[SCS] How do you win at chess?
BettaGeorge
Member Posts: 12
I hope this is the correct board to post this – the modding board seems to be more about new mods and stuff, not about gameplay.
I am descending into Sword Coast Stratagems' improved Durlag's Tower for the first time, and everything I've encountered so far has been beatable without reloads except for that bloody game of chess. Even with my party buffed and immune to electricity, the enemy knights tend to focus CHARNAME and put a quick end to the battle by simply killing her. I have never seen those guys fail a single saving throw, so disabling them is apparently not a thing. I've tried different tactics, but I'm running out of ideas.
How did you guys win that fight? I loved this solo run, but it seems super annoying to actually do with a full party, and I'm not dismissing four characters just so I can cheese this fight.
I am descending into Sword Coast Stratagems' improved Durlag's Tower for the first time, and everything I've encountered so far has been beatable without reloads except for that bloody game of chess. Even with my party buffed and immune to electricity, the enemy knights tend to focus CHARNAME and put a quick end to the battle by simply killing her. I have never seen those guys fail a single saving throw, so disabling them is apparently not a thing. I've tried different tactics, but I'm running out of ideas.
How did you guys win that fight? I loved this solo run, but it seems super annoying to actually do with a full party, and I'm not dismissing four characters just so I can cheese this fight.
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Comments
If you don't want to do that, you should be able to win the fight simply by killing the king. Once the king dies, the rest of the enemies disappear. So focus on the king and don't worry about the other enemies.
Actually, all enemy pieces are immune to lightning bolts in SCS.
I have tried making my entire party invisible, surrounding the enemy king and killing him, but I need more than one round to kill him, and once I become visible, the other pieces need far less than one round to finish me off.
Sounds reasonable. Is there a way to fire an arrow of detonation at the ground though? I wanted to try this tactic before, but my archers refuse to fire without a target.
Edit: A quick test shows that this tactic would indeed work if using a potion of explosion didn't count as your action for the round. After throwing that, CHARNAME cannot become invisible for six seconds, which is apparently plenty of time for the enemy knights to get her from 120 HP to 0. Basically, it is easy to dispatch of everything but the king and two knights, but that leaves you wide open to be killed by said knights before you get a non-attack action again.
Edit 2: Never mind. The trick is to pause the game the instant you are teleported (before the dialogue triggers – it's too late afterwards!) to queue up the fireballs, then you hit everything and win without a fight. Surprisingly boring that way, but I'm not complaining. Though if you pause a fraction of a second too late, the knights will be outside the blast radius by the time your spells hit.
and while all that stuff is going off your front line will get healed as you blow more fireballs into your front lines and while your front line moves they will get healed by lightning
- Turn off AI, so the party doesn't run around.
- Round one, everyone launches fireballs (four oils of burning, two wands). Archer protagonist equips melee weapon.
- That initial barrage took out seven pawns, a bishop, a rook, and the queen. Party members use weapons that can attack the knights, mostly ranged.
- Round two, protagonist heals with Durlag's goblet (Kiel's helmet equipped). Another round of fire takes down the remaining bishop, rook, and pawn, while attacks get one of the knight.
- Round three, it's another goblet swig, and three Wand of the Heavens hits to finish off the remaining knight.
- Round four, we finish off the king with one last fireball.
This is fundamentally a badly designed fight, because of that SCS AI. Single-mindedly charging the protagonist shuts off way too many strategies. The vanilla AI which doesn't react until they see you isn't great, but it's much more fun in this battle. And it's a deliberate change; several pieces have very short additional scripts which tell them to go after Player 1 no matter what.
Incidentally ... there is a way to protect yourself from the knights, at least for some characters. A mage protagonist can polymorph into a mustard jelly, and gain immunity to nonmagical weapons that way. Then ... well, you'll still have to worry about the rooks and bishops, because they've got magical weapons that can damage you. Alternately, a protagonist that starts invisible and stays that way causes the fight to revert to normal targeting. Now you just have to beat an enemy force that outnumbers you three to one, without the services of your protagonist.
As far as trying to disable them ... the queen is vulnerable. Every other piece has the RING95 immunity item, which is the same long list of status immunities as a mustard jelly.
So, those knights... 1d8 + 6 damage with their mundane long swords, including strength and proficiency. Two base APR, increased to three by haste (the MAGE06 item). Base THAC0 8, minus 5 for strength and proficiency. Against a heavily armored warrior (full plate, helmet, Dex 18, +1 protection item) with AC -8 versus slashing, that hits on an 11. Average damage per round 16 each under those conditions. Two knights pounding on you will outpace any normal healing potions, but it isn't going to kill your warrior in one round - that needs more damage from their friends.
Now, there's one key status effect that none of the pieces are protected from: Slow. Their saves aren't great, either - if you can drop a Slow spell on them (presumably from a companion who is being ignored), you'll seriously weaken the assault. The knights will even go from hasted to slowed in one step.
Given the "use six fireballs in round one" strategy above, that's not wrong...
Action:
This party also pulled off a flawless victory against the Demon Knight - launch seven webs in round 1, get lucky with a failed save in round 2, and take him down with physical attacks before he can recover. The only enemy action in that fight was a PW: Stun on the protagonist.