[3.1] Hanging Sepulcher Enemies

[Olmek]

Running the beta patch. Quest called "Eulogy for the Dead" displays no extra difficulty in quest log.

However, the enemies in the Hanging Sepulchers are all 'red/three skull' difficulty. I believe this is a bug. I attached a relevant save.

[SChin]

Hello Olmek,

 

I'm sorry for the difference in difficulty level in the Hanging Sepulchers.  I don't see an attached save file to the forum post, however.  Would you be able to send it to me at support@obsidian.net along with your forum user name and a link to this thread as a reference?

 

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

[Frak]

At player level 8-10, the risen skeletons are 3+ (red skulls) levels above. The quest log shows it as fitting for that player level, yet it is not doable. The quest log for that quest needs a fix ;-)

[CooldadTx]

I'm having the same issue. This quest is beyond overpowered. I was level 7 with 6 characters when I started this quest. The quest says it is at or below my level. Yet in the second area you encounter 2 mages, 1 priest, 1 champion, and at 3 least fighters. Every single one of them are 3 red skulls. Only 1 is active when you enter the room but they all immediately activate when you're spotted so you cannot sneak past.  After that you have a couple of rounds at most before they wipe out your entire party. 

 

I had all my characters pound on the mage, I had set down 3 traps before hand, set up a healing aura and set flame wall and every single enemy walked right through it with not even a hint of damage. By round 3 all but 2 of my characters were dead and the mage was still at least at 1/3 health. 

 

How is this quest remotely at or below a 7th level party??

 

TBH I see the same problem with other quests as well. It's like the "difficulty" is some made up value while the enemies scale. I had to forego the "Family Pride" quest which is also at or below my level because I'm in a situation where I cannot complete it without a fight because I failed to do X at some arbitrary time earlier in the quest and now a fight is inevitable. Yet every enemy there is red skulls.

[Volsalex]

What difficulty are you playing on?

 

If it is PoTD, it looks like this zone has been affected by the 3.1 PoTD difficulty change. Before it, I had a run through this zone and as far as I can remember risen creatures had 1-2 skulls (+1-2 lvl) for my lvl 8 party. If my suspicion is correct, they could just forget to update the quest level restriction/description.

 

However, it is still possible to finish this quest at lvl 7-8, there are several tips how to fight enemies in Hanging Sepulchers that might be useful:

- Don't use weapons/spells with piercing damage, all risen creatures are immune to it. Blunt damage weapons (scepters for ranged chars, maces/warhammers for one-handed melee chars, morningstars for two-handed) should be quite effective against them.

- Use weapons/abilities with high penetration as risen fighters and especially champions have high Armor Rating, even more on PoTD difficulty. The weapons mentioned above all have both decent Penetration and 1-2 damage types including Blunt damage.

- In a fight where tons of small skeletons appear, consider using heal-on-kill pets (like Abraham) and spells (like Crusader's Triumph), they will provide a big amount of healing that can help survive high ST damage from risen fighters/rogues and AoE damage from risen mages

- In a fight with traps there are small passages which you could block with your melees/summons to keep ranged characters relatively safe and place the fire wall before them so that enemy melee fighers will have to stand right on it to deal damage

- In a fight with Dargules/Rotghasts, focus the Dargules first as their vampirism is very irritating and can be hard to overwhelm when your party is out of ability charges. Your tank could also get abducted by a Wraith so having additional melee off-tanks or summoning creatures right at the beginning of combat to keep enemy melees busy is recommended.

- Consider using characters that can summon controllable summons (like Pallegina specced into Herald class). You can use your summons to fight enemy mages in melee, then they usually stop annihilating your party with AoEs and start using protective spells/ST damage spells and become much less a threat. These summons can also be used to distract enemy melee fighters from your tank(s), so it is easier to keep him(them) alive.

- If you have Serafen specced into Cipher/Witch in your party, consider using Puppet Master, especially on enemy mages/priests. This can completely change the pace of battles as priests won't save/heal enemies, mages won't harm your party with their Arcane Dampeners,etc. If the enemy's Will is too high, you can greatly reduce it with his auto-learned Tenuous Grasp spell at first. Its cost is low, duration is decent, so even its graze can be sufficient to use Pupper Master successfully.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Volsalex

[CosmicTheComic]

The hardest part is the south-east corner which has 7 or so high level enemies close enough to join the fight. It's much easier if you Sneak from the North just near enough for one of them to spot you and then retreat as far as you can, then kill just the one or two that follow. You can also use wall spells to slow down the last pursuers while you beat up the first ones.

For the crypt in the far west area, I was able to sneak in and get the tablet without fighting at all.