Winndspear Hills and an inconsiderate demon
FredN
Member Posts: 373
.....If it's not one thing, it's another. Also I can be an idiot sometimes. 
So, I ran out of easy quests to do ... "easy" being a relative term ... and decided to head off to the Windspear Hills. What a chotic mess that place is! It seemed like we ran into a random encounter every 10 feet. Easy opponents, usually, but a real annoyance when you want to go somewhere at a reasonable pace. Well, at any rate, at least I was finally able to get rid of those wretched acorns, or chestnuts or whatever the heck that Dryad business was about.
.....Then we entered the first room of the Dungeon proper. I thought the exterior was an annoyance? Hah! Not even marginally comparable. I won't go into specific details for fear of posting spoilers, but this was a serious bother. A huge cavern with 3 groups of enemies. The wimpiest group were orcs and hobgoblins with shamanic support, uttering their moronic battle cry "spare no one" (yeah, like monsters are known for showing mercy to their victims). Then there was Rukh the Pestiferous, who kept summoning a stream of ... exploding kobolds?? OK, that was a new one to me. Although they were probably just upgraded versions of the classic kobold commandos. Pretty wide radius of effect though. Walking firevalls they were.
.....Last but not least were the damned Vampitic mists. They are supposed to be only level 5, but they were a level 15 pain in the buttocks. They have a crapton of immunities, can turn invisible, heal themselves with that Laerloch thing, and have a chance to drain levels. They also apprear in an endless stream! Worst of all, they fight intelligently. I couldn't distract them with summoned critters like skeletal warriors. I sent Dorn and Hexxat out next to engage them, since both are immune to level drain, but they didn't fall for that distraction either. In fact, it looked like they were specifically tergetting .... ME? Ouch!
.....Now, here is where I totally screwed the pooch. It took me 3 days of beseiging the place before I realized ... Hey, these things are level 5 undead, Viconia is a level 14 cleric, why don't I have her ::gasp:: use Turn Undead on them. Doh! Well, that worked out quite well. Then, just as we were about to go through the entrance to the next area, Dorn suddelnly pipes up about how his patron wants him to murder some priest or paladin or whatever; some sort of Holy Roller in any event.
.....Really, Ur-Gothoz? REALLY?? You couldnt have waited another day or so? How rude! Ok, he is a demon, and demons are not known for their consideration toward others, but this was particularly obnoxious.
So, I ran out of easy quests to do ... "easy" being a relative term ... and decided to head off to the Windspear Hills. What a chotic mess that place is! It seemed like we ran into a random encounter every 10 feet. Easy opponents, usually, but a real annoyance when you want to go somewhere at a reasonable pace. Well, at any rate, at least I was finally able to get rid of those wretched acorns, or chestnuts or whatever the heck that Dryad business was about.
.....Then we entered the first room of the Dungeon proper. I thought the exterior was an annoyance? Hah! Not even marginally comparable. I won't go into specific details for fear of posting spoilers, but this was a serious bother. A huge cavern with 3 groups of enemies. The wimpiest group were orcs and hobgoblins with shamanic support, uttering their moronic battle cry "spare no one" (yeah, like monsters are known for showing mercy to their victims). Then there was Rukh the Pestiferous, who kept summoning a stream of ... exploding kobolds?? OK, that was a new one to me. Although they were probably just upgraded versions of the classic kobold commandos. Pretty wide radius of effect though. Walking firevalls they were.
.....Last but not least were the damned Vampitic mists. They are supposed to be only level 5, but they were a level 15 pain in the buttocks. They have a crapton of immunities, can turn invisible, heal themselves with that Laerloch thing, and have a chance to drain levels. They also apprear in an endless stream! Worst of all, they fight intelligently. I couldn't distract them with summoned critters like skeletal warriors. I sent Dorn and Hexxat out next to engage them, since both are immune to level drain, but they didn't fall for that distraction either. In fact, it looked like they were specifically tergetting .... ME? Ouch!
.....Now, here is where I totally screwed the pooch. It took me 3 days of beseiging the place before I realized ... Hey, these things are level 5 undead, Viconia is a level 14 cleric, why don't I have her ::gasp:: use Turn Undead on them. Doh! Well, that worked out quite well. Then, just as we were about to go through the entrance to the next area, Dorn suddelnly pipes up about how his patron wants him to murder some priest or paladin or whatever; some sort of Holy Roller in any event.
.....Really, Ur-Gothoz? REALLY?? You couldnt have waited another day or so? How rude! Ok, he is a demon, and demons are not known for their consideration toward others, but this was particularly obnoxious.
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Comments
What's going on with the stream of them is that there's a spawn point over in the room with the pool, that spawns a bunch of them. And then they have a rather large detection radius that ignores line of sight, so some of them detect you past the wall and head over to attack. Silently and invisibly. And as you move farther in, more of them find you.
And then they have ridiculously good THAC0, so if they can close to melee range, they will get hits in.
One trick that beats them, and all other mist-type creatures: immunity to nonmagical weapons. Despite the obvious magical properties of their attack, it counts as a nonmagical weapon for what it can hit. A high-level bard can just no-sell mist encounters with Enhanced Bard Song, because that's normal weapon immunity for everyone.
By the way, "Rukh" is a title, not a name. Rakshasas like that one use titles from Indian nobility/royalty. As for the exploding kobolds, they have hardly any HP. Just hit them with ranged attacks before they can reach you, and no explosions. AoE magical damage is a good option against them. Though it's unlikely to help against their boss; standard rakshasa immunities include immunity to all spells of level 1-7.
And he wasn't that hard to take down. I doglpiled him with 4 skeletal warriors and a fire elemental ... good luck trying to harm that with a fireball ... while staying well out of range of his walking bombs. I'm really annoyed at myself though for not thinking to use turn undead earlier; oh well, live and learn. Also, that bit about foiling the Mists by casting protection from non-magical weapons is new to me. I would never have guessed that their attacks were non-magical in nature. Thanks for the heads up on that one!
Fortunately, that rakshasa has a rather dumb script. After a single cloud spell, he switches to his nonmagical sword. If he didn't pick Death Fog, the fire elemental just wins. Though it might take a while.