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Duke Gryfyn...


eaintree

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is hiding in the Tawon Empire. Good to know! The Raptors suggest that I "ask around" while traveling. Heads rolled to obtain that piece of info, I'm certain. There is no quest marker in any Tawon territory pointing me toward the next stage of the quest, leaving me in the position of clicking on every character with a name until I find the one who's got something to tell me.

 

Any pointers?

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No, nothing. There are only four buildings in town where you can have dialogues. One is the Tinkermage shop, another is City Hall. No one else in City Hall but the dead mayor.

 

That leaves the bar and the marketplace. Nothing in either. It isn't the mute armorer. It isn't the girl who wants to be a Hand. It isn't the guard patrolling near the camp where the Kellem Shadowalkers jumped me.

 

So then.

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I've been operating under the same assumption.

 

The Avadon 1 PC might still be out there somewhere, as I'd assume he or she is the one other person to be straight up asked if they want to remain a Hand or immediately switch to being an Eye or Heart . . . But for all I know, the 1st PC could have said, "I'm taking your job, old man!"

 

The lack of a mention makes sense if they decided to bury the 1st party as just another set of failed assassins.

 

Being superstar loyalists surely would have gotten SOME mention.

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Of course! I completely forgot about the Raptor. Now, I spoke to her (twice) and I found Gryfin, but he went away through the portal. Gosh, I hate that man since Avadon 1, where is he now?

NO, I thought I found him but it was a spectre... went to the three major temples Nolus, Aetius, and the one in Serdica, where is he please?

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The logic of his defenses being so good is that he has enough money to spend on magical defenses that you, even as a Hand of Avadon who collects all sorts of bribes, will never have enough money to afford or the opportunity to purchase. Next time, he will probably be a bit more hard up, from having spent all that money in both this game and the last one, as well as the fact that everything everywhere is going to pot.

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It's still pretty illogical if the player mysteriously doesn't even have access to these kinds of magical protections. I have like 20,000 gold, can't I summon a team of invincible demons to spam AoE effects while shields reduce 90% of the damage I take?

 

Nope, that costs 200,000 gold per use -- a significant fraction of several generations of accumulated wealth, and more money than is available in the game. It's totally logical that he has access to it, and totally logical that you don't.

 

I would only know if he is somewhere the party can reach him after he fled through the portal.

 

Once he departs through the portal, he is gone from the game. Reporting back to Envoy Jamie ends the quest and gets you a reward.

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OH.

 

But I didn't even have the chance for a real long fight. I mean I killed maybe two infernals, then he fled. I really, really don't understand.

He's a continuing character, and remember that the Grey Raptors only asked you to find out where he might be, not to kill him. They want to do THAT themselves.
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It is possible to kill him before he flees. I just did it myself.

 

He drops a Necklace of Vitality and a Trueshield Wrap, and you even get a little message where it says he was just too damn overconfident.

 

The reward you get from Envoy Jamie is almost exactly the same. You still get a Scroll of Resurrection and a Bracelet of Opportunity. However, it seems you get 900 coins instead of the 800 you get if Duke Gryfyn escaped.

 

That said . . . Even if you killed Gryfyn, and even if Jamie expresses joy that he is dead, future conversations with Jamie still assume that he got away and the Grey Raptors are still looking for him.

 

So there. It's possible to kill Duke Gryfyn, but it's also pretty obvious that he's supposed to get away.

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It is possible to kill him before he flees. I just did it myself.

 

He drops a Necklace of Vitality and a Trueshield Wrap, and you even get a little message where it says he was just too damn overconfident.

 

The reward you get from Envoy Jamie is almost exactly the same. You still get a Scroll of Resurrection and a Bracelet of Opportunity. However, it seems you get 900 coins instead of the 800 you get if Duke Gryfyn escaped.

 

That said . . . Even if you killed Gryfyn, and even if Jamie expresses joy that he is dead, future conversations with Jamie still assume that he got away and the Grey Raptors are still looking for him.

 

Wow. So broken.

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I was glad to see Redbeard return from his premature shanking since he's such a cool character(Although less interesting this time around.). Duke Gryfyn, though, man. I was bummed out when I saw this d-bag was still sucking air. His betrayal is pretty uncalled for the first time around and storming back into throne room and taking the smug look off his face was a pretty fun time.

 

Since killing him was optional in the first game, why keep him for the second if he never plays a part in the story? I don't really think his storyline merits continuance in the third game. I'd much prefered that this guy had stayed dead.

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Since killing him was optional in the first game, why keep him for the second if he never plays a part in the story? I don't really think his storyline merits continuance in the third game. I'd much prefered that this guy had stayed dead.

 

His involvement in this one is also optional. If you don't take the quest to find him, he'll never show up. Just ask Jaime about Yoshiria, and otherwise leave him alone.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't the faintest clue how to deal with Gryfyn. I have a pair of difficulties.

 

First, the terrify-the-whole-party-every-round attack; I have two characters (Yoshiria and Yannick) who have decent mental resistance, but my main character (a Tinkermage) doesn't and succumbs to the terrify every time. This isn't exactly a fight where I can lose a whole character for the entire fight, because...

 

I can't figure out how to block Gryfyn so that he doesn't just escape within two or three turns, and there doesn't seem to be any conceivable way that I can do enough damage to him in two or three rounds to kill him. I can get him down to maybe half-health. Only one or two characters die, and then he escapes.

 

What gives? I have all the characters at level 30, probably all the scarabs in the game, most of the top artifacts in the game, and I frankly have no idea how to retrain the party or use items to win this fight. How is it done?

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I haven't the faintest clue how to deal with Gryfyn. I have a pair of difficulties.

 

First, the terrify-the-whole-party-every-round attack; I have two characters (Yoshiria and Yannick) who have decent mental resistance, but my main character (a Tinkermage) doesn't and succumbs to the terrify every time. This isn't exactly a fight where I can lose a whole character for the entire fight, because...

 

I can't figure out how to block Gryfyn so that he doesn't just escape within two or three turns, and there doesn't seem to be any conceivable way that I can do enough damage to him in two or three rounds to kill him. I can get him down to maybe half-health. Only one or two characters die, and then he escapes.

 

What gives? I have all the characters at level 30, probably all the scarabs in the game, most of the top artifacts in the game, and I frankly have no idea how to retrain the party or use items to win this fight. How is it done?

 

Step 1 is to bring a whole team of high-Dexterity characters to surround him before he starts running off, then summon allies to form a wall that blocks him in. Step 2 is to somehow kill him while surviving all those infernals.

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Step 1 is to bring a whole team of high-Dexterity characters to surround him before he starts running off, then summon allies to form a wall that blocks him in. Step 2 is to somehow kill him while surviving all those infernals.

I'm sure that's true. But how? My characters with 35+ Dexterity move after he does. I can form a wall, but my characters get terrified or occasionally killed enough that the wall doesn't hold for more than a couple of turns.

 

I guess I'll go do some other stuff and come back. I'll stack up on mental and elemental resistance items, and I'll see what happens.

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You're not kidding. After giving up in frustration on Gryfyn, I went and killed Vardegras. It took three tries and loading up on the right scarabs and burning through some (but frankly not a lot) of consumables, but it wasn't particularly hard. In contrast, Gryfyn seems impossible. But if anyone who's succeeded cares to share some details as to how it's done, I'd be curious.

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That terror effect is a major pain in the ass. I save scummed until all of my party managed to avoid it on the first turn of combat. (It was always the Tinkermage who got hit by terror. Always.)

 

I remember a Tinkermage attack that stops Gryfyn from moving for a few turns as well. (I think 2?)

 

Also, because accepting that offer of tea teleports you between Gryfyn and his portal . . . Right before triggering that pre-battle conversation, I buff the crap out of my party. I usually get 1 or 2 turns of being buffed before it wears off if I rush in to trigger that chat quickly enough.

 

Anyways . . . You have to block his attacks and wail on him with stunning attacks to keep him still long enough to simply wail on him.

 

All in all, the encounter relies very heavily on luck. Being half to a quarter dead is pretty common before he gets away. Hell, I had him slip away when I only needed one more hit in to drop him.

 

It's nice to be able to say I dropped him, but in the end I really don't think he's worth the trouble.

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Anyways . . . You have to block his attacks and wail on him with stunning attacks to keep him still long enough to simply wail on him.

 

All in all, the encounter relies very heavily on luck.

Stuns! Interesting. I didn't think of trying that, but it makes sense.

 

I think you're right about luck. I think the fundamental problem with the fight is that too much depends on chance. Even a high mental resistance character will succumb to the terrify spells occasionally, and only some classes can build up high mental resistance (notably SW and SO). There are a few items that boost your mental resistance a lot, too (Dreadnought Helm, Mica Ring, among others). So you could conceivably have three characters who were decently likely to resist. But even if you have one with a 90% chance to resist, another with a 80% chance to resist, and a third with a 70% chance to resist (which is pretty generous), you'll still have at least one character terrified on every other round.

 

But a party member getting terrified on his own turn is pretty much a loss, because you need a wall to block off Gryfyn, and most summons aren't strong enough to withstand the infernals. Well-placed turrets might do it, but that's finicky work.

 

This means that you probably need to have your first-acting character also be high resistance (probably a Dexterity-based SW) who's ready with a group mental cure scarab to clean up your terrified party members. But you have to get lucky enough that you don't get the wrong character terrified on any turn (out of probably five or six). Even if your top mental resistance is 90%, if the fight lasts 6 turns, that's about a fifty-fifty chance of losing the first-acting character (who's supposed to cure everyone else).

 

The combat is relatively short, so having it depend almost entirely on luck is not all that bad, but it still seems like a bad design decision.

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Yeah, it seems highly likely that he comes back. How much of a history does Jeff have of making a villain appear prominently twice and then never reappear again? I can't think of even one. He tends more to make villains recur even when you think they're long gone (Rentar, Garzahd).

 

I didn't actually realize that it was possible to kill Gryfyn until I found on the boards that it was. It seemed like the sort of thing where you really weren't supposed to even fight him, and the apparent "fight" was just for show (like Miranda in Avadon 1).

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Yeah, it seems highly likely that he comes back. How much of a history does Jeff have of making a villain appear prominently twice and then never reappear again? I can't think of even one. He tends more to make villains recur even when you think they're long gone (Rentar, Garzahd).

 

Gladwell appeared thrice (although he was killed in his 2nd appearance and maybe in 1st too but he's mad mage so he most likely has some autoresurrection casted), Rentar was turned to soul crystal (and A4 was quite similar to A3), Garzahd appeared twice (I'm thinking he appeared 3rd time too as undead but it was prolly some1 else) but he had changed himself quite much. There are possibilities that Gryfyn resurfaces (either we help him or we hunt him) but also possible that we won't see him (except note on some book).

 

if Miranda surfaces in Avadon 3 then JV needs to find very good excuse for her existence (after what she has done doubt players would want to goto rescue her).

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Presumably Dheless is the main antagonist in Avadon 3, but it'd be fun to have a Corruption-possessed Miranda-ghost/zombie as a secondary antagonist, and a secret Redbeard in hiding who you find halfway through the game.

 

Miranda's dead, but that won't necessarily stop her.

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I'm guessing the most likely candidate for Keeper is Callan, who is politically weak and beholden to Hanvar's Council. Redbeard will probably reappear--Jeff has invested too much in developing his character to just throw him away without fanfare. Dheless will almost certainly be back before the end of the series as a primary antagonist or even ally, but when and how depends on how many Avadon games Jeff plans to make and what roles the character is intended to play. Gryfyn is also almost certain to be back in the next game. Miranda, well, I hope she stays dead.

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