Icefall Hammer Area Ridiculous and Unsurvivable!?

[Megafont]

I'm glad I got this game and have been immensely enjoying it. I'm using the default party. But I went down into the Icefall Hammer area for the secret. The amount of enemies that are released upon getting the secret is just plain stupid. There is no way the player can fight through that much bs unless you grind and level up a ton first.

Also, if they're going to make this hammer hard to get it should at least be good. But it looks like it is only barely more powerful than the more common Ogre Hammer. It's main advantage over the Ogre Hammer being that it has only 1/4 of the penalty to accuracy that the Ogre Hammer does.

Regardless, this area is pretty rediculous. How on Earth are you supposed to get out of there alive!?

[Metro]

Once you have access to that area there aren't many other places you can 'grind up' so it obviously isn't required. I beat this after a couple of attempts on normal difficulty. Surviving mass combat like that is all about positioning (getting to favorable ground before everythings gets released), movement, and potions.

To say it doesn't have an advantage over the ogre hammer 'aside from accuracy penalty' is absurd -- the accuracy hit is huge and if you miss on half or more of your attacks the damage range of the weapon is worthless.

[Megafont]

After a bunch more tries I did escape, but with only one character barely alive. I healed up at the life crystal on the floor above and then went back down just for the sake of killing the remaining monsters. I simply ran as far as I could before the monsters cornered me. There really isn't any advantageous ground in the area. You could get in a corner to only be attacked from 2 directions, or you could get in the nearby corridor between 2 small rooms but then one side that you leave open is the rear, which is the weaker characters so that wouldn't work so well.

So I ran for it since there is no real good spot to try to get in other than a corner which seemed to fail pretty bad when I tried anyway because you're being attacked by giant crabs and blinded by poison clouds all at once. And dancing around enemies is impossible when there are so many.

And the attack damage you do seems to vary much too wildly from one attack to the next at times. Missing happens simply too often in this game regardless of which weapon my front guys (one human uses maces and the other, a minotaur, uses swords) are using. That's why the Icefall Hammer didn't seem much better than the Ogre Hammer to me at first. I didn't realize that the Icefall Hammer can sometimes freeze enemies, and he was missing a lot either way. I guess that's probably skills related, but there's not much I can do about it other than go grind some ice lizards perhaps.

[Metro]

Dexterity governs accuracy. Also minotaurs have a racial penalty of -5 accuracy. You'll notice misses more with maces/hammers because they are slower weapons. Re: grinding -- not necessary and quite impractical. Assuming you kill every fixed spawn you'd be hard pressed to go any higher than level 14 (and you're probably around 12 or 13 now). There is one location I know of where snails respawn but that would take forever given the leveling curve.

Guessing you haven't found the Fighter's Challenge yet as if you thought the Icefall Hammer room was bad then the Challenge would drive you nuts.

[Megafont]

I have found the fighter's challenge. I tried it a few times and them left it alone and did a couple more dungeon floors and then went back to it and beat it when I was a little stronger. That one is a bit crazier when you first get to it.

I'm definitely glad I got this game on sale a few weeks ago. I've already logged 38 hours so far. And I haven't even played any custom dungeons yet. :)

[LenTrexler]

If you run for the exit IMMEDIATELY after picking up the hammer you can juuuust make it to the door before being attacked.

[Megafont]

I didn't manage to get that far but I escaped with just my human fighter barely alive. lol

[jules4cartoons]

I had this problem and solved it fairly simply after a number of attempts. Try this: stand with the hammer to your left, move one step forward (this triggers the release) then 2 to the right so that you're in the corner. The first creature out is a crab and he SHOULD turn to the left to face you. Being in this position means one of 2 things 1> the other creatures can't see you so shouldn't come after you and 2> If they do they'll have to take quite a long detour round the crab which I don't think they're intelligent enough to do as they can't see you.
Now I must confess that I used a frost bomb or 2 on the crab to save my team from being slaughtered but your team should be strong enough at this point to take him out. After this you should be able to entice the creatures round one at a time. If you thought that was bad, have you got to the fungi infested chamber where the key to 'The Vault' is hidden???

[biogoo]

I just run out and fought at the door. I guess I wouldnt have a chance otherwise on hard.
I didnt even need invisibility for that.

[Prof_Nekko]

I went into a corner and used a freeze bomb to keep one as a makeshift wall, then had my fighters tank it with my mage spaming the AoE skills and my rogue unleashing arrows like mad

[Dr.Disaster]

Clear out the slimes first, then go for the hammer. Grab it and run for the door. Once outside anything following you can then be killed one after another.

[iwarboy3]

prob a tad late on the response, but yeah, just run towards the entry point as soon as you grab the hammer. dumb down the resolution for a moment if you have to. easy peasy.