Watcher's Keep fiasco

FredN

.....OK, I decided to put the final SoA chapter 6 quest ... Cult of the Eyeless ... on temporary hold, and go back to Watcher's Keep. I really really wanted to hit the 5th level and score Ir'revrykal for Dorn. We had already penetrated to lthe Maze level, so I figured we'd have no problem at our current levels. Wrong! One room had a bunch of demon types. Ordinarily there would be no problem, but this was one of those annoying magic free rooms. Any spells we had in effect coming in became ineffective. Like Haste, and, most critical of all, Remove Fear. We tried some hit and run tactics ... run in, take a few whacks, run back out ... and this had a certain amount of success, but now and then one of my guys would panic, and start running all over the place instead of exiting along with the rest. The loss of remove fear was crucial here.
.....Yeah, we could have whittled them down eventually, but it would have literally taken hours with numerous reloads. Not worth the bother. So, we headed to a different room. More demons! Oh, but one of them was a sexy succubus who wanted a ... 'kiss" from moi. OK, I am using the word "kiss" but you know what we did. We banged like bunnies in heat, I got level drained, and we got teleported to where we wanted to be. Viconia popped off a restoration and we were fine.
.....I could have simply gone on to the next level of the Keep, but noooo! I just had to explore this level further. I went back, and in the next room I found Mr. Demon Wraith and his enslaved minions. I won't go into details for fear of spoilers, but let's just say that he made the prior group of demons look like a bunch of pre-school children. Avoid this guy like the plague. Yeah it is possible to beat him, with the right preparation, but again, probably not worth the bother.

FredN

OK, as I may have stated before, I have a mild case of OCD. There was no way I was gonna let this guy disrespect me. We went back, and pulling out all the stops, we finally took him down. Dorn armed with Daystar and using whirlwind played a big part, since he sneers at level drains. The problem then arose that Jaheira got turned to stone. Now, Edwin knows the flesh to stone spell, but when he tried to cast it, Jaheira did not appear as a target. What's up with that? Why did her petrified body vanish?

jmerry

Flesh to Stone isn't going to help a petrified person. You want the other way around. (Which also appears on green scrolls that anyone can use and are much cheaper)

atcDave

I think that Demon Wraith may be the hardest fight on that level. Its easy to skip just by backing out of the room. But yeah, I can never do that either. Its a good fight worth plenty of experience. My teams with *Aerie and Imoen* always power through this easily enough. No doubt, for me Keldorn is the easy button for any foe with a lot of defenses up.

FredN

Ok I totally typoed that one. I meant stone to flesh. But her petrified body seems to have vanished. I'll reload and look again though.

FredN

As I thought, jaheira's petrified body is not visible, and hence cannot be recovered. Did she somehow get disintegrated? I have no clue. But now I am ticked off. I had been not using Hexxats's Children of the Night ability ever since you folks told me it was a programming error, but this dude has totally infuriated me. Now the gloves are off! Deal with the full fury of the Children of the Night, you scumsucker!

Kensei_xXx

It may happen that petrified Partymembers get chunked by AoE Damage like Fireball or others and therefore can not be revived or turned again. Maybe that's what happened to Jaheira.

atcDave

Yes as Kensei said, that can easily happen. I think everyone has had to reload this battle a time or two!

FredN

OK, we can definitely kill this bozo. Dorn really comes in huge here. He's got a Whirlwind and the Visage, and he's packing both Foebane and Daystar. He also sneers at level drains. Edwin has a bunch of breach spells plus Khelben's Whip, and we have 2 wands of spell strike. However, for some reason we keep losing people. Once it was Jaheira, and twice it was me! Needless to say, if the MC goes down, it's game over. I don't know how they are doing it, but some of those slave wraiths always head straight for me, despite the fact that I have mirror image and improved invisibility cast on me. And the Master tosses the occasional kill spell at me. Can they just see through my spells? Or maybe the Master Wraith tells them "get the Bard, he's much too noisy!" How annoying. I have been tossing Melf's Meteors around but next time I am going to hit them with Improved Bard Song. Let's see how they like THAT tune. Also, maybe I should use Defensive spin instead of Offensive. Even if I can't move I can still sing, use spell strike wands and cast spells. Safety first is my new motto!

FredN

OK, Mr. DW is now toast, we got a crapton of experience, the surviving Slave Wraiths were jumping up and down, thanking us profusely for freeing them ... but it was hard for me to rejoice. The prior three defeats were completely on me. Between us, Edwin and I have so many scrolls we had to buy an extra scroll case to fit the excess. And among those scrolls were ... not one but three scrolls of protecion from Undead. And guess who is Undead? Duh! What the heck was I saving them for? Some sort of "emergency"? I'd say facing down a mini-boss like the Demon Wraith merits that designation. How annoying; this was totally my bad. Color me red for utter and complete embarassment. Sheesh!

jmerry

You mentioned Daystar and Protection from Undead. One thing to note: despite appearances, the Demon Wraith and Slave Wraiths are not undead. They're demons. So Daystar is just a +4 sword against them, and the scrolls do nothing.

Singing breaks invisibility; you can't hide if you're doing that. Improved Invisibility is still a boost to AC and saves, but that's all it is at that point. And if you weren't singing ... these foes have some extra sense that allows them to ignore invisibility. You can't hide from them, period.

FredN

OK, that's interesting. Good to know. Demons, huh? I had Dorn switch back and forth between Daystar and Foebane. I guess Foebane would have been the weapon of choice, or maybe even his Abyssal Blade? But that's a 2 hander so he wouldn't be able to use a shield. Decisions, decisions. Also, I had suspected they could totally ignore my invisibility, since they were particularly annoyed when I use the spell strike wand on the head Honcho and started whacking me. But ... if they aren't undead, how can they drain levels? Just to be a pain in the butt? How pestiferous!

jmerry

Level drain isn't a strictly undead thing, you know. Demon Knights drain levels with their attacks, too.

... oops. Actually, Daystar isn't even a +4 weapon against the slave wraiths; they're not evil, and since they require +3 weapons to hit, you're totally out of luck against them with it.
As for the Abyssal Blade, neither the "demon" nor "devil" bonuses apply; those are done based on a race/class check, and while the wraiths pass the check for DEMONIC race, they don't have either the TANARI (demon) or IMP (devil) class, having WRAITH instead. (Those effects are really not implemented well; I have a component of my mod that swaps the class check to an alignment check, and I consider it a bug fix.)
The catch here is their resistances. The Demon Wraith is 90% resistant to physical damage (and immune to elemental damage), so Foebane's +6 is +1 against it, and Daystar's +2 is also +1. No matter what, it'll take a lot of hits. That, or tearing down the 90% magic resistance and then applying magic-type damage such as Horrid Wilting.

FredN

....Heh, ok thanks for the heads up. We went in and did the fight again, just because we could. Dorn + abyssal blade + whirlwind still put a hurting on him. We hit him with multiple breaches and Khelben's whip, And since everybody had +3 weapons, after his defences were lowered, we all dogpiled him. Well, except for moi; I went into defensive spin, and then sang improved bard song.
.....OK I need two things explained. Mr. DW was almost dead, and then suddenly ... without casting any spell that I could see ... he was suddenly back to "barely injured". I mean, ok I can see a mini boss this powerful being able to heal themselves, but you would think having them cast a heal spell on themselves would be visible.
.....Also, before the fight, I had Viconia cast negative plane protection on me. During the fight, as usual, a number of the slave wraiths made a beeline towards me ... and were still able to level drain me. What's up with that?

jmerry

The Negative Plane Protection spell only lasts five rounds. Perhaps it expired?

The Demon Wraith has no self-healing capability whatsoever. If you saw it recover ... looks like a glitch to me.

FredN

Well, I didn't see him actually cast any healing spells, but in 1 round he suddenly went from "almost dead" to "barely injured". Can the slave wraiths heal him? Or maybe he can absorb health from characters he drains? Hexxat has that blood drain thing; maybe he has something similar? Dorn was whacking away at him with the Abyssal Blade ... I had him switch from Daystar to that weapon ... but Dorn can't be level drained, so that can't be it.

jmerry

As I said, no self-healing capability whatsoever. Not from attacks, not from spells, not from items, not from allies. Glitch.

shevy123456

IMO some party members are rather weak, e. g. Hexxat versus Korgan. Whenever I pick Korgan, I have a much easier time than, say, picking Hexxat, in high-level fights. Dorn is quite ok actually. Stacking up on health potions can also be useful.

The no-magic part in regards of dispel is indeed quite annoying, but it also depends on the level one starts watcher's keep. I usually delay it after I have most of the other main and side quests finished. For the demon wraith fight, it depends a lot on positioning too as well as how many summons you can use. You can try various strategies; these days I usually go with whichever wraith is closest, gets killed, but you may also try to re-position the weaker party members to other areas or group the enemies up, then e. g. chase to the boss. It may sound strange but this often works, in particular if you have haste on party members.

As for drain: this is usually why I have at the least one with berserk, either Korgan and/or the main actor (I tend to pick berserker first then transition into mage). You can also try e. g. to have a few magical sword scrolls; I think they may help buy time a LOT. It is probably one of the hardest fight in watcher's keep, before ToB. Cambion and his tiefling mages can also be a tough fight.

You can also try to acquire boots of speed. I think that one thief character has them; I typically solve this quest, then kill and loot him for the boots before Level 6 or so. :P (Or after level 6; watcher's keep becomes quite easy after you finished the underdark area.)

FredN

The Deom Wraith is long gone. I am, however, having trouble getting the final 2 portal gems. I know where they are, but they keep kicking our butts. The dead magic areas remove our pre cast protections, like remove fear, and half my group gets hit with panic in this one particular fight. Have to see how I can deal with this.

jmerry

Yeah, the demons are troublesome if you're reliant on buffs. No way to approach that fight except through a dead magic zone, and the portal dumps you out already in sight of the demons.

That makes it a good one to take the deal for, if you're on the more morally flexible side. Then if you change your mind and decide you want to kill the demons later, you can start the fight at a time of your choosing. Namely, when you're properly buffed.

Or, you could just leave and come back in ToB when you're better equipped and with higher levels. Demon fear ... doesn't even have a save penalty. Throw that against an epic party as I usually build them, and there's no chance of anyone being affected even if they're completely unprepared.
And also, no demon fear in the Tahazzar fight. That's only in the Ka'rashur fight, which is the one with normal magic areas in both directions you can approach from. None of the demons present at the start of the Ka'rashur fight use fear at all.

I very rarely venture this deep into Watcher's Keep before entering the ToB campaign proper. The rewards just aren't there; almost all of the good stuff past the first two levels needs a Cespenar upgrade before it's really worth using. And the difficulty is real. This area is meant to be a challenge for an epic party.

FredN

Actually, I think i found the answer. I'm feeling like an idiot, though. I have Enhanced Bard song. I didn't try it initially because I assumed it wouldn't wotk in dead magic rooms, but apparently it does. And, among other things, it provides immunity to fear, along with a bunch of party buffs.
::faceplams::

FredN

>I very rarely venture this deep into Watcher's Keep before entering the ToB campaign proper. The rewards just aren't there<
I am only doing this for one reason. Dorn is one of my main Tanks. He has the Abyssal Blade and The Visage, which make him quite effective in melee; he just vaporized a Pit Fiend in two rounds. He can also switch to Foebane and either the Shield of Fyrus Khal or the Shield of Balduran when necessary. But I'd really like to get him to the 5th level so he can grab Ir'revrykal from the anti-paladins there. Yeah, he can function well enough with what he's got, but no harm in trying for an improvement. But we need the two other Portal gems, which could be tricky.