Moth campaign last mission

[Rianith]

Enjoyed the campaign till this, WTF you meant to do to beat the boss who heals after almost every attack, dominates folks, and moves between each of your attacks? IS there some trick to this?

[davea]

There is kind of a trick. Attacking the boss moves her closer to the temple door, and the goal changes when she gets to the door. Concentrate on moving her closer rather than specifically killing her.

[Worldwalker Games]

Dominate - you can clear this by moving someone adjacent and using the "attempt to clear dominate" ability - there's a better chance if they have a strong relationship.

You need to deal damage to Ecthis to get her to move. Once she starts moving things will go a bit quicker.

Aside from that, it's definitely a hard fight, but we know it's doable. You can probably find some videos. If you're really stuck, maybe adjust the difficulty level for this fight (from the options menu - and try to do it from a save just *before* the fight starts.

[Rianith]

Not a big fan of fights you can't win
without knowing the unexplained mechanics and objectives,
Not sure anyone is?
Thanks for the advice, davea!

The rather poor guidance for the player as to what you actually have to do
in this one is part of the difficulty? Really?
The rest of the game usually explained objectives clearly.

[Rianith]

And done, was plenty fun once I understood what I was trying to do.
Thanks, davea for the spoiler-free advice,
what you have to do is a little bit unclear, unlike any other previous quest,
and then changes...
Definitely could be better written in English at least.

Words of advice to anyone else frustrated here...
Do not read on, if you wanna work it out by trial and error, minor spoilers maybe.

The "Tower" is the centre area, inside the walls, do not worry about protecting the Mothman,
you have to wait for the Queen to appear
and then you move her inside the tower by hitting her, do not try to kill her.
Then she kind of gives up, and then you have to move all your team back outside the tower
while annihilating the remaining insects. Not difficult, just unintuitive, very.
Voila.

[Trekopep]

We're definitely not trying to make the objective unclear, but we've seen several players struggle with the first part of it and not realize they needed to attack. Most players figure it out as soon as they've damaged Ecthis enough that she starts moving.

There's a chance we just need to explicitly state the objectives in the comics, or put a banner in the middle of the screen like we do with incursion defense missions. I'm not sure how much more clear and concise we can make the objectives themselves ("Attack Ecthis to force her into the tower" and "Clear the tower of Thrixl, and get out!" seem like pretty well-defined goals to me, though maybe the tooltips on hover could be more descriptive), but a lot of players don't look at the objectives, which feels like it could be the real issue here. We're open to feedback if you think a different wording would work better.

[Syrris]

The problem with the "Attack (character) to..." is that it isn't clear from that statement how attacking them will force them in, or whether there's anything conditional about it - do you have to attack from 'behind' to force the character in that direction, etc. This is particularly likely to be problematic if someone is playing it second-language where they may wonder if they've missed something in the translation.

Consider phrasing something like this: "Each attack that strikes (character) will force them toward the tower." It sounds a bit awkward but it's also more explicit.

[Rianith]

Thanks for all the responses and advice.
I think it's worth saying that my initial frustrated mail was the first moment in 30+ hours of playing Wildermyth that I felt anything other than love for the game.
And it's not a big moan at all, I just didn't understand that one objective,
which maybe needed more lateral thinking...
I don't like games where reloading is seen as normal
and the way to deal with difficulty spikes.
And this is not that kind of game at all, it rewards intelligent play.
That was the first combat I had to reload in five campaigns.

Brilliant turn-based fantasy tactics, poetic storytelling, lots of fun and depth in both.
If you're reading this and not bought it, go buy it now.

[davea]

I had a similar problem in one of my published mods. That has a lot fewer players than the builtin campaigns, but maybe the solution was good enough. There is a monster which is, in fact unkillable by design at a certain point in one questline; all weapons do zero damage. The objective is a standard one "kill all, or escape" but kill is impossible, so the heroes must escape.

I added a mid-mission comic where one of the characters says, "None of our attacks are doing any damage! We have to retreat!".

Perhaps you could add a mid-mission comic where one of the characters says, "Keep attacking! Each hit moves her closer to the door!"

The trick is how to trigger this comic. I had a problem with that, and I wound up triggering the comic as soon as a certain door opens. That doesn't quite make sense in the mission, but it was the only trigger I had. I am sure the dev team can add a more specific trigger for the builtin campaign.

[Worldwalker Games]

hm, good suggestion

[rp29]

Welll....I I figured it out quite quickly...just restarted the fight once the mechanic became clear. It was a tough fight too, I only had 2 out 5 heroes left at the end, Just the way it should be. No shame in reloading to finish the fight, I think so long as you enjoy it.

[druzilsupreme]

Perhaps "Damage Ecthis to force her into the tower" would be slightly more clear? I was okay with the objective as written but I could see someone interpreting attack more broadly as trying to defeat her army.

[Worldwalker Games]

Yeah. We actually have some objective clarification on deck for the next patch :-)

[TamTroll]

i found the final mission pretty easy to understand first go around. pretty clear already imho.

[Tank Lady (Sicilian King)]

I... definitely didn't. It was clear enough that the fight progressed by hitting Eluna to force her into the tower, but the dominate mechanic took me by complete surprise—resulting in a TPK because I didn't understand that you could remove the status with an adjacent character! (I didn't get that until my third run through, actually—second time I just kept the other party members at a distance and maneuvered Eluna with a sole tanky warrior... which works, but is rather time-consuming!)

So, IMO, the fight would be a lot easier if you made it clear how dominate works—through a dummy fight, or a mid-battle scene, or whatever.

[bipolaron]

I just beat it yesterday and couldn't help but be surprised at how poorly the mechanism was explained. Once I figured out that you just have to keep doing damage to her until she's inside it was hard but doable. It was super frustrating to not know what my next goal would be though, first I'm defending the castle then I'm attacking the queen then I'm fighting to get back out of the castle, it all seems like stuff that I'd know in advance and wouldn't be a surprise.