Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?

[Shai Hulud]

Here is a helfire barrage where I grouped all three weapons to get multiple times. The weapons are hit by a first explosion which does 252 / 295 / 183 crit/crit/hit, which kills one of the weapons. The next explosion kills the remaining two with 324 / 323 crit / crit. 

Dorudugan grazes himself three times and hits himself for 27, 30, 38, and 29 damage, all of which he receives in healing for 124 healing. He *should* receive (252+295+183+324+324)*.3 = 413 damage for total damage minus healing of 289. A small sliver of his health but not too shabby, it's decent damage output that eventually would kill him. And it cost me 7 phrases, 90 focus, all my summons, and some health to set this up so that seems like a fair return. 

Instead he only procs 76 damage from the first pain-linked hit (the 252 damage) and heals himself for 124, so yeah. This would go on forever.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Elric Galad]

5 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Can't test everything but based on my smallish sample it looks like

1) Pain Link does not proc at all if target dies
2) Pain Link DOTs do not proc damage at all
3) Pain Link AOEs proc only the first hit

That's good (and sad) findings, but unfortunately this is about the harcoded part of the effect. Not something that could be addressed by tweaking Gamedata.

[Shai Hulud]

7 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

That's good (and sad) findings, but unfortunately this is about the harcoded part of the effect. Not something that could be addressed by tweaking Gamedata.

Yes that is indeed unfortunate. The ability is not nearly as useful as it should be. What can be done, just adjusting the damage, duration, cast time, and recovery? None of that really would help besides damage. Improving the damage would be better than nothing because as is Pain LInk is kind of useless outside exactly seer, spiritualist, and maybe hierophant with intense micromanagement (like manually engaging / disengaging each summon to proc weapons attacks that actually return damage correctly). I think even if the return damage were like 66% it wouldn't change most builds because it rarely makes sense to cast pain link on yourself and facetank for retaliation damage given tough enemies tend to have vastly more health. But certain builds would be a little unbalanced (seer) and self-cast retaliation may be viable in encounters where you face lots of low level enemies like ship combat.

BTW how hard is it to modify deadfire gamedata files? I'd like to look into some of these things myself. I've made minor game modifications before but if it requires anything beyond VERY simple programming it's likely beyond me.

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

Yes that is indeed unfortunate. The ability is not nearly as useful as it should be. What can be done, just adjusting the damage, duration, cast time, and recovery? None of that really would help besides damage. Improving the damage would be better than nothing because as is Pain LInk is kind of useless outside exactly seer, spiritualist, and maybe hierophant with intense micromanagement (like manually engaging / disengaging each summon to proc weapons attacks that actually return damage correctly). I think even if the return damage were like 66% it wouldn't change most builds because it rarely makes sense to cast pain link on yourself and facetank for retaliation damage given tough enemies tend to have vastly more health. But certain builds would be a little unbalanced (seer) and self-cast retaliation may be viable in encounters where you face lots of low level enemies like ship combat.

BTW how hard is it to modify deadfire gamedata files? I'd like to look into some of these things myself. I've made minor game modifications before but if it requires anything beyond VERY simple programming it's likely beyond me.

@Noqnhas actually made a tool to simplify the gamedata files edition. Look in the modder subforum. 

[Boeroer]

22 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Lover's Embrace is not massive cheese?

Of course not, at least for me. As Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy, True Love's Kiss works exactly as intended by the developer. It's not a weird side effect that can be used to your advantage which the designer didn't see coming (see Strand of Favor etc al., endless use of Bounding Boots, persistent Draining Touch, stacking Beast's Claw into heaven by save/reload, stacking food bonuses with save/reload, permanently stealing free spells with Grimoire Imprint and so on and so forth). 

Imo there's no difference in the level of "cheesyness" between applying a nerverending DoT and then hide vs. hiding and then sending a neverending stream of damage (summons). In both cases it's just having a source of damage that won't run dry while staying untouchable at the same time.

[Shai Hulud]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Of course not, at least for me. As Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy, True Love's Kiss works exactly as intended by the developer. It's not a weird side effect that can be used to your advantage which the designer didn't see coming (see Strand of Favor etc al., endless use of Bounding Boots, persistent Draining Touch, stacking Beast's Claw into heaven by save/reload, stacking food bonuses with save/reload, permanently stealing free spells with Grimoire Imprint and so on and so forth). 

Imo there's no difference in the level of "cheesyness" between applying a nerverending DoT and then hide vs. hiding and then sending a neverending stream of damage (summons). In both cases it's just having a source of damage that won't run dry while staying untouchable at the same time.

Brand Enemy and Gouging Strike can also be abused. Endless use of Bounding Boots is incredibly minor. Lets you use a useful ability twice per encounter instead of four times (two per boot) per rest. Would not be remotely game-breaking if the boots were written that way. Rakhan Field Boots have a similar 1/encounter movement plus corrode resistance. I don't see much difference. And for most players there really is no difference between 2/encounter or 4/rest. This only becomes important on woedica+eothas runs and even then I probably used leap like 10 times instead of 4. Stabbing a boss and hiding and coming back hours later OTOH circumvents the entire challenge of the battle. I don't think developers expected people would actually use the dagger that way even if that is the intended mechanic. In a typical battle you're fighting a dozen smaller things and stabbing one from stealth with constant damage doesn't affect the outcome that much. But in megaboss fights that's rather different. 

I don't really advocate hiding and sending in endless summons forever either but there is a difference in that that requires some active engagement by the user, plus at least some strategy in which summons to send plus building the character etc. You can script the summons and even spells to cast on them but typically if you're standing close enough for the script to be effective you are in danger of being hit (not in all cases admittedly). I don't think you can do this on Dorudugan map for example. I'm hiding in the picture because I was trying to proc something specific for the screenshot but I still got hit by the helfire barrage. Most fights it is better to come out of stealth at some point anyway so you can do direct attacks. This includes vs. Dorodugan. Especially vs. him. It is much easier to avoid Helfire Barrage if you're unstealthed. And if you watch Pale Shelter's battle with Dorodugan he doesn't just send in summons. That tactic isn't super effective by itself. Most of the damage he does comes from direct attacks and conduit's massive shock bonus. 

On the other hand I really don't care what tactics people use and I've used epic levels of cheese in previous runs including SOF, grimoire imprints, etc. But this time I'm trying to solve encounters without for the challenge. I just find it funny that that tactic is considered somehow legitimate but of all things Bounding Boots is not. I mean Wall of Draining, Salvation of Time, Shroud of the Phantasm, Scordeo's Edge Blade Cascade etc. all work as intended in vanilla but can be used to make yourself completely invulnerable with no recovery and limitless resources, whereas Bounding Boots let you use a movement ability twice per encounter, so how the developers wrote things isn't really the yardstick I'd use. It's more about whether your tactics circumvent all challenge. Imprinting specific spells is at least somewhat challenging, particularly with BPM nerfs to blood sacrifice. But...yeah once you get the right spells the challenge falls off dramatically (though doesn't disappear, so I'd still rank that as less cheesy than TLK).

Anyway this just shows how subjective the concept of cheese is and why it isn't a very useful metric, but for me True Love's Kiss falls outside the scope of what I'm trying to do at the moment. 

But what I'm trying to do at the moment may be nearly impossible so I'll hold True Love's Kiss in reserve if I can't figure anything else out. I haven't found a build yet that can solo all the megabosses in BPM with triple crown solo + god challenges. HOW and to a lesser extent Dorodugan are the sticking points. Spiritualist could do it if Pain Link worked correctly. Can maybe do it anyway but Dorodugan will take absolutely ages of tediousness. In BPM a lot of the strong classes like blood mage, tactician, priest were nerfed pretty hard, but chanter/cipher not at all so that one is still pretty strong and only suffers from the general nerfs like lack of SOF.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Boeroer]

20 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Endless use of Bounding Boots is incredibly minor. Lets you use a useful ability twice per encounter instead of four times (two per boot) per rest. Would not be remotely game-breaking if the boots were written that way.   

Then you haven't understood how to "properly abuse" Bounding Boots. If you cancel the leap action before landing, it won't deplete a per/rest use - but you will still land at the target location (without the noise and the dazing effect) and have 0 recovery. This makes solo runs a lot easier because you can sneak everywhere without any points in stealth and cover a lot of ground in an instant. You can loot all containers even if guards stand next to them because if you jump in from stealth the detection will only start once you truly land. But if you cancel in the air (while the target circle is already showing up at the destination) and immediately clock on the container you can loot without getting detected. There's also enough time to jump back out again (unless you toich the guard, that will break stealth immediately). It also allows to flee from all sorts of problems at any time, even of you are stuck or otherwise can't run away (disengagement, blocked path etc.). Very useful to reach the backline, kill some threats, jump to another high prio target and so on. Unlimited tikes per encounter. Is is less reliable in Ultimate runs because you cannot pause the game which help a lot with the timing (when to cancel). But even with the slowest combat setting one can manage with some practice (without pause). But it's def. a lot more hassle so I guess that's why it isn't that popular. 

Anyway, for me cheese is to use something to your advantage which the developers clearly didn't foresee and intend. True Love's Kiss, Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy all work as designed and thus cannot be considered cheese. They can be very potent with the right setup and in the right situations, but at least you buy that potency with a lot of idle time. Same with sending summons from a save space. Takes forever but will surely lead to success (unless the enemy needs some special treatment: see Huani OW for example). 

Stuff like prolonging buffs indefinitely with Strand of Favor etc. - that's extremely cheesy in my book. Stealing free spells with Grimoire Imprint: also extr. cheesy. Using Bounding Boots as I described: cheesy, but not as wild as the stuff above. Endless DoTs: not cheesy. Just imbalanced if solo and combined with invisibility. A very long duration (that would suffice for any encounter with a full party but run out in very long solo fights) instead of and endless one might have been better. Bit it's still is no abuse of an unintended effect. 

With the same line of argumentation I would also say that Salvation of Time + Brilliant or Blood Mage + Wall of Draining are not really cheese. Just like endless DoTs and endless summons they are just too imbalanced for some situations (mostly solo runs imo). 

Edited February 5, 2023 by Boeroer
Typo

[Boeroer]

HOW is real. easy with Disintegrate. If it dies while Disintegrate is active it will not split and the fight is over. Doru can be done with endless summons, even if it takes ages. Maybe Troubadour/Psion is the way to go, but I haven't tried BPM for such things so I can't be sure. But a Troubadour/Psion can also use an Arbalest+modal or Crossbow+modal with good speed (thanks to Sure-Handed Ila's double reduction for reloading weapons) and that would help against merging, too (if the Disintegrate fails for example). 

Edited February 5, 2023 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

HOW is real. easy with Disintegrate. If it dies while Disintegrate is active it will not split and the fight is over. Doru can be done with endless summons, even if it takes ages. Maybe Troubadour/Psion is the way to go, but to haven't tried BPM for such things so I can't be sure. But a Troubadour/Psion can also use an Arbalest+modal or Crossbow+modal with good speed (thanks to Sure-Handed Ila's double reduction for reloading weapons) and that would help against merging, too (of the Disintegrate fails for example). 

Oh wow I thought you meant when you have two pairs of bounding boots you can put one in your stash and it refreshes the per / rest. Actually applies to all similar items like stone of power. Was thinking "that is really minor". But yeah the ability to zip around in stealth would save a lot of time if nothing else. Wish I'd known about that, would have knocked off about 10 hours from my ultimate run probably. I think you're conflating "cheese" with "exploit" though when traditionally cheese just means any easy and broken tactic. Killing megabosses with Sworn Enemy is not an exploit but it is definitely an abusive mechanic. And while the individual mechanics of blade cascade, wall of draining, salvation of time, brilliant, potions of final stand / barring death's door are fine, I don't think devs foresaw that combining them could make you permanently unkillable without recovery. But enough about that...

Yes I easily killed HOW first attempt with troubadour / psion. I think I can probably do it with a lot of cipher / x classes, though some of them have trouble with other megabosses like Dorudugan. If I had the arbalest Mechanical Marvel with its weapon modal I think I could do that fight with a lot of builds because as you say arbalests prone and that one shoots three projectiles in a line so one char can hard CC multiple oozes. May be able to do that with Scourge of Bezzelo also, haven't tried it. But Mechanical Marvel is hard to get with Eothas and weapons in general are problematic in long fights with Abydon. They get damaged after a mere 30 uses and break at 60. If I had BOTH Scourge of Bezzelo and Mechanical Marvel I could maybe do it before they both broke, but I'd still need to use something else on HOW form like fists.

I am skeptical Dorudugan can be killed with chanter summons without other tactics. Not in the way you mean, analogous to TLK like stealthing and scripting endless summons and then go afk. Helfire barrage and helfire heal him for too much and none of the summons besides the will o wisps do any damage but they get killed super fast. It took me over an hour in fast mode with summons and shooting him with a high damage bow. Like 99% of the damage was me and checking the records before and after the fight I did over 25000 damage, so he healed for like 18k. I don't think summons can outpace that without other tactics. I could be wrong, but I'm not going to test something that if it worked would take a day. The thing about TLK is he doesn't then use helfire barrage to heal himself, so the little damage ticks accumulate and he eventually dies. But with summons he will target them and end up healing himself more than they damage him.

I just killed him with a Devoted / Troubadour using Essence Interrupter but I had to turn off Abydon, my weapons would have broken before he was even injured. Interesting thing about Devoted the bonuses apply to fists if you take monastic unarmed training and you can get enough PEN to damage him with crushing attacks that way, particularly with devoted/troubadour since with high INT you can easily both keep up Energized the whole fight and keep a constant stream of summons to draw his attacks. But it is easier to stack ranged accuracy than unarmed, and up close it is much easier for him to kill you (wearing the rekvu's scorched cloak helps), so I think it is doable but harder. That build will have more trouble with HOW though, but can attack very fast with hunting bow modal + Sure-handed ila. I'll try it on HOW it may be doable especially if I had a few arbalests with quick switch, then can just punch them when not trying to merge. Also devoted can have pretty significant hit to crit with Disciplined Strikes plus Uncanny Luck plus Power of Money, and Energized interrupts on crit.

It is best to be unarmed or use summoned weapons because of abydon's challenge so blood mage is also appealing but SC has problems sustaining healing and interrupting HOW by itself (I can't figure it out in BPM), but I am thinking maybe a blood mage / devoted (specialty pike) could do it. A blood mage / troubadour could also do HOW with citzal's + energized but troubadour doesn't have as much healing as fighters.

I haven't tried to fight the other megabosses but I think HOW and Doru are probably hardest so if I can take them with a given build then I will try it on the others

[Elric Galad]

In case you want to try the new version of Blood Sacrifice (the proper description works with the complete mod, but isn't included in this particular file)

cl.wizard.blood_sacrifice.gamedatabundle.zip@Shai Hulud

[Shai Hulud]

I've defeated all the megabosses with a variety of builds, but some still have trouble with HOW and Dorudugan. These two are sticking points for some really nice builds. 

Like for non-ciphers and non-SC monk, Hauni O Whe seems relatively impossible, though I did manage to defeat it using a forbidden fist / barbarian. The plan was initially to use interrupting blows, but the carnage circles aren't big enough for the gigantic ooze phase. What I ended up doing was using Dichotomous Souls to pull one gigantic ooze to the northeast corner and the other to the southwest corner. Eventually they stopped trying to move towards each other. 

So...theoretically any class with summons should be able to do this encounter. 

But that still leaves plenty of builds that are great at everything else but can't do HOW. Like a fighter/barbarian build I am working on. I had the thought to use Call the Restless on Charm of Bones to separate the oozes, and it sort of works, but as soon as they're killed or the duration expires, they head back towards each other. I'm not sure how you get them to stop moving back towards each other and now feel my success with the dichotomous souls may have been a fluke. And unlike with dichotomous souls I can't keep retrying if they go back to HOW form, I just have 10 casts. I guess I could supplement this with trinkets that summon things for 11 casts. Can get 12 with Living Illusions, and that one is an actual duplicate like the phantoms.

I've also noticed there are various brambles on the map that can possibly block the ooze's AI when trying to merge but haven't had success using the terrain to my advantage. My one success with the summons seemed kind of random, I just kept trying it and eventually they stopped trying to merge. 

Tricky tricky...any other ideas how a brute can defeat HOW? 

-------

I had another idea to use the war hammer "Last Word" since it has a fairly long duration of 3s on blocking active abilities, and theoretically I could alternate attacking the two gigantic oozes, but the hammer doesn't seem to actually do anything...not to the oozes at least. 

------

I managed to kill off one gigantic ooze once. I guess the "good" thing about this fight is in an iron run I have basically infinite tries as long as I'm using fists or generic weapons. I don't know why but the vessel summons don't seem to keep the oozes in place like the phantoms do. Some of them do, like the risen soldier or steelspine warrior but some don't have engagement at all. The AI is pretty reluctant to break engagement, I figure that's why the dichotomous souls work better because the AI has to eat 2 disengagement attacks...

Anyway, the only "strategy" I have so far is getting both gigantic oozes across from each other with me in the middle, with hold the line talent, so I can engage both of them. This way they occasionally eat disengagement attacks, which since I'm always energized can interrupt them. Anyway, I'm dual-wielding rapiers with the +20 accuracy modal on. It adds 50% recovery time, but dual wielding subtracts more than that and nets slightly better accuracy and action speed than wielding one rapier without the modal. So I poke one ooze, interrupt it, poke the other ooze, interrupt it, repeat 50 times. My attack modifier is as high as it will get with this build, like +80ish but still I have to get pretty lucky to actually manage to take one down with this tactic as I only need to not crit once or twice and they merge. The time I did kill the gigantic ooze, I forgot that the massive oozes start merging sooner and wasted an attack, and by then it was really too late. There must be some way to separate them using summons from items and / or the terrain but I haven't figured out a way where they don't come oozing back when the summon dies. Oddly, with the soul mirrors one ooze was content to just sit there on the other side of the screen at some point...

Might be time to break out the scrolls of tornado, which are pretty busted in BPM IMO. 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Might be time to break out the scrolls of tornado, which are pretty busted in BPM IMO. 

It might not be entirely wrong if BPM Scrolls of Tornado provided a viable solution to beat HoW avaiable for all classes.

Granted you need to dedicate a fair number of stacks to them, and having scolls of Meteor Shower along might be more efficient to hasten the risky phase, because of its extremely high damages.

Also beware that Tornado targets Fortitude (Gigantic Black Ooze has 142+15 Fort in PotD...)

[Kaylon]

Any class using Mechanical Marvel with modal activated and stacked speed/recovery reduction from items can interrupt the gigantic/massive oozes. Any class can also kill the first form using Lover's Embrace and a potion of invisibility. Massive, greater and lesser oozes can be killed/interrupted using scrolls of Tornado. The difficult thing is to deal with the two massive oozes while wearing light armor. 

[Shai Hulud]

12 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Any class using Mechanical Marvel with modal activated and stacked speed/recovery reduction from items can interrupt the gigantic/massive oozes. Any class can also kill the first form using Lover's Embrace and a potion of invisibility. Massive, greater and lesser oozes can be killed/interrupted using scrolls of Tornado. The difficult thing is to deal with the two massive oozes while wearing light armor. 

This build can survive indefinitely without armor. Can try Mechanical Marvel, but getting it requires odd pathing and going through the survivor's trial which also forces a rest, so I prefer a solution without it. I guess that leaves tornadoes since they won't stay separated once the vessels die.

12 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

It might not be entirely wrong if BPM Scrolls of Tornado provided a viable solution to beat HoW avaiable for all classes.

Granted you need to dedicate a fair number of stacks to them, and having scolls of Meteor Shower along might be more efficient to hasten the risky phase, because of its extremely high damages.

Also beware that Tornado targets Fortitude (Gigantic Black Ooze has 142+15 Fort in PotD...)

Right. My weapon accuracy is extremely high (186 v deflection, plus power of money, plus uncanny luck, plus intuitive) and interrupts on crit, which rolls twice, so with cap of the laughingstock I roll 186 v 94 and crit 93% of the time (but it rolls twice with carnage, however carnage roll is a bit lower) so rolling twice I crit probably about 98%.  When dual-wielding it is more like 90 to 95 percent. My accuracy vs. fort with tornado is just 122 (perception doesn't apply to scrolls I guess), but I think the hit to crit things still function, and it interrupts on graze, so as long as I hit one of them I can interrupt the other one during the knock up phase by poking it with a rapier. Or I can do the first tornado cast while they are far apart (using charm of bones to summon things), they do stay apart as long as the summon is alive, and BPM tornado has huge radius. Could just cast tornado repeatedly and probably be okay missing a couple times. So 122 accuracy vs 157 fortitude gives me an adjustment of -35, and I'll roll a 25 or better on a 60. So the odds of me missing both is 36%, not counting hit to graze conversions. That's too high to be reliable. If I switch to a morning star and debuff their fortitude nearing the bloodied stage then I'm rolling 122 vs 132, and I need roll only a 35, in which case odds of missing both is down to 12%. Think I'll try that. Currently the build is a human, but I could change to boreal dwarf for 50% miss to graze which would bring it down to less than 6%. A savage or witch could land the tornadoes, but I like the extreme tankiness of the brute.

Conqueror's Stance doesn't stack with rapier modal. Bummer. I still don't understand why some things stack and others don't. Fighting spirit stacks. I thought basically all passives stack, but not clear what is treated as passive, since conqueror' stance sounds passive-ish to me as does rapier modal. Would beast's claw stack with rapier modal? Borrowed Instinct? Marked Prey? 

----

Okay so the tornado strategy worked on the gigantic oozes, but barely. I got several miss/miss even with 20 arcana and it took 17 scrolls to kill one gigantic ooze from bloodied, while the other one was fighting a steelspine warrior across the screen. I could have used Lockdown from gloves of the dungeon warden at some point, that has a 97% chance to at least graze.

Anyway, then went to fighting the massive oozes. My accuracy with rapier modal is high enough to always crit and interrupt, even without the hit to crit stuff, and if the massive oozes are next to each other, then at a modified intelligence of 29+, carnage will interrupt both from one attack. So I'll need to take tactical barrage instead of disciplined strikes for this fight for the massive ooze stage (or carry even more tornado scrolls). I consoled in the ability so I could finish the fight. With oblivion (high harbinger's robes), blood storm, and attempted parley (left a small ooze behind me) my attack speed is high enough to constantly interrupt them both. The greater oozes are auto crits even with the carnage attacks, and leap is sometimes useful if I can't get to them fast enough. 

Well, got it in one try (this time), though there were some close moments with the tornadoes. The gigantic ooze phase is the only one that presents any challenge. HOW is straightforward, and the massive and smaller oozes and can be simultaneously interrupted easily enough, but the gigantic ones are too large for carnage to reach outside of them (seems like the ability would be better if it was calculated from the edge vs center of characters, but I guess that would have been more complicated). 

I'd guess this strategy will work like...80% of the time? If it fails one can fall back on taking turns interrupting the gigantic oozes individually, though this is not super reliable and could require redoing HOW phase one or more times. 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Shai Hulud