Sorak boss battle after Library unwinnable.

[jman0war]

After numerous attempts at this battle i'm probably going to have to throw in the towel. It is simply unwinnable unless I have extreme luck, (which hasn't happened yet).

The most success i've had is to stay by the entrance and run 3 of my party back into the cave start of Round 2 and set them to "Ready" with Range attack, all equipped with bows and crossbow.
I've killed the Boss before, but the 2 Sorak Skirmishers remain and they either kill off my last party member, or one of my guys dies and it's auto Game Over.
The Sorak Boss can 1 shot kill my Fighter with Guided Bolt.
My Cleric and Ranger cannot keep the Fighter alive while throwing every single healing potion and cure wounds spell at him.

Only once after 10 attempts has my Wizard's Charm spell worked on a Sorak, it was majorly beneficial when it did, but their saving throws are just too successful.
In fact the Wizard seems to be the most useless of my group in this battle as the Sorak boss either annul several of their spells, or the Soraks succeed at their saving throws.

Probably my party is not great but I have not had such difficulty up to this battle.

[Grumpy Old Dude]

Originally posted by jman0war:

jimdirks i disagree.

I have wasted many rounds using Magic Missile in this fight; it is pretty useless as the Boss Sorak shields every time, and MM does such minimal damage that the round is better spent trying something more substantial.
The most efficient way to kill him is with bows and crossbow.

I finally did win this battle, but probably because I finally got some luck on my attack dice, -and the Soraks got unlucky on theirs.
Also finally pulled off another Charm - which btw is instrumental in a battle such as this as the charmed Sorak draws ALL the enemy fire, buying the party precious couple of rounds to heal, or bless, or stabalize a dying party member.

I know about not fighting in darkness, usually cast Dancing Light early and move it to the enemy i'm concentrating fire on.

My Fighter was down again, I was able to bring him back to life for a few more rounds before he was down a 2nd time, fortunately the battle ended before he died.

I've never save scrummed and wasn't aware that was possible.
But I don't think i'll be doing that anyway as it way more intense treating every battle like it's a matter of life or death.

I do not care if you disagree. You are wrong. I have over 2 dz play throughs behind me, and I only lost that battle, the very 1st time I entered into it. My methodology after that 1st time, has ALWAYS been the same. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS.

(1) ALWAYS make MM scrolls while traveling.
(2) Have your WIZ cast MM over and over and over, turnng to scrolls if he/she exhausts her memorized spells
(3) Have your Wiz turn to bows, if they exhaust their scrolls.

My record in this fight using THAT tactic?

23-0

[subetai99]

Originally posted by jimdirks:

Originally posted by jman0war:

jimdirks i disagree.

I have wasted many rounds using Magic Missile in this fight; it is pretty useless as the Boss Sorak shields every time, and MM does such minimal damage that the round is better spent trying something more substantial.
The most efficient way to kill him is with bows and crossbow.

I finally did win this battle, but probably because I finally got some luck on my attack dice, -and the Soraks got unlucky on theirs.
Also finally pulled off another Charm - which btw is instrumental in a battle such as this as the charmed Sorak draws ALL the enemy fire, buying the party precious couple of rounds to heal, or bless, or stabalize a dying party member.

I know about not fighting in darkness, usually cast Dancing Light early and move it to the enemy i'm concentrating fire on.

My Fighter was down again, I was able to bring him back to life for a few more rounds before he was down a 2nd time, fortunately the battle ended before he died.

I've never save scrummed and wasn't aware that was possible.
But I don't think i'll be doing that anyway as it way more intense treating every battle like it's a matter of life or death.

I do not care if you disagree. You are wrong. I have over 2 dz play throughs behind me, and I only lost that battle, the very 1st time I entered into it. My methodology after that 1st time, has ALWAYS been the same. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS.

(1) ALWAYS make MM scrolls while traveling.
(2) Have your WIZ cast MM over and over and over, turnng to scrolls if he/she exhausts her memorized spells
(3) Have your Wiz turn to bows, if they exhaust their scrolls.

My record in this fight using THAT tactic?

23-0

Two dozen play throughs? That's impressive! I've only done it four times!

Yeah, I only lost the battle my first time through, also. I think it made all of us step back and really strategize about how best to win the fight.

[Bramhar]

I hated P:K difficulty spikes, overtuned monster stats and fighting against time on map and kingdom management. I tried to understand you about balance because of that experience of mine, friend.

But NO!! This game is fairly balanced in general but maybe Sorakkath is imbalanced "a little". Nevertheless i didnt see game over scene in 2 playthrough.

[Jack Hawklight]

Don't know if anyone here has said it, but if you manage to get the flying sorak to fall can help with killing him much more quickly due to the damage.

[Zzyl_tsw]

Hello,

Question : I played the game mid-november till the end of the playable content at the time ( a castle with undead)
Is this a fight after this point (i know there was some additional content around january)

And I do remember making a kind of boss flying sorak fall, but i got that fight in the first try ( but that was before lighting update, and my party had some 'a bit too good' stats)

[jman0war]

(1) ALWAYS make MM scrolls while traveling.

But in order to spam the Sorak flying boss with MM, why would a player commit all the crafting ingredient "Gallivan Amaranth" they can find - to create as many Magic Missile scrolls as possible, when that same ingredient is also used in normal Potion of Healing among other things like Bane scroll?

In reality you'd only use up all the Gallivan Amaranth ingredient like that if you had foreknowledge that spamming bosses with MM is the "best strategy" in this game or in this battle in particular.

I didn't read ahead on these forums to know that strategy and only had a couple MM scrolls with me.
Subsequently the amount of MM spamming required to get the boss to use up all his casting attempts with Shield did not seem an effective strategy.

[Cartesian Duelist]

Originally posted by jman0war:

(1) ALWAYS make MM scrolls while traveling.

But in order to spam the Sorak flying boss with MM, why would a player commit all the crafting ingredient "Gallivan Amaranth" they can find - to create as many Magic Missile scrolls as possible, when that same ingredient is also used in normal Potion of Healing among other things like Bane scroll?

In reality you'd only use up all the Gallivan Amaranth ingredient like that if you had foreknowledge that spamming bosses with MM is the "best strategy" in this game or in this battle in particular.

I didn't read ahead on these forums to know that strategy and only had a couple MM scrolls with me.
Subsequently the amount of MM spamming required to get the boss to use up all his casting attempts with Shield did not seem an effective strategy.

I've never used a MM scroll in that battle. I've never even crafted an MM scroll in any play-through. You don't need them. All you need to do is have you caster aim one at the flyer to make him trigger Shield then you can aim the rest at anyone else on the battlefield. And you only need to do that if one of your other characters misses with a bow/x-bow shot. You dedicate one party member to shooting him while everyone else mops up the others. Once he stops casting Shield, you can focus fire him. By that point most, if not all, of the other soraks should be down.

[Landomart]

Originally posted by Cartesian Duelist:

Originally posted by jman0war:

(1) ALWAYS make MM scrolls while traveling.

But in order to spam the Sorak flying boss with MM, why would a player commit all the crafting ingredient "Gallivan Amaranth" they can find - to create as many Magic Missile scrolls as possible, when that same ingredient is also used in normal Potion of Healing among other things like Bane scroll?

In reality you'd only use up all the Gallivan Amaranth ingredient like that if you had foreknowledge that spamming bosses with MM is the "best strategy" in this game or in this battle in particular.

I didn't read ahead on these forums to know that strategy and only had a couple MM scrolls with me.
Subsequently the amount of MM spamming required to get the boss to use up all his casting attempts with Shield did not seem an effective strategy.

I've never used a MM scroll in that battle. I've never even crafted an MM scroll in any play-through. You don't need them. All you need to do is have you caster aim one at the flyer to make him trigger Shield then you can aim the rest at anyone else on the battlefield. And you only need to do that if one of your other characters misses with a bow/x-bow shot. You dedicate one party member to shooting him while everyone else mops up the others. Once he stops casting Shield, you can focus fire him. By that point most, if not all, of the other soraks should be down.

Thank you! I beat the game on my first play through with no scrolls used, no potions used, point buy characters, and zero knowledge of this game, outside of knowing it was based on 5e D&D. My party was a Paladin(Oath of Devotion), Cleric(life domain), Rogue(Thief), and Wizard(Shock Arcanist). I seriously thought that the Wizard broke the game. Shock Arcanist was so powerful, I felt like I was cheating by using him. I had human characters, so I was constantly lighting up the battlefield, and had no idea that Sorak's even had a health regeneration ability. The game felt pretty easy if you knew 5e's rules and how to manage action economy.

[Zzyl_tsw]

Well, my team was paladin/cleric/ranger/magician (lore master)
And the magician was rather underwhelming.
Not completely useless, as in the end, sleep did save me/helped me.
And the occasional rod of lighting was usefull towars the end.
But I only got fireball before the last fights (november version), so it was more of a support character as a dps.
But wizard gets better with higher level, and I choose a subtype that is clearly more "lore oriented" or "higher level" as you need to be able to find good high level scrolls to optimize it.

[VexingFool]

OP, maybe you could share your save file with us? We could look at your party comp and see if we can beat it using your group. Then we could post our strategies and screenshots of victory to show you this fight is not 'Unwinnable'

Save files are located C:\Users\Username\AppData\LocalLow\Tactical Adventures\Solasta\ Save Files

[Zzyl_tsw]

Originally posted by VexingFool:

OP, maybe you could share your save file with us? We could look at your party comp and see if we can beat it using your group. Then we could post our strategies and screenshots of victory to show you this fight is not 'Unwinnable'

Save files are located C:\Users\Username\AppData\LocalLow\Tactical Adventures\Solasta\ Save Files

Oh, good idea, migth be fun to try ,)

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

Its far from unwinnable but it again shows cases all the issues with the Soraks as an enemy type... and puts it on grand display.

Are 3types of Soraks
Big Warriors
The Red Sabtours
The Javalin throwers
The Boss so that's technically 4

In all fairness i didn't have issues with the boss himself, the real problem is getting rid of all his minions. The Big beefy warriors are actually NOT that thretaening. The main issue i had... was keeping them away from my wizard. Since they can just zip up walls, is no real way to keep them pinned down if they decided to go maul your wizard or rogue. Which is again a problem with the Soraks.

As far as real threats go, the Javalin thrower, and the little red sabtours are your real threats. They by far, do more damage and have a MUCH higher rat of hitting you then any other enemy type including even the boss himself which---i think only hit me once or twice the whole fight.

My tactic was to sneak up through the hole with my rouge pot shot the little red dude in the back and remove him. This will trigger the fight BUT not the boss yet. If you can keep sneaking about and removing the javalins and sabs your life will be great. Either way once the fight starts things get dicey, since now the boss is in play. Remember to spam shine on them, i pretty much dedicated my wizard to doing this, to stop there regen. Which is the main issue here... the sorak's regen is stupidly high and a couple rounds will full heal them.

What i did on the actual boss was cast bees on him, which gives him disadvantage on concentraition checks. Now spam attacks on him till you do damage. Which is harder then it sounds... since he'll be spamming the shield spell every round, to stop your damage. I actually found him to be fairly weak against sacred flame since that's a forced save and he cant use shield on it. Seems unlike the other soraks his dex is much lower. Once he hits the ground he's mince meat just pile on him and do as much damage as you can. Remember to keep trying to cast shine on him, to stop that regen!

All in all i still think the Sorak's regeneration is way to high... i had to kill the Javelin thrower a full 3 times because of bad rolls and he kept saving vs shine. So he just kept healing himself the whole fight. He ended up killing my Wizard and Paladin, because of this and he's probably the most dangerous of the bunch. Over all--- I still don't like the Sorak's having so much crap crammed into them and fighting them at such a low lvl, we don't have the tools we need to deal with them or the damage to out pace them. The regen either needsto go or be heavily reduced in numbers. They have the same regen as a troll ... It's just to high. I wouldnt mind this on the boss i guess, but every sorak having a regen of 5 unless you get shine to stick? what ifi dont want to use shine? what if i prefer other cantrips. Right now shine feels so forced... since any other light source can simply be ran away from and STILL get the healing from it despite being in the light.

Sorak's are just not a fun enemy to fight...

[Landomart]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

Its far from unwinnable but it again shows cases all the issues with the Soraks as an enemy type... and puts it on grand display.

Are 3types of Soraks
Big Warriors
The Red Sabtours
The Javalin throwers
The Boss so that's technically 4

In all fairness i didn't have issues with the boss himself, the real problem is getting rid of all his minions. The Big beefy warriors are actually NOT that thretaening. The main issue i had... was keeping them away from my wizard. Since they can just zip up walls, is no real way to keep them pinned down if they decided to go maul your wizard or rogue. Which is again a problem with the Soraks.

As far as real threats go, the Javalin thrower, and the little red sabtours are your real threats. They by far, do more damage and have a MUCH higher rat of hitting you then any other enemy type including even the boss himself which---i think only hit me once or twice the whole fight.

My tactic was to sneak up through the hole with my rouge pot shot the little red dude in the back and remove him. This will trigger the fight BUT not the boss yet. If you can keep sneaking about and removing the javalins and sabs your life will be great. Either way once the fight starts things get dicey, since now the boss is in play. Remember to spam shine on them, i pretty much dedicated my wizard to doing this, to stop there regen. Which is the main issue here... the sorak's regen is stupidly high and a couple rounds will full heal them.

What i did on the actual boss was cast bees on him, which gives him disadvantage on concentraition checks. Now spam attacks on him till you do damage. Which is harder then it sounds... since he'll be spamming the shield spell every round, to stop your damage. I actually found him to be fairly weak against sacred flame since that's a forced save and he cant use shield on it. Seems unlike the other soraks his dex is much lower. Once he hits the ground he's mince meat just pile on him and do as much damage as you can. Remember to keep trying to cast shine on him, to stop that regen!

All in all i still think the Sorak's regeneration is way to high... i had to kill the Javelin thrower a full 3 times because of bad rolls and he kept saving vs shine. So he just kept healing himself the whole fight. He ended up killing my Wizard and Paladin, because of this and he's probably the most dangerous of the bunch. Over all--- I still don't like the Sorak's having so much crap crammed into them and fighting them at such a low lvl, we don't have the tools we need to deal with them or the damage to out pace them. The regen either needsto go or be heavily reduced in numbers. They have the same regen as a troll ... It's just to high. I wouldnt mind this on the boss i guess, but every sorak having a regen of 5 unless you get shine to stick? what ifi dont want to use shine? what if i prefer other cantrips. Right now shine feels so forced... since any other light source can simply be ran away from and STILL get the healing from it despite being in the light.

Sorak's are just not a fun enemy to fight...

Not all of the Soraks have high dex. The big tanky ones that you mentioned have a pretty low bonus to dex. I got around their high AC by using cantrips that force a saving throw. Sacred Flame, and Acid Splash had a good landing rate against the tanky Soraks, while the smaller ones had high dex saves, but low AC.

[Hobo Elf]

I wish this game was harder. The Sorak fights were the coolest and most challenging encounters in this game. After the undead castle it felt like the devs didn't even feel like designing encounters anymore and just threw some enemies at you. Also Fireball is too strong and it's ridiculous that most classes in this game can cast it.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

Also Fireball is too strong and it's ridiculous that most classes in this game can cast it.

That's an issue with 5e, not the game and i doubt that will change...