Black Horror

[Bryce]

How do I get to the Black Horror? Is it that arena? if so, what do i have to do to fight it?

[*i]

Speak with the ogre in Melanchion's Keep. He has the vital piece of info that will allow you to trigger this encounter.

[Randomizer]

This is a long and nasty fight. I remember telling Jeff that this is one that probably can't be beat as a singleton. The Black Horror drains AP when it hits plus some other special attacks. You'll need summoned help just to have a chance.

 

Good Luck because you'll need it.

[Fael]

For my money, this is the hardest fight in the game. Not the hardest fight for its level -- that would be the Slith Horror -- but the hardest fight, period. Much worse than Doriakis or anything else in the final chapter. So, don't feel bad about using up supplies (invulnerability poitions, inferno wands, etc.). There'll never be a place you need them more.

[Lilith]

I have to say, I was unimpressed by the Black Horror. For the most part, I just sat my fighter next to the Black Horror to take hits (and having 15 Parry and 10 Riposte, thanks to having been fed 90% of the knowledge brews and wisdom crystals found throughout the entire game, meant he wasn't taking hits very often) while having my three characters with priest spells spam Repel Spirit (or Divine Retribution when the sentinels showed up) and heal when necessary. Each phase of the Black Horror's attack only lasted a couple of rounds. I used up one or two energy potions in the last phase of the fight because I didn't want to switch to attacking with bows and risk the timer running out, but apart from that I was never in any serious danger.

 

Come to think of it, having three priests (all with enough battle skills to use Battle Fury) probably had something to do with it being so easy.

 

For my money, the hardest fight for its point in the game was the one in Solberg's secret lab, with four pumped-up hellhounds. When I first got there, nothing I could do would prevent them from wiping out most of my party in a single round. Even when I came back after doing the Anama Lands and quite a bit of the Azure Gallery, they put up a respectable fight.

 

For the game as a whole, I'd say that the haakai near Melanchion's Keep was the hardest for me. Nashazzar and his imps hit for decent damage, and they stun everyone they hit into immobility. This is bad when you need to kill the imps quickly, and have everyone standing close to where the imps were when you killed them (so no creative battle formations to keep your squishy characters as far as possible from the fight.) Heck, I had to have everyone use Battle Fury at the start of the fight just so his preliminary, "non-lethal" energy attacks wouldn't kill anyone.

[Bryce]

Thanks for your advice.

Thankfully, my singleton can dish out a lot of damage to the Black Horror with battle rage (which I can maintain almost constantly, with a 1 full turn break at most) and much repel spirit, and if I keep it slowed the stunning isn't so much of a problem but it is still the biggest difficulty since if it stuns below 1 ap I am dead once the statues are there. They just kinda push things over the edge in the Horror's favor.

 

The battlefield really doesn't have anywhere to hide, the best thing being a corner. I'm going to try holding the horror off with augmented/arcane shielded arcane summons, e.g. terror wolves, for the fire stage, then try to hide behind three statues, which I will slow, and wail on the horror from behind them.

 

If I have to kill them to get to the next stage, it won't work, but I suspect I don't since the stages seem to be triggered by the horror's health.

 

This way, I'll only have to deal with the melee attacks of the three statues (not very damaging, plus I parry/riposte it sometimes), and the terror's elemental ranged attack. With arcane shield and my full set of elemental necklaces (being a singleton, I get all the loot ), it's ranged attacks hopefully won't be too bad. (If the fire and acid are any indication.)

 

If anyone has a better idea or more tactical information they would like to share, let me know.

 

I've got about 7 invulnerability potions and I could get several more from Melanchion and other places, if one of the stages is unexpectedly horrible. (No pun intended.) Also I have some assult crystals/elixers for regeneration.

 

So I'm basically hopeful but this does seem like a hard fight. Thanks for telling me about the relative difficulty of it, that will make me more willing to use items, since the game is apparently winding down (no new quests in a while).

[Lilith]

One problem you're going to encounter as a singleton is that the final stage's first action is to put a death curse on you, so you're working under a time limit. I don't really know if it's an achievable one for a singleton or not, since I didn't run out of time with a party of four.

[Bryce]

Quote:

Originally written by Thuryl:

For my money, the hardest fight for its point in the game was the one in Solberg's secret lab, with four pumped-up hellhounds.

Hide in one of the two side rooms with a doorway. Usually you can fight one at a time that way by standing off to the edge. Once in a while two will attack if you leave room. Of course this might only work with a singleton or duo - I don't know if you can hide a full party in one.

I had to come back to that one too, though; even fighting them one at a time I could only take out the weakest one (i forget which), they others would eventually kill me.

[Bryce]

Quote:

Originally written by Thuryl:
One problem you're going to encounter as a singleton is that the final stage's first action is to put a death curse on you, so you're working under a time limit. I don't really know if it's an achievable one for a singleton or not, since I didn't run out of time with a party of four.

I hope that I can pop some invulnerability and assault potions to avoid having to heal for that stage and then just wail on it with repel spirit until it dies. I hope.

[Bryce]

A side effect of popping an invulnerability potion seems to have been surviving the death curse as well:

Ssthss Falls victim to the death curse.

Ssthss takes 38 magical damage (562 resisted)

 

 

So yeah that was anti-climatic. (Had pretty much all buffs including arcane shield and battle rage running too.)

 

Report of the Great Battle:

The Black Horror was defeated, at length.

Supplies used: 3 invulnerability potions, 1 invulnerability elixir, 4 assault crystals (for the regeneration, maybe could have done without), 2 energy elixers, 1 madness scroll (didn't work on the shades, not a big surprise), about 3 healing elixirs (probably not needed.)

 

Overall strategy employed by my singleton:

Hiding in the Corner, with lesser enemies occupying all squares attacking me.

 

Number of save-reloads for this battle - about 6.

 

Trivial Stage -

Fully buffed and using Battle Rage whenever possible, I rung the gong and used repel spirit three times and slow once on the horror. This caused it to go to the next stage. I put on my ruby chain at this point also.

 

First Stage (Fire)

Performed this casting sequence:

RS (repel spirit), RS, RS, Slow, Heal, RS, repeat.

 

When you are about to go to the next stage, pop an invulnerability potion (for more flexability about your actions), switch to jade chain, and above all Slow the horror.

 

Alternative to slowing the horror: use Arcane Summon. However, provided you keep this stage short, it should be more MP-effective to slow the horror. Summons will require healing every turn if the horror is not slowed, and may die even if they are as buffed as you are (augmentation, arcane shield, the works). Between the buffing, healing, increased battle length and the cost of Arcane Summon itself, slowing is cheaper.

 

 

Second Stage (poison)

When the statues spawn, this is the moment of truth. Since the horror is slowed, it will loose every other turn. You need to end your turn in a corner (i used the southeast) on a turn that the horror loose, so that three statues will end up occupying all three squares that can attack you in the corner.

 

You don't have to worry about slowing the horror now. Just whack on it with repel spirit and heal/rebuff yourself for the rest of the stage.

DO NOT ATTACK THE STATUES AT ALL. On torment, paradoxically, the battle should be easier from here on out since you don't have to worry about them dying and exposing you because they took riposte or spine damage. But on hard they just didn't have enough HP (more on that later).

 

Third Stage (Ice)

Switch to your opal chain. Whack on the horror with repel spirit. When it is almost dead, you might want to drop out of combat and save the game in case you mess up.

 

The horror is not a problem in this stage assuming you keep up your arcane/prismatic shield to prevent freezing. But the statues that protect you may be close to killing themselves from your riposte damage or damage from spines if you're using assault crystals/elixirs or arcane shield. When they look to be nearly dead (watch their HP, and remember that since riposte is random it is not the same for all of them) slow the horror so it doesn't run into the gap after the statue dies. Fill the gap with a summon or let one of the shades in if the statue dies during the last stage.

 

Final Stage (Death Curse)

The Death Curse issued by the Black Horror does a ton of magical damage, around 600. If you are invulnerable and fully buffed, you will take like 40 damage. So keep healed (an assault crystal is helpful) as you whack on the black horror with repel spirit. (On a second experimental attempt at beating it, I discovered that you only really need one invulnerability potion - one to survive the death curse.) Make sure the three squares adjacent to you stay full with ANYTHING other than the black horror, which with two AP-stealing attacks per turn will almost always kill you if it gets a melee attack on you.

 

Keep whacking on the horror with repel spirit until it is almost dead. For an artful finish, end the battle with two arcane blows to get the shades and the horror.

 

I've been putting a lot of effort into getting high int early on, and I must say it has paid off. At level 44, My mode of operation is pretty much arcane blow or fireblast to kill any group of more than one creature, unless I anticipate a long battle in which case I sometimes use my pointy stick or lesser powers. Battle Frenzy was totally worth the 12 skill points or so I had to spend on useless melee/thrown weapons skills, though.

[Fael]

Quote:

Originally written by Thuryl:
Come to think of it, having three priests (all with enough battle skills to use Battle Fury) probably had something to do with it being so easy.

Yeah, with three priests I can imagine that this wouldn't be much of a challenge. I had the more traditional fighter/archer/priest/mage party, so I was limited to at most two Repel Spirits a round, and that only if I didn't have to heal.

The real issue, though is when the shades show up. With only one priest casting Divine Ret, I can't kill any of them the first round and only about half of them the second. So, I have to survive one round of them pounding on my two weakest characters and a second round of half of them pounding on my weakest one again. Plus whatever the horror and the sentinals happen to be doing. That's what was hard for me.

But, yeah, two Repel Spirits and two Heals per round for most of the battle and six Divine Rets when the shades show up would likely make pretty short work of this fight.

[Randomizer]

One trick for the end is to use invulnerability potions on your characters. Then you have plenty of time to use divine retribution on the shades with only one caster.

 

Getting the Black Horror and mopping up the rest tends to work best since it has the most damaging attacks.

[Bryce]

All the other creatures die when the Black Horror is killed. Only one character really needs to survive though, so I'm not sure that using an invulnerability potion for all of them is a wise use of resources unless they are all doing a lot of damage to the horror.

 

As an added bonus the IP will protect them from the death curse if it takes a little longer than expected to kill it.