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Firkraag or any BG2 dragon when stripped of magic resistance, lower resistance in contingency/sequencer, with lowered saving throws from Grater Malison was vulnerable to spells of any level. Level 2 Chromatic Orb on such dragon was instant kill. Or Feeble Mind or Polymorph to squirrel whatever. Not talking about Time Stop (no defense .. lol) , Imprisonment (no saving throw) and whatever. Those who say stuff like this was not part of the legacy this game advertised to follow do not know what they are talking about. What was not, at least I do not remember it like that, part of the game were constant judgmental voices calling what they do not like exploits, cheese, cheap etc. That is new in the 21st century. This and those ****ing achievements. Whiners, scrubs, simpletons, and achievers. That I do not remember. Killing dragon on solo sorcerer in 5 sec I do. BG had Invisibility for **** sake. IN VI SI BI LI TY You're working under the assumption one has access to incredibly powerful spells here. Chain Contingency is level 9. Time Stop is level 9. Imprisonment is level 9. On a regular play through without XP uncappers, you can only cast them from scrolls, which one should be hoarding at this point to scribe them when they hit Throne of Bhaal. You're also forgetting Chromatic Orb's PLUS SIX to the target's saving throw, even with Greater Malison the target actually receives a bonus to make the save. Last but not least, you're under the delusion that the one Lower Resistance from your low level Contingency is going to do the job , it won't. Lower Resistance is level 5 and takes away 10 + level% magic resist , that's 19% by the time you can cast it. After the 2 castings from your contingency + mage, that's still 27% magic resist left, on top of 3/5/4/4/6 saving throws. I'm not saying it cannot be done, I'm saying the odds are against you, and if you're going to be Save Scumming until your Chromatic Orb hits, you may as well edit the spell to remove the saving throw entirely, make it bypass magic resistance, and give yourself 99 casts / rest. Your "you can use level 9 spells !" talk is misplaced here. It's like saying "you can 1-shot goblins with Abi Dalzim's !!". I quite agree with your second paragraph, this is a solo game, one's savegame, one's rules. You do have to keep in mind that was 15 years ago though, not that many people had internet access back then. That, and these newer generations have something odd about them. Something about having to prove themselves... finished the tutorial ? ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED !! With any luck, they'll reincarnate into Stags, and

You never get +20 crit chance from "the thief faction in defiance bay". You get a 0.3 crit damage multiplier which is to say crits now hit for 180% damage (and duration ?) instead of 150%. Yes, when you crit and prone the A.D, your next attack will be a SA (if it actually connects, by the way). The problem is that given the bitch's resistances, your prone effect will probably only graze, affording you just the one attack (if any). Not to mention the adds wailing away on you during that time, and disrupting your attacks. Edit: damned auto-correct , who the fck implements auto-correct in a browser ? I'm typing this or that for a reason !

Why, thank you

There is no relation whatsoever with triggering a Sneak Attack, and your chance to crit. You get more crit chance as your enemy's Deflection goes down, no other condition applies (except for hit->crit buffs of course). Regarding a rogue solo'ing the dragon, I don't think so on anything other than Easy (and even then). Your rogue has 20% crit chance from Vicious Fighting, 10% from Tall Grass, and that is all. The Orlan racial doesn't come into play since you're soloing the A.D. 30% hit->crit isn't going to cut it. Crits may inflict Prone, at which point they have to actually bypass the enemy's resistance. You're not going to land enough lucky crits + prone combos to solo her, even with something like 24 DEX.

I'm gonna work off the assumption that you mean total party kill with TPK. First off, you'll have noticed the A.D has a very long range Breath attack so, obviously, you want your tank to turn her away from the team. Second, it helps if your tank has a self revive, either from Second Chance or the warrior ability. If your tank's gone down once he'll probably go down again, but then that's more time you're buying. Third, you'll want a prayer against fear, Frightened is extremely potent and your whole team losing 20 accuracy vs a high defense monster can never be a good thing. Fourth, you'll need to buff up, which is what your tank is buying time for anyway. While scrolls work, a priest is highly recommended. Their Crown spell which gives +8 INT is invaluable, not only will it make your priest's spells last longer, it'll also prolong the lifetime of your debuffs and the area of your spells Fifth, you'll need to overcome the 28 DR, and that's where you have to pick : - high damage ranged weapons with DR ignore (arquebuses, pistols) - high damage melee weapons (2-handed rogue, 2-handed barbarian), both Tall Grass and the Blade of the Endless Paths work wonders here - raw damage (rogue deep wounds, druid spells, cipher, possibly even mage ?) to ignore the DR entirely - debuffs (priest spells, wizard, cipher, barbarian sickening aura) , I won't count monk enervating blows here 'cause you're not very likely to land a crit + the effect + it lasting a noticeable amount of time Sixth, it helps if you can distract the AD, or even the adds : - chanter summons (by the way level 3 invocations, 2 ogres are better than 1 drake) - figurines (scarabs, ghosts...) - druid summons (blights) Seventh, speaking of adds, get rid of them : - the skirmishers and champions will wreck your backline - the adragans will petrify your main tank (bye bro) and possibly your DPS frontline (barb, rogue, monk) Understand your foe, her stats are as follows : Basically unless you manage to debuff her (weaken, hobble, blind, sicken...) you're not going to land many blows and spells. While she has high Shock DR, Returning Storm still works pretty nicely because you may get a few Stuns off. Other than that, there is not much strategy to this fight. It's basically a DPS race where you need to kill it before it kills you.

As a matter of fact, I had the luck of landing the one Disintegrate on the Shadow Dragon in a multiplayer game, where we were vastly underleveled to go with that kind of holy crusade ^^ No MR lowering combos, no pierce magic, just the one Disintegrate and boom. We actually had to reload the Autosave, that was a wasted fight for later on Seeing how I had 4.3 seconds of Petrify time and was able to burst the A.D in that tiny little window, including party positioning time, I'd say at least for Hard mode the one trap (and thus the one spell) is sufficient. Now in PotD that may be harder, what with the increased stats and all. Well with that 93 damage graze I'm tempted to say it probably does -.-

GG WP dem tactics tho.. i really actually read whole post up untill that line hoping for something , expecting , ready to give my congrats to OP and then....... Petrify and No Cheese cant be in one topic not on these forums about this game , also to say it seems that you atleast tried not to cheese this but for future no cheese attempts : Petrify is Like biggest piece of cheese you ever ate Sadly I have no way of editing the topic's title to remove the "no cheese" tagline, and I only recently was made aware that Petrify also applies a 400% damage taken debuff. Too bad, I was real proud of that 93 damage graze.

There is a bug with items with the Unconquerable property (talisman of the unconquerable for example) which used to allow stacking INT. Some people have reportedly ended up with 70+ As for the description on the mage's version of the Petrify spell, that's the heart of the problem here. If the description appears only in the mage spell, and neither in the trap's description or the Cyclopedia, one can only assume only the mage's spell applies the 4x damage debuff. But then, I've never read the mage spell, I'll get to that when I play with a party featuring a mage

I'm so gonna have to try that next playthrough, see if there's some kind of freebie to be had from the grateful bitch dragon

3. I'm afraid I didn't notice anything that pointed to a damage mult being applied against petrified targets in the log, I'll experiment further. Note to self: create a god damned wizard 4. Oh believe me I was indeed rather proud of myself, I mean, 93 graze, 109 crit \o/ , aaand now it's gone -.- 5. At least I made you laugh and we part in good spirits, mission accomplished Edit: 2. Oh idk... fights certainly felt more lively in BG2 to me, more like you did put your life on the table; what with the contingencies and all ! They also seemed more realistic in DAO, where a dragon didn't have magical abilities, but would grab your tank and chew on him. But then, that's a matter of viewpoint so there is no universal truth to be had here

It's been pointed out to me that Petrify spells (and by extension traps) seem to apply a 400% damage taken to the enemy, so, sadly, this kill isn't as impressive as I had hoped it would be

A simple matter of perspective, what's cheesiest : - 4 seconds worth of free time on a boss, including party movement time. or - people cleaning up the whole room of adds, before engaging the A.D herself ? Every single video, every single screenshot I've seen, people get there with maxed level 12 parties, enchants, potions and scrolls, cheese-clean the room, then get to aggro'ing the A.D, and resort to cheap Walls and Raw damage D.O.Ts to do the job. I'm kinda proud of my sub-level 12 hard mode encounter with the adds still alive. Good job, now do the same without using traps, potions, scrolls, summoning items, paralyzing/petrifying or shooting it from above (and other exploits). On my first playthrough I didn't even have the luxury of non-hostility until you attack. My 1st ever kill was using priest seals. Instant ~-40% HP. That was cheesing on my behalf (after a gazillion reloads and the same chit-chat over and over again). Later I managed to kill it quite easily with no cheesing. You pretty much need a bait (use Edér), a few debuffs and high spike damage like MPPB that ignores DT. Use others to keep the adds away from your main damage dealer (Aloth in my case). No DoTs or raw damage necessary. 1. Traps, Potions, Scrolls and Summons No traps : yeah no, I did use a trap, no debate here No potions : 1 potion of power on my rogue, which is shown in the combat log and the buffs bar No scrolls : check No food : check No summoning items : check Non-hostility until you attack : neither did I have it in my first playthrough or this one, see any add pre-clear ? me neither I have no idea what got you started, talking about scrolls and summoning items and suchlike, where clearly none were used ? I mean, on a kill featuring them I could understand, but here ? 2. General boss advice and this fight's mechanics I am thankful for your advice, but I think I'm fine here. I knew to dispel haste, I knew to breach stoneskin, I think I might manage an inferior version of BG2 dragons, whose only fight mechanics are "turn away from party, avoid tail, cast 2 level 1 and 1 level 3 buffs and DPS". This is not Firkraag or Abazigal, who actually used magic, special abilities and cheesy contingencies. This is not Onyxia or Nefarian, who required precise adds management and positioning. This is a dragon whose one and only fight phase is "try to absorb or mitigate as much as the damage as possible so your tank won't die". This is a DPS race against a regular monster with no special abilities besides vastly increased damage and resistance (although I really love the voice-over). Basically that's Vaelastrasz ten years later and with 34 fewer party members. 3. Petrify spell effect and afferent documentation Seeing the game has very lacking in-game spell, effect and enchantment descriptions, I had no insight into Petrify's inner workings. I only now read, from cavemandiary and Jasta11, that it applies a 400% damage taken penalty. I refer you to the following threads (end of my post) which illustrate further the lack of proper descriptions : - Pondering whether Bloody Slaughter applies to spells, what are its trigger conditions, and whether the 0.5 crit mult applies to every single crit. [1] - Reflecting on the meanings of "Spell Binding, Spell Holding, Spell Striking" and their limitations. [2] I challenge you to find the 4x damage taken information in the game, I haven't, you will not either. It is not in the spell description, and it isn't in the Cyclopedia any more : "They suffer the same effects as being Paralyzed, but attacks will damage their Health directly instead of Endurance." Let's browse to Paralyzed, see if there's anything about a damage taken debuff : "Their Dexterity is set to 0 and their Reflex and Deflection are reduced by 40." Obviously something is amiss here, either Petrify applies a debuff it shouldn't, or the documentation is lacking. 4. Your attitude Either way, there is no need for your pedantic tone and your "now try without scrolls and summons", all the more when obviously none were used. 5. End on a funny note and part ways giggling If your only contributions are going to be scorn and verbal abuse, may I suggest the following, original dialogue (all rights reserved, patrimonial rights unalienable) : 1: [shrug and pass your way] [stoic] 2: [find something to do, other than not-so-subtly insult strangers on the interwebs] [Clever] 3: [Yell "he lied ! he said no cheese but he cheesed ! HOW DARE HE LIE TO ME !!!"] [Passionate] 4: [sacrifice stray cats and force virgins to drink their blood] [Cruel, with a slight lean towards Insane] 5: [shake your tiny fists at the screen in rage] [Aggressive] 6: [plainly and painfully remind that OP sucks for not having read the in-game documenta.. oh wait] [Honest] If, on the other hand, you're going to be cautious and assume the OP may have posted in good faith, and couldn't possibly have been aware of Petrify's side effects, you could : 1: [calmly explain that yes, this is cheesy because dat damage debuff bro] [Diplomatic] 2: [Lie] [congratulate the OP on his very very legitimate and entirely not cheesy kill] [Deceptive] 3: [point out that bug ticket #XYZ and duplicate #ZYX already mention Petrify having an unfortunate side effect, which QA couldn't replicate but are working on tirelessly all the same] [Rational] Have your fun picking, I know I had fun writing No hard feelings. 6. References [1] http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73572-bloody-slaughter-talent-few-questions-and-doubts/?p=1651956 [2] http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72852-spell-holding-on-items-natures-embrace/?p=1652679 Edit: As a side note and in the light of petrify applying a 400% damage debuff, I concede that, to my disappointment, this was a cheesy kill

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. Sadly the game's spell description and in-game help aren't exceedingly clear as to the effects of Petrify. From the game's notes, petrified targets take direct HP damage instead of endurance, and are obviously unable to act. Are there any other side effects from it ? Edit: To be more specific, are there any differences between paralyze and petrify ? Would have used a paralyze trap but none seems to exist, so I went for the next best thing. As far as I understand, the real difference is when your own party members get petrified, attacks target their HP directly making them more annoying if you try to avoid heavy rest cycles.

A simple matter of perspective, what's cheesiest : - 4 seconds worth of free time on a boss, including party movement time. or - people cleaning up the whole room of adds, before engaging the A.D herself ? Every single video, every single screenshot I've seen, people get there with maxed level 12 parties, enchants, potions and scrolls, cheese-clean the room, then get to aggro'ing the A.D, and resort to cheap Walls and Raw damage D.O.Ts to do the job. I'm kinda proud of my sub-level 12 hard mode encounter with the adds still alive.

I didn't know one could do that, on my first game

Matter of fact I got her down in my first playthrough without a petrify trap or spell. And no she wasn't that much harder. It is a matter of perspective, but I found Thaos much harder than the A.D.

That doesn't show that dw is good, only that petrify is good. You don't need dw to make it good. I should hope it doesn't show that DW is good, this is with 2H...

Ok so, remember how I suggested we move away from our DnD habits of very fast weapons inflicting flat damage bonii for sneak attacks, in favour of slower, 2-handed weapons that vanquished foes' DR ? Well here you go, Adra dragon down in 3 seconds flat, on Hard, with a level 11 party : http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77486-spoiler-master-below-down-in-3-seconds-no-cheese/

Ok so, this is too fun I had to capture the moment. Every last one of us remembers our first encounter with the Adra Dragon at level 15 of Od Nua. Take myself for example, my first playthrough was on hard with a DW rogue and I reached the dragon at level 9, my party consisting of the in-game companions got rek't in seconds flat. Since I do not have the spare time to run a full playthrough with every possible class, I've decided to run the one game with a custom party this time, see how far I get. First things first, if one plays on hard and thus allows themselves a bit of min-maxing, custom adventurers are so very superior to the built-in companions. Despite my lack of knowledge of classes other than the rogue, I've gone with the following, hopefully not too terrible party. I'm including the character names so you can correlate the combat log and see who did what damage, with what gear. - Eder 11 Fighter, main tank, gear doesn't matter he's here to delay - Maya 11 Monk, off-tank with maxed might, dex and con, 2x endurance draining fast weapons (exceptional, burning lash) - Solar 11 Barbarian, DW, 2x Edge of Reason and Resolution (exceptional, burning lash) - Alicia 11 PC Rogue, 2-handed spec, Tall Grass (exceptional, burning lash) main weapon, Blade of the Endless Paths for the dragon - Dhaos 11 Chanter, St. Garam's Spark (fine, shocking lash) - Leila 10 Priest, Good Friend (fine), cast prayer vs fear + Blessing + Dire Blessing , and that's all So how'd the fight go ? My 12 mechanics rogue laid down a Gaze of the Adragan trap prior to the engagement (after all, these traps have to see some use right ?). I moved Eder to initiate dialogue, picked the options which gave me dialogue rep increases 'cause I'm greedy with that, then engaged the dragon. I really thought my main tank was going to be of some use, so I had him run past the dragon, aggro him, turn him away from the party to avoid an instant wipe from the corrosive breath. Eder gets hit by a Wing Slam for 197 crush (16 DR) and goes down (221 endurance, guess he was hit a bit earlier as well). His Unbroken (1/rest revive with 50% endurance) kicks in and he comes back with roughly 110 endurance. Not to be disheartened, the dragon follows up a few seconds later with a Breath which hits Eder for 173 corrode (24 DR). It also had the good idea of taking down 3 Adragans in the process so who am I to complain ? Eder flops to the ground, and this time has the good sense of staying down. At this point the dragon is unharmed and relatively far from my trap (and the team), my MT is down, but at least that bought me time to get priest buffs up: - bless - dire blessing - prayer against fear I move my team a bit to leash the dragon to where I want him to walk, right on to the Gaze of the Adragan trap. The dragon triggers the trap, gets petrified for a whopping 4.3 seconds. Still, the goal was to petrify the dragon to at least lower his defenses a bit, get my team in a flanking position and try to burst him down (that's the point of a 2-handed rogue after all). But then, 4.3 seconds is a very short time to take away 477 HP from a 28DR beast. I take the shot, he's petrified, my MT is down and not getting up by any means, I decide to all-in. And that's right there, in the span of these precious seconds, that my team decides to land almost every hit and burst him down : 77 + 43 + 25 + 25 + 93 + 109 + 61 + 39 (total 472/477 , I can only assume the Threatening Presence from my barb, which took 1 CON away, lowered his HP incidentally). Take a good look at the log, I'm pretty proud of the graze for 93 damage. So here I am, game's paused, I need to clean up the adds but after the spanking the dragon got, they shouldn't be troubling overmuch. And you ? How'd you take revenge on the Adra Dragon after the inevitable beating you received on your very first try ?

Actually I am sorry Sking but cannot for the life of me figure out how to upload content (screenshots, saves) on the forums. I've uploaded the following save file : - Level 5 of Od Nua - 1 copy of Resolution in Alicia's (PC) inventory - 1 copy of Resolution in the Stash, page 2 The file is exactly 3138048 bytes and hashes thus : MD5 (poe_save_77337_double_resolution_sabre_patch103_20150412.tar) = fcb0be230d6e0cb10e663612ce197eab Edit: Additionally, please note I'm currently running 1.03 because for some reason, the Beta branch is not available to me here in France. I have taken the liberty of reporting in this new forum because I failed to see a bugfix for this in the 1.04b2 patch notes. Edit 2: I'm afraid I'm unsure as to when exactly the bug triggered, so I'm only assuming it is related to the statue. I cannot tell if the original Resolution was in my stash or in my inventory when I clicked the statue.

Description: There is an infinite Clever dialogue reputation exploit in Od Nua level 13. The Spirit is in the Easternmost small room with 2-3 traps and a normal + hidden containers, and can be talked to indefinitely. Speaking to the Spirit results in the following introductory text: "This hazy figure is tall and broad in frame" [...] The player is then offered the following dialogue options : 1: Hello? 2: Oh, good. More dead people. [clever] 3: [Leave]. The same kind of loop may be available on other NPCs. A possible fix would be to check that, for a given dialogue option, the Reputation has already been granted. That, or just ignore superbly, after all this breaks roleplay immersion but if people want to cheat a bit, it's their own savegame they're diminishing. Steps to Reproduce the Issue: 1/ Get to level 13 of Od Nua. 2/ Find the Spirit in the Easternmost small room. 3/ Initiate dialogue, press 2 to gain [Clever] rep, press 2 again to exit dialogue, click again on NPC without even moving your mouse 4/ Repeat I have gotten from 2 to 4 [Clever] rep in a minute or less, so this definitely is repeatable and not just the one time occurrence. Important Files: If the files are too large to attach separately, compile them all in a .zip and make a link to Dropbox with the .zip Attach files that will help the dev team figure out and resolve the issue. These include: Savegames Not applicable, reproducible on any save game. Output Log Not applicable. System Specs Not applicable. Screenshots Not applicable either.

Well it's very easy to compute isn't it ? +10% crit multiplier, assuming a 50% hit-crit rate, means 5% additional damage. +3 might is 9% additional damage. So that's your answer regarding rabbit gloves vs might gloves. Now on to the race, that depends on the rogue you're building. If you're building around the Tall Grass, as I currently am, you want to get more crits to : - proc Prone - set up your own SAs - set up your own Deathblows if the target is flanked Which translates into easier fights because of the CC, and in more damage obviously. 24 vs 21 might is a 9% difference in damage dealt. I prefer the 10% more crits plus CC and more deathblows.

I could be mistaken, but there is no way of proving this is a solo run. This is a solo boss kill, the whole run altogether is another matter. Regardless, it is still pretty impressive

Description: I just noticed now that I'm out of Od Nua to sell junk, I seem to have 2 copies of Resolution in my inventory. I'm quite sure this was supposed to be unique ? Sadly, I'm not sure at what point the 2nd copy popped up so I cannot test how to reproduce. I do know, however, that in my previous game the issue didn't occur. Differences from previous game : - currently on 1.03 , previous game was 1.02 - used the Resolution sabre on the statue in Od Nua level 3, opened the secret room, clicked on the statue to get my item back (I didn't know about this on my previous game, so I didn't run any of the steps then). Steps to Reproduce the Issue: Unsure, possibly grab the Sabre from level 4, place it in the statue at level 3, then take it back. Important Files: If the files are too large to attach separately, compile them all in a .zip and make a link to Dropbox with the .zip Attach files that will help the dev team figure out and resolve the issue. These include: Savegames I'm afraid I don't have a save before, I mostly use quicksaves now. Output Log Not applicable. System Specs Not applicable. Screenshots Not applicable either.

This resonates nicely with my post in the patch 1.03 thread where I argued that wizards were far from weak , when one compares them with IE games arcane spellcasters which can get gibbed by a goblin at level 1. The problem with a wizard is, sure, he has CC, but he can cast it X/rest. A Cipher has (arguably inferior) CC but he can spam it all day long. Unless you're willing to rest often, that's super annoying -.-