Having trouble with Watcher's Keep on LoB/SCS

therdre

I'm using a custom party, dwarven defender, Inquisitor, fighter/druid, fighter/thief, cleric/illusionist, necromancer. I've had little issue so far (I've done every side quest except some of the liches and as far as main quest goes I just got out of the underdark). I'm having trouble with the maze level, I took the quest to kill the other demon but I can't seem to kill him no matter what I do. Its the fears that are the issue. I've tried every buff/potion they all get wiped out. I tried the chain contingency set for resist fear on my mages, but it only holds up a few seconds (I can see this strategy working on anything other than LoB). Anyone have suggestions?

malachi151

I suppose getting a Bard is not an option? I don't know if you can re-recruit custom members. If so you could get Haer'Dalis and use his song, but you may need to get him to level 30 first...

Also the sword Dragonslayer, to protect at least 1 guy.

Borek

There's not many items with fear immunity, the Dragon Slayer sword Peridan is 1 though, but obviously can't be wielded by all your characters. Potions are effective but i believe SCS tends to throw around dispel magic like crazy, so you will need to use Spell Immunity Abjuration on your mages to block that. Protection from Evil will give a +2 bonus to saves and prevent summoned demons targeting, but not entirely sure how effective that will be with SCS.

I found resist fear to be not that great as you also found, the problem is it doesn't make you immune, just sets your morale to max which rapidly gets eroded by fear abilities, meaning sooner or later, usually sooner, you're still fleeing whilst being mauled to death.

If it's the room i think you are talking about then pre-buffing spells is not an option due to anti-magic room, although you should be able to pre-buff with potions as long as you use them from the backpack and not from the quick item slots. Just remember that the main demon will drop dispel magic right away, so you will need to factor that into the tactics.

If it was me i would equip Peridan on the F/T, pre-buff potions with the 2 mages and spell immunity as their 1st spell in the room to prevent them being feared and dispelled. Hope to hell everyone else makes their saving throws until after the dispel magic has landed, then Chaotic Commands from the F/D to make 4th character immune. Round 2 is CC from F/D and C/I to make the last 2 immune.

Unsure how many demons can use dispel magic with SCS, it may take some trial and error to find the ones who can and then you need to see if you can focus damage on them fast enough to drop them before you have lost control of too many characters. Unless you are ludicrous level and have Deva/Planetar i don't think any summons are going to matter, Mordy Swords perhaps but i don't think on LoB they will dish out enough damage to be worth using, animate dead is unlikely to produce enough either.

Kinda depends on your levels though, HLA's will make it much easier obviously. It's one of the toughest fights IMO due to the inability to pre-buff.

ThacoBell

I knew this was going to be about the maze level as soon as I saw the thread title. Its always the maze level.

therdre

Yes it's the room your thinking of with spell disruption. I tried using potions but they get dispelled also. It's the traps that are the biggest issue there's 4 of them when my guys get feared they walk into them. I'm at like 3.2ish million exp atm so I only have 2-3 hlas on each character maybe I could do the liches and some of the last elf quests then come back, I wish I had waited till tob to do watchers keep now but I figured the items would help a lot. If I've half finished watchers keep in soa can I still go back to it in tob? I tried pots of invul but if they don't get dispelled they don't seem to help with saving throws at all, my dwarf and gnome are the only 2 that seem to be ok cause of their crazy saving throws, my paladin even seems to fail his throws and his saving throws are almost as low as the dwarf

UnderstandMouseMagic

Not sure about LOB but for that room and SCS, my only strategy is to keep everybody well back near the portal.
Basically trying to hide.

Let them come to you, you might lose one or two to the fear but as long as you have a couple of fighters still functioning, it's manageable. Also, pretty sure things like the "golem book" work OK for a summons in there, if I'm remembering correctly. So there's the genii bottle as well as the staff that summons fire elementals, worth a try at least.

That or the thief darts forward and disarms the trap which is doable. I keep a set of good leather armour on me for instances where my fighter/thief needs to deal with traps and then fight because you can't swap around during a fight.

therdre

I've been using the golem and genie, I forgot about the fire elemental staff so I'll try that. Any other summoning item gets feared

I think the room is bugged too because sometimes a cutscene plays and sometimes it doesn't when the cutscene plays sometimes the whole room doesn't aggro right away making it slightly easier

UnderstandMouseMagic

therdre said:

I've been using the golem and genie, I forgot about the fire elemental staff so I'll try that. Any other summoning item gets feared

I think the room is bugged too because sometimes a cutscene plays and sometimes it doesn't when the cutscene plays sometimes the whole room doesn't aggro right away making it slightly easier

Do wands work?
I'm so bad at remembering anything from a fight, especially a difficult one.
Moment it's finally over, I tend to immediately put the horror of it out of mind......until next time and then I sit there thinking "how on earth did I manage to get past this lot last time".

Probably why I can keep on playing the games after all this time.

therdre

I think they are usable, but anything I do aoe would likely kill my own guys since if I did cloudkill they will just wander into it lol. Also I have not had much luck using wands on LoB everything seems to be resisted. I've gotten through everything so far this is the first thing I've seen in LoB that I really have no idea how I'm going to beat.

therdre

I finally beat it, if I've done a harder fight in any video game I can't think of one. I used peridan in the off-hand off my F/T (has fear immune), greenstone amulet on my paladin (it definitely didn't last a full turn but it lasted long enough) and slayer form on my PC until the first 3 guys were dead, C/M had shield of harmony and I had nothing for my necro although once he used summoning items he was basically useless anyways and the dwarf defender just wins every roll lol. I used the geni, fire elemental and golem for summons everything else would just get feared and sometimes attack my own guys so not worth it. They died fast but it was enough time for me to use wirlwind/greater wirl on all my fighters to get down the first few guys fast. I went through almost all of my health pots and my necro and paladin died (rod of res ftw).