Deceit and Jul

[jack1974]

I could change all the enemies (except the bosses maybe since they are fine-tuned) to have more attack and less HPs, but the problem would be the testing If I knew that enough people would replay it all to make sure it's not too hard, I could do it even tomorrow.
Maybe I have an idea, I will try to include a "cheat mode" which pressing a key will change the battles that way. So I still have the already tested version, and anyone who wants can try the "shorter fights" version. If enough people play and confirm it's OK, I will probably use that as final version since I don't think anyone wants to play long fights!

[Franka]

I've only ever played high offense, high speed parties (in gear and skils), and this means that in these hard fights all I need is for the mobs not to disable my entire party with paralyze or madness, because I can't last very long. This also means that fights that go badly will be over quick (only a few boss fights have a chance to go that badly though). I completely focus on AoE skills, but if I switch to basic attacks on single targets, speed alone kills them. All on Easy of course.

I think the problem here is doing a defensive party on lower difficulties. Enemies have so many strong healing skills throughout the game that you'll have much longer fights and when you do get to the tough fights, you might not be winning the catch up game.

At least Taleweaver should be happy that Deceit has become the menace he desired for that optional ending.

[jack1974]

Hmm enemies starts to heal properly only in act3 though (with the new AI). Before they have healing skills but they don't use them as well as in act3.
Anyway yes, maybe is not a problem that can be easily solved tweaking enemies values. I'm going to add it as optional/unofficial cheat menu and see what happens

[Franka]

Oh, there are some mobs that love to resurrect and heal like crazy in Act II.

[fabulaparva]

^^Act2: Arena slave fights. Those healers.... Also Gamesh mercs now love to fling those healing potions around. If one doesn't have enough killpower, those fights can drag. Galanna BattleMages. Unless they go straight for the IceSpikes and the ShadowHunters for Shadow of Deaths. Now, without a survival build & fragile, but high speed and attack crew, those Galanna merc fights were deadly for me on many occasions in NM. (maybe I should call that a gambling build? or maybe I just suck fighting )

So, having said that.. after a couple of trials of the early game, I chose in general not to go for the survival build and saved most AoE-building until Rowinda & Jariel came along. High speed and ability to cause High single enemy damage seems to lead to very different battle experience throughout the game and in this fight in particular. I don't know what the average HP values for crews are when people play, either, and probably having really high HP and relatively low attack power will make this Deceit fight feel extra long and devoid of danger of dying. On NM, his Chain of Lightning (if he isn't confused) can easily cause 120-200 (can go over that, depending on Madness) dmg to each member. My crew's HPs were at level 20-22 from 260 to 350. So on NM, that strike isn't quite harmless. I do agree that for whatever reason he often doesn't use that when it would be most beneficial to him (he can make your whole crew stagger with that),

To add to the feel of danger...here's a devil.suggestion: One way would be to scale his attack power so that it would increase according to people's HP, but that would probably lead to a lot of complaints that leveling up against him would work even less. We saw already how "well" the enemy level and HP scaling went early on... (I'm not really suggesting this! )

[jack1974]

I personally think the boss fights are OK. They CAN have lot of HPs. Also some skills like cleanse would lose all the power if they had less HP. Remember that is just ONE enemy while your party is of 6 So even if it heals for 300HP, it is still not versatile as a full party which could heal and debuff. That's the reason I put some very powerful skills to him, otherwise was too easy to beat. The problem with those single enemy boss fights is that a small tweak can unbalance everything and turn an impossible battle in a "too easy" battle. Just look the Cleanse, went from 2 to 6 delay and was already enough to change the difficulty completely!

Regarding the non-boss fights instead, going to post my thoughts in the main update thread since I'm uploading a new build now

[FireSeraph]

My trick for defeating Deceit is putting my mages in the front and the warriors in the back row. Riley hits with slow, druid hits with the single target airspell and rowinda hits with lightning bolt while the warriors just heal the mages and replenishes their sp since Deceit always casts mass paralysis on the back row. At least that's how it was for me and I was fighting him in the Madness reduces everything to 1 version of the game.

[jack1974]

Yes that's a good strategy indeed. The Madness bug was quite a game changer though

[FireSeraph]

Managed to beat him because my druid had purification. So I was only under the Madness bug for 1 turn at best. It just made the fight last much longer than it should cause Deceit kept Cleansing himself every few rounds but the the slow effect that remained still worked wonders.

[vexingaura]

Wow so many replies so quickly I have to say thank you to everyone who contributed still at work right now but didn't expect so many quick responses. I will post more in detail information when I get back and edit the post. From what I have read so far I clearly went very wrong somwhere as I heard that someone was doing 110! While I only do around 60 on easy even with debuffs. It is just strange though because I have beaten everything else on normal with no problems at all for example I haven't had anyone Ko'd even once throughout the game. That is why I just found it wierd that the party I am using right now is having so much difficultly when it hasn't in the past. I will post more details and check out if my version is 9.7.

Once again thank you for the game and thank you to the members of this great community I really appreciate it