Goblin summoners in Kylearan's dungeon

[DaveP123]

I'm playing on Legendary difficulty and haven't had to reload any fights until now. However, I'm experiencing an enormous difficulty spike with one type of fight in one area: the goblin summoners in Kylearan's Tower. I managed to barely win one after four attempts when everything went perfectly, but I'm not sure I can face doing more of them.

I have one of each class using the story companions (Melody, Wringneck, Crux, Dalgliesh). The main two problems seem to be:
(1) Their damage output is a huge increase from everything before. I'm completely at the mercy of who the goblins and mage target - if they decide to target my squishy characters, or if they all focus fire a tank - I lose.
(2) I don't have enough mental damage attacks to reliably stop the mage from channelling/meditating to get more spell points.

Is it necessary to have a perfect party composition and character builds to reliably beat these fights? I think I can see certain abilities and character combos that would help (e.g. Crux + Green Lady both using Arcane Barrage to shut down the summoners), but it seems like bad game design to have to spec your party for one type of fight in one area. Also, I don't have any saves from before I chose for the Green Lady to leave the team, and Mercenary Tokens are a limited resource.

Unless there's some tactic available to any party build that I'm missing?

[svdp]

Perfect party? No. There are a few fights where lots of people say they have difficulties defeating enemies. I only had real trouble with the king and redcap of Haernhold. Of course, your party dying once or twice during a big fight can always happen and is normal; I'm talking about people saying it's nigh impossible. And say one needs a perfect party for it. That's actually not true, but you DO need to think about your skillchoices and tactics.

For your tank(s) you need to invest in armor as well; it makes a huge difference. Tactics: if you have firehorn, use it; especially with groups it's usefull, and you can use taunt to force several in walking into the firestorm. Concentrate your magical mental attacks, or things like headknocker on the goblins that have shields, because those block physical attacks the most, or on mages that use mangars mallet, because those pack a punch. Also, if you see goblins with a bomb: kill them off the moment they lit the fuze; in that case they explode within their rear ranks, heavily damaging their own companions, instead of your partymembers.

You're the second one I hear say they have a hard time with the goblins in kylereans tower, but I assure you it's perfectly doable. You'll get the hang of it soon enough.

Btw, there is also a thread about tactics on this forum; check it out, it may give you additional ideas.

[DaveP123]

Thanks for your reply.

My bard and fighter do have pretty good armour (30+HP), but it's the mage and rogue who mostly get killed even in the back row, and I don't have enough gold to upgrade their armour. I haven't found the firehorn and I don't have Mangar's Mallet available since my only mage is Crux who comes pre-leveled with mostly dagger-mage abilities.

Just to be clear, I'm not having trouble with all the fights in Kylearan's Tower - just the ones with high HP summoners. Each round the summoner meditates/channels, and that needs to be cancelled by doing 15-20 HP of mental damage. I can usually manage it once or twice, but when he eventually succeeds he then summons three more goblins with 100+ HP between them. There's no point in attacking the goblins until the summoner is dead (since he just summons more). I can cope with the suicide bomber goblins, and know how to use their attacks against their own side. If the AI decides to waste enemy action points on moving or non-attack actions then I have a chance. But if it attacks, particularly ranged attacks against the squishy rogue or mage, then the damage output is far higher than my healing output, and that's assuming it doesn't just OHKO someone.

As I said, I have actually beaten one of the summoner fights after four attempts, so I know that it's possible. But it was such a huge spike in difficulty compared to every fight up to that point including other non-summoner fights in Kylearan's Tower. I hadn't had a single character K.O. up until then, but then I had multiple consecutive party wipes including a couple where characters were K.O.ed in the first enemy round.

I may just have to swallow my pride and play on Hard difficulty instead of Legendary. No doubt there are folk who have completed the game on Legendary on their first run using the story characters, but for me it might only be possible after first getting some experience on Hard difficulty and then using custom characters.

[svdp]

Oh, right, you're playing on legendary? I overlooked that the first time. 😋 That may explain it, then. With my first two playthroughs, I played on normal, most of the time. 😉 Still, others have done it, even on legendary. It does make things more difficult, of course.

You don't have the firehorn?? Do you have the Standard or the Deluxe version of the game? You are aware you get some in-game items with Deluxe, right?

But, wait.. scrap that. Even with the Standard version you get the firehorn, as far as I remember. Not sure if you have to input the code for the firehorn first as well, though.

Are you SURE it's not there? Did you check all the (weapons on the) walls, in the Guild? Otherwise: check them out.

If you see the firehorn hanging there, but you can't grab it, you need to put the code in (it's in the pdf you got with your gamefiles). If you have the deluxe version, you also get the red boots and some other stuff. But you need the code for that as well.

[DaveP123]

I don't usually get stuff gated behind out-of-game codes and whatnot, but given how hard those fights are I'll check it out. Many thanks for the tip.

[Sigil]

i never play nightmare but i have to say usually games made with normal difficulty in minds so majority of games higher difficulty have balanced problem. higher difficulty made to make games unbalanced toward enemies afterall. so if you can't defeat them in legendary difficulty i think its not design faulty but if its impossible to defeat in normal, then i agree.
harder difficulty made for people who already mastered the game and find normal difficulty boring. so min max with meta knowledge is required.
all i can say is bring 2 fighter with taunt and deflect. let them taunt and deflect alternatively,
or be like me playing in easy mode.

[DaveP123]

Originally posted by Alcor:

so if you can't defeat them in legendary difficulty i think its not design faulty but if its impossible to defeat in normal, then i agree.
harder difficulty made for people who already mastered the game and find normal difficulty boring. so min max with meta knowledge is required.

Yeah, on reflection I think I actually agree with you. I've played plenty of RPG/strategy games on higher difficulties that require a thorough understanding of the mechanics and character builds (including which to avoid), and I didn't consider those badly designed.

[Kittybass]

My last game was on Legendary but I played about a month ago. I'm trying to remember how I handled that particular fight. I used mercenary tokens and made new characters, so it was 3 I made plus Crux for Kylearan's tower and I do remember having to reload a few times. But I did have the fire horn and Kael's Axe with one upgrade and having them helped a lot.

I just remembered that there's a room with a puzzle weapon before that and it's the one that drains magic points, which is incredibly handy. I might have had an upgrade on that too. I think that one only has one upgrade slot on it. I am certain I still had to reload a couple of times but having those weapons certainly made things more manageable. Draining their spell points might even be the key to winning that fight so they can't summon more goblins.

And I can attest to the fact that you don't need a perfect party to win that fight or any of them on Legendary. if I could do it, anybody could. My Legendary playthrough was my 9th game and by then I did have a good understanding of the mechanics and combos. But by no means am I a tactical expert or micromanager.

[DaveP123]

I'm now playing through on Hard instead of Legendary. This time I chose Wringneck to leave, so for Kylearan's Tower I had two mages, a fighter and a bard. It was much easier with that set-up, because I had double the Arcane Barrage to shut down the summoners' focus/meditation. Like you, I also used the Elven puzzle weapon a few times to suck out the summoners' initial spell points.

My only reload so far was when I accidentally triggered a group and they got first attack and immediately OHKO-ed a character. None of the other fights were close. I'm pretty sure Legendary would have been fine with this set-up too.

Everything's been pretty easy since then, but I'll stick with Hard difficulty in case there are any more difficulty spikes.

[svdp]

Originally posted by DaveP123:

I'm now playing through on Hard instead of Legendary. This time I chose Wringneck to leave, so for Kylearan's Tower I had two mages, a fighter and a bard. It was much easier with that set-up, because I had double the Arcane Barrage to shut down the summoners' focus/meditation. Like you, I also used the Elven puzzle weapon a few times to suck out the summoners' initial spell points.

My only reload so far was when I accidentally triggered a group and they got first attack and immediately OHKO-ed a character. None of the other fights were close. I'm pretty sure Legendary would have been fine with this set-up too.

Everything's been pretty easy since then, but I'll stick with Hard difficulty in case there are any more difficulty spikes.

Without a rogue, though, you can't open chests. I would find that rather annoying, to be honest.

Well, the problem will resplve itself when you get 5 or 6 partymembers.

As a general rule, except if your goal is very specific ('bards only' for instance), you're better off having a member of each class in your party.

As for easy: wait until you get in Haernhold. 😏

[Kittybass]

I also like to attack from stealth, I went with fighter, bard, rogue, crux. Getting the first strike can make or break a difficult encounter.

[svdp]

And, Dave, did you manage to get through Kylerean's tower? Did you try your hand on the Haernhold dungeon yet?

It's accessable from the start, but it's a high-level dungeon, so you can't do there much (except for the altar that let's you change your skills) before you're around level 20-25.

[DaveP123]

Yep - using two mages I got through Kylearan's Tower with no problems. The only difficult fights had been the summoners, and with two mages instead of one it was easy to spam Arcane Barrage to shut down their focus/meditation.

I've finished the game now. I got through Haernhold without too much trouble. Earlier I had taken the bard's Compulsory Cavorting song in case there was a nasty boss, but I'd never actually selected it as one of my active skills. I got through almost all of Haernhold (including the first two redcap fights) without having to change my default strategy/set-up. Then I fought the king and he wiped out half my party in his first turn. I reloaded and tried again with Compulsory Cavorting and Rhyme of Duotime, and that combo was able to shut him down completely. I then changed back to my usual set-up and promptly got annihilated by the last redcap fight. I reloaded, switched back to Compulsory Cavorting and Rhyme of Duotime and this time, like with the king, the redcap didn't even get a turn.

It seems to me that the king and final redcap fight are more like a test to see if you can break the system. It seemed impossible to win the fight on Legendary without cheesing it, but I'd be interested to hear if people managed to beat it another way.

[svdp]

Originally posted by DaveP123:

Yep - using two mages I got through Kylearan's Tower with no problems. The only difficult fights had been the summoners, and with two mages instead of one it was easy to spam Arcane Barrage to shut down their focus/meditation.

I've finished the game now. I got through Haernhold without too much trouble. Earlier I had taken the bard's Compulsory Cavorting song in case there was a nasty boss, but I'd never actually selected it as one of my active skills. I got through almost all of Haernhold (including the first two redcap fights) without having to change my default strategy/set-up. Then I fought the king and he wiped out half my party in his first turn. I reloaded and tried again with Compulsory Cavorting and Rhyme of Duotime, and that combo was able to shut him down completely. I then changed back to my usual set-up and promptly got annihilated by the last redcap fight. I reloaded, switched back to Compulsory Cavorting and Rhyme of Duotime and this time, like with the king, the redcap didn't even get a turn.

It seems to me that the king and final redcap fight are more like a test to see if you can break the system. It seemed impossible to win the fight on Legendary without cheesing it, but I'd be interested to hear if people managed to beat it another way.

Well, I tried it the hard way without cheesing at first, but I couldn't do it. (That said, I had some additional problems, like two bards that fell without booze by the time of the fight). I had to set it on easy to defeat the king and redcap (the generals were do-able). Others, like chilkoot, had a completely other strategy, and apparently had no trouble with those. For me, those two were the only one who CAUSED trouble - with all the rest, I had no real trouble, just tweaking the playstyle slightly now and then (like when confronting the skeletons, which was a more attrition-based way of fighting, due to their summons).
Sure, I had a death in my party now and then, but I hardly had to reload any time - except for the king and redcap of haernhold. I guess my skills/playstyle/tactic was a very bad math for those two.

Well, anyway, I hope you had some fun with the game, and congrats on finishing it!

[chaosblade]

Originally posted by svdp:

And, Dave, did you manage to get through Kylerean's tower? Did you try your hand on the Haernhold dungeon yet?

It's accessable from the start, but it's a high-level dungeon, so you can't do there much (except for the altar that let's you change your skills) before you're around level 20-25.

O-Oooooh. That might explain it. I'm new to Bard's Tale, not to RPGs in general (and i don't mean "Action RPGs", whom i also enjoy) and was wondering why on Normal im suddenly facing 100+ HP summoners after an hour or two of playing when my highest tank (Daelglish) is under 30HP and every summoned enemy can 2-3 shot him.

So i came there way too early, i imagine, hmm.

[svdp]

Originally posted by chaosblade:

Originally posted by svdp:

And, Dave, did you manage to get through Kylerean's tower? Did you try your hand on the Haernhold dungeon yet?

It's accessable from the start, but it's a high-level dungeon, so you can't do there much (except for the altar that let's you change your skills) before you're around level 20-25.

O-Oooooh. That might explain it. I'm new to Bard's Tale, not to RPGs in general (and i don't mean "Action RPGs", whom i also enjoy) and was wondering why on Normal im suddenly facing 100+ HP summoners after an hour or two of playing when my highest tank (Daelglish) is under 30HP and every summoned enemy can 2-3 shot him.

So i came there way too early, i imagine, hmm.

Haha! Yes, I can imagine that gave quite the punch, if you tried that one when you're low level. ;-)

The Haernhold dungeon is an added extra high-level dungeon they added in the DC. It's REALLY high-lvl - arguably even more so then the end-boss fight. It's accessible from the get go because it was an addition, without any specific quest linked to it from the main story (basically it's an area you just discover by exploring, there are some more, like the dwarven ruins and the necromancer spire).

It's not completely useless to let you go there even at lower levels, because you can sneak up to the alter there to respec your party (if you have enough gold), which is another option than using the mercenary tokens.

But I wouldn't try exploring the rest of the dungeon itself before being at least lvl 20-25 and for the King and Redcap there, even higher (lvl 24-28). Depends a bit on your party/skills/tactics, so it can differ a lvl or two, but you'll get your ass whooped if you're much lower than that most of the time. ;-)

May I ask, since I see a new influx of newbies recently: was there a sale/promotion for BT4, mayhaps?