The bosses... What the hell happened???

[zombocalypse3]

I once played the original Ego Draconis many years ago. Unlike the Dragon Knight Saga, it followed a very simple, very effective LOGIC. The final boss, Lucian, was the toughest...

This is my very first playthrough of Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga, and even though the difficulty setting wasn't beefed up, I had some rather tough boss fights. Everything was fine. It was challenging and fun... until I fought Ba'al and reached the Hall of Echoes.

I remember vaguely in Ego Draconis that the Black Ring femme fatale Kali was the toughest boss outside of Lucian. I had a particularly easy time killing Ba'al with whatever tactic I cooked up on the spot. But here in DKS, Ba'al was tougher than Lucian, and Marius, THE FIRST ENEMY IN THE DEAD-PEOPLE-ARENA, PUT UP A BETTER FIGHT THAN THE COMBINED FORCES OF LUCIAN, ZANDALOR, AND HIS DIVINE ORDER KNIGHTS.

What the hell... The only one tougher to beat than Marius was Ba'al, and Ba'al was tougher than Lucian. I managed to tank Lucian's assault while Ba'al literally one-shotted me multiple times with his Magic Blast. Keep in mind this... Despite the fact that I put zero points on my vitality, my health bar was over 900 points because of my equipment. Plus, my intelligence was nearly maxed out, which means my magic resistance is sky-high. Despite that, Ba'al's magic attack, Magic Blast, could nearly one-shot me. When I fought Ba'al (in Broken Valley), I had to resort to the classic, hide-behind-your-summon strategy and picked off his minions one by one. Not a bad thing, really. It's logical for Ba'al to be strong, and it is fun to be forced to think strategically. But this was such a big surprise to me. I never experienced this in Ego Draconis.

I just find it weird that Lucian was weaker than that bum Marius (in the Hall of Echoes).

Any thoughts about my ranting?

[Ichthyic]

it could be they were revamping the difficulties for each fight, but just ran out of steam before getting to the final fight.

or, maybe they just wanted to make sure nobody had a problem finishing the final fight.

*shrug*

it's larian. every game they have ever made has weird stuff like this.

[Raze_Larian]

There is a known (rare) issue where bosses can have a fast, overpowered attack (Ba'al. The Impossible foe?[www.larian.com]), most commonly with Ba'al, Laiken or the flying fortress generals.

[Kamboyah]

what difficulty are you playing on? Im keeping it at nightmare and still havent even entered Lovis Tower but every fight is about abusing environment and AI to score most damage with bow.

[zombocalypse3]

Originally posted by Kamboyah:

what difficulty are you playing on? Im keeping it at nightmare and still havent even entered Lovis Tower but every fight is about abusing environment and AI to score most damage with bow.

I play on the default normal difficulty. I've checked and rechecked obsessively the difficulty setting, despite the fact that I was 99% sure it stayed on normal the entire time. Just one of my quirks.

I used to play Ego Draconis on hard mode. They didn't have nightmare back then. I managed consistently to reach the Hall of Echoes but failed miserably consistently with the final fight.

My strategy with this playthrough have been essentially the same with when I played Ego Draconis on hard mode. I'd fight the highest level enemies I could possibly fight without losing, and profit from the severe XP gain. But it was definitely noticeably easier. Nowadays, I would only lose a fight if I made a legitimate mistake or did something blatantly stupid. Back in the days during hard mode, there was no room for error if I wanted to win.

Nevertheless, I had fun both times.

I'm also very grateful to God that I now have the Developer's Cut with it's super-awesome cheat window. I have a bug in my game where Zagan, the flying demon of High Hall, has a broken, severely overpowered spam-attack that would drain my 1200+ HP bar in less than 5 seconds. I was level 32 when I faced him. He wasn't even level 23. The cheat window allows me to activate God Mode so I can survive that. Thank heavens indeed...

[Ichthyic]

yeah... it's NOT zagan that is wiping you, you are getting ganked by the hugely overpowered level 20 demon spawns from the nests. not a bug.

the thing to do in that area is to kill zagan asap. cast a summon, hit your shield, shoot an orb at him, fly right in his face and do a blast, then flamebreath if needed to finish him (though he should already be dead). as soon as the cavein cutscene happnens IMMMEDIATELY fly UP and to the NW to find the little exit cave, or you will get ganked by the demon spawns.

you should be fine, even on the hardest difficulty mode. you CAN take out the nests (totally optional) by divebombing from the little cave. either hit and run with fireorb, or rush down there with shield on and blast/flamebreath one nest at a time, then retreat.

then you can take out the demonspawn one at a time, if you want. basically, EACH ONE of those stupid little things are stronger than Zagan!

that maintains throughout the game whenever you encounter them, btw, but in all other areas, you have more room to maneuver, so they aren't as much of a threat.

they also can be polymorphed.

[zombocalypse3]

Originally posted by Ichthyic:

yeah... it's NOT zagan that is wiping you, you are getting ganked by the hugely overpowered level 20 demon spawns from the nests. not a bug.

the thing to do in that area is to kill zagan asap. cast a summon, hit your shield, shoot an orb at him, fly right in his face and do a blast, then flamebreath if needed to finish him (though he should already be dead). as soon as the cavein cutscene happnens IMMMEDIATELY fly UP and to the NW to find the little exit cave, or you will get ganked by the demon spawns.

you should be fine, even on the hardest difficulty mode. you CAN take out the nests (totally optional) by divebombing from the little cave. either hit and run with fireorb, or rush down there with shield on and blast/flamebreath one nest at a time, then retreat.

then you can take out the demonspawn one at a time, if you want. basically, EACH ONE of those stupid little things are stronger than Zagan!

that maintains throughout the game whenever you encounter them, btw, but in all other areas, you have more room to maneuver, so they aren't as much of a threat.

they also can be polymorphed.

I'm not sure if you're right. I could SWEAR that it was exclusively Zagan who was spam-attacking me with something bugged for several reasons.

Number One: I could SEE him machine-gunning me. I could see the bullets hitting me coming out of his body.

Number Two: He kills me even before his minions have a chance to grow in numbers.

Number Three: There was a very disturbing, eardrum-splitting, cringeworthy sound that you could hear when it was all happening. It didn't sound normal. I know that if you would've heard it, you would immediately assume it was a bug. It was like a DJ brutally shaking a disc like an epileptic parmaganon (a word I invented).



I actually managed to defeat him without using the God Mode cheat. I invested 5 points on my Dragon Shield ability and used it ON TOP of spamming healing potions and rejuvenating potions at the same time. I succeeded, but I never want that nightmare to happen to me again. So the next playthrough I do, I'll test the waters to see if it's truly a bug, and if it is, I'll just cheat my way through it using God Mode.

[Raze_Larian]

The bug with the overpowered attack is generally a one hit kill on nightmare. I don't recall exactly how much less damage it would do on normal, but I'm pretty sure it would not drop enough that you would last 5 seconds (that is actually a long time for a sustained attack).

There are some flying demons with a volley of 5 or 6 attacks in series, but I don't recall if Zagan is one of them.

The various balancing changes in the DKS release resulted in an overall easier game, so the nightmare difficulty was added.

[Ichthyic]

FWIW, playing nightmare now in FoV, and find it noticeably more crunchy than "hard" difficulty. even low level fights can surprise you if you're not paying attention. bosses are rightfully tough. ursula took me a while because she regens so fast, even with the teleporters enabled. I needed 3 crits in a row to finally take her down.

minor bosses like ratha even can kill you quick. It brings the challenge back a bit if you have maxed your build out.

[Kamboyah]

well, that's sounds appealing :) even though I've just discovered that bandit's poison shots cannot be evaded and they always hit. hopefully not every NPC skillshot works like that (they're possible to deal with but still painfully crippling).

[Ichthyic]

in FoV you get skeleton bowman with poison shots. frankly, I never noticed if I could evade them specifically or not. poison doesn't seem much of an issue, and i rely on relaliatory confusion effects to incapacitate them anyway, until I get around to killing them.