Tales of Torment Duo

[Synergy]

I just spent the last couple weeks whittling away at a torment duo game, which appeals to me more than a torment singleton. I was curious how it would feel throughout and how challenging or easy it would be all in all. Here's a summary of how it went. I know Vlish was working on a similar duo game months back, but I never saw him give any updates on how it went or if he even finished it.

 

I played a powergame of maximizing all loot and rewards possible. I did not bother to slaughter every town, but I did mop up the ones I didn't like or turned angry against me due to advantageous strategizing. I played loyal to Dorikas up through the end, then played the loyal to Redmark ending for comparison. Your outcome is discouragingly identical either way, unless you like mushroom meal.

 

I used all my herbs only to make Knowledge Brews in Muck. I was able to make 52 of them at least, and possible 1-2 more I forgot to tally. I bought all Mandrake Root I could get my hands on, since it is the limiting factor in making Knowledge Brew. I also made it a priority to steal Mandrake Root first in any town I didn't want to anger. I wound up with virtually every available Mandrake Root in the game to this end.

 

I created Silvrrtip—a nephil melee fighter thief meat shield Divinely Touched Elite Warrior, and Sssnooky—a Pure Spirit Natural Mage priest/mage slith. I gave each 2 Luck. I gave the nephil one level of Priest spells so he could heal and cure himself, as well as distract those charming mind control freaks in the game. The rest all went into a lot of strength, 8 melee, a couple dexterity and endurance. I next brought up Tool Use to 8 asap and then focused on strength. After I brought strength up satisfactorily, I worked on defense in order to unlock parry. After that, it was 17 levels of parry (with gear) plus some more TU and NL as necessary. The mage-priest I gave 8 Intelligence and 5 levels of both spells. I focused entirely on intelligence with him till it was up around 10, at which point I started raising mage and priest spell levels.

 

The game started out kind of tough and grinding, though by the middle of the demo, I was totally kicking everything's butt, and was able to beat the Black Wight, the goblins' altar demon, and the Unstable Mass in the lowlands. I was in fact able to kill the Unstable Mass without it splitting once. This was due to having my nephil use the Stunning Blade most of the time for the first two chapters. The Stunning Blade is wimpy in actual damage, but I found it invaluable in being able to stun many many foes into unresponsiveness well into the third chapter. Combined with Slow by the mage, it was often possible to just whittle something immobile into oblivion - a great exploit for a duo party, This is how I kept the unstable mass from splitting.

 

Chapter 2 got tough again in places. I instantly worked on buying spells and skills from Shanker in the Northern Isles, training in nothing that I was going to be able to buy later. I was able to handle the Mongbat better than I remember doing it with a Normal party of four back in demo testing. Daze worked very effectively all through my game with this ramped-up mage priest. One reason I wanted a duo, was because I wanted those nephil ceremonial weapons and armor. I saved that for the end of the Chapter 2, but was able to secure them before moving on. The 8 Fang Clan trials were mixed: some really quite easy, but some quite tough, requiring numerous reloads. The 9th trial I got weary of attempting, and admittedly bumped difficulty down to Normal to get it over with. This game wasn't meant to be a purist proof of possibility, but for my fun and to update and verify my Items List. There were about four contests in the game, I think, for which I bumped difficulty down to Normal at some point. I'll mention more of those when I get to them.

 

The nephil ceremonial leggings, warblade, and bow were given to my priest, who I allowed to die by the hand of Kherr on my way out of the trials. My fighter killed Kherr and went back to Shanker's Tower to revive the priest and collect our booty. I tried leaving them on the ground by the pylon and killing off the Fang Clan village, but I discovered that just by going there again, even if the artifacts aren't with you, they disappear from your inventory the next time you pick them up off the ground. So I went back to an earlier save, and had my fighter kill the fletcher on the way out of the Fang Clan village after the trials to get his blessed longbow for my priest. My melee nephil was my primary archer, when needed, so he had the ceremonial bow. With the 75% fatigue removal of the leggings, he was able to cast many a mighty blow by the end of chapter three or so when I was finally able to unlock it.

 

Chapter 3 - Gelmax the goblin shaman is a serious problem in the second encounter. I can't even imagine doing it a torment singleton as Randomizer has been attempting. I don't have that kind of patience for all those reloads. Another note: I edited in arcane lore for my priest, thinking SP were going to be too much of a problem, but I was wrong. I may play one more duo game in which case I will do everything purist. Money, however, is a serious problem even for a duo, and, according to Randomizer, even for a singleton....all the way until you reach Highround, when suddenly you acquire tons of loot. One has to pick and choose training and spells carefully until Ch. 6, which is rather frustrating. You feel like you are lagging behind what the trainers are offering you until then. After that, it makes up for it by leaving you feeling insanely powerful, at least this duo here did.

 

The rat lift on the way to Lysstak was a real drag and took numerous reloads. It seems like Daze should have worked well, but I think it wasn't effective enough to keep up with all the rats, and they have a hella lotta hit points on Torment. My priest died and my fighter ran off , able to heal up and kick off the poison. He got boxed in between them and the fire lizards he had to kill in order to get out. He couldn't hack his way back through the rats. Too many survived. Though he made a valiant attempt to do so and managed to kill another 2-3 on his own.

 

Lysstak took many attempts. I did not enlist the aid of anyone to help me. Next time I will. The Pit Crawler was easy once I positioned my duo back on the ledge by the entry to the pit, and left one worm blocking the path to them. The Crawler was forced to stand off and take our ranged attacks until dead. All that was required was occasional healing of the front man from the worm attacks. I was able to clean out Khora-Vyss both levels more easily than I expected by the end of Ch. 3. However, without the exploit I was not aware of, standing far off and not having the Slith Horror come out after you, I found it impossible to do enough damage to the Horror in time before his 4th or 5th death curse kills you before the antidote appears in a basin. Basically, if you take that long, it is auto-kill, and I just couldn't do it no matter what I tried. So the horror I did on Normal. I wanted that Slith Bloodspear for my slith mage-priest.

 

Ch. 4 Tranquility - I was feeling pretty beefy. The endurance test against the sentinels was too difficult for my patience without first whittling down about 8 of them by being seen by them in the SE quadrant. Mosef was terrible to attempt as a torment duo. I'm not sure it's possible to both do enough damage and hold out long enough against all the respawning unstable servants. I tried many times, then bumped this fight down to Normal to just get on with it. There may be an exploit to this, but I'll be darned if I could figure one out. Mosef may be too hard on torment until your party is a couple chapters further along. Same deal with Cheeseballs 3-6. I did those on Normal eventually also. Mostly because I didn't want to come back again later when I was tougher. The Prime Sentinel was a piece of cake on torment for my duo. I was finally able to train in weapons for my duo, and got my priest up to Mighty Blow.

 

Ch. 5 Anama lands were pretty easy, except for the Chitrach Queen which took my first use of invulnerable potions and a madness scroll. For the Howling Depths, my duo had to keep moving and blow through the blockade. I let Tholmen go, and came back to clean all the rest out after the hunt/ambush was over.

 

Ch. 6 at Highground, we were at level 28. I made a mercuric plate for my fighter. Now, and especially later with one more AP granting piece of gear added, he often got 19-21 AP hasted and using Battle Frenzy. He always got 10 AP unhasted eventually. The Soultaker Pit was a piece of cake all in all. By now, my priest had massive spell power and my melee nephil was parrying huge percentages. This was the problem. When I faced the Soultaker itself, even my nephil with bare fists would kill my fairly tough and armored priest with two punches. There was no way to keep my priest alive through the possession phase. So I figured out an exploit. I let the nephil kill my priest. Then, as a singleton, it instantly cycled to the next phase facing the soultaker and his minions. I forced ended the combat just long enough to revive the priest with my only Return Life scroll. Otherwise I was at a loss. When possessed, you are automatically hasted and get two strikes. That made my fighter lethal. I didn't want to waste invulnerable potions, and it would have taken quite a few.

 

Lake of Trials was easy, except for the final showdown on the island. That gave me a bit of a run. By the end of Ch. 6, I was able to train up pretty much everything, except had to leave some spells like Unlock Doors, Dispel Barrier, Return Life at 1 level bought only. You really don't need more. I was able to get my priest up to the last battle discipline around this point. Soon after, I started training him in dexterity, defense, then parry. The 52 Knowledge Brews at this point made a lot more possible, to say the least.

 

Ch. 7 Vahnatai Lands were all pretty easy, as was nearly everything from this point on in the game. The Pit of Abominations was easy except for the showdown with the Lich at the end. This took a few reloads, and a long time. My priest would do a lot of charming and dazing to keep things going. I loved using those energy-based Crawlers against everything else. I managed to make it through the Doomguard in about a half hour, with no more than 8-10 split off at any one time. The Behemoths in the Pit had an insane amount of hit points on torment and took forever. Boring.

 

Ch. 8 Dark River - The only challenging battle was that darn Haakai demon. I didn't know the exploit about shielding near the imps, so wound up doing this one on Normal difficulty and used a couple invulnerable potions. I was able to do it on Torment without potions to hold out long enough to get him to succumb to tribute, but couldn't get lucky enough to whittle the other half of him down to score the Jade Halberd not knowing the exploit. The only hope I had of surviving was if the haakai missed his attacks on my fighter at the start in particular. One wave of his energy attack was enough to kill my priest at maximum possible range sometimes, and he kept dazing my fighter. Melanchion was easy to kill, but it was a little tough dealing with the golem denfenders till I got a bit more serious about it. The Doomguard upstairs at this point went very fast. I think it split about three times before I wiped it all out.

 

The Black Horror was some work. On my third or fourth attempt, I was able to work my way slowly to the fourth round, including having my priest die once, and my fighter resurrecting him with the one other scroll in the game. I was barely able to hold on through about twice. I used a few invulnerable potions on this one, for sure. This, the slith horror, and the haakai are the toughest fights to survive in the game for this duo.

 

Ch. 9 end - First I went pro-Dorikas and then pro-Redmark. Both routes were easy, but fun to run through. I didn't even use invulnerable potions or assault crystals or anything extra. I didn't even clean out the fortress ahead of time, but assaulted Dorikas first thing, well, after Cienna. So, as he ran around, I faced lots of other baddies including Tholmen and Ruth along the way. This kept it from being boring. Dorikas rarely was even able to terrorize my fighter and never my priest, Dionicio just once.

 

My nephil was level 40 at the end. My slith was level 41. My stats in everything essential seemed ridiculous. I was hard pressed to figure out what to add to my priest-mage around Ch. 7, until I decided to make him a tank too and went for Parry. This will be less an issue if I replay with adding Arcane Lore properly.

 

Some additional bits: Arcane Shield is insane. I used it before every battle once acquired. Parry is insane. I eventually had 8 or 9 levels for my priest along with the non-encumbering Emerald Chestguard won from the Black Horror. For the final chapter, my priest was a tank too. My fighter took ludicrously small amounts of damage from about 2/3 into the game on. Still, there were plenty of challenging fights at every stage, except for the end itself. I cleaned out Harkins Landing after letting the drake go, Ahonaria, after stealing the scrolls, and Highground, just because.

 

Best to save invulnerable potions for the 9th nephil trial, Mosef, the haakai, and the black horror. Those are the only places I either used them or would have used them.

 

A5 really is an epic game in scope by the time you're done. I especially love the way the game builds through the Drake Pillars. Then it feels sort of formulaic and repetitive through the next five chapters: go to a surprisingly developed city center and run around killing various things in the area to earn loot to buy the training you want and access to move on. There is almost no sign of Dorikas after Ch. 3, except for the Howling Depths...it sort of seems like you've lost sight of the immediate quest to me. I wish there were more true wilderness with bizarre and cool landscapes and strange critters and encounters deep in, instead of just more and more civilized cities: dragon or vahnatai. It killed the feeling of extreme remotism I would have enjoyed. I got tired of all the hack and slash by the Highround area. I wanted more variety, quests that were stealthy or something other than go whack something. Or just exploring, like you got to do in A3. I loved that component of A3 - the wonder of seeing new sights in unknown areas. And overall, I gotta say, I'm tired of caves. It's a stretch to buy the whole world under the world idea in the first place. I like the A3 or Nethergate environemnt of living in the surface world, but going into creepy underground dungeons and tunnels to deal with things there. Caves make for boring scenery. I look forward to Jeff's new game after Avernum 6. I trust it won't be underground.

 

I welcome any comments, questions, or comparisons people have. Has anyone else played a torment duo to end? Did you manage any of the "impossible" fights in torment mode?

 

-S-

[Rowen]

Wow. I think I am going to go try out torment after reading what you did. Or maybe I'll just bump my party up to torment so I don't have to start over again.

[Zummi]

Quote:

Nephil artifacts blah blah blah. I tried leaving them on the ground by the pylon and killing off the Fang Clan village, but I discovered that just by going there again, even if the artifacts

Did Jeff did that in the latest version?

[Randomizer]

Invulnerability potions are key for some torment fights where you want to concentrate on damage against one monster.

 

Moref the Shade is best standing in a corner with invulnerability. It's really hard to catch that flash of yellow that marks the right one and you don't want collateral damage killing them at random.

 

The Cheeseballs in Solberg's lab respond well to control person scrolls/charm to keep them fighting amongst themselves.

 

Congratulations on finishing. A duo is more fun than a singleton trying not to get swarmed.

[Synergy]

Yeah, with both Moref and Nashazzar, I didn't remember, or hadn't previously used the exploits. I was interested in blazing along, so didn't take the time to figure them out. Some of the battle strategies are quite subtle like this, and not always intuitive to me — the Nashazzar one in particular. I like that Jeff puts clever and tricky stuff like this in the games though. I never figured out what to do with the Soultaker either. I think Jeff clued me in on that one originally.

 

Also, I didn't remember Fireblast being at level 8 by endgame last time through. That's just nuts, and makes it the most powerful spell you can have in the late game. Boom! 150 damage all over. I had fun with that.

 

-S-

 

ADDIT:

 

Meh, here are some end stats. Wish I could link jpegs here.

 

Actually, Silvrrtip made it to level 41, just shy of 42, and Sssnooky made it to 42 by the end of Dorikas' fortress.

 

With gear, Silverrtip had 13 strength, 8 dex, 4 int, 4 end, 11 melee, 4 pole, 11 bows, 8 thrown, 18 quick action, 1 priest spells, 1 spellcraft, 5 hardiness, 6 defense, 15 TU (18 with gear switch), 7 NL, 3 first aid. First aid was adding large amounts of health and spell power by 2/3 into the game, once I was able to buy three levels each. I think first aid is well worth it, and was regaining like 40-50 health being added at the ends of battles. Of course, Anatomy was adding to this too. 5 luck, 13 quick strike, also worth it, in my opinion, for many turns with extra useful AP - even as little as 3-4 QS started adding AP fairly often. 18 parry, 23 blademaster, 7 anatomy, 9 gymnastics, 3 pathfinder, 13 magery, 5 resistance, 2 mag. eff., 11 lethal blow (got many of these as well), 4 riposte (meh), 14 sharpshooter. The only bows I cared for or used much were the nephil ceremonial bow and the heartstriker bow. The submission bow comes too late to be very effective at dazing to most foes. Archery really is only something to do if you have AP to use up and aren't next to your foe. Especially on torment, with so many hit points. Archery just isn't very satisfying, it's been so nerfed since A4.

 

I was swapping out between 4 blades for a while with the nephil: for a long time I used the nephil warblade with its amazing stat boosts until its usefulness was eclipsed by more powerful swords: most often used was the fiery sword, the all around most useful. You wouldn't think fire would be so effective against golems, for instance, but it is. Where cold was effective, I used the frozen blade. The venomous blade is the second most powerful blade in the game, and actually drips acid, while the oozing sword drips venom (they seem to have been accidentally reversed in special damage). This makes the oozing sword not so useful. Might as well use the more damaging venomous blade in its place. Toward the end, I used the radiant soulblade at times, though even with its high attack strength, other blades were often more effective and satisfying to use.

 

Sssnooky the slith magician wound up with: 10 strength, 8 dex, 11 int, 2 end, 4 melee, 12 poles, 11 bows, 4 thrown, 12 quick action, 18 mage, 20 priest (kind of overdid it, but some of this priest spell gear comes later than you'd really like to be using it), AL 18 (edited in), spellcraft 17, hardiness 8, defense 6, NL 7, first aid 6, luck 5, quick strike 3, parry 11, blademaster 4, anatomy 3, gymnastics 3, pathfinder 3, magery 11, resistance 7, mag. eff. 16 (this is very noticeable and worthwhile indeed. He wound up with massive amounts of spell energy at his disposal due in good part to this increased efficiency.) riposte 4, sharpshooter 3.

 

If I hadn't cheated in the AL, I wouldn't have the 8 hardiness or all that parry, and possibly not all the defense. I'd have to add points or play again without using the editor to verify. But I felt like I wasted a lot of points throwing them around for fun in the later game, including more on the nephil than I really needed. I wasn't perfectly efficient with spell levels, as you can see. I could have cut back one or two on each if I really wanted to min/max. Sssnooky was good with a spear later in the game, and could double as a fighter whenever necessary. I used the Jade Halberd late in the game, still an awesome weapon. The Cryos spear with its extra AP is also a cool spear for a slith. I was kind of sorry not be able to use more of the cool shields in the game though, because of the choice of slith. I think I'd make two nephils next time, or for fun, make my fighter a slith (a bit extra challenging, but lots of damage!)

 

 

 

[Randomizer]

I forgot there is an exploit for Malachite's Endurance quest.

Click to reveal..

Leave the door to Horace the scribe's house open and get hasted. Then wait for the wandering patrols of sentinels to be their furthest from you to start the test. This gives you time to go into the house and close the door. Then wait for the test to end.

[Slawbug]

Syn - you can still link to an http address with an image, so people can all look at them.

[Synergy]

Yeah, but I miss inserting visuals right into a post.

 

There was something else I wanted to mention. My fighter started with one level of priest spells in order to heal and cure (and sometimes bless) himself, as I mentioned. I never bought or trained anything beyond that for magic for him: no more priest levels, spellcraft, or magery. Divinely Touched gave him 13 levels of magery by the end, and by the last third of the game, he could Minor Heal a significant amount of points. He could almost entirely heal my slith in one shot and was usually successful at curing. It's well worth having a second healer with a duo, even with this seemingly middling ability, if that PC is DT.

 

-S-