Watcher's Keep fiasco
FredN
Member Posts: 494
.....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.
.....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.
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Comments
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.
... 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.
.....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?
The Demon Wraith has no self-healing capability whatsoever. If you saw it recover ... looks like a glitch to me.
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.)
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.
::faceplams::
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.