Endgame fight

[darkgod]

So now that a few players have won, how is the endgame fight ?
Does it feel hard (archmage PT+inferno cheesing aside) ? Fun ? Different from the other bosses ?

[yufra]

I have gotten there once and was destroyed, but I enjoyed it. There was a thread a little while back about the portals that I think you changed (allowing different orbs to work).

[Dervis]

I went there with a Cursed without too much preparation and it was challenging. If not for some skills I believe are slightly overpowered and I would have failed.
My only issue at the moment is that Alatar is way more dangerous than Pallando, since Pallando spends most of his turns just chasing you. Sure Pallando is much harder to kill, but since he can't really dish pain unless he closes in, he's just a nuisance until you get the time to take care of him.
15 turns worth of godmode aka Rampage were enough to bring Alatar down and Pallando fell eventually to a stack of potions of greater healing.

I think it's relatively well tuned though, and I have doubts at the moment if some classes could pull it off without meticulous preparation.

Edit: It's quite fun, however I think it should be clearer to the player which options he has on the end fight. Some NPC trapped in the High Peak or something... who would give you hints on how to beat them using cunning rather brute force... that sort of thing...

[overtrix]

Maybe the Blue Wizards' AI could involve more movement, blinking and what have you. With an archer their tendency to stand and fight made it quite uneven - because you're often dishing out 2000+ per shot at that stage, while they can't be given real bunker-buster spells or the cramped conditions would produce an even shorter ending to the other result. With a mage is a more even fight, at least with the spell-casty bloke - he was stone-prisoned while we dealt with the other one, then a good battle started as that dissolved. Sadly for the fight, a D had come out of their portal and summoned other Ds, they all decided to breathe at the same turn so it was scoosh-scoosh-scoosh - die, you halfling upstart. I've a feeling it would have been wiser to tackle the übermage first while the field is more orderly, because Pallando is probably the easier to ignore for a while should other priorities have surfaced.

The combination of autotarget glitches and bouncing spells are going to make it a long while before I get back there with a mage to try other things - there's ever some point at which a careless spell-choice-and-return-key sees me trying to frazzle something through several metres of granite - need to find the fabled Tinfoil Hat of Lesser Hastiness

[darkgod]

Should have closed those portals

[ghostbuster]

I went there twice as an archmage.
The first time, I got rid of Palando, then I was submerged with dragons until Alater killed me very rapidly.

The second time, the first thing I did was to time buble Alatar and to close the dragon portal while the paladin was keeping Palando busy. Then killing Palando with distant spells was not very difficult. After that I was very lucky with Alatar. One demon had the good idea to cast a darkness spell, and I just had to keep Alatar in the dark area by a mix of strike and phase door, while bombing him with AoE spells. A long, but rather easy fight, indeed, but without the darkness, I would have probably been slaughtered like the first time...

[edge2054]

My only issue at the moment is that Alatar is way more dangerous than Pallando, since Pallando spends most of his turns just chasing you. Sure Pallando is much harder to kill, but since he can't really dish pain unless he closes in, he's just a nuisance until you get the time to take care of him.

Sounds like Pallando needs to prioritize Bone Grab over move maybe?

[Dervis]

Sounds like Pallando needs to prioritize Bone Grab over move maybe?

I don't think that would be enough, Bone Grab is on a relatively large cooldown, so it wouldn't make a significant difference anyway.

[overtrix]

Back to the ending with a mage and a plan. Stone Wall Alatar, PD on Aerwyn to a far corner, Time Prison Pallando - calmly PD scrolls to each portal, mopping one quasit - start on Pallando, quite soon after Alatar free Time Prison him - Pallando down, battle Alatar. Can't think how this could go wrong (unless the portal-closing was sorely interrupted) which is probably a bad thing ... and I've a feeling that Quicken Spells could find Stone Wall cooling down before the wall crumbles.

Need to let the Istari pass walls, it's not too bad to Time Prison them a shorter while but 30-40 turns wholly out of the action is too long, especially if it can indeed be repeated right away.

Is it possible to adjust their AI according to what kind of upstart has come to do battle ? ... makes okay sense, they can see how you're kitted out - have them quite likely to hit a mage's sustained talents for example, one grumbles about the mana cost but you really miss them when they are gone !

[darkgod]

Yeah I could make special AI for them, but it would probly make them much harder

[Vee]

Yeah I could make special AI for them, but it would probly make them much harder

A nice Challange for Nightmare or Insane difficulties perhaps?

[paboperfecto]

That's what I was thinking could really help differentiate some of the harder levels, custom AI. Bosses that don't take one way corners into your line of fire, summoners that summon around corners, etc....

[Hachem_Muche]

So far I've won this fight on a Dunadan Sun Paladin (b12b), a skeleton Arcane Blade (b13), skeleton ice Wyrmic (b13), and a skeleton Cryomancer (b13). (I like the relatively slow leveling curve of playing a skeleton.)

It was easy on the Sun Paladin with almost 100% resistance to all of the elements and focusing down Alatar first (because that's the one Aeryn picked). Alatar got stunned and was down almost before Pallando got to us after being distracted by my elder vampire. I never bothered with any of the portals.

On the Arcane Blade, I focused down Pallando with melee until Aeryn died, then stayed at range with copious use of phase door and AOE spells, darting in to get off a few melee shots when I had one of them alone until I need to back off and heal up. Arcane feed and unending frenzy enabled me to play pretty much as a mage most of the fight.

The Wyrmic was by far the hardest to win with. Both wizards focused on Aeryn from the start, stunned her, and killed her in about 7-8 turns. With only me doing the damage, I was able to get Alatar down to about 30% before she died, but was constantly running for my life (courtesy of phase door scrolls and lightning speed) after that. I ran into serious equilibrium problems since it was difficult to find any mobs near death (<30%) to use Swallow on. (AOE was killing most of the portal spawns before I could get to them.) I eventually wore down Alatar with sniping, and then found some juicy xorns -who were destroying the walls I was using for cover- to eat, and was able to take down Pallando.

The fight was a total cakewalk on the Cryomancer. Aeryn attacked Alatar first and so I time-prisoned Pallando. A lucky freeze stunned Alatar and he died quickly, doing minimal damage to me. After that I phase doored Pallando across the room and nuked him down at range. By the time he got back to us he was almost dead. Aeryn was hardly scratched when he fell.

The bosses are much tougher to kill with the changes in b13, and I think it makes the fight feel much more epic. It is frustrating that Aeryn dies so fast though; I think that making her tougher and/or having her heal more would make the fight more fair and interesting for classes without overwhelming firepower. Pallando as a meleeing mage strikes me as rather strange and is, I think, a weakness in this encounter. He should either have more ranged attacks or better and more frequent closing abilities.

The fight is currently quite beatable with good preparation and strategy, but strongly favors ranged classes. It's also easy (and prudent) to enter the fight with a lot of short-term buffs going since you know there's likely to be something nasty at the other end of the portal. To make this less of a problem, you could have the bosses teleport into the room a random number of turns after the player gets there (maybe even one at a time) so that haste, shields, and other short-term buffs are not all up at the start of the encounter.

I'm currently getting ready to enter the high peak on my alchemist, and I'm really not sure how to win with this character at this point. This is mostly due to the limitations of the class, however.

[darkgod]

Woh you impress me.
Ok I'll have to ask a broader question, is the game too easy ?
And yes I agree palando needs a buff, he is a wuss

[Hachem_Muche]

I think the game is almost perfectly tuned for the most part, but the endgame fight just favors ranged classes a little bit too much. As long as Pallando can effectively engage ranged opponents, I think the fight will be balanced.

I may not be a good yardstick for judging the game's difficulty, since I've played (and won) many different roguelike games over many years.

The only general suggestion I can make is to slow down the leveling curve across the board. With the new content I understand is on the way, I think most characters will be well beyond max level by the time they get to the endgame.

Of all the roguelikes I've played so far, this one is my favorite! And it's only in beta