Tips for fights against Furrante and The Messenger

[dejavu619]

I had issues with both these fights with my level 16 party. Furrante showed as a sword with 3 skulls so I thought I'll come to that fight later. Against The Messenger, the will defense was huge (around 125) so my Cipher was almost useless throughout.

The party comp I used against The Messenger: Me (ranged rogue), Eder (fighter), Xoti (priest), Ydwin (cipher), Aloth (wizard).

Another question I had was about Combusting Wounds and Wall of Flames. Do they have any penetration? With what accuracy does Wall of Flames try to hurt enemies in the hazard aoe?

[dgray62]

Lvl 16 is too low in my opinion for the Messenger and the FS in general. You might consider leveling up a bit elsewhere and try again. If you do all the side quests and bounties you'll easily hit lvl 20 before even turning to the DLCs. As for Furrante, you're dealing with him, a challenging foe, and a large mob. Good CC can make that fight a lot easier. You might want to have Ydwin cast Ringleader and other CC abilities.

As for Combusting Wounds and Wall of Flames, I'm not sure if they have a base PEN since the tooltip doesn't indicate this. However, I can relate from experience that they are great spells if used properly. WoF doesn't do much damage, but it ticks frequently. By itself, it is meh. However, if you also cast CW, each tick procs CW. Moreover, CW inflicts increased damage every time the character is hit by something, so if you cast on them hazards like WoF and pulsing spells like Chill Fog, the damage very quickly multiplies to very high levels. It's one of the best spells in the game IMO, but you may not notice this early on, when your repertoire of spells is limited. I'm not sure how CW's damage is calculated but it definitely can add up to serious damage. As for the accuracy of WoF, it's based on the wizard's accuracy vs. reflex. If you debuff DEX or PER (like with Chilll Fog for example) the spell will be more likely to hit.

[Shai Hulud]

Messenger is pretty tough to beat unless you throw lots of fire spells on him. In particular combusting wounds + anything that procs combusting wounds will chew him up. I've soloed him at L16 or so, basically kept up combusting wounds and then cast things like minoletta's minor missiles (each cast gets like 7 procs) and pulse spells like chill fog (frost damage doesn't do much but each pulse stacks combusting wounds). If you have a druid infestation of maggots procs combusting wounds a lot, though targeting fortitude may be hard to hit in that particular fight.

Still you're going to have an easier time fighting him at L20, simply since you'll have better accuracy and defenses making everything easier.

Don't know much about fighting Furrante but being human I'd guess he's vulnerable to stuff like slicken, mental binding, other CC etc.

 

[Boeroer]

On the damage-dealing side: Combusting Wounds + Wall spells (multiple if you have different chars with wall spells, like Wizard + Druid for example), beam spells and pulsing spells of all sorts (Chillfog - yes it works with CW, Venombloom, Wicked Briars and all that stuff that does damage rolls every few secs) make short work of the Messenger's health pool. It's easier to land Combusting Wounds if you have a character with a Morning Star + modal who debuffs the dragon's fortitude a bit first.

In general: use interrupts. Interrupts, wisely applied, make a huge difference with boss enemies. For example you can have one char with an Arbalest or Crossbow + modal who doesn't mindlessly fire and reload but waits for the dragon to execute an ability and only then fire a bolt to interrupt that. My most cherished character for that is a Arcane Archer/Troubadour because it not only fires very quickly with high accuracy but also becaue it can remoive all layers of concentration right away with a chant - but it works with all sorts of chars who have decent accuracy and some form of speedup. Without interrupts (or hard CC which is usually resource-restricted while interrupts are not ) you cannot beat some Megabosses - so it's better to getting used to employ them early imo. 

I usually beat the Messenger around lvl 14 or so. I mostly use story companions, maybe one hireling now and then.   

[dejavu619]

12 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Messenger is pretty tough to beat unless you throw lots of fire spells on him. In particular combusting wounds + anything that procs combusting wounds will chew him up. I've soloed him at L16 or so, basically kept up combusting wounds and then cast things like minoletta's minor missiles (each cast gets like 7 procs) and pulse spells like chill fog (frost damage doesn't do much but each pulse stacks combusting wounds). If you have a druid infestation of maggots procs combusting wounds a lot, though targeting fortitude may be hard to hit in that particular fight.

Still you're going to have an easier time fighting him at L20, simply since you'll have better accuracy and defenses making everything easier.

Don't know much about fighting Furrante but being human I'd guess he's vulnerable to stuff like slicken, mental binding, other CC etc.

 

Does Minoletta's minor missiles even manage to penetrate his armor? Combusting Wounds and Infestation of Maggots both target Fortitude which like you said are hard to hit and even more so if he casts Llengrath's Safeguard (+20 defences for 60 seconds).

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

On the damage-dealing side: Combusting Wounds + Wall spells (multiple if you have different chars with wall spells, like Wizard + Druid for example), beam spells and pulsing spells of all sorts (Chillfog - yes it works with CW, Venombloom, Wicked Briars and all that stuff that does damage rolls every few secs) make short work of the Messenger's health pool. It's easier to land Combusting Wounds if you have a character with a Morning Star + modal who debuffs the dragon's fortitude a bit first.

In general: use interrupts. Interrupts, wisely applied, make a huge difference with boss enemies. For example you can have one char with an Arbalest or Crossbow + modal who doesn't mindlessly fire and reload but waits for the dragon to execute an ability and only then fire a bolt to interrupt that. My most cherished character for that is a Arcane Archer/Troubadour because it not only fires very quickly with high accuracy but also becaue it can remoive all layers of concentration right away with a chant - but it works with all sorts of chars who have decent accuracy and some form of speedup. Without interrupts (or hard CC which is usually resource-restricted while interrupts are not ) you cannot beat some Megabosses - so it's better to getting used to employ them early imo. 

I usually beat the Messenger around lvl 14 or so. I mostly use story companions, maybe one hireling now and then.   

I ended up surviving my second encounter with The Messenger by the skin of my teeth. I just ran out of abilities to use and Eder was the only surviving member who somehow managed to kill him with basic attacks. In this one I did have a party member wield an arbalest for the sole purpose of interrupting and it did help but Llengrath's Safeguard rendered pretty much all my abilities useless. How much accuracy is it possible to stack with a Priest & Wizard (without consumables)? Overall do I need to change my approach of not trying to use an ability if the accuracy % is below 50% when I hover over an enemy with it?

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, dejavu619 said:

Does Minoletta's minor missiles even manage to penetrate his armor? Combusting Wounds and Infestation of Maggots both target Fortitude which like you said are hard to hit and even more so if he casts Llengrath's Safeguard (+20 defences for 60 seconds).

You can remove his buffs with arcane dampener, concussive tranquilizer and the like if needed, also buff your own accuracy. Minoletta's Minor Missiles would indeed underpen but the great thing about the spell is the missiles are *guaranteed* hits and each one ticks combusting wounds. If you have one or more blood mages they can easily restore minoletta's minor missiles and keep casting it while maintaining combusting wounds. The damage really piles up when the messenger has a couple dozen ticks of combusting wounds. Each tick does 4 burn vs fortitude per 6s, not counting +damage effects like from might, kuaru's ring, griffin's blade etc. The combusting wounds do target fortitude but if you have 20 of them going off every 6s enough are going to graze and hit to do serious damage. 

I've killed the messenger before doing literally nothing but casting combusting wounds + minoletta's minor missiles (besides defensive spells), with solo blood mage, I was at most L16 but I think 14 or 15. I was finding it hard to outdamage his healing from Oblivion's Call but once I got a decent number of combusting wounds stacks from spamming missiles, he melted away. 

5 hours ago, dejavu619 said:

I ended up surviving my second encounter with The Messenger by the skin of my teeth. I just ran out of abilities to use and Eder was the only surviving member who somehow managed to kill him with basic attacks. In this one I did have a party member wield an arbalest for the sole purpose of interrupting and it did help but Llengrath's Safeguard rendered pretty much all my abilities useless. How much accuracy is it possible to stack with a Priest & Wizard (without consumables)? Overall do I need to change my approach of not trying to use an ability if the accuracy % is below 50% when I hover over an enemy with it?

Well eldritch aim or some other perception inspiration is +5, devotions for the faithful is +10. Think that's about it for wizard and priest. Merciless Gaze I guess. Ciphers, rangers, and fighters can stack a lot of accuracy making hierophants, geomancers, and battlemages really good in this fight. Nothing wrong with chugging some potions of perfect aim though, particularly to get combusting wounds to hit. That plus eldritch aim and you'll at least graze most of the time. 

There are also items for stacking ranged accuracy though. Like Sky Dragon Wurm will give your whole party +3 accuracy against distant enemies. Boras gives +5 spell accuracy. Various +PER items, the Horns of the Bleak Mother give +10 accuracy vs beasts and +1PER. Honestly not sure if Messenger is considered a beast since he's a lich dragon. He could be a vessel, I can't remember. But if he's a vessel Charm of Bones gives +5 accuracy. Don't cast with more than a small shield, also. If you can get the nature's resolve buff from Tikiwara Island that's +10 accuracy as well. Konstanten's Boon and Aenely's Boon give bonus perception. Probably some stuff I'm forgetting.

This battle is definitely possible at L16 but you'll have a much better time with a few more levels. 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Shai Hulud]

13 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Without interrupts (or hard CC which is usually resource-restricted while interrupts are not ) you cannot beat some Megabosses - so it's better to getting used to employ them early imo. 

It is possible to beat all megabosses without interrupts. The only boss where interrupts become sort of necessary is Hauani O Whe, though there are other ways. 

If I can easily interrupt things with high accuracy and energized or interrupting blows, YAY, but I don't think you need to go out of your way to time interrupts on things.

[Boeroer]

Yes, that's why I wrote "some".

Against Neriscyrlas interrupts can be a key to prevent her from casting Llengrath's Safeguard - which annoys und frustrates most many players a lot once it's up.

You can beat her without well-timed interrupts of course, but it's a lot harder once Safeguard is up.

So I would argue that one should indeed "go out of one's way" - at least a bit - in order to learn more about interrupts and how to use them effecively. Otherwise you'll have to go out of your way in a different and most likely more unpleasant way to be able to beat her and certain other enemies.

The power of interrupts (which again can be put out for free with numerous weapons and/or abilities) can be showcased with the aforementioned Arcane Archer/Troubadour: he can fire an arbalest+modal so quickly and with such high ACC (esp. when using Spearcaster+Arcana skill) that Neriscyrlas will not get anything done anymore but will be prone and interrupt-locked for the whole fight (as long as you don't let the ads come near the AA/Troub). That's one char alone who is of course optimized for interrupts - so it's most likely not a solution for players who just now encountered problems with the dracolich. But in a whole party it's often easy enough to reach similar results if one spreads out the ability to interrupt and add some hard CC over several chars to prevent certain actions of the enemy to happen. 

It's an efficient way to beat tough enemies without going into cheese mode. You don't have to do it, I'm just showing a rel. easy way out of a dilemma some players might have - with a tool they might already have at hand but didn't employ until now - because they didn't realize the potential. Alternative might be to go back, get other gear and stuff and then try again later. 

[Shai Hulud]

Just fought the messenger. 

Shimmer Scale. Use the 50% reflection upgrade and Oblivion's Call chews him up. 

Can also do the combusting wounds stuff but this is definitely easier. 

----

EDIT: After more testing I don't think shimmer scale works on Oblivion's Call after all. (See post below). My bad. 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Shai Hulud
correction

[Boeroer]

Ouh... nice! It didn't cross my mind that some of her abilities are gazes. That lil' shield didn't get much love before - maybe that should change.  

Once again I wonder if it would work to use the enchantment "immunity to gazes" of Shimmer Scale and the Monk's Soul Mirror in combination. Then you'd have 50% relfection and be 100% safe.  It would be a nice alternative shield setup for a Monk. Always Tuotilo's Palm gets kind of boring.  

[dejavu619]

On 3/31/2023 at 3:00 AM, Shai Hulud said:

Just fought the messenger. 

Shimmer Scale. Use the 50% reflection upgrade and Oblivion's Call chews him up. 

Can also do the combusting wounds stuff but this is definitely easier. 

What's Oblivion's Call? Googled it and couldn't find anything

[Shai Hulud]

6 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Ouh... nice! It didn't cross my mind that some of her abilities are gazes. That lil' shield didn't get much love before - maybe that should change.  

Once again I wonder if it would work to use the enchantment "immunity to gazes" of Shimmer Scale and the Monk's Soul Mirror in combination. Then you'd have 50% relfection and be 100% safe.  It would be a nice alternative shield setup for a Monk. Always Tuotilo's Palm gets kind of boring.  

Hmm...I just rechecked this fight because my guy was a monk. At the time I had two versions of the shield, one with reflect and one with immunity. In my initial testing it looked like soul mirror + reflect shield was having an extra effect, but I may have thought this because my will defense was 229 so he misses every time or the attack is reflected by soul mirror, or I just ran good in the random rolls. 

So I removed soul mirror and tanked my will defense and now I'm just getting hit over and over. Same with the immunity shield. 

This must not be a gaze attack after all. It is reflected by soul mirror but not shimmer scale. It isn't really clear what is a "gaze" and what is a "ray". So far the only thing I'm certain shimmer scale reflects is the scavenger of vision guys in the oracle of wael fight.

Should have checked a larger sample, but my toon absolutely shredded the guy basically just standing there auto attacking with Neriscrlylas doing most of the damage to himself. 

4 hours ago, dejavu619 said:

What's Oblivion's Call? Googled it and couldn't find anything

It's the purple beam attack used by the messenger and neriscyrlas. It is devestating unless you have very high will defense or soul mirror. Arcane reflection may work on it also. I thought shimmer scale reflected it but it looks like I was wrong about that, sorry. 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Boeroer]

Ah, too bad for Shimmer Scale. But great that you took the time to test it again.