SpellsTuesday

I lost at this fight so many times. I finally beat it by doing what felt like gaming the system to me: I realized that Tassik summons slimes at particular hit point cues, rather than on round-based cues. So I attacked him until he summoned slimes, then immediately stopped damaging him at all and focused on killing all the slimes. Once they were dead, I piled on Tassik again until he summoned more slimes. By steady healing and keeping all the damage concentrated on my tanks, I was able to survive. Even doing this, which kept the slime numbers manageable until I could kill Tassik, I still almost got overwhelmed by the final wave of slimes and had to burn a couple rezz scrolls.

I can't speak for the overall difficulty because I've been playing on Hard. I should probably be playing on Normal (since each dungeon takes me a half-dozen retreats to town to finish) but am making slow, steady progress and enjoying myself. The one thing that I definitely HAVE noticed is a major gap in difficulty between crunchies and bosses. I mean, yes, bosses are supposed to be hard. But I've found that the character level where I can largely cruise through a dungeon with no more major risks than a freak PC death or running out of spell energy is usually nowhere near sufficient to take out the dungeon's boss. My usual pattern has evolved into something like this: 1) Clean out the dungeon 2) Charge straight into the boss, get slaughtered and TPK'd. 3) Reload. Use better buffs and better tactics. Get slaughtered. 4) Repeat #3 a few times with similar results. 5) Give up, leave. Do a few quests, clear out another dungeon. Gain several levels. 6) Return, try the boss again. Kill him after a tough but rewarding fight that demanded optimum tactics and item usage. I've observed this all over the place. The Nephilim fortress, the Nephar fortress, the Slith island fortress near Cotra, the Slith temple, the crypt near Formello, the Mertis Spiral, the Slith fort north of Fort Emerald... I don't frame this as anything more than a subjective observation. Some of it might be sub-optimum party build for my difficulty level. I will note, though, that a lot of times it's not just my PCs getting swarmed to death in these boss fights (aka, Slith island fortress) but in a lot of cases one-hit kills (sometimes even to my tanks), where no amount of buffing or healing can save the day. This experience HASN'T ruined the game for me, or made it un-fun — I can still beat everything with the strategy of leaving and gaining a few levels before taking on the bosses again. And when I do face a boss appropriate for my power level, I love the fights — they're very challenging and force me to think outside the box, beyond just buff-and-snuff charges. But my metagaming sensibilities are bothered by being able to clear out a fortress but having to wait a few levels to finish off the boss. Are other people having this experience, or is it just me?