Fighting Redbeard, a poll (spoilers within!)

[Mike Echo]

I'm just curious if most people enjoyed the fight or not (it's possibly we're hearing from the 'noisy minority'). Please vote in the poll!

[Randomizer]

Even knowing what to do, this is a long boring fight especially on torment. But then the idea was that Redbeard survived all these years because he is hard to kill.

[Mike Echo]

True, but in other Spiderweb games I've slaughtered geneforge-enhanced evil wizards, dragons, the head of an Empire, and various other horrible things dooming humanity. I play for the "adolescent power fantasy" as Jeff calls it. I _should_ be able to kill the unkillable.

 

My personal preference would be to have Redbeard simply deal massive amounts of damage each round. At least that way it'd be obvious he'd too much for me. The existing fight is more like a grind imo.

[Superba]

Mike: there's the Editor you can use, I did on Torment after Normal and Hard levels were too boring fights, and killed Redbeard without fighting the hidden monsters, that means - before - he gets the immunity. That totally satisfied my adolescent power fantasy :-)

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Mike Echo

I _should_ be able to kill the unkillable.

Also, it's clear that Redbeard is complacent and most failed assassinations were the result of just one or two people or brought down early on by someone with cold feet. Five determined Hands is a stronger force than anything Redbeard has faced in a long time. Storywise, he should be beatable. Not easy to kill, but not impossible either.

Dikiyoba.

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: Superba

Mike: there's the Editor you can use, I did on Torment after Normal and Hard levels were too boring fights, and killed Redbeard without fighting the hidden monsters, that means - before - he gets the immunity. That totally satisfied my adolescent power fantasy :-)

The current version of the editor probably wouldn't let you kill Redbeard that quickly; I had to nerf it slightly.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Five determined hands with some backing from an international conspiracy, including a double agent within Avadon, even.

[Acky]

I honestly didn't enjoy it. It was probably the worst part of the game for me. I've got no trouble with difficult battles, but I broke down and started using cheats to get my way through it half way since the thought of starting all over again made me feel sick.

[Feythe]

I finished the game on torment and I have to say I just did not find the fight difficult or long at all. I was playing as a sorceress so obviously that gave me a huge edge on the jars, but I killed him on my first attempt without using scrolls of res or ever being in danger of losing control of the fight.

 

How effective would a ranged spec bm or sw be at slaying them?

[Geneforgeisformeyukkyu]

I absolutely hated that fight, I tried reloading over and over again until I just gave in and cheated. Worst part was, my fight was on casual so I have no doubt that fight would have been much harder on torment.

[BetrayalAtKrondor]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Also, it's clear that Redbeard is complacent and most failed assassinations were the result of just one or two people or brought down early on by someone with cold feet. Five determined Hands is a stronger force than anything Redbeard has faced in a long time. Storywise, he should be beatable. Not easy to kill, but not impossible either.

I agree with this comment. I think the difficulty is over the top; It seems very hard on normal with 5 chars maxxed out at 30.

I spent about 30 min getting Redbeard down to about 25% health, killing about 20 of those soul jars, but then I started having problems because some of chars ran out of healing potions, so I gave up. I think I can finish it if I take time to split consumables amongst everyone, but I don't really feel like going through the whole battle again.

This fight was very annoying for a number of reasons besides being very tedious.
* Why are soul jars immune to shaman's spirit attack? Doesn't seem to make sense. I would think they should be more vulnerable to that.
* Soul jars were also immune to some of the sorcercess attacks. Corruption and dark bolt scarab -- don't remember for sure. Not sure why all the immunities. I could fix this by adjusting the scarabs.
* The distance between soul jars on each side was such that my melee chars wasted a turn running from one to the other.
* IMO Redbeard should lose some health each time a part of his soul breaks off to form another soul jar. Or else, there should have been some limit to the soul jars.
* Also, it would have been cool if Shadow Tarkas/Wayfarer could be added to your party, but if you choose that dialog path, Redbeard insta-killed him in one shot.

The Redbeard fight seemed like a rehash from earlier battle with the dragon Zephrine who had 4 guard sentinels, except Redbeard's guard sentinels were limitless.

[Randomizer]

It doesn't cost action points to shift items from the active character.

 

Soul jars are immune to energy attacks - shaman's spirit attack, lightning including the dark bolt scarab

also cold and acid (corruption)

[Eljah]

I was very annoyed and disappointed by the last fight as well. For my second run I am playing on torment and soon I will be facing that battle again. The closer it comes the more my fun of playing the game vanishes, which should not be in a good RPG (apart from that fight, I love Avadon!).

 

Most annoying I found...

... the jars immunity

... the duration of the boring/hard fight

... no possibility of buying limitless potions (e.g. healing and battle frenzy) in store (which would make a big difference)

... that none of the nicodemus special-items helped significantly - which I truly hoped could be the clue in that fight. (Still think that would be a neat idea!)

... and everything BetrayalAtKrondor is listing - totaly agreeing with him!

 

Hopefully this will be different in Avadon2...

[Alberich]

I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to attack and replace Redbeard. I didn't try. I mean:

 

- The Pact, and Avadon itself, are in the middle of a disaster. Kill off the strongest fighter Avadon has, and take over the position yourself - how is that disaster going to get easier to manage? (And if you have a strong leader who wants to stay in power and manage crises like that, that's a blessing you shouldn't throw away lightly.)

 

- The Tawon Empire is obviously looking for an opportunity to reassert its dominance, so you're not going to end up with free and independent states, even if Avadon is overthrown. The two Pact countries closest to the TE are about to exhaust themselves in a war with each other, leaving it wide open for a campaign of expansion. What's going to make that better than Avadon-as-it-is? Yeah, you could *try* to play the dragons, vikings, imperialists, reformed-barbarians, whatever is going to come out of the Corruption, and so forth against each other to keep one or two of these countries independent and their borders safe. How high are the odds of success?

 

- For that matter, the "barbarian" country is sitting right next to their angry, estranged, and warlike cousins, who have started building fortresses...with the pact falling apart and the tribes back to fighting each other, I can see another war of conquest on the horizon even though I'm nearsighted. And it's not as if The Corruption is going away, nor the island raiders to the southeast. Tarkus & Co. tried to prove the Pact was inadequate by having titans, wretches, etc. from the mountains keep attacking, no doubt promising them an excess of plunder once Avadon dies and the Pact disintegrates. So what's to stop that promise from being kept? What you need, obviously, is a stronger army of Hands...which, with Redbeard dead, you are going to get - how?

 

- Every Redbeard decision somebody's bitching about is at least understandable and hard to improve upon. (I love the way you get the chance to ask him your companions' questions, and hear his explanations.) All right, you might've done one or two of those things differently. The way this world works, whoever runs Avadon is going to have to make decisions like that on a weekly basis. Do you really think you'll do better, consistently? More moderation and you'll look weak in the face of some very determined enemies, who are trying their hardest to make you look weak. More extremism and you'll miss valuable opportunities (like info from enemy turncoats, who don't trust you to honor your pardons). You need fear and respect on your side, and having killed the major source of fear and respect...where are you?

 

- Since it's pretty obvious from the story that Redbeard is at least going to be tougher than you alone...how long are you going to last against the next assassination attempt, fomented by enemy spies among disgruntled hands like the ones you keep meeting?

 

I can't see how it could ever be worth it, unless you're like Miranda, and have such a personal grudge against Redbeard and Avadon that you don't mind seeing the overthrow of Avadon and the Pact Civil War followed shortly by the War of Tawon Conquest, with increased raids and possibly invasions from nearly every point of the compass. But there's nothing in the player character's background to give you that kind of grudge, and if there were, I'd hope most of us wouldn't sacrifice that many people over a personal grudge.

 

Okay, I can see a gamer would do the fight just for the heck of it, to prove he can do it, but from the viewpoint of a character in the game....I just can't see it.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I mostly agree. I don't think Redbeard is a very good leader, but now doesn't seem the best time to replace him. Still, I can see an argument for Redbeard only becoming more entrenched, corrupt and dictatorial as time passes, requiring his ouster even if that causes many problems in itself. I don't agree, but I think there are arguments for both sides.

 

The other assumption I take issue with here is that the PC is basically altruistic and likes the Pact. While both of these seem like the default, there's no strong reason why it couldn't be otherwise. There are dialogue options to the effect that the PC joined Avadon primarily for wealth and power, and the PC can also behave in a very corrupt and power-hungry manner. Hell, the PC could even be a Miranda/Leira-style mole, who came into Avadon with the intent of weakening it, either because s/he thinks this is best for the Pact, or because s/he has some sort of loyalty to the Farlands.

[Lilith]

Having just beaten Redbeard, I have to say I didn't find it that bad, even on Torment. I parked a Dex-based Sevilin in one soul jar room and Nathalie in the other and had the rest of the party keep wearing away at Redbeard. There were no more than two soul jars alive at any given time, at which point Redbeard was still taking 20-30 damage per hit. With Battle Frenzy, and taking into account the occasional turn spent healing, that added up to 120 damage or so per round, which wasn't too bad since his HP is only 1500 or so.

 

Key to the fight was bringing along lots of speed potions and a few recuperation crystals; if I hadn't, the battle would have taken a lot longer and probably started to feel tedious. Healing elixirs were also handy: Redbeard shouldn't be able to take down a well-built character in one turn, but a character who's the target of his full attentions for a round is going to need to heal. When I had the AP to spare, I popped the occasional blessing crystal just to make the fight go a little faster. I brought along some recovery potions and phoenix shards too, but didn't find much use for them: except when healing, my party was using regular attacks most of the time and wouldn't have benefited much from using anything else.

 

One thing you want to do is keep the fight with Redbeard happening in the northern part of the main room. Under no circumstances do you want your soul-jar killers to be taking attacks from him: the soul jars themselves do enough damage as it is. Try to have your Redbeard-attackers stay to the north of him, so that if you have a run of bad luck and all of your attackers get terrified at once, they'll flee north, not south, and Redbeard will hopefully follow them.

 

I could probably have optimised more if I wanted the fight to go even quicker: it's pretty easy to get Nat's mental resistance close to 90%, so she might actually have been more useful as an attacker/status-curer in the main room than on soul jar duty. Using missiles instead of spells to kill the soul jars also has the advantage that you can still hit them while staying out of range of all their attacks. Even so, the battle was a lot quicker and cleaner than Zephyrine, where I had to pull out all the stops and spend the majority of my stock of resurrection scrolls and healing elixirs just to stay alive, let alone actually inflict damage. While Redbeard's mental attacks are a nuisance, he's not likely to stunlock an entire party of five members for long enough to kill them, something that Zephyrine and her golems are quite capable of doing to a party of three.

[Eljah]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Under no circumstances do you want your soul-jar killers to be taking attacks from him: the soul jars themselves do enough damage as it is. Try to have your Redbeard-attackers stay to the north of him

I have just beaten Redbeard on tornment which took me about 70-80 min. By accident he got into the southern room with two of the soul-jars. "Shockhorror" I thought in the beginning but it turned out to be good! (I have completely forgotten about the rod of attraction - so I guess otherwise I would have tried to pull Redbeard back in mainhall.)

So this is how I wrestled him down: Shima on his own in the upper room, using battle frenzy potions and wand of calling to distract souljars.
The rest of the party was in the other souljar-room to the southeast. Basically I used Nathalie and my mainchar (another shadowwalker) to care for the souljars. Sevellin tried to engage Redbeard and Jenell was supposed to (group)heal and cure hostile effects, which she did 5-6 times (terrifying and charming effects).

Most of the time, there were two soul-jars active. In the end, when Redbeard seemed low on health I ignored them and went on Readbeard with all partymembers in that room.

I guess to my surprise the key was having 4 partymembers in one room with redbeard and the soul-jars. So I could concentrate my power on the souljars and after having them down on redbeard. Besides thats why many groupeffects like buffs, cures or healings effected all 4 partymembers which was very helpful.

So whatever you choose: Mainroom or gathering your party in the souljar-room - you will have different kind of advantages and can beat Redbeard.

[Necris Omega]

Honestly, I cannot say anything good about this fight I'm afraid... It's long, it's tedious, it cowers behind a scripted wall of invulnerability, constant dancing between two room hunting for stupidly resilient off switches that distracts from the action... it has everything I hate...

 

And the fight really feels static. There doesn't feel like there is any actual meaningful development during the fight, just a long, grueling game of "wack a mob that's not the boss". Same exact mechanic through the entire fight without end.

 

I would much rather face something that heals, or simply has mind googling amounts of health, rather than one that persistently drops my effectiveness to a soft gentle nudging. The end boss should be a chance to showcase how powerful I've become - instead, Redbeard constantly and repeatedly busts me back down to a trivial nuisance. That's not any fun.

 

Yeah, I overcame the fight without lowering the difficulty - I used the same strategy Eljah described in the end basically. Did I enjoy it? No. Did I have fun? No. Was it worth it? Not really. It was all just too tedious and, honestly, I would have been happier with just a straightforward Hack n' Slash type fight. Call me a philistine if you will, but I don't see why a boss has to be a synchronized dance routine.