Jump to content

Lord Huge of Oregano

Member
  • Posts

    2
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Lord Huge of Oregano's Achievements

Fledgling Fyora

Fledgling Fyora (1/17)

  1. Great strategy. I was never able to beat her, even on Normal until I read this. Also, another note: If you have trouble defeating the guardians even after you kill Zepherine, you can run one of your characters to the exit, leave the area, then come back. The guardians reset to their normal non-hostile selves if you leave, but the dragon stays dead if you kill her. They will just sit in their starting spots and watch you rip out her tooth (I guess they carried her back to her lair, empty her hoard and walk away. So you can actually beat Zephyrine without ever fighting the Guardians! Thanks to Sarlok! Long live Sarlok! Long live Sarlok!
  2. Hi. I'm relatively new to spiderweb games. I started playing Avadon about 3 weeks ago and I just ordered Avernum 6, and I must say I am very impressed. They remind me of the old RPGs from the 1980s when graphics were low, so games had to have great stories to hook in. I really enjoyed this end fight with Redbeard (NO I AM NOT A MASOCIST… well maybe a little). Too often in modern games the end fight is just a long, brutal slugfest against an opponent with a million hit points and no brain, but this final battle really made you think. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he has less hit points than Zephyrine which was a much harder fight until I learned to cheat. I kept remembering the old Nintendo games where the final boss was always invincible until you hit them with a special arrow or caught a specific bubble and then wailed on them for a while. You had to prepare from the begining and role-play wanting to take his place, gathering your allies around you. My first battle against Redbeard went horribly! All my character’s were dead before I even thought to hit the two switches and look for the soul jars. I kept wondering when my attacks would do damage to him again. I spent the next 6 fights against him just experimenting and observing. Seeing how many attacks on average it took each of my characters to kill one soul jar. How much damage their attacks did to Redbeard with 1, 2, 3 or 4 jars (he takes no damage by the way with 4 soul jars!). On the 8th fight I beat him on normal. 2 more tries and I beat him on Torment. I won’t lie to any of you who read this, it is a tough battle, but it was no tougher than it had to be. It was just epic enough to give a real sense of accomplishment (as much as a computer game can offer I guess), but it wasn’t frustratingly so, let alone impossible. Here are some things I learned during this fight that may help you beat him easier. 1) Prepare. You will need lots of health, recovery, speed and battle elixirs, res and group heal scrolls, recovery crystals and fire, ice, corruption and calling wands. I didn’t need too many other items, including vitality potions, but I did save some charges on the attraction rod which did help. Curing brews didn’t seem that helpful since they only cure one affliction on the character taking it and Redbeard hits all of your players at once with multiple afflictions. I gave the scarab that cures mental afflictions to first Blademaster, the teleport to Natalie, and the fire, ice, dark bolt and major aid to Jenell. The rest I spread around. 2) Be faithful to your companions (simper fidelis). Remember that this is a Role Playing Game. You can’t kiss up to Redbeard and ignore your friends the whole time and then all of sudden think “Hey, I want to be the Keeper too.” You will most likely need all four of your companions to beat Redbeard on Torment level (I did it with 3 on Normal, but I wouldn’t recommend it). 3) Once Redbeard gets 3-4 Soul Jars, leave him alone. Every attack which does less than 20 points of damage to him could lower a soul jars life by 25-50%, so focus your attention on them. I found that keeping Redbeard in the main room attacking 1-2 summoned creatures while my characters sat in the soul jar rooms saved me a lot of heals and res scrolls. Jenell can heal them and keep them alive long enough to keep him happy, but if they die they are easy to replace. I’ve heard of some people who say keep him in a soul jar room in one of the corners, which sounds awesome if you can do it. If not, at least keep him away. I couldn’t do it either. He kept getting out and hitting half my people with his AOE attacks which terrified them and messed up my turn order rhythm. I used less heals and res scrolls keeping him in the main room above the soul jar rooms. 4) DO NOT kill soul jars one-by-one. If you can’t kill a soul jar in one turn with only 2 characters (in both rooms) then forget about it. I have seen him a couple of times summon 2 soul jars before my characters had a chance to even attack him. You need to kill all 4 of the soul jars at once and still have character actions left over to hit Redbeard before he starts summoning more. To this, first split up your characters (this may take some experimentation on your part) such that you can get all 4 soul jars down to just a little bit of life AND such that the first two characters to act right after Redbeard has his turn are in separate rooms and can kill both soul jars in one turn (again experiment with how close to zero you can get them without killing them and memorize the turn order). For me, I put Shima and Natalie in one room and my blademasters with Jenell in the other. Natalie was great at killing jars and could use firestorm to assist the other room when needed. Jenell and Shima had the highest dex, but did the least amount of damage to Redbeard, so this was perfect. They would finish off the soul jars leaving my blademasters and Natalie about 3 full turns to pound on Redbeard before he got his soul jars back up. Fire and ice wands work well (but not great) on soul jars, but they are immune to all other magical attacks (including Jenell’s so she should stick with javelins). Physical damage works as well, but if you engage them in melee, be prepared to heal… a lot as they have blade shield at all times. 5) Once Redbeard has no Soul Jars (including the first few rounds of combat), beat on him mercilessly. Even though he heals 300 damage after the first stage, you can get him down to 50% or less health before he summons his first soul jar (putting him at about 75-80% after his first heal). If you are hasted and battle furied (take your first pots before you talk to him and keep taking them when needed) you should be able to get 2-3 attacks per turn. If you left him in the main room your fighters can shadow step or berserker’s leap to close on him fast. Natalie and Jenell can hit him with spells and wands from a great distance, so keep them there. If you have skills that are still recovering, use those recovery pots or elixirs BEFORE you kill the soul jars). Fire, Ice and Corruption will damage him while he has very few soul jars. One of his AOE attacks causes terror, so make sure that the first blademaster to act after him has his Warrior’s Focus active and is equipped with the scarab to cure mental afflictions. He can then cure terror hopefully before their turn so that they can do some damage as well. As soon as he summons his third soul jar… RUN! If you are having trouble doing more than 20 damage to him per attack after he summons 2 jars, run then (it will take longer depending on your character builds and equipment, but shouldn’t be impossible). Use your summoned creatures to slow him down, or if you are a complete jerk like me you can run whoever takes his fancy into a corner and res them into a soul jar room after they die (way to take one for the team soldier!). Once he is happily killing off your summoned fodder all by himself again, focus on those soul jars (go back to 3). Rinse and repeat until Redbeard is dead (which takes about an hour on Torment). Now, there may be some character builds or storylines that make this impossible. For example, if your characters are all level 20 or below, good luck even killing the wayfarer! I did ALL of the optional quests and fights so my characters were level 30 well before this point. I also maxed out their battle and power skills and didn’t put too much into the utility skills (except Jenell who could summon drakes), so my characters had the offensive capability to put some hurt on Redbeard during those short moments when he was vulnerable. AOE and defensive skills are not very effective on him. Again, this was a great game, so don’t let this last fight bring you down. It is, in my opinion, a challenging and climatic end to a rich story driven RPG. Now I’m going to try the much harder task of ending the game as a Heart of Avadon (I’ve never been a good subordinate)... any tips?
×
×
  • Create New...