Cross Platform Nightmare Ironman

[plunk]

Because the discussion I was having involved turning every party member into a damage dealer and somehow Eternal Anguish 4 factored into that.

But if Kyera isn't damage dealing she now has all 7 AP for Healing and Debuffing. At 2 AP she can hit 3 enemies on the first turn and move 1 spot if you have initiative. Or heal once and debuff 2 every turn.

That from my experience in Episode 1 is more than enough because I didn't even use Eternal Anguish after the Shaman. Every enemy I debuffed in addition to the one I was intending to debuff didn't pose a threat. And there wasn't an instance when I couldn't have debuffed the enemies I wanted to debuff in the same number of turns even without the AoE. And there was no point doing so to begin with, given that Vraes's HP didn't even drop below half in the Shaman fight, so Eternal Anguish was really just pointless.

Apparently the last fights of Episode 1 are going to be where it'll be worth it, but it's really moot as I already could already have Eternal Anguish at 6. Because Eternal Anguish 6 will have AoE anyway. But just to see how pointless the AoE is, I'll keep it at 4, have Kyrea waste AP (moving 1 space and back) for each extra enemy she debuffs because of the AoE.

[plunk]

Oh and I forgot to ask, was the Captain/General Whatshisname at the Gatehouse one of those fabled 3 boss fights which would make me reconsider Eternal Anguish 4? Because positioning won the day for that one, didn't even bother debuffing the General or the Orc Warboy(?) with Eternal Anguish. And really those were the only enemies I needed to debuff, and Kyera could have easily gotten those two with Eternal Anguish 1.

Or are we talking about literally the last three battles I'll be fighting in Episode 1?

[fallen]

plunk - lol. Pretty sure that the Geraux fight was included in those 3.

[xdesperado]

plunk can you please share your character builds and how you positioned them for the Geraux fight?

I'm intrigued that first time you reach that point in game on Nightmare difficulty you find it so easy to handle.

[fallen]

That would be awesome. plunk - a lot of members have created a thread dedicated to their techniques and group build in the tips board. Maybe you should do a write up on how you play there!

[plunk]

Vraes - All Dex, All Blades, that 2AP Light Blade with the highest Parry, and a 5 Parry Shield, 10 Stone Skin
Kyera - All Con, 15 Conjuring, 3 Lore (felt 15 Conjuring was already long enough), 4 Eternal Anguish, Tears 5, 1 Sacrifice (should really have went to Tears but walking to campsites got really boring, 2 Spare points)
Kjartan - All Con, All Conjuring, Choking Ash 7, Pureflame Shield 5
Tamilin - All Con, All Bows, 10 Deadly Intention (or 9, I remember spending a point either before or after the fight not sure when exactly)

Hid Kyera, Kjartan and Tamilin in the little outcropping on the upper right with that gazebo or guardhouse, put Vraes a space south and left of them. Enemies all started trying to attack Vraes. Vraes took practically no damage from Archers, the melee mobss ocassionally did 20-30 damage if they hit, and that's a heavy if. Orcboy did around 100 damage (or at least that's what I think he would have done based on previous Orcboys I encountered), General did above 100 damage.

2 melee mooks and 1 archer immediately covered all the of Vraes's south squares (actually just the 2 melee mobs, but I'll get to that later), General approached from the left, Orcboy also approached from the left. Turn passes, General gets near Vraes first, I move 1 space right, now Vraes is fully covered from the south (the archer covering the last square) General moves in to cover Vraes's left side, Orcboy is shut out.

I take out the archer in the north area with Tamilin as it's hitting Kyera, then just kill Orcboy. Vraes is taking maybe 250-350 damage per turn, well within Kyera's capability to heal. Tamilin takes out Orcboy and starts helping Vraes kill the General. Once the General goes down it becomes a regular extended fight with Vraes not needing healing every turn.

Oh and Kjartan was just dropping Choking Ash and I think refreshed Pureflame Shield once.

If Orcboy and the General got in range of Vraes at the same time, I'd probably need to Anguish them, but against just those two.

[fallen]

plunk - nice build! It will be interesting to see how it fairs in E2. It makes a good argument for some reverse caps - preventing raising talents past certain Powers until you reach certain level caps.

[slayernz]

I am impressed at the level 10 stone skin so early in the game. Vraes certainly acts as my tank, absorbing tremendous amounts of damage, but in some of the larger fights, he can lose as much as 500hp in a turn. Level 10 stoneskin would help reduce that damage significantly.

[fallen]

Must make the fights way longer to actually kill any monsters, but I guess level 10 Choking Ash helps

Keep us posted - E2 will be fun, you'll have to branch out as you've hit your 10s already.

[plunk]

I was going to branch into Phalanx Shield, but those enemies with a ridiculous amount of armor in the Officer's Barracks really made me consider Burst of Speed or the Mastery thing as those give me more defense but don't take out dual wielding. Two Sai Blades let Vraes do damage regularly, but just the 2 AP blade w/ Shield or 1 Sai w/ Shield just made Vraes a giant wall that couldn't deal any significant damage half of the time. Especially when being a slightly less giant wall but with a lot, lot more bite still works (and better) and knowing that Eternal Anguish 6 will be a part of my arsenal for Episode 2 

I really don't want to rely only on Tamilin for high armor enemies.

[xdesperado]

Very interesting build, just wondering if pouring all the stat raises into Con now is going to be an issue later as your behind the curve on accuracy and SP while being so far ahead on HP.

Is the Turtle build going to be tough enough to survive the increasingly harder to hit and damage foes...

[plunk]

Tamilin and Vraes have no trouble hitting anything right now. They have near perfect accuracy with regular attacks.

And I think I've offset Tamilin's drop accuracy from lack of DEX by going all Bows. People seem to do a CON/DEX thing for her and still invest in Stealth, then take it into Episode 2. DEX and Bows have the same effect on Accuracy, so what points that should have gone into DEX are made up for with points I take from Stealth and put into Bows.

When I first posted this build, I got advised to go pure CON for Vraes and make up for accuracy with Spears, since I divert all the points that go into CON to DEX, I gain a bunch of Standard Dice, which so far make up for whatever Strong Rolls Spears would have granted me.

So if there's a curve somewhere I'm still above it.

Not sure what the standard is for killing speed is, but the game regularly tries to give me the achievement for killing 3 enemies in a turn despite me not trying to do anything to get it (other than maybe have Tamilin and Vraes not hit the same enemy for strategic reasons)

[fallen]

plunk - great work! Are you on the leaderboards?

[plunk]

Nope I don't have Google Plus and don't really like getting it, I'm sitting at 109m though

[plunk]

Well that was rather unexpected, moving Vraes to the other side of the map as soon as you killed Groth. Still had 4 of those Javalineers to deal with. Tamilin knocked one off right away (had her attack first to lessen the impact of the -4 Dodge) then I just had Kyrea step up as a replacement tank, and debuff the 3 remaining Javalineers with Eternal Anguish (which could be done with Eternal Anguish 1, seeing as she didn't do anything else in that turn except cast Eternal Anguish 4)

She tanked the first round (not even dodging a single hit, so the -1 Accuracy didn't even matter) She could outheal all the damage coming at her, fairly simple.

By the time Vraes got back to the stairs only 1 Javilineer was left.

The entire boss battle was incredibly easy, move everyone to the stairs wait for enemies to come in and die. If I knew about that little surprise, I could have just left Groth alive and killed the Javilineers, he was only doing 80-120 damage to Vraes. Or he could have just rolled really low on his damage die or Vraes rolled high on his armor die. Anyway Vraes parried/dodged 4 of the six attacks he landed before he died thanks to Tamilin being a crit machine.

So 2 out of the 3 Boss Battles where Eternal Anguish could really have just stuck at 1.

Edit: And just beat the Baron, again pretty easy despite the change in routine. Vraes tanked most of the mobs, there were Archers on the side hitting Kjartan and Kyera but I just got too lazy to reposition. Had Tamilin take care of those Archers, only needed to heal both characters once. Put an Eternal Anguish on the Baron, which hit only him. Not sure if the -Dodge helped (I doubt it did) -Accuracy didn't help as during the times he hit Vraes, all the combined damage didn't put him below 300 HP.

Had to consume two SP of those 80-110 SP potions for Kyera. Probably could have avoided using 1 or even both if I positioned properly, but eh.

So none of the three boss battles convinced me Eternal Anguish 4's AoE was even the least bit useful in Episode 1, so pretty much just a waste of SP if you position right (or in the last boss battle don't need to much at all) Oh well, time to up it to 6.

Still at 0 Deaths, with 149M. Once I'm done with the storeroom subquest, on to Episode 2, hopefully the difficulty will match the hype.