Riley's Flashback

[Troyen]

So, I was really reluctant to make this thread because it feels like giving up, but I've spent a couple hours on this now, and I must be missing something. At first, I thought "hey cool, I can do neat tricks to dodge all these guard fights. So totally Riley! This is awesome!" Nope. Hardest quest I've encountered so far, and I just feel like I don't have the right tools to pull it off.

Spoilers below if you haven't done the quest, but I think you all are on Act 3 already.

I'm playing on Nightmare. For my stats, I've been putting 8 into Con for 120 HP (so popping a health potion doesn't overheal), 2 into Arcane to top it at 20 for slightly more damage (I think), 4 into Will (for 100 SP), and the last one I put randomly into Speed, Strength, or Defense. For skills I take Restless for the inter-battle heal (at 5 battles, ends up healing ~60 HP/50 SP, though one of those is wasted cause I level), Ghost Form (even though the short delay means the one time I get back-to-back turns, all I do is waste a turn of my buff), and I'm not sure on the last one. It's a fire environment, so naturally none of his nukes do fire damage. I've tried Mirror Damage which ended horribly, and I don't seem to notice much of a difference between Magic Chains and Heavy Mist. I thought Magic Chains would slow them down enough that I can get more turns in, or Heavy Mist lower their attack so they do less damage, but I'm seeing no practical effect. (Actually, given Stagger does nothing on Nightmare, I'm not even sure these debuffs make a difference either.) Worse, they're delay 15, which means each enemy gets two hits while I recover, for only slightly more damage than Magic Bolt (thanks to the max magic damage cap).

I can bring down the ceiling, but then every other feat fails and I'm stuck fighting something like five waves of guards, so I'm stuck rolling back and fighting the guards. The first fight I do fine with no special potion. The second fight I use the haste potion. The third fight I level. The fourth fight I use either HP/SP regen (whichever is lower). The fifth fight I use the poison. Then I run into a problem. When the guards in the mirror chamber notice me hiding, I lose because I've simply ran out of healing potions after fighting so many waves of three guards that all move faster than my attacks. I even save my healing potions to that critical <15 HP range and I run out (typically with 4-5 mana potions left over).

What trick am I missing? I've reloaded and retried and I'm consistently stuck fighting wave after wave of guards until I run out of healing potions and die.

[yayswords]

Nowadays I usually just reload until his stunts work. It's not very entertaining to keep beating the guards, and sometimes it doesn't even happen. But try Ghost Form + Energize + Magic Sparks. Not sure I even remember...

Begin with GF, kill one guard, and from there you can turtle with Energize + GF vs. the two remaining. Or perhaps not all-out turtle but at least kill them without much pressure. That way you should be able to begin each fight on practically full health and mana, since IIRC if you deliberately attack the guards instead of trying to avoid them, you get some health and mana restored.

[Troyen]

Do you quit the game to reload, or is there a faster way?

Now even the carpet pulling thing fails! The worst part is all these fights are so much alike the battles aren't that interesting, even with the super potions. :/

Curious to hear if anybody beats this quest without reloading on Nightmare. If not, perhaps it's a little overtuned?

[yayswords]

I save the game before each attempted stunt and if it fails I reload. It's very fast to reload on PC. Just rightclick, load game, pew pew.

[Troyen]

Well, I know *that* reloading, but it doesn't seem to change the result, even when I do it several times. Some games persist the random results so you can't simply rollback and get a different result just by saving/reloading, and I thought that's what was going on here.

[yayswords]

Some games persist the random results so you can't simply rollback

Mousewheel rollback indeed does that, I think you only get one shot at rerolling like that, after that the next page of the story is written in stone, unless you reload. I think the only thing reload can't cure is quest generated items - unless you reload from like the point you take the quest or something.

[Troyen]

Nowadays I usually just reload until his stunts work. It's not very entertaining to keep beating the guards, and sometimes it doesn't even happen. But try Ghost Form + Energize + Magic Sparks. Not sure I even remember...

Begin with GF, kill one guard, and from there you can turtle with Energize + GF vs. the two remaining. Or perhaps not all-out turtle but at least kill them without much pressure. That way you should be able to begin each fight on practically full health and mana, since IIRC if you deliberately attack the guards instead of trying to avoid them, you get some health and mana restored.

This is working out better, but wow, this is kinda tedious since I can only attack one out of every three turns. (I even do Energize then Ghost Form so I don't waste the short delay on GF). Especially the golem boss with his high magic resistance and dodging most of my Magic Bolts.

I'm still failing like six events. I failed the rug, I did swing on the chandelier, I failed the jump, failed the balcony, failed at distracting the guards, dropped the Atlas on my head, and couldn't hold my breath. Considering the guards can perma-Stagger me, inflict bleed and Confusion, and I do <10 damage to the golem, I'm not sure this is doable without the turtling combo above.

I went through the trouble of saving my poison potion for the boss and I don't get to use it.

[Troyen]

All right, with the yayswords method and an excruciating 15 minutes of Energize -> GF -> Magic Bolt (33% chance to be dodged, 67% chance to do 8 damage to the 450 HP golem), I got the boss down without having to mass reload my game.

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.

[yayswords]

Your difficulty with the golem sounds alien. Maybe you randomed some really poor gear for Riley.

I think the combat sucks for this flashback though, facetanking everything with a mage.

[Troyen]

Attributes (at the beginning of the flashback, since I didn't save before the golem):
HP 120
SP 100
Attack 12 (20)
Threshold 4 (14)
Defense 14 (37)
Speed 113 (125)
Magic 24 (35)

How's that compare to yours? The weapons that dropped mid-quest are all worthless and I got no armor drops.

Also, the 100 exp bonus to flashback Riley for going through all that is a little insulting, because I immediately return to normal Riley.