Superbosses on PotD

[Desmodeus]

So... how am I suppose to fight this guys? With custom companions? I barely can damage anyone before their damage output kills me. Even on lvl 20 with superb equipment

[Serg BlackStrider]

I took them all with Lifegiver/Ascendant MC, Eder(Swashbuckler), Xoti (SC Priest), Aloth (SC Wizard), Pallegina (Palladin/Chanter) on the first try each (after studying a lot of videos/this forum topics ofc). The main approach is to start the fight with Eder, then withdraw via Shadowing Beyond, MC apply Ancient Memory on Xoti who buff all (including BDD) and keep those buffs with Salvation of Time. Sigilmaster Auranic also need potions of spell deflection since one of her Sigils dispel all buffs with Arcane Cleanse.

Ancient Memory+BDD+Salvation of Time is a cheap trick ofc. but those megabosses are cheap cheaters themselves so...

Edited January 28, 2021 by Serg BlackStrider

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Desmodeus said:

So... how am I suppose to fight this guys? With custom companions? I barely can damage anyone before their damage output kills me. Even on lvl 20 with superb equipment

Now imagine solo with all god challenges activated.

It's a lot easier if you know the "tricks" with each Megaboss. Also all kinds of cheese make it a lot easier obviously. Like: pausing and switching from Lethandria's Devotion to another weapon setup... and then back and forth and back and forth: you will heal from the Pale Light with every switch even during pause - so after several switches your party is healed up again. Costs nothing...
Or using Strand of Favor (unequip/equpi/unequip etc.) to prolong stuff like Blade Cascade until the end of the world as we know it.
Or using the good old Gouging Strike or Brand Enemy or Lover's Embrace. 
Using Salvation of Time + Barring Death's Door + Brilliant or Wall of Draining + Brilliant (or Blood Sacrifice). All that duration-bending stuff. 

If you want to do it "rightly" without too much cheese then refreshing resources that are not tied to anything like dealing/receiving damage are a BIG plus. For example Psion and Chanter do get resources just from waiting which is very good in those tough boss fights. Especially Psion with Ancient Memory is a great thing to have because he can turn others into resource refreshers, too. If you have passive healing (e.g. from a Herald with Exalted Endurance + Ancient Memory and some regeneration gear) then also a Bloodmage has kind of unlimited resources - as does a traditional Monk (I mean non-Shattered Pillar and -Forbidden Fist). A Paladin with Divine Retribution + a Chanter (preferably Beckoner or Troubadour) with summons (preferably Ancient Brittle Bones + Many Lives Pass by) will also have unlimited Zeal because Divine Retribution grants +2 Zeal for every killed summon - and those die really quickly against most megabosses. 

It's also all doable with the official companions though. It's just a real drag. Imo Megabosses are not worth the hassle at all.  

Edited January 28, 2021 by Boeroer

[thelee]

it's best not to think of megabosses as normal fights, but puzzles to be solved.

if you go in using all of your standard tricks, you are pretty much going to be roflstomped into the ground. even with all mythic gear somehow.

there's probably a lot of resources out there, but rather than regurgitate myself or other people, you might want to take a read through this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/megabosses

 

the good news is that 3/4 megabosses are very possible with a wide variety of character builds and party setups (sigilmaster auranic is pretty rigid in how you take the fight imo). Having someone with regenerating resources as boeroer suggests is very good, but you can also sub in a brilliant inspiration source somewhere. (loooong time ago i did the fights without resource regeneration and it frankly isn't worth the time versus having a chanter, cipher, monk, blood mage, and/or a source of brilliant)

Edited January 28, 2021 by thelee

[Not So Clever Hound]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Imo Megabosses are not worth the hassle at all.  

Completely agree, just finish them once if you fancy and then do move on .

Those fights are about intricate, borderline absurd meta/power-playing strategies against absurd hit-sinks (like heatsinks but with hitpoints), though they are still entertaining to finish at least once.

If you run out of ideas I recently compiled a few lines on how to take every one of them down with (relatively) no stress on solo PotD in this thread. With a SC Bloodmage. There are many more noble ways to deal with them if you want on this forum and youtube. Honestly, if you want Dorudugan's hide badly... just use True Lover Kiss. It's weird, but again it solves an absurd fight in the most fittingly absurd way: arguably the sturdiest, most gigantic and least forgiving opponent can be eliminated with one sloppy poke of a tiny dagger. Go figure!  

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Desmodeus]

As far as I understand I need to kill them at least once to max out all Berath blessings points... Or not?

[Not So Clever Hound]

Nope, you don't get any achievement. You get some trinkets (not very useful) and mythical adra stones to further upgrade your weapons to mythic lvl. Megabosses are purely optional.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Desmodeus]

Hmm maybe then it doesn't worth to waste time on it right now. On second run with Berath goodies it might become easier

[Not So Clever Hound]

It is nice indeed to come back to it in a second playthrough with a different and/or fully optimized character. Gives you something to look forward to - at least that's how I did it  . In order to unlock all 105 points of BB, there are a couple posts lying around on the internet that compile them and how-to's. There are two that are a bit time consuming IMO: getting to survive a mutiny, and an achievement from the SSS DLC (Archivist of Kazuwari) if I recall correctly. Overall though, most achievements get unlocked pretty naturally in a full playthrough.

[danielbda]

I'd say none of them are cheap except for Dorudugan, but the Blob also required infinite resources.

A way to give brilliant to your Priest is a must. The easiest method using only companions is to bring Seraphen along and cast Ancestor's memory on Xoti, then you can keep using Salvation of Time to keep the buff forever.

For Belranga you'll need a good tank and everyone eat shark soups. The way I did was to keep distracting her with summons and attack when her deflection is very low and abuse on crit effects like knockdown and paralyze.

For Silgilmaster you'll need everyone to eat Captain's banquet and someone with Llengrath's reflection and maelstrom scrolls to destroys the sigils quickly. After the lightning and Chaotic orb ones are destroyed, it is an easy fight.

For the blob just bring Seraphen or your Cipher MC and use the Ancestor Memory + SoT combo, keep everyone together using ranged weapons and constantly healing. Then when it is at very low health cast every accuracy buff you have and empower Disintegrate against it, and it will not split.

Dorudugan is stupid. I hate it, there is no way to kill him legit. Just use Ancestor's memory + SoT then can BDD on a frontliner using Scordeo's edge and keep using SoT when the zero recovery triggers. The most boring fight in the game. Also, your frontliner need to have at least one injury and be using Rekvu's Helmet which makes you immune to interrupt. To get an injury without hurting yourself, go to the Outcast's Respite and drink from magic water.

Edited February 2, 2021 by danielbda

[Constentin Lévine]

For the blob I've seen a youtube video of Thelee who constantly interupt him, very nice exploitation of some game mechanics to control him, I mean it is just like blob was always paralized.

[thelee]

18 hours ago, danielbda said:

Dorudugan is stupid. I hate it, there is no way to kill him legit.

there are some ways to kill dorudugan legit (i assume means no brilliant shenanigans). here's a few (i've done the first two myself) -

- for any party, you can just use Grog and lots of scepters (plus eccea's* and essence). Grog means your tank can run out of melee attack/cleave range without getting hit (dorudugan will miss with "out of range"). Do that for half an hour. You'll need some sources of immune to push/pull or withdrawal or invisibility to avoid dorudugan's magnetic overdrive for squishier characters (since you can't afford a knockout) - a priest or some potions of refuge and scrolls of withdrawal are good.

- for a party with a sc chanter, use the dragon summon to tank dorudugan and everyone else uses scepters (plus eccea's* and essence). The dragon is immune to fire and is so big your party can just hide behind him and the dragon will body-block and prevent your characters from being sucked in by magnetic overdrive. The dragon has *sooooo* much health that you can just re-summon him and get 100% uptime.

- a long time ago, someone stacked enough AR to straight-up face tank dorudugan. you'd need 21 crush AR on potd to get dorudugan to -75% pen. off the top of my head, i'm not quite sure how they did that though i think mythic brigandine plus several stacks of potions of spirit shield plus paladin stoic shield and inspired defense would get you quite a bit (14 + 3 + 3 + 1 => 20). a stalker/paladin or an unbroken/paladin and/or ngati's girdle and/or the maker's own power for an additional +1. best would probably be stalker/paladin or unbroken/paladin** so that you can leave belt slot open for using undying burden (increasing weapon damage reduction as health lost, typically -10% to -20% at "safe" health levels); plus refusal on claim/refusal would get you further damage reduction (-10%). the plus side to this approach is that you can always just hire this hireling just for dorudugan (though they'd be at level 19 unless you saved some XP for them before dorudugan).

 

* eccea's enchanted to legendary and upgraded with elemental shot: frost and fractured bullet, wielded single-weapon style with weapon modal and imbued ammunition active is A+ dorudugan weapon.

edit - ** now that i'm thinking about it more, the person might have done it not-on-potd, before veteran got buffed to also given enemies +1 AR. I still think it's do-able in a post-5.0 world with this approach. a stalker/paladin could use beast's claw on vessels beforehand to get +20 all defenses to vessels (in addition to the +5 stalker deflection, up to +15 deep faith) as well as a tough medium shield with the shield modal on (since IIRC dorudugan's attacks count as weapons so you have a 30% resist chance taht way). lethandria's devotion is probably ideal because of the regen. (though with sufficient defenses, a large shield yields superior returns than 30% resist so maybe cadhu scalth or bronlar's phalanx) 

Edited February 2, 2021 by thelee

[thelee]

18 hours ago, danielbda said:

the Blob also required infinite resources.

xbows and arbalest proficiency are your friend. if beating it without disintegrate, once you get past HoW's first form, the deflection on the oozes is low enough that it's pretty easy to hit/graze at near 100% with only minor metagaming. (and in the first form you save a lot of stress with periodic interrupts even with HoW's higher defenses) You have to micromanage a bit to make sure you're properly interrupting the oozes, but HoW can be pretty flexible in how you take it.

Edited February 2, 2021 by thelee

[danielbda]

21 minutes ago, thelee said:

there are some ways to kill dorudugan legit (i assume means no brilliant shenanigans). here's a few (i've done the first two myself) -

- for any party, you can just use Grog and lots of scepters (plus eccea's* and essence). Grog means your tank can run out of melee attack/cleave range without getting hit (dorudugan will miss with "out of range"). Do that for half an hour. You'll need some sources of immune to push/pull or withdrawal or invisibility to avoid dorudugan's magnetic overdrive for squishier characters (since you can't afford a knockout) - a priest or some potions of refuge and scrolls of withdrawal are good.

- for a party with a sc chanter, use the dragon summon to tank dorudugan and everyone else uses scepters (plus eccea's* and essence). The dragon is immune to fire and is so big your party can just hide behind him and the dragon will body-block and prevent your characters from being sucked in by magnetic overdrive. The dragon has *sooooo* much health that you can just re-summon him and get 100% uptime.

- a long time ago, someone stacked enough AR to straight-up face tank dorudugan. you'd need 21 crush AR on potd to get dorudugan to -75% pen. off the top of my head, i'm not quite sure how they did that though i think mythic brigandine plus several stacks of potions of spirit shield plus paladin stoic shield and inspired defense would get you quite a bit (14 + 3 + 3 + 1 => 20). a stalker/paladin or an unbroken/paladin and/or ngati's girdle and/or the maker's own power for an additional +1. best would probably be stalker/paladin or unbroken/paladin** so that you can leave belt slot open for using undying burden (increasing weapon damage reduction as health lost, typically -10% to -20% at "safe" health levels); plus refusal on claim/refusal would get you further damage reduction (-10%). the plus side to this approach is that you can always just hire this hireling just for dorudugan (though they'd be at level 19 unless you saved some XP for them before dorudugan).

 

* eccea's enchanted to legendary and upgraded with elemental shot: frost and fractured bullet, wielded single-weapon style with weapon modal and imbued ammunition active is A+ dorudugan weapon.

edit - ** now that i'm thinking about it more, the person might have done it not-on-potd, before veteran got buffed to also given enemies +1 AR. I still think it's do-able in a post-5.0 world with this approach. a stalker/paladin could use beast's claw on vessels beforehand to get +20 all defenses to vessels (in addition to the +5 stalker deflection, up to +15 deep faith) as well as a tough medium shield with the shield modal on (since IIRC dorudugan's attacks count as weapons so you have a 30% resist chance taht way). lethandria's devotion is probably ideal because of the regen. (though with sufficient defenses, a large shield yields superior returns than 30% resist so maybe cadhu scalth or bronlar's phalanx) 

Yeah maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm talking legit without the fight lasting for half an hour+ with Grog and hit n run. It aint. fun anyways, this way or in 2 minutes using Scordeo's Edge

[thelee]

Just now, danielbda said:

It aint. fun

lol yeah

if dorudugan had like half the health it would be less of an ordeal. dorudugan pretty much demands cheese for anyone whose time has any worth

[Boeroer]

Why Grog if you can use Nomad's Brigandine? That knockout = kill is pretty harsh.

[thelee]

5 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Why Grog if you can use Nomad's Brigandine? That knockout = kill is pretty harsh.

it's for everyone. magnetic overdrive can be pretty brutal. (example: magnetic overdrive sucks in some people, your squishies get hit by the fire explosion, then they get engaged, and then dorudugan turns around and whacks them out.)

also, i'm much better at avoiding getting knocked out with grog than avoiding engagement with my entire party. in some party setups, i can get better dps with additional melee folks (e.g. reaping knives or animancer's saber) and grog helps protect them, too.

Edited February 2, 2021 by thelee