Epic failure's challenge!

[xdesperado]

Ok current NMI run has Deathstalkers VIII in start of Dungeon Barracks at level 16. Score is 101,553,335 on Google Play.
Kincaid has Crippling Strikes 6, Sure Parry 4, Cunning Footwork 1. He's main blocker for rest of party and I'll keep bringing CF up now that he's got the AoE -AP attack. Using 1AP Captain Lukai's Blade and 1AP Bladesman Knives he's got 16% melee or 15% ranged SP Drain so only when he's using CS heavily does he burn any SP.
Kjartan has Choking Ash 10 and Burning Blades 1. He's main reason party is crushing things currently with that CA. Didn't start BB until CA was maxed now it will be primary focus until maxed with only a couple points going into Firestorm.
Fyona has Holy Strickening 9 and Blessed Aura 2. She's my off tank using 50 Armor and 418 HP. Once HS is maxed I'll add another point or two in BA, then likely split between Reckoning and Righteous Ferver.
Selen has Pinning Shot 5, Punishing Blades 2 and Dance of Shadows 3. She'll be going about 2-1 PB-DoS until PB is maxed out. My stealth lead and main ranged damage controller, her PS has been vital along with Kjartan's CA in getting the team this far. I've managed to get her up to 10% SP Drain which is helping greatly in keeping her out of the potions.
So far Deathstalkers is performing about like I expected. Better defense would be nice, especially on Selen but that would require giving up a lot of potential damage output and loss of SP Drain gears. For time being it's, "the best defense is a great offense" mentality of immediately kill everything on sight.
I've probably just cursed myself by posting this, but feeling really good about at least getting this NMI run through Episode 1.

[fallen]

xdesperado - great to hear you cleared the Ratkin lairs

[xdesperado]

Apr 6, 2016 9:34:40 GMT -5 fallen said:

xdesperado - great to hear you cleared the Ratkin lairs

Was starting to get nightmares about the bloody grind and how many ways things could go wrong. The Watershed almost felt like an easy vacation after that. Only really tense moment I've had since before the Great Shaman was the spider ambush at beginning of Red Hill Depths. They started very close and coming from 3 directions I couldn't get my squishiest heroes covered. When I saw Selen get bit for 130HP with the potential for up to 5 more attacks I thought I was done for.

[matrim]

I leave the rest of the party behind for that fight, send in the tank, then run back to where the hounds fight you at the beginning. Any scripted fight where they move first I try to minimize things like 6 attacks on Vincent.

[En1gma]

The entire zone before the Great Shaman is I think the hardest area in the game until you get to mid E2. Maybe the Krete Spur, but no other areas make me nervous like the Ratkin Lair...

What is the challenge here? Pick a group that failed and make them work? I'd maybe try a run

[xdesperado]

Apr 6, 2016 12:07:18 GMT -5 En1gma said:

The entire zone before the Great Shaman is I think the hardest area in the game until you get to mid E2. Maybe the Krete Spur, but no other areas make me nervous like the Ratkin Lair...

What is the challenge here? Pick a group that failed and make them work? I'd maybe try a run

Think the challenge is mainly just getting the best possible NMI score you can. However as far as failed groups go I'm currently on Deathstalkers VIII so have plenty of fails already lol.

[matrim]

Yeah the challenge is to get the best score by buying as little as possible and resting as little as possible. So probably means kill Tavensa, steal gold from Vlotgar (not sure if this has consequences, there is a click so I assume it does), and stuff like that. Just an efficiency challenge with tried and tested parties (tried tested and died for the most part). The challenge welcomes everyone!

[En1gma]

I'm already outclassed 

I'll sit this one out, Normal and Hard are enough for me on HoS

[xdesperado]

Apr 6, 2016 13:47:06 GMT -5 En1gma said:

I'm already outclassed 

I'll sit this one out, Normal and Hard are enough for me on HoS

NMI can be frustrating early on but the thrill of managing to beat your previous best efforts on it without losing a hero is definitely worth the effort.
I seriously doubt I'll be challenging the masters with this challenge as I rest way too much I'm sure but have a great feeling of accomplishment seeing my strategy coming together in a killer team that's managing to stay alive further into the game.
While lower difficulties are easier to manage, I don't feel compelled to start over if a mistake or bad luck sees one of the Heroes go down and I rarely get those moments of heartstopping terror that I'm about to lose it all that you get on NMI.

[xdesperado]

Bleh my NMI run ended at the Gatehouse as Kincaid went down under a hail of arrows.
Think I'll be taking a break from HoS for a few days as really can't see anything I could have done differently in the situation. Selen had to take out the Orc or get killed by him and archers which meant she didn't have much in way of extra attacks she could use for Pinning Shot against the Archers that took out Kincaid. Geraux had immediately closed on Fyona and after downing a potion to recover her HP she could only drop a couple Strickening one on the Orc and one on Geraux and the elite next to him and stand her ground. Kjartan had done a decent job of Choking Ash on most enemies in range and a highly effective Firebolt helped Selen down the Orc but thats all he could do.
Bottom line this time the melee types closed to fast, especially Geraux for the party to do any real manuevering and the massed archers spelled doom.

[matrim]

That sucks xdesperado. There is a safe way to fight that fight, you have to take about 4 shots and 6 melee max on the first round but after that it is a breeze. You just run everyone north, huddling everyone that is not your tank in the lower west corner above the bridge while you tank uses all of his/her movement to grab as many melee as possible. If it is possible to AP curse the 2 archers in the back then do so. Everything should attack the tank. After that you loop everyone north and try to finish the archers. 3rd round is kill Orc and as many others as possible. You now have the bridge to bottleneck the "anvil" part of the encounter and you can defeat everything at your leisure. Try to stay out of archer range.

[xdesperado]

Apr 7, 2016 0:14:56 GMT -5 matrim said:

That sucks xdesperado. There is a safe way to fight that fight, you have to take about 4 shots and 6 melee max on the first round but after that it is a breeze. You just run everyone north, huddling everyone that is not your tank in the lower west corner above the bridge while you tank uses all of his/her movement to grab as many melee as possible. If it is possible to AP curse the 2 archers in the back then do so. Everything should attack the tank. After that you loop everyone north and try to finish the archers. 3rd round is kill Orc and as many others as possible. You now have the bridge to bottleneck the "anvil" part of the encounter and you can defeat everything at your leisure. Try to stay out of archer range.

Nice theory but with the initial deployments no way I could have survived that way.
For S&Gs I did replay turn and eventually on 3rd try (Selen went down on next turn) I managed to win fight.
Even then it was mostly luck as Geraux ran around both Fyona and Kincaid on second turn to stand next to Kjartan and positioning meant Kjartan was stuck next to him for following 2 turns, but for some reason he never attacked Kjartan instead going after Kincaid and Fyona. 2 of his hits would have destroyed Kjartan.

Really the biggest issue with that fight has always been the sheer number of Archers and how spread out they start. With Kyera and Selen both in a party or having Vincent with one of them you can take most of the bite out of it. Otherwise it's murder. Tamilin with her new Torrent of Steel makes charging back across first bridge at the Orc an option, but that's not as viable with Selen in party with PS needing more AP and at least two squares range.

By the way Fyona has 50 armor, highest in party, and was still hit a few times by archers for over 50 points damage which shows how deadly they are even without any melee types hitting.

[contributor]

sorry xdesperado that's no fun to lose your party. I almost feel bad saying this, but when I looked at your post about your party build I was going to comment on the fact that they're pretty light on defense. My first thought was "they're going to have a really hard time at the gatehouse." It seems like the TBs are committed to putting the saying "The best defense is a good offense" to the test. They've engineered scenarios where you will never be able to kill everyone off fast enough and someone is going to have to take a serious beating, at least momentarily.

matrim, thanks for the tip on the Gatehouse. I haven't tried that before, but might, if I make it that far.

[Rashar]

If you do a full retreat to N when battle start only N group can hit you and there is a pretty decent chance that Geraux will just idle and all archers on E won't even move since you are miles away.

As matrim suggested, you need to survive 1 turn to bottleneck the bridge and then it's /sleepfest. Before that battle starts just make sure your heroes have the best parry/dodge/armor gear (incase of tanks) and max hitpoint/armor gear (incase of nontanks). Also since I started to replay the game with the 4 new heroes I have noticed that Kincaid is a sissy early game compared to Vraes. Vraes at that point will be close to parry capped and has rank 8-9 phalanx shield and if positioned correctly archers will shoot him during episode 1. As far as my theory goes Kincaid will probably overtake Vraes end episode 2/start episode 3, after 20-ish talent points have been spent per character.

Basicly it comes down to that perfect 1st turn at the gatehouse, I will reach the gatehouse with 4 alternative heroes shortly if I can get myself to play some more. I'll post the outcome once I'm done with it but I have issues with motivation.

[fallen]

Apr 6, 2016 23:53:49 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

Bleh my NMI run ended at the Gatehouse as Kincaid went down under a hail of arrows.
Think I'll be taking a break from HoS for a few days as really can't see anything I could have done differently in the situation. Selen had to take out the Orc or get killed by him and archers which meant she didn't have much in way of extra attacks she could use for Pinning Shot against the Archers that took out Kincaid. Geraux had immediately closed on Fyona and after downing a potion to recover her HP she could only drop a couple Strickening one on the Orc and one on Geraux and the elite next to him and stand her ground. Kjartan had done a decent job of Choking Ash on most enemies in range and a highly effective Firebolt helped Selen down the Orc but thats all he could do.
Bottom line this time the melee types closed to fast, especially Geraux for the party to do any real manuevering and the massed archers spelled doom.

If it's any consolation, I took 8 NMI groups into the Ratkin lair and they all died.

I took the 9th group to the Gatehouse and they died.

I took the 10th group and they are in the Searoad heading to Granthorn and still alive.

It is a hell of a fight. One suggestion I can make it so try to reduce AP over killing a big baddie like the Orc. It's risky leaving Selen to fight him (reduce his AP first) but it could have given Kincaid a shot. Definitely suggest using a Restore Point and finishing the fight to get used to its NMI difficulty.

By the time I made it to the Gatehouse, I had 10-12+ Constitution on every character. You've really got to focus to be able to take bigger hits from monsters like Orcin.

I also always take a week or two break between games, if not more, otherwise I play frustrated and fast and die again quick.