Riley's Flashback

[yayswords]

I don't have a save to compare with. I just know on one playthrough I randomed something as awesome as a rare 5 SPR staff. I'm of the opinion the flashback gear shouldn't be random.

[jack1974]

Yes but that was before I've removed the regen items completely from the randomizer, remember? only manually created ones can have that now.

[yayswords]

I know, but you can still have good/bad luck. Troyen's difficulty with the golem sounds a lot like it. I think I usually nuke it for 20 with no problems hitting.

[jack1974]

I still feel like either the success rate could be brought up or made more consistent (so say, you're guaranteed to succeed three times) and the golem's HP/Magic brought down. It wouldn't affect the boss difficulty too much, after surviving the surprise Meteor Storm I was guaranteed victory, but it'd be nice if it took say five minutes instead of 15, and that might open up the possibility of alternative Riley skill builds. But, that's just my opinion.

Well I can do it of course for me is not a problem. For those battles in Nightmare is always hard because one player might say "you made it too easy" and another "is too hard".
The XP in the quests is just because it needs to be a value, but of course doesn't matter since you get back from the flashback. It matters later though if you solve them or not to get powerful items

[Troyen]

In this case, I'm not sure drawing out the length adds to the difficulty. (I guess it tests your potion management if you didn't go GF/Energize)

The only time I nearly died was when he popped a 103 damage Meteor Storm on me at the beginning of the battle. After that it was ~8 damage hits with GF up, or 16-17 damage hits without, and Energize was 10 a turn plus the occasional double-turn which was plenty to let me gain health during the fight. So it was 15 minutes of the same thing. If the golem had say, half the health he does, and everything else remained the same, it would still take at least a dozen Riley offensive turns to bring him down (probably more because you'd need to do some healing regardless of what skills you took), the strategy wouldn't really change, but it would be less tedious.

But, like you said, I'm not the only Nightmare player. What do the others think?

[jack1974]

So far I think only yaysword (who already replied) and fabulaparva are playing in NM, maybe FireSeraph. I'll see what they say, for me no problem to lower Golem health

[fabulaparva]

After the first tries back when Act 2 came out..I haven't needed reloads on Nightmare. In my opinion, it's challenging but by no means too difficult, it just takes time. Most of the tricks fail for me, I usually succeed in only 1 or 2. Sometimes I don't even bother trying them in the beginning, that's just a faster level-up. And I've done the quest a couple of times without even trying those tricks at all.

I use Constitution-trait*), so I won't have to waste points on that, ghost form and energize. Most of the skills have too high a delay for me to bother choosing them. I wouldn't mind if HP for that golem in the end would be lowered a bit. It's not difficult at all to beat him...it's just takes so looooooooooong. He only has that one strong hit in the beginning, then he's out of mana to try it again. You can use 1 potion to get over that and then just keep the GF on and play with energize until you've baby-swatted him to death with magic bolts. I've always find that the guards leading to the golem are who I have to be careful with, not the golem. Golem makes me yawn. But since the guards are the interesting bit, I don't see that any big changes for that quest would be needed. Just my two pixels, though.

My Attribute Points and Total values for stats in the beginning of the flashback -- and this was done around a month ago..but already after the 5SPR staff was removed
Const 12 --- HP 112*)
Will 14 --- SP 90
Strength 10 --- Attack 22
Skill 10 --- Defense 35
Agility 09 ---Speed 118
Arcane 22 ---- Magic 40

[Troyen]

So, we agreed? Halve the health of the golem?

[jack1974]

Yes I'll do that on next update!

[fabulaparva]

Might I suggest that in addition to cutting the HP, give the golem enough mana so that he could launch a second powerful attack (meteor storm, was it?) at some point? Then you'd have to be more careful with Riley's HP...and save more than just one potion left at the Boss-fight...