Feedback, Abazigal Improved Lair

[Raj]

Did anybody try this component yet? Judging by the (lack of) feedback on the board I suspect nobody played through it because one of the encounters is seriously different than everything else I experienced of SCS2: I'm talking about the yellow dragon.

 

I went through it with three different parties: a pretty standard 4 men one ( pc pure kensai+anomen+nalia+barbarian minsc ), a duo ( pc fighter/mage+imoen ), a solo ( sorc ); most of my considerations about what made me hate this encounter are based on the first party that asked for less cheese from my side.

 

The cave is incredibly small, it's the only encounter in the game where you have to fight a dragon in such confined space, still he uses wing buffets and rush hasted on your party like it was in open country: party members get struck between his huge mass and the cave walls, this means that when he breathes (often) things get nasty, as the party is unable to scatter. I had some members chunked even with the component that should prevent that installed.

He uses a lot of dispel/breaches and protective magic, about 5-6 each of pfmw and stoneskin I remember; 600+ hit points with the more staying power component installed, heavy phisical/elemental resistances ( I uninstalled the component now so can't check ) and, difference with any other dragon in the game Abazigal excluded is immune to death spells. He has no vulnerabilities. This means you have to hack your way through his hit points no matter what, with mages usually annihilated by breaths/wing buffet that have to breach it several times. usage of aoe is severly limited, like your movement.

Did I say he casts WISH as soon as you enter the cave? Use it to wish freedom from Abazigal instead of breach my whole party!

Heck, it was a tedious fight every time; 90% of difficulty ( and my bigger complain about 'realism' ) came from the size of the room imo, that made impossible take a break for injured characters ( and only resurrection rods provided the adeguate healing rate ) but the fact he's a powerful spellcaster as well didn't help too.

 

I think it is plain wrong to have this dragon, who can be considered a guard minion, 10x times more powerful than the boss you are going to kill, as Aba himself was a walk in the park compared to him ( like all other dragons that don't have such overwhelming magic abilities, and the yellow one absorbed ton of phisical damage while dealing a fair amount too ).

 

The fact this is a exception to the usual attitude of scs2 of not giving the player more items than the vanilla game irked me a bit too: the amulet is extremely convenient and the plate you get from forging his scales screams wtf ( 50% piercing immunity? still able to use thieving skills? ); OT: instead of adding new scales I would have welcomed a realistic location where to find the white dragon ones that are such out of place in those WK remains

 

Overall, I enjoy playing with most of SCS2 components and Sendai/Yaga lairs upgrades are simply perfect so I want to be able to keep the Improved Abazigal lair that, with this exception, is a nice addition (and the vanilla area with the bone golems is such out of place). My idea for the next run was to simply remove the dragon from that area, or substitute it with some other guard creature but my NI skills are lacking so I was hoping in some help in modifying the spawning scripts

[Guest deep o]

I´ve played 2 times with this component installed and haven´t noticed any problems with the said dragon difficulty-wise. However I play with SCS-light aka "mages don´t prebuff" and no "more staying power". I use HLAs for selected ToB mages/clerics.

I guess that additional staying power makes this encounter significantly tougher due to confined space it takes place.

Actually, I had a different "problem" in the first game I used this component. After the battle, dragon gave his "you´ve proven strong enough" speech, I received the amulet, dialogue ended and dragon got killed promptly afterwards by Jan´s bolt fired before the dialogue started. I found that funny and took advantage of it since I was playing a sorta chaotic neutral party .

 

Both times I had Ascension´s Improved Abazigal installed and that fight was definitely tougher than the yellow dragon one.

Vanilla Abazigal was always a pushover, especially compared to Draconis.

 

Overall, I really like Improved Abazigal Lair, enemies make more sense, the additional dialogue is nicely done and the dragon ambush is cool too (though I had some problems with the last dragon not always showing up).

Regarding the items, personally I didn´t mind the convenient amulet at all. After all that time I thought my party deserved something like this . I might be wrong but if I remember correctly the AC bonus isn´t listed in its description, though.

As for the plate, I though its nonrestrictive nature was a bit out of place. I play with BG2 Tweaks´ allow thieving/spellcasting in heavy armour but I always install SCSII after it. I wonder if it has something to do with it.

 

Generally, I think it´s impossible to make everything well balanced difficulty-wise, which is why I realli dig SCSII´s highly modular nature so that I can sorta tailor difficulty for my needs (and abilities).

I´m pretty sure that different mod setups and different SCSII setups can make difficulty and appropriateness of some encounters greatly varied.

Personally, I think that all SCSII´s improved ToB components play really nicely with all Ascension´s improved ones.

 

Whoa, what a redundant post!

[DavidW]

One or two comments (though mostly I'd like to hear what people think about the component rather than just saying what I think).

 

Did I say he casts WISH as soon as you enter the cave? Use it to wish freedom from Abazigal instead of breach my whole party!

 

Difference between PnP and BG2. "I wish to be freed from opression" isn't on the genie's list; "I wish that all my enemies should be breached" is. (It's fair to observe that Ana always gets that wish, but (a) it would have made the scripting a lot more complicated if I had to choose it randomly; (b) I really didn't want Ana to use Timestops, and it would seem a bit unfair to give him randomised wishes but deny him Timestop.

 

I might be wrong but if I remember correctly the AC bonus isn´t listed in its description, though.

It isn't: pure laziness. I'll try to remember to put it in.

 

As for the plate, I though its nonrestrictive nature was a bit out of place

 

Agreed; didn't occur to me. (I actually stole the plate pretty much unaltered from Tactics Ritual).

[Raj]

wish: hey it was a j/k , or I'd still be complaining that I can't wish ''to win the game'' anyway from the readme you say wish is considered a HLA and the yellow dragon isn't in the list of guys that should get it ( I have the 'only selected mages get HLA' component installed. Is it really necessary give him that spell, considering he has ( according to a quick reinstall I just made ) 4 more breaches memorized? Not to mention he has 5 more level 9 spells ( 2 spellstrike, 2 pw:kill, 1 spell trap ) and is only level 28

 

edit: he has 6 memorized spells for each level, but 0 level 2

 

 

Both times I had Ascension´s Improved Abazigal installed and that fight was definitely tougher than the yellow dragon one.

I tried it with and without Ascension but my experience was a lot different. Abazigal lair is very big so it's easy to recover injured partymembers, lure him away, recast some buffs, throw some summons as fodder and so on. Then looking at how scs2 handle both dragons the yellow one seems tougher on paper.

Anadramatis is clearly a better mage than Abazigal, and judging by the SCS2 stats the yellow one poses a bigger threat to fighters too.

Anadramatis has 650 hp, is immune to fire, 25% crush and slash, 75% pierce and missle, while Abazigal has 500 hp, is immune to electric, 40% vs all phisical: yellow one wins against mages, there're simply 10x more fire spells to use against the blue one Little weaker against maleers but then he has ( according to a fast reinstall, don't know how scs2 randomness kicks in ) 5 stoneskins and 3 pfmw vs 3 stoneskins and 1 pfmw.

 

Overall I just don't like to have a harder time against a minion than against the boss, it reminds me of the vanilla Draconis and that little cave as lair is both unrealistical and a huge advantage.

[coaster]

Um, I played through this but I have to admit that all the dragon battles kind of blurred together. All I recall is that with a solo barbarian+Hardiness+a few potions I didn't really have many problems with any of them. Might actually be harder with a party (at least if you want to preserve all your party members) since following a wing buffet I assume the clever AI would tell the dragon to go after the weakest party member, rather than the one with 80% physical resistance.

[Demivrgvs]

Just my two cents.

 

I'd prefer the Improved Abazigal's lair to not include additional dragons at all. Dragons should be kept as absurdly rare encounters to preserve their uniqueness imo, and the lair already had three dragons which imo is more than enough. There's plenty of alternative solutions to just another fight against dragons, you already shows it a lot will all the different creatures you've added to the lair. I can look for some more unique monsters if you want, but I'd prefer to not use monsters which have nothing to do with the common D&D/Forgotten Realms lore.

 

P.S You states in the readme that tyrant golems are beholder golems, but the name imo reminds me too much Death Tyrant, which are undead beholders. Speaking of which, have you used any death tyrants? Perhaps it's just me, but if you haven't used them yet I think they would be more PnP-esque than a beholder golem.

[Wisp]

Just my two cents.

 

I'd prefer the Improved Abazigal's lair to not include additional dragons at all. Dragons should be kept as absurdly rare encounters to preserve their uniqueness imo, and the lair already had three dragons which imo is more than enough.

I agree with this.

I do not mind Anadramantis as such (I rather liked the fight actually), but it gets a bit too much with Draconis, Anadramantis, Wingus and Dingus, the green one, the red one, the other green one, Abazigal and maybe Tamah (and that's assuming I did not forget any).

 

Edit: Of course, now I feel bad about criticising what looks to be the whole concept behind Improved Abazigal's Lair (which I enjoyed playing, it's those damned purist leanings).

I would not be opposed to seeing a few less dragons, but Anadramantis and the green and red duo outside are nice and felt like meaningful encounters. I believe I proposed that Wingus and Dingus (the two black ones) got axed on a previous occasion, and I think I should make that argument again, as they struck me as the most gratuitous cases.

 

Speaking of which, have you used any death tyrants? Perhaps it's just me, but if you haven't used them yet I think they would be more PnP-esque than a beholder golem.

There are Death Tyrants in vanilla ToB.

[DavidW]

Just my two cents.

 

I'd prefer the Improved Abazigal's lair to not include additional dragons at all. Dragons should be kept as absurdly rare encounters to preserve their uniqueness imo, and the lair already had three dragons which imo is more than enough.

I agree with this.

I do not mind Anadramantis as such (I rather liked the fight actually), but it gets a bit too much with Draconis, Anadramantis, Wingus and Dingus, the green one, the red one, the other green one, Abazigal and maybe Tamah (and that's assuming I did not forget any).

 

I'm kind of reluctant, as the "loads of dragons" theme was pretty deliberate. The various background info you get in Amkethran suggests that Abazigal is gathering "an army of dragons", but I recall being very disappointed on my first playthrough that there's only Abazigal, Draconis, and whatever the geased dragon is called... some army.

 

(You didn't forget any: there are three dragons in vanilla, Ascension adds one (Tamah), SCS2 adds two blacks, one green, one red, and one yellow.)

 

P.S You states in the readme that tyrant golems are beholder golems, but the name imo reminds me too much Death Tyrant, which are undead beholders.

 

If I recall my D&D lore, "eye tyrant" is an alternative name for "beholder", and "death tyrant" is derivative on it. "Tyrant golem" is meant to follow the same theme.

 

Speaking of which, have you used any death tyrants?

 

IIR there are some mixed in with the tyrant golems. But I expect they get sliced to pieces awfully quickly at this level.

 

Perhaps it's just me, but if you haven't used them yet I think they would be more PnP-esque than a beholder golem.

 

If people feel that the beholder golems don't fit the flavour of the area, I'm happy to listen (though the fact that they're not in any extant PnP monster manual doesn't move me: one can make up variants on monsters in PnP D&D, so why not in BG2?) My logic was that Iycanth is making weird eye-based abominations and drawing on beholders for inspiration and material components. Beholder golems seemed in keeping with that theme (and after all, if you fight Iycanth, one of his eyes is an "eye of the beholder" with all beholder powers).

 

@Raj:

 

- the HLA component is only designed for mages/priests; it's not intended to apply to unique ToB creatures added by other SCSII components.

 

- yes, I realised the wish comment was a joke; sorry, I should have been clearer that I was being flippant!

 

- does he need wish? No. But it was part of my design spec for that battle, not least because I was getting bored of scripting combats where the enemy painstakingly tears down party defences, and wanted a change. Plus, I'd decided not to allow him Timestop (which would be completely lethal for a dragon, and which the Ritual yellow dragon uses), and wanted to throw the poor thing a bone to compensate.

 

- I agree in principle that Anadramatis shouldn't be tougher than Abazigal (more accurately: than Abazigal+Tamah); I'm not yet convinced that's true (hence my interest in what other people thought).

 

- If there are suggestions for an alternate map for the Anadramatis battle, I'm listening. (Drawing one myself is out of the question). Bear in mind that it needs to have a pool in it. (At one point I was going to use the Saladrex map; the lack of a pool was what stymied me). Having somewhere relatively dank is a bonus.

[Wisp]

- I agree in principle that Anadramatis shouldn't be tougher than Abazigal (more accurately: than Abazigal+Tamah); I'm not yet convinced that's true (hence my interest in what other people thought).

 

I did not think Anadramantis was harder than Abazigal+Tamah, at least not since SCSII mandates that you fight both at the same time, rather than killing Tamah while dangling something in front of Abazigal for him to play with.

 

(See my edit as well)

 

 

Yet more edits:

- If there are suggestions for an alternate map for the Anadramatis battle, I'm listening. (Drawing one myself is out of the question). Bear in mind that it needs to have a pool in it. (At one point I was going to use the Saladrex map; the lack of a pool was what stymied me). Having somewhere relatively dank is a bonus.

Adalon's cave? Not really a pool, but there is water in there.

[Ilyich]

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the Tyrant Golems on my last playthrough. I haven't done the new Improved Abazigal with the dragons yet, though. Also, David would it be possible to make the Abazigal fight in this component the same as the Ascension Abazigal fight? So that people like myself who prefer to not use the Ascension mod can get to fight Tamah as well.

[Raj]

I don't understand how I remember Abazigai and Tamath, or Abazigai alone being so much easier than the Anadramatis while everybody else thinks the latter is easier

I'm talking about using a party not a soloer ( hey if we exclude a damn lucky wail of banshee the solo sorc ended the game w/o reloads ) and while tanks don't have much problems against dragons ( expecially barbarians I agree, I was using minsc as one with Refinements and 85% dr^^ it's just a bit boring to fight 30 minutes drinking a potion sometime ) and this one wasn't a exception, it just took a lot of resurrection rod charges every time, mages and expecially clerics get dispelled, throwed and chunked.

What pissed me about the yellow dragon is that the area is so unrealistically little that I had no way to prevent the weak npc to die, usually chunked even with the component that should prevent it installed, hence forced a reload.

 

Anyway, what about use a copy of the map with pools where the green dragon under geas is? Or Adalon lair is fine too, just not sure where to click to fill the bottle.

[Shaitan]

Hey! I remember that reference to (sort of) dragon army from Vanilla ToB... And yes David, there really lacked some dragons. Unfortunately I never played with Ascension before SCSII came to us. With that being said, I'd be sorry to miss the yellow one (or others) but on the other hand I can understand the need for space

He we have had different opinions of Anadramatis: I really had some troubles with that dude, if I recall at least 5 reloads - but it was fun

[Shaitan]

Hey! I remember that reference to (sort of) dragon army from Vanilla ToB... And yes David, there really lacked some dragons. Unfortunately I never played with Ascension before SCSII came to us. With that being said, I'd be sorry to miss the yellow one (or others) but on the other hand I can understand the need for space

He we have had different opinions of Anadramatis: I really had some troubles with that dude, if I recall at least 5 reloads - but it was fun

[Demivrgvs]

I'm kind of reluctant, as the "loads of dragons" theme was pretty deliberate. The various background info you get in Amkethran suggests that Abazigal is gathering "an army of dragons", but I recall being very disappointed on my first playthrough that there's only Abazigal, Draconis, and whatever the geased dragon is called... some army.

You do have a point, though we may assume charname get there in time to stop Abazigal before it raises the army of dragons. I think I agree with Wisp's suggestion about removing just the two black dragons while keeping the others. It would be 4 more dragons than in vanilla (if you include Ascension's one), which is more than enough to make it appear as an army "in construction" and doesn't start making it look like a "oh, look there another bunch of dragons to split in two". Obviously, feel free to disagree.

 

P.S You states in the readme that tyrant golems are beholder golems, but the name imo reminds me too much Death Tyrant, which are undead beholders.

If I recall my D&D lore, "eye tyrant" is an alternative name for "beholder", and "death tyrant" is derivative on it. "Tyrant golem" is meant to follow the same theme. ...

If people feel that the beholder golems don't fit the flavour of the area, I'm happy to listen (though the fact that they're not in any extant PnP monster manual doesn't move me: one can make up variants on monsters in PnP D&D, so why not in BG2?) My logic was that Iycanth is making weird eye-based abominations and drawing on beholders for inspiration and material components. Beholder golems seemed in keeping with that theme (and after all, if you fight Iycanth, one of his eyes is an "eye of the beholder" with all beholder powers).

Fine with me, you've convinced me.

 

I agree in principle that Anadramatis shouldn't be tougher than Abazigal (more accurately: than Abazigal+Tamah); I'm not yet convinced that's true (hence my interest in what other people thought).

Abazigal alone should be more powerful than Anadramatis, which means Abazigal+Tamah should be clearly harder, in a way that doesn't leave doubts imo.

[DavidW]

- OK, so quite a few people seem to want to axe the two black dragons. Any dissenters? - if not, I'll consider it for the next version (though I'll have to mess with the dialogue, unfortunately).

 

- @Ilyich: I'm reluctant to clone Tamah to my own mod given I didn't come up with her - but (I hope) all you need to do is install the "Tougher Abazigal" component of Ascension. You don't need the main Ascension mod.

 

- Adalon's lair is a possibility as an alternative map for Ana, though it's a bit of a pain as I'll have to mark in the water as trigger-able. I don't want to use the green dragon area because it means using the same fairly distinctive map twice in one enclave.

 

- @Raj: I'm not sure why you say Ana's existing cave is unrealistic (as opposed to annoying, a point I have some time for). He fits in it perfectly well, and there's in-game justifications as to why he's slumming it.

 

Abazigal alone should be more powerful than Anadramatis, which means Abazigal+Tamah should be clearly harder, in a way that doesn't leave doubts imo.

 

I think "not leaving doubts" is too much to ask. I never cease to be surprised at the variety in which battles people find easy or difficult (I assume it's quite sensitively dependent on both party mix and personal tactics).