Beraza Deep Woods (Varoche)

[Kelandon]

Okay, I'm at my wits end. I have a blademaster lead with Shima and Nathalie in Beraza Deep Woods. The blademaster is primarily a meat shield; he has over 500 health, and he can deal out decent melee damage, but he doesn't have much in the way of archery. Shima is reasonably well-balanced, though more on the direct-damage than on the effects side. Nathalie, too, is somewhat well-balanced, but erring more on the direct-damage and less on the effects, too.

 

Now, this was all well and good until I got into the end of the Beraza Deep Woods. I've been playing on Hard this whole time and would hate to drop down to a lower difficulty for this, but I've replayed the Viscount Varoche fight several times and never even come close to accomplishing anything (i.e. I can't kill a single person).

 

As far as I can tell, given that they have Blade Shield and Reflection, the only recourse I have is physical damage from a distance, but none of my three party members has any real archery ability. I have tons of items (elixirs, resurrection scrolls, etc.) that I've barely touched throughout most of the game, but none of them seem to help.

 

So my question is: what should I being as far as strategy here? I can't for the life of me figure out how to accomplish much of anything.

[Randomizer]

This is one of those fights where Jeff scripted it to happen a certain way, but you should be able to do it anyway. The trick that Jeff planned was to split up Varoche and the rest using knockback attacks. It is doable on torment without this, but my party favored range attacks and high dexterity (over 32) to avoid getting hit.

 

Use speed items here to get extra attacks at the start. If you get lucky you might even kill a few in the first round. I used a scroll from the first character and got in 5 area attacks as they stood together.

 

They don't always have reflection and that comes from the sorceress so taking her out first opens up more options for attacks.

 

On thing is to retreat to a position where your meat shields can protect Nathalie. Reducing the number of attackers using control foe and daze sometimes works. But I did find that concentrating on taking them out one at a time can work. Area attacks on clumps helps and don't forget summoning items for more bodies to suck up damage instead of you.

[Alorael at Large]

My party was similar: a shadowwalker with Sevilin and Nathalie. In general with these fights, the trick is to use Nathalie to blast away and plink with archery while the enemies have their defenses up. They're not all permanent, so you can wait for the windows when you can start using all of your melee abilities.

 

The other thing is that even relatively low archery damage should be usable. Slower, yes, but plink long enough and you'll plink enemies to death. You can use that pile of potions to stay alive while you do it.

 

—Alorael, who of course will also plug cheating to retrain. You could go back to an old save, go to the retrainer, and redo Castle Verbeaux and the deep woods, but you could also just pretend you did for the small ego blow of using a debug command.

[Kelandon]

I confess I eventually got irritated with the sheer number of attacks that each of the characters could get off in a turn. It seemed as though they got three turns for every one of mine, which felt like cheating, frankly. I'd noticed it with other creatures in the past, but the sheer number of immunities that they had, combined with the number of attacks, made this combat not fun at all for me. So I dropped the difficulty down to Casual, and, uh, woah. I hadn't played on anything but Hard up to this point, and Casual is ridiculous. This fight didn't even require abilities on Casual.

 

At some point, I'll go back and beat this one the right way, probably, and I'll take the advice above. For the moment, I'm kind of blown away by the difference the difficulty rating makes (stops the enemies from cheating, mostly).

[A less presumptuous name.]

I only played on Casual, and that fight never game me trouble; I killed half of the group before they could touch me. I do agree that when enemies are hasted beyond 2 turns to my one, and there is a huge group of them, that it is quite unfun. I'd be okay with them having 2x hitpower, but the extra turn lets them continually buff, heal, and attack all before I can even move.

[Hammerdal]

Yea, I'm not crazy about enemies getting 2-3 rounds for each of mine, especially when every one of their attacks has to be one of those 20 second special effect AoEs. I'm thinking of all those Incubus's near the Krysanth that take forever to finish their turns, and end up killing Nathalie in one round because she's so fragile.

[Vent]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

This is one of those fights where Jeff scripted it to happen a certain way, but you should be able to do it anyway. The trick that Jeff planned was to split up Varoche and the rest using knockback attacks. It is doable on torment without this, but my party favored range attacks and high dexterity (over 32) to avoid getting hit.

Use speed items here to get extra attacks at the start. If you get lucky you might even kill a few in the first round. I used a scroll from the first character and got in 5 area attacks as they stood together.

They don't always have reflection and that comes from the sorceress so taking her out first opens up more options for attacks.

On thing is to retreat to a position where your meat shields can protect Nathalie. Reducing the number of attackers using control foe and daze sometimes works. But I did find that concentrating on taking them out one at a time can work. Area attacks on clumps helps and don't forget summoning items for more bodies to suck up damage instead of you.

Got trouble with this one yesterday, gave up at third attempt. It's second fight after Audric that exhausted my patience and tenacity (both are at quite average level!).

Against Audric I just switched to Casual, was wondering if I had to do it too for Varoche.

If I understand well your suggestion, it's not to apply the original trick intended by design?

Honestly I don't see how push back could work, anyway the three characters I have for this part don't have much skills like that if any, perhaps some wands.

My character is shaman with high dex and summon focus, and I pick Nathalie and Shima, normally I play at Hard (Hard seems in general be the Normal difficulty anyway). I got many problems with Nathalie in this part of the game and often had to finish with two members only.

And I do agree with the comment that it's tedious to see a pack of enemies constantly make 3 turns and more when you do only one.

[Randomizer]

Shaman's earthquake or the pulsating scarab are the best ways to do knockback since they work on more than one character.

 

I don't understand why so many people have trouble with Nathalie. Sorceress class is extremely powerful if you build up the center column defensive abilities. All those area effect damaging spells are great for the end.

[Vent]

Because it's not that easy to build and keep on such wall. And this part of the game had some tough fights where it's more difficult.

 

In this one you start in a wide open area. In some previous some oponents use rather often knockback destroying defensive walls and allowing some monsters reach Nathalie, this in more than one fight. In another but that was probably right before this part of the game, there's some tough oponents using teleporting. And another one sometimes you go a bit closer to have Nathalie cast something and then multiple oponents reply from long range and you get a dead Nathalie.

 

By doing from far the highest damages with area spells and even doing the single target highest damages, Nathalie attract lot more enemies and defense wall isn't always easy to setup and keep, and Nathalie tend be weak but I could change her equipment, but not yet in this part of the game.

[Spidweb]

Hard is hard and casual is casual. If someone gets to this fight playing on Hard and finds it tough, I'm totally cool with that.

 

(Also, people have been criticizing me for not making fights that require tactics or different approaches. And yet, when I put in such a fight, other people complain. Making an RPG means trying to balance between the needs of many factions.)

 

Anyway. I intended for there to be several approaches to doing this fight. Remember, the game explicitly tells you there's a group of enemies ahead. You can haste, rush them, and hit them with all you got before they have time to buff and shield.

 

Or you can split your group up before you attack them. They will, in turn, split up to rush you, and you can pick off the stray foes.

 

Or you can use knockback abilities to knock foes away from the clump, lock them down by putting one of your party members or a pet by them, and burn them down then.

 

I feel very comfortable with this fight as written. If nobody ever had trouble with it, it wouldn't be of an appropriate difficulty for this point in the game. (It is, I believe, the last rough fight that can't be avoided somehow.)

 

- Jeff Vogel

[Vent]

Keep cool I'm not an old school fanatic. About tactics and fights difficulty you already know it's the hard way, always some to find and complain about something too difficult and some other too easy. Nothing new under the sun about that so no need be surprised, lol. But I do think most often during a large part of the game, Normal is too easy, too many players will just use the default, will get something too easy and won't think rise up the difficulty and will find the game too easy and will complain.

 

I use this opportunity to quote that at least someone prefer the way you did it in general (I don't mean just fights) with Avadon, for me your best game (I'm close to end) or on par with Avernum 1. And now any future game you'll make without companions know that I'll whine. I also enjoyed the multiple technicals used, from JRPG elements to companions, sneaking parts, one of the rare flee working rather well in RPG, and many more.

 

I jungled a bit too much with difficulty in Avadon but yes at least I always had this possibility. I think it's better through more resources used, something more difficult when it's blocked parts like this one. But some blocked parts is great so.

 

For the fight quoted, I tried a last time still at hard, following some advices in the thread. I tried first run west to setup a barrier, but failed, and instead got the leader on one side isolated and other on another side. With one earthquake provided with an item giving the skill to my Shaman I push further the separation and broke for good the link, Shima get the leader busy during the whole fight. Then used few summons, some scrolls for healing push back the mage with help of a Shaman summon, and got them all then the leader. In end quite good I appreciate this one.

 

About tactics, I don't complain, good value, and Turn Based plus party highlight it well, even if party of three restrains a bit. But even if I'm sure you know, you could develop more possibilities like barriers, missile only barriers, bean effects, bounce effects, stances like defensive and offensive, party with a little more members, small jumps usable more often than teleport, sneaking during fight (allowing move without to be blocked and attacked), attraction effects on enemies, and so on. But party of five would most probably help a lot to offer even more possibilities to players.

 

To close this long post, thanks, Avadon is great, few flaws but many strong parts and a great game.

[circe27]

Help please! I killed Varoche before I found Gavin, and now I cannot get out of the Beraza Deep Woods to finish the game. What should I do?

Thanks,

C

[Lilith]

Have you tried talking to Gavin and then going back to where you killed Varoche?