Strongest Pretender Build (?) vs Abomination of Desolation

[ARJohnGassmann]

So... I was bored and tried to design the strongest Pretender build I could think of (the wall of text below will be completely uninteresting for you if you don't care about powergaming ;-) ).
Not at all trying to come up with something viable for multiplayer, just finding the strongest Pretender build if time and gem income are no issue.

I took a Crone as basis (because of the 4 Misc slots), empowered her to Astral 13 (seems to be the limit to what you can raise a magic path with Empowerment, Wish for "magic power" can only raise to level 9, but with items you apparently can raise further beyond 13), and equipped her with:
Rune Smasher
Mage Bane
Crown of the Magi
Boots of Calius the Druid
Ring of Wizardry
Tome of High Power
The Green Eye
The Trapped Dreams of Hruvur
With that equipment, my Crone has a Penetration Bonus of +7, Magic Resistance 29, Fast Caster 30% and Reinvigoration 10.
Now, I tried to see how much additional Hit Points, Attack and Defence Skill I can give her by wishing for strength - there doesn't seem to be a limit, I raised above 1000 Hit Points before I gave up.

I gave her a full set of Astral Pearls and scripted her to cast:
1. Time Stop
2. Master Enslave (should get +4 Penetration bonus from Astral 16, and another +7 from items, but is easy too resist - still, I figured that should have a decent chance to enslave pretty much anything that is not mindless)
3. Enslave Mind (single target, but not easy to resist - to enslave what Master Enslave missed)
4. Enslave Mind
5. Enslave Mind

That seems to work well - I can put her up against almost any army in PvE and she'll enslave the vast majority of the enemy army, wins, and keeps most of the enemy army as new units.

However, given that several of her equipped items are tainted, she of course also has to face the various Horrors, and here's where it gets weird. She can easily beat almost all of them, the Eater of Gods for example lasted exactly one round after he get next to her. But, in those ambush battles against the horrors, she ignores the script and just goes full melee, doesn't cast a single spell, and I have no idea why....
Does anyone know if there are conditions under which the spell script is ignored? (What's special for those ambushes compared to normal army battles, is a very small battlefield and a 1vs1 situation, and she has insane combat stats - so maybe there's a condition built in to ignore the script and just bash the enemy?)

Also, there is exactly one enemy that was still dangerous - Hruvur the Abomination of Desolation. When my crone got ambushed by Hruvur the first time, she had 38 defence skil, and got immediately swallowed whole and died... And that was reproducible, I savescummed to try to recreate the situation, which was easy because at that power level an ambush by a Horror was always against Hruvur, it seemed that the odds of my Crone being swallowed whole immediately where about 66%. I don't understand how that can be with 38 defence vs Hruvur's 20 Attack. I assume his swallow whole gets a *huge* bonus due to him being size 10 vs my Crone being size 3, but that's just an assumption (and, if true, that doesn't show up in the detailed combat log, the combat log shows Attack 20 vs Defence 38, and I lost....). I googled and found someone saying that this swallow whole attack works like trample, but I don't say the exact mechanics for a trample attack in the manual...
When I empowered my Crone by further wishes for "strength" to even more ridiculous melee stats, she could also reliably repel Hruvur's swallow whole attack and then instakill him in melee. What I actually wanted to see, is if even a 22MR Monster like Hruvur could be enslaved, but for that my Crone would have to follow the script instead of going all melee ^^.
Is there even a "normal" way of how Hruvur can be defeated? Spending literally thousands of Astral Pearls on Empowerment and Wishes in order to beat him can't be the only way I assume, but I have no idea how you could survive his swallow whole attack without absolutely insane defence values...

[Bumc]

Trample auto-hits and can only be lowered to 1 damage, so you get gotted if its the same mechanic. KInda how the flying hasted gelatinous cubes meme works (it doesn't because their stats are so bad).

Some source of recalling could work maybe?
You do take damage after all, and Hruvur doesn't have astral tethers.

[Glorf]

Maybe you can wish for abomination of desolation. I think there is a 50% chance he doesn't attack immediately. Then you could enslave him

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Trample auto-hits and can only be lowered to 1 damage, so you get gotted if its the same mechanic. KInda how the flying hasted gelatinous cubes meme works (it doesn't because their stats are so bad).

Some source of recalling could work maybe?
You do take damage after all, and Hruvur doesn't have astral tethers.

Bite your togue, flying cubes are great.

[Andkat]

However, given that several of her equipped items are tainted, she of course also has to face the various Horrors, and here's where it gets weird. She can easily beat almost all of them, the Eater of Gods for example lasted exactly one round after he get next to her. But, in those ambush battles against the horrors, she ignores the script and just goes full melee, doesn't cast a single spell, and I have no idea why....

assassination victims never use scripts; they just revert to default AI behavior. Unscripted mages with very high stats and strong equipment can just opt to charge into melee.

[Bumc]

Any mages also often don't cast while in melee (you need combat casting to cast more reliably)

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

I saw a fire king beat the Abomination of Desolation once. It was hilarious! The Fire king got swallowed almost immediately and then I though the battle was over. But it went on for a while and eventually the Abomination died and the fire king popped out again.

The abomination died of indigestion! It turns out eating someone who have fire shield 20 and good regeneration is not the smartest thing you can do. Thats a spicy fella!

[knowthyself2]

Originally posted by Count von Bunnyhopven:

I saw a fire king beat the Abomination of Desolation once. It was hilarious! The Fire king got swallowed almost immediately and then I though the battle was over. But it went on for a while and eventually the Abomination died and the fire king popped out again.

The abomination died of indigestion! It turns out eating someone who have fire shield 20 and good regeneration is not the smartest thing you can do. Thats a spicy fella!

Interactions like that are why I play Dominions