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Garzahd is a Noob


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Long have I traveled through the dim warrens of Avernum. I have wrested the Blessed Athame from Empire hands. I have consorted with many a friend: with the plebeians Ostoth, Enla, and Thompson, but more importantly, with the mighty mages Erika and Rentar-Ihrno. The king himself has bestowed upon me the mighty demonslayer. I have slain many an Empire foe, but now I seek only the Burning Reaches.

 

Garzahd's fort is ominous. I rush in, blade in hand, and dispatch the warded infernals. Um… did I just kill them with divine fire? Hath hell frozen over? Is the mighty Garzahd taunting me with weaklings? Oh hey! A portal… and eye beasts! Meh. Can you handle six divine fires and three fireblasts? Losers. Oh noes! This Empire dude stole my soul! Six divine retributions! Three arcane blows! Empire dude takes a dirt nap. I regain my soul, kthxbai. Uh-oh, there's a bunch of lava and some gremli… er, I mean imps. 'sokay, I'll just read this book and make them go away.

 

I'm finally here! *plays O Fortuna* I'd better buff up. Oh, and I'll bring along two haakais, they're totally rad. I am totes ready now.

 

I meet Garzahd. He's all like, "Come at me bro. I am teh 1337 wizard!" What happened to your face, brah? Let's do spells together and stuff, 'mkay? Woosh! Quib! Kazam! Whoa bro, that is one gnarly cave widow you just summoned, I am totally shakin' in my pants. Uh… is that a cow patty you summoned? Nvm, it's a hortah thingamujiggit.

 

Then Garzahd's all like, "I am teh ubergeneral. You can haz pointy sword?! Oh noes! My beautiful face!" Cool story bro, don't tell it again. Slow! Daze! Um… I have 10 resistance, and you're like, using spells I learned in high school. Oh hey, lightning. Whatevs, I'll just mass heal. Six divine retributions! Three arcane blows! Poof! Now he's a bunch of pipe ash. Wait, srsly? Man, it took me longer to kill that eye beast in Cotra. Then Rentar-Ihrno's all like, "Yo! Here's a portal, bai."

 

Garzahd is a noob.

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Oh noes! My beautiful face!

 

 

 

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But on a more serious note' date=' I had some problems because I was a wizard with low HP and enormous resistances, but for some reason his spells by the end of the fight could bypass my wards, so he cound cast Arcane Blow and do ~200 damage to me even [i']with[/i] an Invulnerability potion and all buffs active. The first few times I fought him, he would do this twice in a turn and kill me and I had to reload. Annoying, but I got him on the fourth try or so.

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But on a more serious note, I had some problems because I was a wizard with low HP and enormous resistances, but for some reason his spells by the end of the fight could bypass my wards, so he cound cast Arcane Blow and do ~200 damage to me even with an Invulnerability potion and all buffs active. The first few times I fought him, he would do this twice in a turn and kill me and I had to reload. Annoying, but I got him on the fourth try or so.

 

His attack power is scripted to increase every turn, although you must have let the fight go on for quite a while if he was doing that much damage.

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Wow, I didn't know he could even cast Arcane Blow because he never used it on me. He often couldn't act because my divine retribution slowed him, and even when he did have a turn he mostly cast a summoning spell. Also, he only used the banishment trick on my Haakais, which didn't matter because they had already given me 20+ turns of battle frenzy.

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Yeah, quite a few mid-to-late-game bosses get stronger every round to put a kind of soft time limit on the fight. Sulfras does the same thing. A2:CS is a game where being able to output a lot of damage in a short time generally pays off better than more defensive strategies.

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For me, the eyebeast in the corner of Cotra was the biggest challenge of the game. Garzahd was hardly dealing any damage for the first little while, but then all of a sudden used Arcane Blow and one-shotted one of my characters. It was unexpected but he was at maybe 10% health so I was able to finish him off.

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Don't Daze me, bro!

 

I'm trying to come up with a good excuse to link this post in the Strategy Central. I want it preserved and easily accessible for the future. If someone else has a good justification post it here, or just add the link yourself. This is too good to let disappear in the mists of time. :lol:

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Killing Garzhad was ... satisfying. After Avernum: EftP, I really hated this character. Oh no, it's not your heroics that topple the emperor, no, it is I who let you kill the emperor! ... It didn't ruin the game for me, but it came close.

 

That said, I liked this fight. I didn't mind expanded dialog one bit, and I found the purity of mechanics something to appreciate. While I did find his melee resistance way out of line (if you're fop in a dress, you have no business shrugging off swords like pool noodles), overall I liked how "clean" the fight was. It wasn't an endless parade of stun happy summons, it wasn't a hokey pokey exhibition between to death zones, very little in terms of gimmicks... Maybe I've just been playing too much WoW, but I find that very refreshing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Uh oh. I thought I was being clever when I killed his dinner guests, then ran around the corner to exit combat and save the game...does that mean he's too tough now?

 

Well, you probably haven't made your life easier, but you might as well try fighting him anyway. At worst, hopefully you've got an autosave to go back to.

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In my fight there was on round where Garzahd was definitely not a noob though. He killed my level 34 high endurance 12 hardiness fighter tank in a single hit, down from full health The text said that Garzahd "banished" him. Was that a special attack?

 

Usually when Garzahd banishes someone they just get teleported over to the other side of the room. Without further information I dunno what happened to you there.

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The teleport doesn't, but there are monsters in the south room including warded demons and empire soldiers being added every few rounds.

 

The warded demons were already dead, and another party member was holding the new empire soldiers at bay. I forget whether Garzahd can get in multiple attacks per round. Maybe he killed him with different attack, then banished him when he was already dead?

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The warded demons were already dead, and another party member was holding the new empire soldiers at bay. I forget whether Garzahd can get in multiple attacks per round. Maybe he killed him with different attack, then banished him when he was already dead?

Or perhaps Garzahd hit him with something that inflicted a poisoned or lightning status, then banished him, then the status took effect and killed him on his turn.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm finding this battle to be way harder than some are making it out to be (even harder than the Angierach arena, which was really just a matter of using invulnerability and speed potions and making sure they never wore off). At least on torment, it seems to take at least 6-9 whacks with Demonslayer before his shield drops (which is like 3-4 turns right there), and his mental attacks are much more effective than any other enemy I've faced thus far (he even occasionally terrifies my priest with uber intelligence and mental protection).

 

And the teleportations are incredibly annoying as the character is immobilized for several turns and the demons that spawn next to the teleported character have shields that can only be broken with Demonslayer. So teleporting a character means they are out of the action for at least 2-3 turns, if not longer (depending on the character).

 

So my party always ends up split, one way or another, and I'm unable to do enough damage before the battle progresses to the point where he insta-kills people even with invulnerability potions.

 

Anyone have any torment strategies?

 

I have two melee characters, a priest, and a mage, all with pretty (I think) optimal builds (i.e. everyone has 13 hardiness and all the defensive stats I could afford via skills or buying. Nearly all my spells are level 3 and everyone has adrenaline rush).

 

I haven't tried using a mental ward yet, though, perhaps that would help, especially since I tend to have invulnerability potions up anyway so magic wards might not make a huge difference.

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Hitting Garzahd 6 times with Demonslayer shouldn't take more than two turns if you've got Battle Frenzy active. On turn 1, attack, Adrenaline Rush, attack, attack, attack -- that's 4. On turn 2, two more attacks -- that's 6. Also note that he'll start taking some damage after the first time you hit him with Demonslayer even if his shield isn't completely down yet, so you might as well start attacking with everyone as soon as you hit him once.

 

Do you have any Sanctification Ritual scrolls? If your priest gets terrified, you can have another character use one to get them back in the fight. They're not essential, but they might be helpful if your priest getting hit by mental effects is a recurring problem.

 

One final piece of advice: don't bother to kill any of the minions that spawn during the fight. They'll respawn endlessly if you keep killing them, but if more than a certain number are active at once they'll stop spawning. Focus all your attacks on Garzahd: it's fine to catch the other enemies in an AoE spell if it's convenient to do so, but you should be targeting Garzahd with every action whenever you can.

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Yeah, I didn't have any sanctification scrolls, which was the main problem. I did finally beat him, though, mostly just through a lucky run where my priest never got stunned/terrified. Thanks, though.

 

I should note that mental ward didn't seem to make a difference at all regarding how often people were stunned/terrified, while magical ward did mean the difference between a character dying and living with a shred of health in later stages of the battle. So I'd definitely recommend the magical protection ward instead of the mind one.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My first encounter with Garzahd was the toughest. I think the party was simply too weak to tackle him at that point. I got stomped at the second encounter because of the quickfire -- was there quickfire in EftP? I don't recall it -- but it didn't take long to understand what I had done wrong. The only thing you can do with quickfire is run or die. Those were difficult fights, though.

 

I believe I fought the hardest and longest RPG game battle I've ever fought in a game like this. It was near the start, not the end. Unbelievable carnage. I guess my party was too weak but that early in the game I'm not sure how I could overcome that. The good armor was still in the future (and there is no really good armor in this game for tanks -- I think you get more from pouring points into dexterity and endurance so they dodge a lot of hits). Should I worry that I was exhilarted at finally winning that incredibly long battle? Anyone have a "long battle" tale they'd like to share?

 

A few of the quests were easy to miss. I had seen no indication of the "Thompson" quest but saw it mentioned here -- apparently, I did not go through all of the dialog options with Erika.

 

So, you think Garzahd is gone for good, eh? I can hear faint evil laughter wafting from the infernal reasons where he and his demon half-brothers are plotting their revenge. Beware. You're on the menu.

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So, you think Garzahd is gone for good, eh? I can hear faint evil laughter wafting from the infernal reasons where he and his demon half-brothers are plotting their revenge. Beware. You're on the menu.

 

... welllll ... <looks at Avernum IV> I don't think that worked out too well for them, if so.

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  • 1 year later...

I wouldn't say he is n00b since his favorite spells are fireblast, blink (or whatever teleportation spell) and arcane summon (and naturally his Haakai-summons have same shield as he has and there is only 1 Demonslayer) and he uses knockback alot.

 

After killing him I reloaded save and edited party to max on all stats etc but still didn't deal more damage on him than with un-edited party.

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You weren't doing it right. After eliminating his flunkies and using Demonslayer to break his shield, you concentrate on him and keeping alive from his demon summons. This is a fight where his later summons aren't important since the faster you kill Garzahd, the faster it ends. Fighting the haakai means the fight just drags out as you burn through consumables.

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I didn't deal with his allies besides those who were there in beginning and some of those human spawns if they were in line of fire, still it was dumb battle due he jumped around alot and knocked my party back (no ensnaring etc luckily) alot (from his pedestial to entrance).

 

I kept my demonslayer wielder attacking Garzahd (2nd fighter was occupied by 2 Haakais so couldn't get anywhere so 2nd demonslayer would been nice) and casters blasted Garzahd with lvl 3 fireblast and lvl 2 arcane blow (dunno which dealt more dmg after his 3rd ranting), priest with fb and mage with ab.

 

Bit funny is that in 1st kill he sorta made suicide since he died on riposte.

 

Still enemies having unlimited mana is nasty thing, if my casters had used as many fireblasts and other spells as Garzahd used on my 1st attempt (his fbs dealt over 1.7k dmg eventually so instakill) they would have needed alot energy potions/elixirs.

 

Bit odd was that my 2nd fighter had invincibilty still on and he got lightning status and lost half of his health on his turn but on prev. round didn't lose any health when Garzahd fireblasted party.

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