Avernum: EFTP on Torment with Non-Magic Party [finished raport].

[Antura]

I did it in early 2023 for the variety in gameplay.

Completely possible.
 

The hardest part began around Giant Lands when fighting Ethridge's Ghosts. In this arena, I started to occasionally use Invulnerability potions, especially during World Map Encounters, but I still minimized their use as much as possible to avoid breaking the game.

 

For the final quest with Hawthorne, I went all out with Invulnerability and Speed Potions.

 

As for the house-rules: I modded the game for the special swords to make specific magic damage (like Flaming Sword), because Frozen, Venomous, Oozing are bugged. During this process, I learned how to mod it myself without any help.

 

As for the tactis: kiting the enemies, bombarding them with adrenaline rush, circling the bosses around to min-max with backstab (30% dmg), then healing with Kabob, replenishing adrenaline-rush, repeat.

 

Final Party, everyone lvl41, used all wisdom crystals before going into End-Quests.

1) Warrior-Tank with Frozen Blade and Shield. Quicksilver Bulwark (+1AP) and Mercuric Chain (+1AP) to always have 2 attacks. All other items focused on tank values.

2) Warrior-Dual-Wielder with Flaming Sword and Spectral Falchion. Quicksilver Sandals (+1AP) and Mercuric Leather (+1AP) to always have 2 attacks. All other items focused on min-maxing damage output.

3) Warrior-Dual Wielder with Venomous Blade and Oozing Sowrd. 1 attack. All best leftover items for him.

4) Archer with First Expedition Bow (according to the analysis from this forum, its better than the critical-based other late-game bow).

 

Archer probably was pointless and under-max, but I went with him for the variety of exprience. Another Warrior-Dual-Wielder with leftovers and with 1 attack (and 30% backstab) would do much more dmg according to my calculations, archer was very under-performing in comparison to warriors, even tank.

 

The only place I ignored was Statue with drakes and basilisk. Everything other 100% completed.

To show best character 2) Warrior-Dual-Wielder, he looked like this (gallery here with 4 images).
https://imgbox.com/jZc7FNNt
Seems like most optimal.

When he makes 1 attack on Drake he is doing around 780 damage, with 650 being blocked. Dope.

How hard?
Kinda hard. Kinda grindy (I had like 2 almost resigns).

Harder than Solo-Torment. I did it with Solo-Mage, with all going into INT and all over-points going for Mage Spells, where at 61 lvl I had 48 (+7) INT, 25 END, 25 Mage Spells and it was easing to clear dungeons with solo AOE spells than with full non-magic party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 26 by Languorous_Maiar

[Antura]

Grath-Hoth:

Because of the summons, I couldnt nuke him with Adrenaline Rush.

Because of many stuns, I couldnt survive even with Invulnerability Potions (afaik I could with many save/load and abusing Invulnerability to the max, but it seemed meh).

 

So I went all-in for Grath, adrenaline-rush nuked him anyway, ignored all his summons, and after defeating secret passage behind him opened. I went there with my archer, crossed till out of map, and returned with no summons. It seemed like a perfect solution.

 

 

Hawthorne:

Using all potions it was kinda easy to explore everything, kill everyone and get to the center.
Garzahd was no-problem with adrenaline-nuking.
Hawthorne was no-problem with adrenaline-nuking the golems, it went really fast.

 

Edited November 26 by Languorous_Maiar

[Quiconque]

1 hour ago, Antura said:

I modded the game for the special swords to make specific magic damage (like Flaming Sword), because Frozen, Venomous, Oozing are bugged.

These aren't bugged, they just might not do what you guessed.  The names refer to the status effects they cause.  The idea is it's still a metal blade doing physical damage, it's just also automatically depositing acid or poison, or causing a chill slow effect.

[Antura]

21 minutes ago, Quiconque said:

These aren't bugged, they just might not do what you guessed.  The names refer to the status effects they cause.  The idea is it's still a metal blade doing physical damage, it's just also automatically depositing acid or poison, or causing a chill slow effect.

Kay, I used semantic shortcut in my phrasing.
AFAIK I checked and those weapons were great in Exile. In A:EFTP they are lame, if we go by logic of balance being done here by Jeff.
Acid, posion and slow effects not only are basically negligible when using those weapons, especially on Torment, but it has very low % of working at all.

I prefered the old variant.

Considering that those weaposn are end-game hard-to-get, very valuable - getting them in vanilla don't feel rewarding and usable. So I did that personal rebalance.
Thanks for pointing it out though.

[Quiconque]

FWIW, those weapons were not direct carryovers from Exile -- almost none of the equipment in AEFTP is.  That said, all melee weapons in Exile do physical damage.  Some, like the Flaming Sword, could do extra elemental damage on hit.  Others did physical damage while always applying poison, though.  So it's not really any different from AEFTP in that regard...