Having an impossible time on SSS POTD upscaled

[Vasvary5050]

Hi folks. I breezed through BoW on POTD upscaled but I'm hitting brick walls in SSS. I did the first two fights okay (hard but okay), but I'm getting annhilated in the fight  against Maerweld, the mirrors to my party and the greater flame blights. Like, my party members are literally getting disintegrated and blasted out of existence so they can't even be rezzed if survive the fight. How do you deal with this fight? (Memories of a Mad Man)

Edited June 3, 2023 by Vasvary5050

[Vasvary5050]

I changed the party, applied a bit of cheese, and it turned into an easy fight. Phew.

[masterty66]

6 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

I changed the party, applied a bit of cheese, and it turned into an easy fight. Phew.

That's one of the hardest fights in SSS for what it's worth. 

If you're having trouble in any fights in SSS don't be afraid to change up your party comp. Some fights require different things. Obsidian tried to make a variety of challenges that can give different parties issues. So some fights might be a breeze for certain parties and hard as heck for other ones. 

Some fights are heavily endurance focused as well so having Ciphers and Chanters can be big there for resource regeneration.

[Vasvary5050]

Yeah I think this is going to be a lot of trial and error and swapping in and out party members. SSS feels a LOT harder than BoW. 

I've pushed through to Cult of the Naga Shaman but failed a few times on it now. I can take out the two totems pretty quickly, using the main party on the right hand side of the arena to take out the totem over there instantly, and Konstantin leaping onto the platform to take out that one, but still having a hard time with what's left on the battlefield. I think the biggest problem is that there archers/skirmishers can burn down my squishier characters really quickly when they focus fire on one target.  

[Finally did it. Trying to rush the totem at the back was a mistake and when I abandoned doing that it was really easy]

Edited June 3, 2023 by Vasvary5050

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

Yeah I think this is going to be a lot of trial and error and swapping in and out party members. SSS feels a LOT harder than BoW. 

I've pushed through to Cult of the Naga Shaman but failed a few times on it now. I can take out the two totems pretty quickly, using the main party on the right hand side of the arena to take out the totem over there instantly, and Konstantin leaping onto the platform to take out that one, but still having a hard time with what's left on the battlefield. I think the biggest problem is that there archers/skirmishers can burn down my squishier characters really quickly when they focus fire on one target.  

[Finally did it. Trying to rush the totem at the back was a mistake and when I abandoned doing that it was really easy]

The best way to take out the totems is to use a huge AOE attack like great maelstrom. You can cast it before they start summoning anything, and It's large enough with high INT to destroy both totems and will usually mess up the snakes pretty bad as well. Sending one character to deal with them is dangerous unless they have movement abilities to get them out of there.

I guess you're on slayer path? The Fangs and Fur one is IMO the hardest (changeling dance is hard solo but probably not with a party) but I always have galawain on so maybe without it isn't. Battles against the humans are pretty easy, and the end boss. 

I think the DLC difficulty goes BOW < SSS < FS, though SSS is arguably the hardest because you can stealth past a lot of the tough fights in FS while you can't do that in SSS. But if you choose to actually fight things, FS has some really hard encounters. 

[Vasvary5050]

Unfortunately, great Malestom (and other max tier spells) wasn't an option as I'm only level 18 at the moment (and most of my party is multi-classed). Yep, sending one character to deal with the totem at the back proved repeatedly suicidal. Actually, each time Konstantin managed to take out the totem at the back, but he died a few second later. In the end I got the job done (on my 4th or 5th try) by just moving my entire party under stealth almost right up to the totem on the righthand side of the arena, took that one out, and then fought a slow grindy battle through everything until I worked my up to the platform to kill the remaining monsters and the second totem. A long fight. Yes, I was on the slayer path, and oddly I didn't have any problem with the cats from the fangs and fur (it's a tough fight, but I did it first time, whereas I wiped at least 3 or 4 times on the nagas). Just got the final boss to kill now (the big crocodile), which I'll leave for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll ding 19 after that, and then head to FS.

I've played through FS before, but it was on veteran with scaling, so it will be a lot tougher this time. I found SSS really hard (and of course there are a lot of optional bits to SSS that I haven't yet done and which I might try to get done before I push through to Ukazo.

[NotDumbEnough]

The mirror fight has an easy cheese where you just strip naked before the fight, then re-equip all your stuff after you load into the arena.

[Boeroer]

This is interesting.

That is usually one of the easier fights for me personally (other that the Changeling's Dance for example, grmblfx...). I'm using official companions most of the time. 

I don't know why - I guess it has something to to with the general tactics I like to use (like for example "assembling" as many enemies as possible in one spot before really opening the fight) that make some other fights (especially with lots of very mobile + tough enemies) pretty hard but others pretty easy - contrary to what other players describe.

 

[Vasvary5050]

Changeling's dance was a cakewalk. The mirror fight was difficult and odd. First couple of attempts I literally got my party disintegrated out of existence. I figured it was my MC mirror killing me with cipher's disintegrate, so second attempt I burned my MC mirror down quickly, but my party still got perma-killed [portrait gone, character deleted] (presumably by massive over-damage from Maerweld as none of my other characters can disintegrate). On the final attempt I managed to get everything to pretty much group together, and then AoE'd everything down. It's pretty nasty to have your party members instant-killed when they have no injuries.

Just finished SSS. I was expecting the final (Parokoa) boss fight to be a cakewalk based on my memory of doing it last time (on an easier difficulty) and people saying it's an easy fight compared to everything else in SSS. Porokoa was of course red-skulls, and the little crocodiles were 1-skulls. Fight required decent AoE on the crocs, reliable non-stop interrupts and knockdowns on the boss (luckily my tank is a fighter-chanter with Knock-Down and Thick Grew Their Tongues) and constant party-wide HoTs. I initially tried to do it with Konstantin and Fassina in the party to see if that helped their romance (it didn't). Had to swap them out for the A-team. Even doing it "right", my tank still git knocked unconscious and had to be panic-resurrected by Paladin. Overall, I found SSS to be a real challenge, much harder than anything in the vanilla content or BoW, and that was just expressing my way through it (I still have some optional artifact retrieval fights to do).

And I hear that FS is more difficult than SSS

Edited June 4, 2023 by Vasvary5050

[masterty66]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

This is interesting.

That is usually one of the easier fights for me personally (other that the Changeling's Dance for example, grmblfx...). I'm using official companions most of the time. 

I don't know why - I guess it has something to to with the general tactics I like to use (like for example "assembling" as many enemies as possible in one spot before really opening the fight) that make some other fights (especially with lots of very mobile + tough enemies) pretty hard but others pretty easy - contrary to what other players describe.

 

What choice do you usually make for Maerwald? Because if you absorb his essence or bind him as a guardian that also makes the fight a lot harder. If you're nice to him and release him it's easier.

But I agree if you open a fight with just the tank unstealthing and then everyone else moving in once positioning is sound that does make things a lot easier in many fights. Once enemies are stuck to for example a high level Eder they tend to not disengage from him. And that can make things easier. If you open a fight with everyone unstealthed it can be a scramble to stabilize positioning.

[Shai Hulud]

On 6/3/2023 at 7:37 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

Unfortunately, great Malestom (and other max tier spells) wasn't an option as I'm only level 18 at the moment (and most of my party is multi-classed). Yep, sending one character to deal with the totem at the back proved repeatedly suicidal. Actually, each time Konstantin managed to take out the totem at the back, but he died a few second later. In the end I got the job done (on my 4th or 5th try) by just moving my entire party under stealth almost right up to the totem on the righthand side of the arena, took that one out, and then fought a slow grindy battle through everything until I worked my up to the platform to kill the remaining monsters and the second totem. A long fight. Yes, I was on the slayer path, and oddly I didn't have any problem with the cats from the fangs and fur (it's a tough fight, but I did it first time, whereas I wiped at least 3 or 4 times on the nagas). Just got the final boss to kill now (the big crocodile), which I'll leave for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll ding 19 after that, and then head to FS.

I've played through FS before, but it was on veteran with scaling, so it will be a lot tougher this time. I found SSS really hard (and of course there are a lot of optional bits to SSS that I haven't yet done and which I might try to get done before I push through to Ukazo.

Don't forget about scrolls. Great Maelstrom scrolls are pretty easy to make (1 palm slat + 1 primal wind + 1 primal water). There's also storm of holy fire and meteor shower scrolls though the range and AOE isn't as large so they aren't as good for these specific battles but still very useful. I'd recommend you always have one character with maxed arcana. 

I think fangs and fur fight must be artificially much more difficult with galawain's challenge so my impression of it is probably not accurate. With that challenge they all have ridiculous buffs that provide a range of nasty effects like a bunch of inspirations, immunity to interrupts, invisibility, super high armor, immunity to all afflictions, etc. Normally galawain's challenge doesn't seem like it makes the game that much harder but in fights where it is nothing but beasts it is definitely felt. 

If you include all the optional SSS fights where you chase down artifacts then SSS is probably the hardest. I usually skip those unless I'm looking for a specific item because it's too much "run and fetch this" nonsense. Installed a mod by @Noqn that lets you do these fights without completing the fetch quests, and I'd definitely recommend it. Some of the fights are pretty tough, though I can't recall which ones are slayer. You can do all of them if you got all three artifacts from the island. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/631

Most of the hardest FS fights are optional. Well, really they're nearly all optional since you can stealth but I mean like Sissak fight can be incredibly hard but avoidable if you give him the warden contract. Frightened Child fight is super hard but totally avoidable. Giant luminescent sporeling fight is pretty tough but also avoidable, and you can also make any remaining spores and infested librarians friendly. A friendly solution also makes one of the upper bowels fights avoidable, while the other two can be stealthed past. Also first oracle fight is avoidable if you do the stacks first and don't kill any librarians IIRC. I think the only truly unavoidable fight is last oracle fight and fyonlecg. If you get reanimated maura you can have a peaceful solution, though I'd recommend killing her for her belt. 

Edited June 5, 2023 by Shai Hulud