact I dutifully cleared the trash before bosses helped a bit, though. Nonetheless, the fight was epic.
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Post by fallen on Mar 27, 2016 22:08:47 GMT -5
anrdaemon - great to hear We knew that entire scene was a bit of a gamble, based very much on group builds, but we knew players would roll with it and take it as a new challenge. Glad to hear it caught you off guard and came off just right!
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Post by Rashar on Mar 27, 2016 22:28:46 GMT -5
It can be both frustrating (in a good way) and motivating to see that boss escape. It might give the players that rush to keep going and try to get justice. Atleast when I lost that fight I finished the next 2 maps non stop even though I decided that after the tower of Ember I was going to get some sleep.
The "boss" does not really die/escapes/blinds the npc and gives you the finger thing is plenty available in episode 4, the only person of interest we have killed is C. which was also a great fight which I was longing for since act 1. Seeing the W. crawl away and Seeing the one winged angel "fly" of did leave me a bit of sour taste though. It does make sense though suddenly everyone is scared so running is a better idea then fighting but as the harbingers of doom I'd love to smash faces. "Vraes Chaarge!" So I can't wait to extract my revenge especially on that one winged angel... Should have just cut her hand of... "well you need my hand to see.." Oh well in that case... chop chop.
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Post by fallen on Mar 27, 2016 22:37:52 GMT -5
It can be both frustrating (in a good way) and motivating to see that boss escape. It might give the players that rush to keep going and try to get justice. Atleast when I lost that fight I finished the next 2 maps non stop even though I decided that after the tower of Ember I was going to get some sleep. The "boss" does not really die/escapes/blinds the npc and gives you the finger thing is plenty available in episode 4, the only person of interest we have killed is C. which was also a great fight which I was longing for since act 1. Seeing the W. crawl away and Seeing the one winged angel "fly" of did leave me a bit of sour taste though. It does make sense though suddenly everyone is scared so running is a better idea then fighting but as the harbingers of doom I'd love to smash faces. "Vraes Chaarge!" So I can't wait to extract my revenge especially on that one winged angel... Should have just cut her hand of... "well you need my hand to see.." Oh well in that case... chop chop. Thank you for sharing how the changing story elements of E4 hit you. Really great for me, as the story writer, to hear. I was chatting with one of our Patreons about how it was sad but motivating (for revenge) to see Nikolai fall at the Seer Lord's feet (depending on the story), and was sharing some of my philosophy on stories with her. Especially when it comes to roleplaying, I've always believed that we can only know the brightest light of victory by having seen the dark of defeat at times. It is the contrast that lets us tell them apart, and appreciate the cost that is being paid by ourselves or our friends.
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Post by Rashar on Mar 27, 2016 22:53:23 GMT -5
Well I have been a d&d geek for 17 maybe 18 years, started out as scrubs playing our campaigns and now I have written (mostly "stolen" aka combined the elements that I liked from all the other d&d systems) a system that we have been using for the last 2-3 years. From my experience as player in stories or from the pov from the storyteller I have seen players go emotional over the loss of npc's during uneventful happenings in the stories and it is at these times that the fire emerges and some kind of raw emotion mixed with adrenaline suddenly drives their characters forward.
The way the story is told, simple yet complicated and some things open for imagination is what kept me playing I wanted to know how things unfold and how much gods can Vraes kill in 4 episodes XD. But yeah HoS feels like a dnd game to me, prolly why a lot of my sparetime goes into this game and not into my writing anymore. -_-
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matrim
Star Hero
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Posts: 708
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Post by matrim on Mar 28, 2016 2:15:11 GMT -5
Rashar if you want an idea of this fight on nightmare I can tell you. All the monsters were level 46 in this fight. Rasp did up to 640 damage, I max level FA him and FF and Reckoning to get him down to 1 attack, his damage went down to 570. He is not a threat as I have Kincaid and can sure parry his attack. Skeletons do 550 damage, archers do 400. Skeletal swordmen do 420, with no off tank (I relied on ToS to solo tank till this point) that meant Kincaid had to field all this damage. The real threat comes from Emesai. He also did 640, same curses, 570 damage but no luxury of sure parry dodging his attack. Kincaid had 980 health, with Emesai's elemental damage he hit for 600 damage commonly. Skeleton archers everywhere meant I needed to Strickening them as soon as they got close and clear them instantly. Top that off with the fact that Rasp and Emesai needed to Reckoning'd every 3 rounds (so they only had 1 attack, 2 attacks on Emesai is a death sentence while 2 attacks on Rasp cleared my sure parry and opened up a possible hit from the melee skeletons) and Fyona needed to stay away from all the melee skeletons. 1 round I could not get Emesai with Reckoning (missed 2 times), had to equip Kincaid with some all resist and +HP gear, potion, and pray that he did not kill him. He did 520 damage on both hits...leaving Kincaid with 70 health. That was the closest it got, although I honestly think that was almost his top damage he could do with my armor and resists factored in so maybe it was not that close. Nail biting, like I said, with so many hours invested. Juggling all these factors (I knew the fight so I left Rasp alive and killed Emesai first after all the adds because taking out Emesai without Vincent would have been a nightmare) successfully and necessarily is what makes this game so satisfying. Nightmare is EXTREMELY tightly balanced and it is so rewarding to just slip by a well designed, challenging fight.
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Post by contributor on Mar 28, 2016 5:46:30 GMT -5
anrdaemon - great to hear We knew that entire scene was a bit of a gamble, based very much on group builds, but we knew players would roll with it and take it as a new challenge. Glad to hear it caught you off guard and came off just right! I actually think about this fight now when I plan groups at the very beginning. I know I can't build one of those groups that is totally inefficient without the sneek. And yeah, if you can't do without the mage you got to kill the trash and get the SL's together and at least get them debuffed before one dies.
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Post by anrdaemon on Mar 28, 2016 6:42:43 GMT -5
If anything, the fight increased my confidence in party respec… (You may read more about it in my post-E3-mortem.) Kyera shifted to Banishment and Vraes wielding higher levels of his attack talents did the trick. And Kj with Firestorm, while he was still around. It was before Will changes, so that wasn't a factor.
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AA
Templar
Torps away!
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Post by AA on Mar 28, 2016 9:36:53 GMT -5
go emotional over the loss of npc's during uneventful happenings in the stories and it is at these times that the fire emerges and some kind of raw emotion mixed with adrenaline suddenly drives their characters forward. I think I did the same at the end of the CoD
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Post by samopop on Mar 28, 2016 11:06:09 GMT -5
From reading the description of the final battle in CoD at different difficulties, it reminds me of a question I have been wondering about for a while. Is the difference in difficulty just scaled enemy levels (-1 for easy to +4 for nightmare) or are enemy attributes scaled on top of that (in particular: damage, accuracy, dodge, and parry)? The in-game description just says levels are scaled and gold rewards are adjusted. However, it seems like more is going based upon the above descriptions of ~330 damage/attack at easy to ~600 damage/attack at nightmare.
I've played that battle at nightmare and I died many, many times. If the only thing that scales at different difficulty levels is a few levels, I'm pretty sure I still would have found the battle ridiculously challenging at lower difficulty levels. Perhaps I'm underestimating how much enemy stats change per level?
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Post by fallen on Mar 28, 2016 11:16:14 GMT -5
I've played that battle at nightmare and I died many, many times. If the only thing that scales at different difficulty levels is a few levels, I'm pretty sure I still would have found the battle ridiculously challenging at lower difficulty levels. Perhaps I'm underestimating how much enemy stats change per level? There is both a +level and a +% to the total level. Whenever a monster goes up in level, they gain a certain % (compounding) to all of their stats. Therefore its a pretty big difference
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