Aksha is a supposed to be this infuriating ?

[RahKiel]

Hi everyone.

What the hell happens with that boss fight ?

First, there is a HUGE difficulty gap between the meagre zombie/necromander and that damn vampire. But thats a boss, ok.

But why EVERYTHING is unfair/bugged ?
1 - Light from the windows ? You know what, i'll fly ONE case over the floor and avoid it. Even mage light or torch won't reach her.
2 - Darkness countered by Daylight ? NOPE. But Darkness will cancel daylight.
3 - Shadow regen 10 HP in tooltip ? Nope, 15.
4 - Let me get multiple legendary actions to spam slow every 2 turns. And multiple bite so i regen more.
5 - And of course, resistant to normal piercing damage when you got very few if not no magic weapons. Because there's not enough ♥♥♥♥ you.

I get that bosses may need special strategy. But here, bugs or imprecision are just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with us...

[Dallas S]

Chill touch a simple cantrip will negate her regeneration . Same with sacred flame another simple cantrip will negate her regeneration (any radiant damage will, so a paladin smite as well). Any kind of light so many cantrips will give her light sensitivity. She's actually quite easy if you utilize what you have.

[RahKiel]

Originally posted by Dallas S:

Chill touch a simple cantrip will negate her regeneration . Same with sacred flame another simple cantrip will negate her regeneration (any radiant damage will, so a paladin smite as well). Any kind of light so many cantrips will give her light sensitivity. She's actually quite easy if you utilize what you have.

Can't say for chilling touch, but Sacred Flame is a 1/3 chance of working since she's got +8 in DEX saving throw. Our priest coudl'nt reliably damage her with that.
Again, any spell, torch or windows were either negated by darkness. And would she flight 1 case higher than the light source, it won't work, be it magic or not. Thats why the fight seems BUGGED.

[Dallas S]

Dispel magic will negate her darkness. It's actually a solid spell for many situations, it'll cancel slow as well

[Black 🌈]

Played against Aksha in Early Access, I thought she got a huge nerf after launch.
She is very easy to play against if her party is level 5 and knows how to use light sources. If you cast Daylight AFTER she casts Darkness, Daylight cancels Darkness. One more tip, use SHIFT + Mouse Wheel to cast Daylight in the air instead of on the ground.
If I'm not mistaken, in D&D a vampire normally regenerates 20 hit points at the start of his turn if he's in the dark, if Aksha only regenerates 15 then she's already weaker than she should be. But if that's a problem for you and you're not able to use light, use the Chill Touch cantrip which negates any type of healing it would receive until your next turn.
Legendary Actions make the D&D bosses have some kind of chance against the party, after all Action Economy is always in favor of the players, and it can only take up to 3 actions between the players' turns (if I'm not mistaken, casting spells cost 2 of the 3 total points of Legendary Action she has per round and attacks 1 point).
At least vampires are resistant to damage from non-magical weapons, if it were a werewolf it would be IMMUNE. And honestly, that's not even that much of a problem in Solasta, the amount of magic weapons available is greater than in any D&D campaign I've ever played, plus you can buy and/or craft them. And even if you don't have the money to buy or the ingredients to craft them, you can cast the Magic Weapon spell, which will turn normal attacks into magical attacks.

[RahKiel]

Originally posted by Dallas S:

Dispel magic will negate her darkness. It's actually a solid spell for many situations, it'll cancel slow as well

My caster mate got it after the fight, but we were dumbfounded Daylight wasn't working as intended.

[DeMasked]

Only issue I noticed was the impossibility to hide anywhere in that fight + her sound effects reminded me of Terry Silver from Karate Kid 3.

[Cleinad]

tbh, for beginner D&D CRPG players like me, this is rather difficult. the difficulty leap from normal monsters to a mini boss is way too huge, and i would reckon a lot of players aren't ready for it.

i failed to kill her for 5-6 times and after repeating for so many rounds, the fun is wearing off. so i dialed down the difficulty level to just get past this stage else i fear i might rage quit forever.

[Dallas S]

Originally posted by Cleinad:

tbh, for beginner D&D CRPG players like me, this is rather difficult. the difficulty leap from normal monsters to a mini boss is way too huge, and i would reckon a lot of players aren't ready for it.

i failed to kill her for 5-6 times and after repeating for so many rounds, the fun is wearing off. so i dialed down the difficulty level to just get past this stage else i fear i might rage quit forever.

If you're not level 5 the fight can be quite hard. The power jump from 4 to 5 is quite significant, probably the biggest power jump in dnd 5e. So it's a good idea to make sure you're level 5 before that fight.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Her darkness ability isn't the normal Darkness spell but a special power that flat-out trumps Daylight specifically because they wanted to ensure that Daylight didn't make the fight too easy, IIRC.

[Black 🌈]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

Her darkness ability isn't the normal Darkness spell but a special power that flat-out trumps Daylight specifically because they wanted to ensure that Daylight didn't make the fight too easy, IIRC.

Even without daylight it's too easy...

[Ommamar]

There are multiple page threads on her with strategies of how to beat her. Solo it becomes fairly easy once you understand how to deal with her. Multiplayer it can be a little or a lot more difficult depending on the party you are running with. The fight does make it very clear on the effectiveness of light that combined with negate spells like chill touch makes the fight winnable. I do agree it is a difficulty jump that will get you the first time you experience it.

[RahKiel]

Couple of screenshot to explain a bit more clearly my grip on her, in 2 different try : https://imgur.com/a/B3jcEPn

Originally posted by Will Rose:

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

...

Even without daylight it's too easy...

Glad for you the game was easy.
But for whatever reason, our daylight wasn't countering her darkness.
We found the tips about height cast after, but since daylight is a HUGE sphere, height shouldn't be a problem, and wasn't until now.
Whatever D&D is doing vampire, that's NOT D&D, and the buff on her tell 10HP, why shouldn we think it'll work differently ?
Chilling touch is a necrotic damage spell. We though it would not work on her since, you know, she's an undead. But seems we need to re-evaluate that. We scrapped Wound high-damage burst because of this.
Economy action on our favor ? If outnumbered, i'm not sure it is. NPCs seems to fully use multiple attack, rush, reaction and so on. Her minions fully used hit&run tactics to avoid sunlight at best as they could.
Slow is a 1-action cost on legendary action on a 2-3 turn CD.
We fought and killed the werewolf outside the castle. He was more resilient than dangerous. But we were yet to found any magic weapons. Coundl't buy them for money and relation limit. Can't enchant either, no one though it'll be this critical this soon.
As for magic weapon, it saddly a 1 target spell on concentration. And god i hate this system.
It wasn't that there was no strat or tools we couldn't use, it was more that they were incredibly unreliable. Betweens rolls and unpredictable result for spells, it was a pain.

We as well try to take position down near the bookshelves to force her in sunlight, and throw the idea the moment she casted another darkness.

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

Her darkness ability isn't the normal Darkness spell but a special power that flat-out trumps Daylight specifically because they wanted to ensure that Daylight didn't make the fight too easy, IIRC.

Don't know how we're supposed to discover this. Seems more like a bug to me.

Originally posted by Ommamar:

There are multiple page threads on her with strategies of how to beat her. Solo it becomes fairly easy once you understand how to deal with her. Multiplayer it can be a little or a lot more difficult depending on the party you are running with. The fight does make it very clear on the effectiveness of light that combined with negate spells like chill touch makes the fight winnable. I do agree it is a difficulty jump that will get you the first time you experience it.

That's more a mountain climb that simple jump ! But we've took a look after, because it was really dumbfounding for us to be that stuck.
We tried to tweak our casters spells for a couple of hours (because thats really the only thing you can do at this point, if not, you're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥).
After multiple fails and an ultimate desync were our ranger died only on his game, we just put down the difficulty just to passed her. (and got another bad surprise with next boss were our tankiest died before his first turn after blight and archer focus)
Our casters got too much to do, in a fight hardly predictable. (see screens)

TL;DR:
The game felt hardly fair or satisfying at all at this point. Not that it was just difficult, but that whatever tools we were using got mixed result if not working at all, contrary to spell details, tooltips and so on.

[Sten]

A good bard can talk you around this fight. Need to have quite high charisma though.

[Ommamar]

Originally posted by Sten:

A good bard can talk you around this fight. Need to have quite high charisma though.

Or just a lucky roll. It is definitely easier if you can position the party then break out the windows before combat starts. If you come at it from the standard formation it can be a lot more difficult.

[Berserkr]

Originally posted by Ommamar:

Or just a lucky roll. It is definitely easier if you can position the party then break out the windows before combat starts. If you come at it from the standard formation it can be a lot more difficult.

Close to double the xp also if you can do diplomatic then the kill