ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello,

In the second level of Rak'Shor Pride, I came across "Poliwen the eternal bone giant" (not even a boss, just rare), probably so called not because it keeps resurrecting, but rather because it's unkillable, at least for me

The problem is that the bone giant has a pretty good set of talents: block, evasion, damage shield, heal, bleeding edge, switch place, etc. On my side, I have a Cornac Bulwark that can deal a massive amount of damage with its shield (in some cases it was over 1000!) but no matter how I attack this bone giant, I only deal a minimal amount of damage. Plus, the giant is more or less always either evading or is shielded, and if I manage to lower its health even a little it just heals all the damage in no time. And it keeps blinding, stunning or dazing me...
I am more or less doing the same (evade, shield, heal, etc.), so we are kind of locked in an eternal fight where none of us is able to deal a decisive blow.

I tried various weapons, to blind it, put its talents on cooldown, stun, daze, etc. to no avail.

Does anybody has any idea on how to put an end to this fight (other than running away or dying)? Any good trick? How did you deal with it?

Thanks.

PS: so far I didn't have too much troubles in the prides (that's my second one after Vor, including the armory although I ran away from the wyrms!). And none of the bone giants I saw until now survived more than a few blows. I am a bit baffled by the sudden increase in difficulty.

Well you don't have to kill it, so just walk away. (and come back later for revenge against the humiliation!)

HousePet wrote:Well you don't have to kill it, so just walk away. (and come back later for revenge against the humiliation!)

This. Mercifully, it seems that the bosses you MUST kill to progress in the game have set abilities, and the random enemies that form your nightmare fuel can be skipped.

cheat cheat cheat to win win win!!!!

give yourself some free talents!

thus you can dual-class!

Walking away wasn't exactly an option I wanted to consider: when I go to the next level, I like to know that the one I am leaving is free of any kind of threat. That's a safe heaven for a quick retreat in case I need to prepare for the welcoming committee below...

Anyway, I finally managed to kill it. Took me 2 days (no, I am NOT playing all day long! Don't know how many hours I actually played) and I tried all the weapons in my inventory (and that's a lot, since I can carry the world) and dozen of tactics until I finally found a way to very very slowly wear it down.

I think that what worked was simply to carefully retreat as soon as the giant was putting the shield on, instead of trying to break through like I am usually doing: this had two benefits: first, it allowed my main talents to cool-down (assault, shield plummel and shield slam) so that I could use them to hit the giant rather than to try to break his shield and then it looks like the giant was less likely to use healing when chasing me. That or the AI got bored before me and simply decided to let me win...

But again, I am really surprised: I then continued to destroy the Prides with relative ease and so far made my way up to the High Peak (not finished yet) without any other major obstacle. So why was there such a difficult enemy in the middle of a Pride? Or is it just that my character was poorly equipped for such an encounter?

Look on the bright side: this bone giant has been trying to destroy you as well this whole time and failed.

halol wrote:But again, I am really surprised: I then continued to destroy the Prides with relative ease and so far made my way up to the High Peak (not finished yet) without any other major obstacle. So why was there such a difficult enemy in the middle of a Pride? Or is it just that my character was poorly equipped for such an encounter?

It seems that sometimes the random skills on those uniques can line up just right to counter your character's build. Looks like the RNG decided to craft the perfect bulwark-frustrating bone golem.

I've always found bone golems to be particularly frustrating, if they spawn as a rare. You have a creature that already has immense HP, a VERY powerful damage shield, can heal, and has a stun effect that lasts a long time. Then you give it a class with even more damage mitigation (such as Block or a second Shield), even more healing (through Vitality or a second healing spell) and several more stun-based skills such as Stunning Blow or Flameshock, and what you have is a stun machine whose damage absorbing capabilities are likely to far outpace the damage you can deal. And then even if you kill them, rare bone golems often have that immortality talent that has a chance to revive them again.

At that point, I'd rather run than lose a promising character

The nice thing is that you now have a good technique for the next time it happens. In fact, I think avoiding whacking at a guy you can't hit is a very important strategy, because you are putting yourself in danger of being attacked while you are hopelessly chipping away at a shield. Remember that all talents have cool downs, so waiting for that perfect opportunity to get in there and get your attack in is important.

But the other thing to consider is, what could have made the fight easier? Why were you letting it get it's shields up? You need to incapacitate it somehow and put the shield on cool down. You could also potentially freeze it with a biting gale rune and let it sit there for a few turns wasting its shields. What other charms could have been useful? A firewall oriented in the right direction that makes it waste its shields running through fire after you would be nice. How about putting it to sleep with the <whatever it's called eye thing>? By the time you've got to the East you have thrown away artifact after artifact. Are you sure there were none with special abilities that could have made the fight easier? I'm not saying any of these things would *actually* work (I can't remember if bone giants can sleep for instance), but you get the idea.

Then next time you are playing, keep thinking, "I'm going to run into that crazy eternal bone giant. What am I going to need?" Of course, you probably won't, but in all likelihood those things will come in useful anyway. You don't need to keep everything, but you should have a mental checklist of "I need *something* to get out of situation X".

Finally, a place where eternal Bone Giants really are eternal!

rod of annulment is good, can be used from inventory without taking up a slot. Also could use armor penetration, physical resist penetration, shield penetration. Not sure if confuse works on them.

I think confuse is one of their many, many resists, sadly.