Steel watchers foundry, Gondians. (spoilers)

[♠.brT]

I'm having a lot of trouble saving the Gondians (mostly because the Gondians are freaking idiots, running towards the watchers as they are blowing up).

But i have a question. The motivators, does it matter if they activate? I thought that the only thing they did was kill the hostages in the Iron Throne, but since i have already dealth with that i was ignoring them.

But after my last attempt at the foundry lab, i'm not so sure anymore, because i was about to save all of them, and then when the last watcher blew up, all the gondians died, apparently through fire damage, but the only two that were in the danger zone of the watcher blowing up were inside an invulnerability sphere, and the other two were far away. So i'm wondering if maybe the motivator killed them...

[Ironwu]

The motivators trigger the explosive collars. They MUST be deactivated. Don't use AoE as that can harm the G-Men. :)

Good Luck

[♠.brT]

Originally posted by Ironwu:

The motivators trigger the explosive collars. They MUST be deactivated. Don't use AoE as that can harm the G-Men. :)

Good Luck

Mann, so what's what did it.. Damnit.. I FREAKING HAD IT, after so many attempts with the Gondians killing themselves i had it, only to lose it in a blink of an eye.

[Ironwu]

Originally posted by ♠.brT:

Originally posted by Ironwu:

The motivators trigger the explosive collars. They MUST be deactivated. Don't use AoE as that can harm the G-Men. :)

Good Luck

Mann, so what's what did it.. Damnit.. I FREAKING HAD IT, after so many attempts with the Gondians killing themselves i had it, only to lose it in a blink of an eye.

You got it now, though!

[seeker1]

Spoiler warning?

I believe if a motivator activates, it a) destroys everyone in the Iron Throne but also b) kills all Gondians wearing collars in the Foundry. If you've already been to the Iron Throne, at least that threat is over, but ... So yeah, if you want to save the Gondians, you gotta deactivate them. If you don't care ... from a non RP perspective, all them dying affects ultimately is they won't help you in endgame. (It's just morally dubious to have them all die.) And if you want to side with Wulbren (instead of Barcus or Toobin), he's gonna kill them all anyway.

The big problem I find is once you get to a certain spot in the Foundry, you often see Gondians surrounded by enemies which you are literally itching to AoE, except, of course, there's Gondians in the blast zone. And no sculpt/careful spells won't protect them. Granted, I'm positive Larian designed it to be that way, to make things more difficult. And yes, I often don't get party members out of Steel Watcher self destruct zones in time, but the Gondians are positively idiotic about escaping them.

[♠.brT]

You sure Sculp doesn't protect the Gondians? I'm blasting the enemies in the lab with a bunch of AoE spells using Gale, and it doesn't seem to be hurting the Gondians in there.

[seeker1]

I believe his Sculpt spells makes all allied entities automatically make their saving throw, but that doesn't always spare them any damage. (I've found this to also be true of party members, of course). Of course, what I really love are spells like Chain Lightning (or the trick multi shot arrow) that will always only hit multiple enemies, and NEVER harm allies.

I'm surprised the Explorer difficulty doesn't have the option to disable friendly fire, and also that nobody's yet written a mod that disables all friendly fire. Though I did just see something at Nexus today that gives everyone the Sculpt spells ability, not just Evocatio wizards. AFAICT, Careful Spell for sorcerors works just like Sculpt for wizards. Everybody allied just automatically makes their save.

P.S. one weird bug that I will not complain to Larian about - after blowing up the Foundry with the runepowder bomb, it stays in my inventory to be used later. And yes, I have used it later. Just one warning - STAND BACK if you're going to use it in combat. Throw it as far as you can, ignite it with a fire arrow from somebody very far away.

[♠.brT]

That has not been my experience with Gale's spells. When he casts an AoE evocation spells with allies in the blast area, they never take damage.

[seeker1]

This may have been patched in at some point. I notice the descriptions at the Wiki ARE different. Careful spell metamagic for sorcerors is different. I have a bad habit of assuming visually my allies are not in the beam/cone/zone, but the game says I hit them anyway, and I do remember Gale in the past damaging (if only slightly) party members.

Careful Spell: allies automatically make saving throws (which means they could take half or lesser damage automatically).

Sculpt Spells DOES say "automatically make saving throws" AND "allies take no damage". (I guess the first part is important if it's something like a fear or charm spell, instead of a damaging one.)

BTW, it does occur to me there are spells where there are no saving throws, so maybe that was the issue in previous playthroughs.

[♠.brT]

Okay so i managed to get through the lab with every Gondian alive... In my previous playthrough i didn't went past this point, are there more levels in the foundry with Gondians to save? (please say no..)

[seeker1]

Ah, I think here's the key qualifier. "Sculpt spells creates pockets of safety within your EVOCATION spells." So if Gale uses a damaging Necromancy spell, for example, there is no pocket of safety. Granted, the majority of damaging AoE wizard spells are Evocation.

BTW, this also means Sculpt won't protect your allies from, say, Enchantment spells like Fear etc. I notice Careful spells doesn't mention the school.

[♠.brT]

yeah that must be it, because i've been using nothing but evocation for gale since the game's launch and i never saw his evocation spells do damage to friendlies.