Blackwater is the worst

[QuinZ33]

So I got myself into serious trouble in Blackwater.

I'm only level 11, and I brought a team wholly unequipped to handle the augmented demons near the end.

Furthermore, I've camped a few times as I've worked my way through, so all 3 of my autosave slots are filled up with Blackwater saves. The last manual save I have is from 20 hours prior.

Reading all of the guides about how hexes can make Blackwater easy are completely useless, since once you're there you can't leave.

I made it past the first two groups of demons, but I had the chick protected by Desna in my party die, and there is no way to bring her back, so I struggled forward with 5, and had to burn through my resurrection scrolls to get past the second fight.

So, I'm going way back to an early blackwater save to try to be *really efficient* with my supply usage.

Honestly, at this rate it would be quicker to go back to Act 1 and re-level from there.

EDIT:

I was playing on a variant of Core difficulty with enemy strength turned to "slightly weaker" but advanced enemy abilities switched on.

Changing enemy strength from "slightly weaker" to "moderately weaker" made all the difference. It took their AC from 44 down to 41, meaning I could hit on a 17+ on some characters instead of only on a natural 20, and that made a WORLD of difference. That little change allowed me to burn through the dungeon without ever being in trouble.

My party build is based on a really high DPS (MC is a slayer), where I can sometimes do 200+ damage in a turn, and that just wasn't happening often enough when faced with an AC of 44.

[kirill-busidow]

Endure and in enduring grow stronger.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Yeah blackwater rocked me my first time as well. Not sure if this will work for your saves/party but I think the initial door that shuts you in has a magic device check to reopen. You may be able to savescum that open and come back at lv 12 and with more touch spells or party buffs to get around the high AC demons.

[SpeaksTooFast]

You can also adjust the difficulty on the fly, I had to do that a few times on my first run as my builds were not super optimized and there are some serious difficulty spikes throughout the game.

[QuinZ33]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

You can also adjust the difficulty on the fly, I had to do that a few times on my first run as my builds were not super optimized and there are some serious difficulty spikes throughout the game.

I hadn't considered that, because I basically never do that in games... this situation though seems particularly odious.

I'm playing on a custom difficulty that is about the same as Core. I think I changed it to be "slightly weaker enemies" but still more of them, and I turned on their special abilities. Everything else is the same as Core.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Yeah I started this game thinking some experience with the Table Top system would be enough for 1:1 damage, crits, and other stuff... I also prefer to play through games at least once before looking up guides. I was not able to finish this game under those conditions.

[Erei]

Fun fact, it was nerfed. Played before, it took me HOURS. Everything had ridiculous AC (above regular ridiculous WotR AC). Immunity to electricity and regen electricity/adamantine, because f*** you.


Also, you can open the entrance and leave. There is a console near the door.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Originally posted by Erei:

Also, you can open the entrance and leave. There is a console near the door.

Pretty sure that this is behind a decently high check

[Conquista]

black water is unprepared pretty evil, which makes sense storywise its a death trap for your party

so pick up spells that help against electricity and also stuff that do electricity dmg, if you have no electricity dmg than you can use coup de grace to kill them or pick up some of their longswords and equip them

[Erei]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

Originally posted by Erei:

Also, you can open the entrance and leave. There is a console near the door.

Pretty sure that this is behind a decently high check

35UMD. I thought it was lower^^

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by QuinZ33:

I'm only level 11...... so all 3 of my autosave slots are filled up with Blackwater saves. The last manual save I have is from 20 hours prior.

Obviously you've got my sympathies, I mean we've all got ourselves into messes like that on occasion, but you really should be at least L13 for Blackwater and, you know, you've got to ask yourself what on earth possessed you barge in there without making a hard save before you went in. Or for that matter checking if you had an line of retreat available or not once you did before you lost the pre-entry autosave for that matter. I mean that is pretty much rule #1 in this game.

[QuinZ33]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by QuinZ33:

I'm only level 11...... so all 3 of my autosave slots are filled up with Blackwater saves. The last manual save I have is from 20 hours prior.

Obviously you've got my sympathies, I mean we've all got ourselves into messes like that on occasion, but you really should be at least L13 for Blackwater and, you know, you've got to ask yourself what on earth possessed you barge in there without making a hard save before you went in. Or for that matter checking if you had an line of retreat available or not once you did before you lost the pre-entry autosave for that matter. I mean that is pretty much rule #1 in this game.

I can think of literally no other location in the game where it randomly locks you in and won't let you leave. Checking for a line of retreat available is not something that the game trains you to do. There's always a line of retreat, unless it's a big story mission that they give you time to prepare for.

Also, there was no indication that this is designed for level 13, since you get access to it at level 10.

[QuinZ33]

Originally posted by Conquista:

black water is unprepared pretty evil, which makes sense storywise its a death trap for your party

so pick up spells that help against electricity and also stuff that do electricity dmg, if you have no electricity dmg than you can use coup de grace to kill them or pick up some of their longswords and equip them

The electricity isn't an issue. It's their 44 AC, meaning I can only hit on a natural 20 that's the problem.

Sure, they need a 20 to hit most of my characters too, but I've seen some of them do 300 damage in a single turn occasionally.

[Conquista]

if you only struggle with hitting ac, than ya probably coming back later after one or two level ups would solve the issue

but its definitely not fun to reload back that much, so you have my sympathies, if you decide to take that road

[QuinZ33]

Originally posted by Conquista:

if you only struggle with hitting ac, than ya probably coming back later after one or two level ups would solve the issue

but its definitely not fun to reload back that much, so you have my sympathies, if you decide to take that road

"Coming back later" is literally not possible.

[QuinZ33]

I think I solved my issue.

I was playing on a variant of Core difficulty with slightly weaker enemies instead of normal and advanced enemy abilities on instead of off.

I changed it to advanced enemy abilities off and moderately weaker enemies, and now the fights are trivially easy.

Instead of 44ac, they have 41 ac, which means I am putting out literally 3x more damage.

Maybe I shouldn't be ashamed to have "moderately weaker enemies" since everything in this game is so damned overtuned.