Curse you, Montalban

[Dustin Dalby]

I'm playing on Rogue and holy sea cows that devil's quick.
I barely have time to defend, and cannot hope to land a hit as I am simply not fast enough to get past his defenses. I'm going for a cutlass and have the tier one swords item as well as tier one fencing shirt.

Am I doing something wrong? Should I simply get more fighting-oriented items to have a chance at taking him down?

[Beep!]

I've never found him to be that difficult. What skill did your character start with? How old is your character? As your character ages, he gets slower.

[Dustin Dalby]

My character started with Medicine skills and was indeed not a young man anymore.

I take it I shouldn't wait around 'till I'm old and decrepit to go fight the best swordsman in the carabeans.

[Beep!]

Origineel geplaatst door The Ghost of Iwata:

I take it I shouldn't wait around 'till I'm old and decrepit to go fight the best swordsman in the carabeans.

Yeah, pretty much.

[Beep!]

Also, if your character has the fencing skill, he will be better at taking down the villains.

[dkress]

TAKE ON THR CURSED MONTALBAN WHILE YOUND AND QUICK (you) AND FIGHT AGGRESSIVLY

[Rabbit CoCo]

Origineel geplaatst door TaichungCanuck:

if your character has the fencing skill, will be better.

+1
*** Also, you need to fight him when you health is still good. Thus, find his hideout is you first thing to do.

[Dustin Dalby]

After a bit of playing around it turns out ya'll are right. There's basically a hard age limit past which you're just too slow to ever hope to defeat the Accursed bugger.

This leaves me a bit disappointed, from a purely Role-Play-y point of view : I really liked the idea of organically progressing through the "main quest" as I did sandboxy stuff and lived my piraty life.

It also gets me wondering where Montalban's hiding his Elixir of Long Life : while I inevitably wither and wilt, he seems to remain as fresh as the blooming rose.

Were the times different, and he not so Accursedly Devilish, I probably would have lots of questions for him.

[Axe]

when you get older if you really want to kinda cheat the game, Monts ship will not sink. So once its dead in the water you can stay back and grape shot it to death leave noone on deck except 1 monty! Then when you go in for the kill, one hit and he surrenders to you and crew!
Its kinda cheaty but works well if your character gets old or you seem to be having a problem with him.

[evann]

You are making a big mistake with your sword choices. Go for Raiper. Also, if you have the time, go dance a Rather Plain or Actractive daughter. They'll give you gifts, one of them being the balanced swords.

[evann]

Also, before battling, try to have more crew than him.

[the last of the dolphins]

Origineel geplaatst door Dustin Dalby:

After a bit of playing around it turns out ya'll are right. There's basically a hard age limit past which you're just too slow to ever hope to defeat the Accursed bugger.

This leaves me a bit disappointed, from a purely Role-Play-y point of view : I really liked the idea of organically progressing through the "main quest" as I did sandboxy stuff and lived my piraty life.

It also gets me wondering where Montalban's hiding his Elixir of Long Life : while I inevitably wither and wilt, he seems to remain as fresh as the blooming rose.

Were the times different, and he not so Accursedly Devilish, I probably would have lots of questions for him.

Oh boy, I only discovered this problem while playing the game yesterday...

I'd played game after game on Rogue difficulty and was always able to beat Montalban whenever I happened to find him before, even if my health had declined some. Always used the same trusty Longsword, and I didn't always beat him on the first try, but I was at least able to do it.

Recently, I decided to give Swashbuckler a try for the first time. And things went pretty much the same as usual for me: sailing around, sea battles, land battles, taking people's money, installing new governors, dancing with said governors' daughters, bumping off other famous pirates, finding a lost city, finding family members, etc.

Montalban's hideout wasn't easy to find. I forget how often the map showed me a landmark in previous games, but in this game there was nothing. No "Devil's Shallows" on the coast or whatever, no settlements nearby, just "South of Campeche".

Which turned out to be more like north of Gran Granada when I finally found the place, but whatever. Got my 400+ troops to take on this guy's mercenaries, then I'll cross swords with him like usual, and then I'll get a lot of money. Right?

Wrong. As I remember it, I'm in my early to mid thirties in "fair" health still, with the two types of herbs slowing my aging down. Montalban just moves too damn quick, at least when I try using a Longsword or Rapier against him. Using the Cutlass helps some with me either successfully dodging or blocking a lot more, but I'm not fast enough to get in anything more than a quick thrust after Montalban misses, and usually he'll get a hit back on me.

I'm glad that I saved right outside his fortress after I realized that this might take a number of tries, but now I don't even know if I CAN beat him, not even with the Cutlass. If it's just plain impossible to beat him at this point, that's a problem in an otherwise excellent game. Like if I'm just too old on this difficulty to do it, the game should just force me to retire by telling me that I'm too decrepit to do any more piracy. I don't know if that's something that can happen if you just keep on playing indefinitely, since I've always retired once I've gotten to "failing health", but it should do that instead of giving me hope that I can still accomplish one of the main goals. I'm feeling like I should just start a new game and maybe lower the difficulty back to Rogue; sure, I could keep on sailing around and tracking down the rest of my family and the lost cities, take on the remaining famous pirates, dig up everybody's treasure...still, I'm so used to always beating Montalban that doing everything EXCEPT beating him just doesn't seem right.

[Dustin Dalby]

Holy mother of necromancy, Batman!