Feedback on the Ithilthum-Quest (heavy spoiler)

[edge2054]

What if the Balrog kept his uber invisibility but had an aura that gave him away to observant players?

Something like the gloom effects from Benli's Cursed class? i.e. something not to obvious but easy to deal with once you know what to look for.

[darkgod]

Good idea!
In fact I just gave him Gloom ! MOUHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA !

[edge2054]

>:)

[Fela]

NPCs reset their target every so often (about 10 turns), so if you stay in their visual range they'll come for you

I strongly suspect the demons' darkness spells might still be a major problem. So Limmir should have 3 exposed tiles maximum, so that a fighter type can attract every attacker's attention by hitting them.

A random Inferno would still kill Limmir without anything to do about it - maybe a dialog to give him a potion might be handy or make him fire immune?



For the record, I did the unupdated version with my SB now after making a backup. (Not nice i know, but i really wanted to test this out a bit, i only made the backup after Limmir was safely in a corner anyway)

- first attempt, blocking all access to L and just passing time (head -> wall). Nothing happened at all, Island full of demons with sense, after the event all demons dead and stuff dropped there, i never saw the Balrog, not sure why.
- second attempt, i closed up and tried to get them to attack me. That worked for maybe 2-3 demons until one cast darkness and that was it with luring. Closed in and slayed demons, which apparently only interested those in direct contact. I figured i would notice the Balrog at some point and prevent him from going after L, but I should have used sense for that. Balrog killed L, I killed him.
- third attempt, same as second, same darkness problem. At about 70 turns left i strolled back to L, tracked Balrog with sense and gave him a whopping, when he actually made it to me.


About the strange moonstone trek the monsters made which Patryn observed, I suppose they just perform standard behaviour after teleport and out of sight afterwards, which is moving to the origin of the teleport. I.e. nothing to do with the moonstone. I'm just guessing at this point, but are the demons created at the start of the event, acquire Limmir as target and the sequence doesn't create but actually moves demons to the portals?

The balrog's invisibility is plain annoying, the minimum it should do is stutter a bit. Also, you are aware that he is in a flame+light shield? How is that supposed to work?

[Patryn]

This strange monsterbulking at the moonstone is due to the "darkness" area some demons cast. I've witnessed such behavior already quite a couple of times. The monsters can't sense anything through the darkness, therefore they don't know where to go. The result is: they stay exacly where they are not matter what happens unless someone walks in a directly neighboring square. This darkness is pretty strange anyways, since its very "thick" and permanent. The first time I encountered it, I tried to enlighten the area again (Scroll of Light or Phial, dunno), but it had no effect. Light radius stayed restricted to 1 square, no matter what.

BTW: AoE spells (inferno, vapor, etc) are restricted to LoS too and usually centered on the target (means: you). In additon, the NPC AoEs do negligible damage and Limmir has quite some HP to survive half a dozen of "accidential" AoE. In addition, you can avoid thos stray AoEs by standing somewhere, where you don't have Limmir in LoS (and thus a AoE targeted on you dosn't either).

[Fela]

Yeah, light doesn't seem to work. Strangely enough, it still blinds
Also it seems a bit absurd, that even a Silmaril would not be able to penetrate that darkness. Maglor's doesn't.

As you can see from my Temple suggestion, i'm aware of AOE limitations. However, I'm not convinced that a pure melee could prevent every single demon to reach Limmir in your setup. From that point on, he'd have to be close to Limmir to protect him.

[Repton]

I thought more of something like this:

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I've just tried this multiple times (via safe-cheating) with a level 45 fighter. No success yet.

The demons all take the eastern route -- even those spawning in the northern-most portal. So position 1 is not a bad place to sit. (I tried position 2, but sometimes a thaurhereg would spawn at the portal in LOS and just sit there manathrusting me :-/ )

If something got past me, though, then I was in big trouble. Nothing to do but run after it, and end up making a second stand at position 3 (the demons always move clockwise around the rock).

The biggest problem, though, was the uruivellas. Let's see: 1600HP, so I can't bring it down in one shot (assault is doing about 800-900). Then it disarms me, so I can't kill it quickly, and can't stop the other demons from just walking past me. Then it surrounds itself with a flame aura, that sticks around for ages even after I do kill it -- which means an uruivellas that makes it to Limmir is going to do guaranteed medium damage, no matter how fast I kill it.. Finally, it also has battle call, which it can use to move me out of any position I've taken.

Other problems are fire imps: if they get past me, they will head for position 3. They will then notice that they are next to their target, and cast phase door, probably dumping them out in the open space to the west. That leaves you with a long walk over to kill them, in which time the other demons will be approaching Limmir from the east..

Finally, dúathedlen will cast darkness, which makes it hard for demons to see me for long enough to pick me as their target.

I'm not trying to whinge, here, just give feedback on how I found it. Maybe a better player could get through. I'm gonna have some more attempts later tonight.

Things that would make a difference:
- If battle call had no effect if you were already adjacent
- If uruivellas flame aura didn't last past their death
- If uruivellas had fewer hitpoints, so I could one-shot them with an assault
- If there were some way of defending against disarm
- If the demons moved a little slower

The corrupted balrog, btw, was a pushover.

[Fela]

- If there were some way of defending against disarm

If i understood the mechanics right, physical save should do the trick. So escorting for chant of fortitude might be an option.

[Repton]

- If there were some way of defending against disarm

If i understood the mechanics right, physical save should do the trick. So escorting for chant of fortitude might be an option.

Ok, yes, but the requirements seem to be very high. I had two ranks in disarm from escorting loremasters and it was almost never resisted. Elites, bosses -- all were consistently disarmable. My physical save was around 70-80, so I don't know what would suffice..

[darkgod]

I've added ego gloves that give disarm resistance

[jenx]

I've found a dead easy way to do the Limmir quest with a melee character, in this case a cornac temporal warden: You just have to find an amulet of greater telepathy, and you see everything. The invisibility problem goes. I've only ever found one of these though.

I just cast Slow and Stop and then picked them off one by one as they came across the water. The eiltes I had to chase down a bit and rune of the rift was very helpful.

I was also Character level 50, as I didn't want to fail the quest!

[Predawn]

This quest has been completed using a beta 15b Skeleton Rogue, equipped with Orc Feller and a Voratun Dagger of Massacre.
Drawing from the experience of a previous fight (12b Archmage), this would be a long fight, and I knew that I would have to conserve Stamina as much as possible, so most of the battles were simple attacks, with major demons receiving a Flurry or Dual Strike. The circular attack Whirlwind killed all mobs when I was getting surrounded. I was lucky with the invisible Balrog, as he attacked me as he went past me, so I unleashed a Flurry in the indicated direction of attack and killed it outright. If it had kept on moving, Limmir would be dead, and I wouldn't have known about it.....

Regular attacks were doing adequate damage to kill the lesser demons in one hit, but I still had to use Rush once to catch something that broke through.

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  [Tome 4.00 @ www.te4.org Character Dump]

Sex              : Male         STR:  77
Race             : Skeleton     DEX:  88
Class            : Rogue        MAG:  30
Level            : 45           WIL:  29
Exp              : 13%          CUN:  63
Gold             : 7892.59      CON:  74

Attack(Main Hand): 117          Life             :     1631/1631Encumbrance      : 155/178
Damage(Main Hand): 221          Stamina          :     260/260  Difficulty       : Normal
APR   (Main Hand):  45          Mana             :     419/419
Crit  (Main Hand):  43%         
Speed (Main Hand): 1.00         
                                
                                

Attack (Off Hand): 117
Damage (Off Hand): 242
APR    (Off Hand):  52
Crit   (Off Hand):  35%
Speed  (Off Hand): 1.00

Fatigue          : 7%           Spellpower       : 42
Armor            : 42.8         Spell Crit       : 24.9%
Defense          : 98.633333333333Spell Speed      : 1
Ranged Defense   : 98.633333333333

Physical damage  : 60%
Fire damage      : 10%
Light damage     : 8%

Physical Save    : 65.725033168695
Spell Save       : 42.725033168695
Mental Save      : 30

All Resists:   0%
Fire Resist(cap):  40%( 70%)
Cold Resist(cap):  20%( 70%)
Lightning Resist(cap):  20%( 70%)
Acid Resist(cap):  20%( 70%)
Nature Resist(cap):  50%( 70%)
Blight Resist(cap):  40%( 70%)
Poison Resistance:  99%
Bleed Resistance: 100%
Confusion Resistance: 100%
Blind Resistance: 100%
Pinning Resistance:  50%
Stun Resistance: 100%
Fear Resistance: 100%

Predawn