Playful Darkness... This Can't be Right?

[atm]

Wow... either this is bugged or they tuned it pretty damned tough. Playful Darkness in the Midnight Fane is a) impossible to hit, and b) one-shotting (or close to) my entire party. I have gotten it down to half using every trick in the book, but that was after like 20 tries. My current strategy is:

Haste. Improved invisibility on most toons. True seeing on anyone that's a decent DPSer to get through its invisibility. Summon a wall of skeletons, creeping doom keeps it briefly occupied.
Channel positive energy to shut down its regeneration. Keep summoning skeletons to keep it busy, but that only works for a few rounds (it will destroy a summoned batch within the same round you summoned it).
It still has about 60 armor, so I would need 41 attack bonus just to hit it on a 19. Effectively, my entire party can only hit on a nat-20.

It simply cannot be tanked. (I can slightly tank it if I spam mirror image on my magus, but that will only last until it gets a hit through and 1-shots you). My armored tank Seelah lasts less than 1 round. It is hasted, so it cannot be kited, and it seems to agro randomly anyway.

What. The. Heck. What am I supposed to do? I can't suddenly know Pillar of Life as I have read some people have used to cheese the fight. I mean, I am about 50-60 hours into the game, and NOW I discover you can't do it without that spell? I am working my way through the Fane, and this is the bit I am up to, but I am not sure if this is supposed to be skippable or not.

For reference, I am on Core, and basically kicking everything else, but this fight seems to be tuned for like L50 or something.

[atm]

Still trying, btw, and I have realised it is worse than I thought. Inspecting it more, I discover it is immune to magic missile (probably the only other way I had to try and hit the damn thing), and actually has about 70 AC (60 was its TOUCH ac), 8 attacks per round at 46-47 attack bonus, e.g. you would need 66-67 armor to be able to sort of tank it (you can get hit 2-3 times to die from full health, so anything less and you are dead in a round).

This just can't be right. I mean... damn.

[Serpentarius]

Playful Darknesss is one of those uber encoutners that guards nice loot, I am afraid it's not a joke either it really is that tough and can chew through a team pretty damn fast. considering the elvel your at when you encoutner it it's not like you can just level up a few times to fight it either.

[Angry Trash]

It's one of the six hardest encounters. The way you're meant to beat it is touch AC healing spells, as Touch is the lowest AC for most high tier enemies and thus the one you're expected to hit with. Even then I heard at core its touch AC is like 45

[atm]

Originally posted by Angry Trash:

It's one of the six hardest encounters. The way you're meant to beat it is touch AC healing spells, as Touch is the lowest AC for most high tier enemies and thus the one you're expected to hit with. Even then I heard at core its touch AC is like 45

I am playing on core and it's touch AC is 59. One thing that seems bugged (?) about the encounter to me is that I have read through its abilities, and it does not appear to have the rogue one that makes it take no damage when it saves for half damage, and yet NO elemental spells seem to work on it. I summon a batch of axiomites who proceed to all cast lightning bolt on it, and even if it saves against all of them (which it will since it has 40 to all saves) it should still take some damage. It is apparently resistant to cold and fire (30 each), and immune to cold and negative, but not electricity, so why does it take no damage from electricity? I should be able to hit it with a lightning bolt at least.

EDIT: Just realised I misread one of its stats. It has a touch AC of 34. Still hard for my healer to get a hit on him, though (as in, would fail like 75% of the time).

[PhamTrinli]

Originally posted by atm:

Wow... either this is bugged or they tuned it pretty damned tough. Playful Darkness in the Midnight Fane is a) impossible to hit, and b) one-shotting (or close to) my entire party. I have gotten it down to half using every trick in the book, but that was after like 20 tries. My current strategy is:

Haste. Improved invisibility on most toons. True seeing on anyone that's a decent DPSer to get through its invisibility. Summon a wall of skeletons, creeping doom keeps it briefly occupied.
Channel positive energy to shut down its regeneration. Keep summoning skeletons to keep it busy, but that only works for a few rounds (it will destroy a summoned batch within the same round you summoned it).
It still has about 60 armor, so I would need 41 attack bonus just to hit it on a 19. Effectively, my entire party can only hit on a nat-20.

It simply cannot be tanked. (I can slightly tank it if I spam mirror image on my magus, but that will only last until it gets a hit through and 1-shots you). My armored tank Seelah lasts less than 1 round. It is hasted, so it cannot be kited, and it seems to agro randomly anyway.

What. The. Heck. What am I supposed to do? I can't suddenly know Pillar of Life as I have read some people have used to cheese the fight. I mean, I am about 50-60 hours into the game, and NOW I discover you can't do it without that spell? I am working my way through the Fane, and this is the bit I am up to, but I am not sure if this is supposed to be skippable or not.

For reference, I am on Core, and basically kicking everything else, but this fight seems to be tuned for like L50 or something.

Can you hit 'y' right click it and screen shot it and post here?

[atm]

Sure - not sure how to post an image tho? (Plus its stats page is like 10 pages long, so which part would you like to see?)

[PhamTrinli]

Originally posted by atm:

Sure - not sure how to post an image tho? (Plus its stats page is like 10 pages long, so which part would you like to see?)

First page - AC, DR, Damage type, Damage amount, Crit range
and Second page - Abilities/Feats

View Screenshots > Select Screenshot > Upload > View online > copy paste url

[Craving Raven]

Try casting pillar of light. That was the only thing I could do as a lich and I did kill it.

The absence of an answer is an answer too.

[Miskatonic]

It's the hardest fight I've seen so far by a longshot. It took me 3 hours last night to finally kill it. Actually had to resort to turnbased. Had 2 people spamming skeletons every round while my lich used exsanguinate and other un-resistable spells. Channel energy to harm undead every other turn. Brutal.

[Morgian]

You can ignore the mob. It sits alone by itself in a cave.

[Dinvan]

I just stacked buffs and used empowered+bolstered spells that cant miss.
Playful hurts, but, will die quickly.
I did get wrecked in the first fight, but a quick reload and some prep made it doable.

[Ciaina]

I..... really don't have that kind of time.

There is DIFFICULT, and I get that.
And then there is asinine, bloated, infuriating inflated "difficult". This fight is the second kind.

It doesn't test your skill, your understanding of the mechanics, you strategic placement, or your builds. No, nonononono.

It's just a grinding stone chipping away at your patience where all you do is repeat the same tactic over and over again hoping that RNJESUS smiles down on you and you manage to scrap out a victory by blowing out all your inventory, and using a metric ton of time.

Or...... you can lower the difficulty and screw this thing.
Bad design is bad design, if lowering the difficulty stings at you... well, that is not a good sign :D

I steamrolled this overpowered cheap pile of darkness, and forget feeling bad about it. It feels GREAT.

[atm]

Originally posted by PhamTrinli:

Originally posted by atm:

Sure - not sure how to post an image tho? (Plus its stats page is like 10 pages long, so which part would you like to see?)

First page - AC, DR, Damage type, Damage amount, Crit range
and Second page - Abilities/Feats

View Screenshots > Select Screenshot > Upload > View online > copy paste url

AH sorry dude I gave up on the fight - though I think I now know how I could have done it. I found Minago on the Midnight Isles (I think it is called?) was similar in awfulness (slightly less because she would stand and cast for quite a while before going ape on you and ripping your party to pieces), but I eventually got her by turning Finnean to a bow and giving him to Lan, who could then get through her armor thanks to Finnean's brilliant energy property (and perfect strike and all the buffs I could muster). I had tried this on my main char, (e.g. with Finnean as a scimitar) but he was melee and went down like a stone. Still a brutal fight, and still only did it by the skin of my teeth. Assuming this would have also worked against Playful Darkness?

On several tries I did get Playful Darkness down to about half before I was just out of ways to distract him anymore. This makes me think if I had taken Kowldge World: 2 Rank on my trickster, (where all 1's your party rolls become 20's) I would have probably gotten him down, since you'd have a 10% chance of getting a nat-20, but that seems a ridiculously specific thing to have to do.

[AELeonson]

Just FYI you don't have to do that now. You have access to that area for the next 2 chapters as well as the one you're in currently.

[atm]

Originally posted by AELeonson:

Just FYI you don't have to do that now. You have access to that area for the next 2 chapters as well as the one you're in currently.

Oh thanks dude, was not aware of that. One more level will probably make the fight doable. Overall I think I am glad the game isn't easy, but it sure can be frustrating. I completed Kingmaker on unfair a couple of times, including with my solo(ish) kineticist (my actual full solo run was on hard, if I recall), so I wasn't expecting to be hitting a wall like this on core.