Temple Ruins lich in chamber next to the 'lava floor' room

[Lemernis]

Good gravy, the temple ruins lich is difficult. No way can my party stand toe-to-toe with the summons they conjure, i.e., two dark planetars and an efreeti. Fortunately those summons are triggered before the party makes it to a vantage where the enemy sees them, and the creatures eventually unsummon. Even then I'm having a tough time finishing off the lich and greater mummy. Edwin can't yet cast Pierce Magic to dispel the their protections.

[DavidW]

Good gravy, the temple ruins lich is difficult. No way can my party stand toe-to-toe with the summons they conjure, i.e., two dark planetars and an efreeti. Fortunately those summons are triggered before the party makes it to a vantage where the enemy sees them, and the creatures eventually unsummon. Even then I'm having a tough time finishing off the lich and greater mummy. Edwin can't yet cast Pierce Magic to dispel the their protections.

 

I did warn you about using HLAs in SoA! Though clearly planetars need to hunt for victims more effectively...

[Lemernis]

I know, they're really beyond an level 11-13 party, heh! Toward the end of SoA, or perhaps even the middle, I'll stand a better chance.

 

I resorted to total cheese here and let the lava floor kill the lich's sims. They got freaked out by it because they're under attack like every second by the fire damage (apparently they know not from where), and they start running around in the lava like chickens with their heads cut off. They do get a spell off now and again but the lava ultimately wins.

 

The lich's chain contingencies are rough, with Horrid Wilting in there.

[Lemernis]

I'm conceding that mage and priest HLAs when the party is lower level are just too much for my party* to handle (at least with only one relatively low level mage and cleric of my own). I'm going to uninstall those components for now. I will try reinstalling them later in the game to see how they work out.

 

One thing of note about the component "Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting": this is actually rather exploitable. For example, when a party member approaches from around any corner to scout, the enemy mages will cast their buffs. They have not sighted him yet, but I guess they do so because he's within a certain range from them geographically. The scout can them step into the enemy's perception range and enemy triggers/sequencers will fire, eg, the liches in the temple ruins will summon creatures and cast Horrid wilting, and so forth. While the summons are materialzing, etc., the scout has an opportunity to step back out of sight. The party can then wait it out, rinse and repeat, until the enemy has exhausted their supply of spell sequencers.

 

I had anticipated the above component would make the game tougher (enemy is prebuffed), but in practice it seems to work the other way around. So I'm going to try unistalling it and install the compoenent that has the enemy buff only when the party is sighted.

 

* PC Fighter

Yoshi

Anomen

Korgan

Edwin

Keldorn

[DavidW]

I'm not certain it'll help - it's their chain contingencies that are going off, not their SCS autobuffs. (They go off on a distance timer to give liches more chance to deal with Protection from Undead). Beta 3 may help, though - it sounds as if the mages aren't doing what they should do (i.e., use scrying to locate you, and then teleport to you), but beta 3 has (I hope!) streamlined that a lot.

[CamDawg]

Good gravy, the temple ruins lich is difficult. No way can my party stand toe-to-toe with the summons they conjure, i.e., two dark planetars and an efreeti. Fortunately those summons are triggered before the party makes it to a vantage where the enemy sees them, and the creatures eventually unsummon. Even then I'm having a tough time finishing off the lich and greater mummy. Edwin can't yet cast Pierce Magic to dispel the their protections.

The party's restricted from having more than one planetar running around, right? Does anyone know (Caedwyr, I'm looking at you ) if there's P&P basis for this, or is it merely a balance change from Bio?

[DavidW]

It's one planetar per character, I think, not per party.

 

However, the lich, I suspect, is doing something that's arguably a bit cheesy: it's cast Simulacrum and then both liches have summoned Planetars. The chance of the party getting to do that is fairly slender since your mage would have to be ridiculously high level, but the standard SoA lich works out as 35th level in SCS II. (My mage component raises each mage to the lowest level consistent with all the spells he has, with a few checks against ridiculous increases). I'm not deliberately exploiting the loophole, it's just that both liches have the same script and spell list.

 

I'm open to views that this should be closed off, though I'm somewhat inclined not to bother.

[CamDawg]

Nah, just curious. If someone asks for HLAs in SoA, they kinda deserve what they get (sorry Lemernis ).

[Caedwyr]

It's just a Bioware summoning cap balancing method. They figured that having an army of Devas/Planetars would be overpowered so they limited them to one per party. There's actually reference in one of the types of Devas for an ability that sends out a call for additional celestial creatures or other devas. I think Planetars have something similar.

[Lemernis]

Nah, just curious. If someone asks for HLAs in SoA, they kinda deserve what they get (sorry Lemernis ).

 

In retrospect it does seem a bit overambitious, doesn't it?

[Lemernis]

Things did not really go all that much better with SoA mage and priest HLAs removed. I still have not installed beta v.3 (which I intend to do after defeating the Shade Dragon). I'm still using Beta 2 and its hotfixes.

 

I have to say, lacking a mage who could cast Pierce Magic I was unable to do much against the second lich in the temple ruins (the one next to the room with all the letters on the floor). The lich's invulberability to attack, and his use of Horrid Wilting and summoning a pit fiend was far more than the party could hope to survive--especially when the lich also stuns then also many of the party.

 

I had to resort to complete and utter cheese tactics. By having a party member step into the lich's range of perception and quickly scoot away, I was able to get the lich to use up many of his spells. Many of these were contingenices at first. Later he fired some spells that targetted my designated 'rodeo clown' player, Korgan. But I used Korgan in his berserked state so that Stun wouldn't work on him. And he was able to step out of Cloud Kill once it hit him.

 

After a lot of the lich's spells were used up, eventually a skeleton warrior and greater mummy did give chase. But by themselves they were easy to dispatch. The other skelton warrior got himself killed by flame strikes wandering around on the booby trapped floor with all the letters.

 

Once the lich had used up all his contingencies and many of his spells, I buffed up my four tanks and sent them in to make quick work of him.

 

This is not at all the way I like to fight the battles, i.e., exploting the AI. But in a honest fight was roundly getting my butt kicked, and after over two dozen unsuccessful tries I could see no way to win. So I just went for the easiest way to keep moving forward with the game.

[DavidW]

In version 3 (I think - I'm kinda losing track of what upgrade is in what version) the lich and pit fiend would have been more efficient at chasing you (teleport is a great spell) so you probably got off lightly...

 

It took me a minute to work out why there are liches in the Temple Ruins at all, then I realised they're placed there by the level-dependent blocks. I usually go there at quite low level (and didn't use the "Always spawn toughest" from Tactics) so I've never run into them. In the unmodded game they don't spawn till you've got 2 million XP, but on your spawning component setting they turn up when you've got 400 thousand.

 

Anyway, sorry if it was frustrating, hope you're still enjoying it overall...

[DavidW]

PS beta 4 should make an appearance in the next hour or so, so don't install 3 just yet...

[Lemernis]

I'm having a good time.

 

If it's not too much trouble, I would not have lichs spawning in that dungeon at all though. Or at least have lichs spawn at a higher XP level. It's still quite early in my game, the party was at level 11-13. I still have well over half of chapter 2 yet to complete. Especially with SCS AI, a level 35 lich is too much.

 

Btw, the lich did Shadow Door but evidently he wasn't able to find the party by so doing.

 

To my amazement, I had an easy time with the Shade Dragon. Maybe it was just lucky dice rolls, but he fell very fast.

 

I had Yoshi set 3 regular snares and 3 special snares. The traps didn't come close to killing him outright but they certainly helped.

 

Fortunately, the dragon concentrated on wing buffets at the start of the battle. That left Edwin unmolested to remove the dragon's protections. By that point Edwin had reached level 12 and I could finally cast Pierce Magic in addition to Breach.

 

No one in the party had greater than a +3 weapon. Yoshi got the overwhelming majority of hits with the Tuigan bow. He got the kill in fact (it was after the trap damage).

[DavidW]

If it's not too much trouble, I would not have lichs spawning in that dungeon at all though. Or at least have lichs spawn at a higher XP level. It's still quite early in my game, the party was at level 11-13. I still have well over half of chapter 2 yet to complete. Especially with SCS AI, a level 35 lich is too much.

 

The level only really affects his dispels, but I take the point. Do you mean that you'd like to play on a lower setting than "Significantly increased difficulty" for that component? (If, so, feel free - uninstall the component entirely if you like, I'm confident it's working correctly now). Or do you mean that liches should be an exception to the usual rule by which that component works.

 

 

I had Yoshi set 3 regular snares and 3 special snares. The traps didn't come close to killing him outright but they certainly helped.

 

Did the dragon let you set the snares before he went hostile? If so, oops: that's an error, and means that the dragon's ability to detect trapsetting isn't working properly. (I've never played a high-level thief; I'm probably not understanding how their power works properly.)

 

(oh, wait a minute: he's supposed to ignore you as long as you've got the wardstone, isn't he? In which case it's in-game perfectly reasonable to festoon the area with traps. It's not like Firkraag, who's voluntarily not attacking.)

 

 

I don't think I've got the hang of dragons 100% yet, to be honest. Although their scripts got streamlined quite a lot in v3. If you're interested, try CLUAing in another shadow dragon after you upgrade and see if it does any better.