[minor spoilers] Please help me understand what I'm doing wrong

[TekDragon]

I'm in the temple with my PC (a rogue) and the 2 NPCs i've encountered so far, the wizard and the fighter.

 

I'm alt-tabbed from a combat with 5 shadows on the 2nd level. I've got my fighter in a doorway and my 2 ranged (rogue has a warbow) users as far back as possible to keep the shadows from teleporting to them and slaughtering them within a few seconds.

 

I've got all 3 party members focus firing on the shadow in the doorway.

 

I'm clearly doing something wrong, because EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT. IS. SUCKING.

 

Either a miss (50%) of the time, or a graze for 1 HP.

 

This is my 12th or so reload. Every other time the shadows have teleported out to surround my fighter and slaughter him (yes, he's in defensive mode) within seconds, yet I can barely hurt these damn things. I have no idea what I am doing wrong with my characters.

 

[EDIT] Two more reloads and I finally got it. Every shot from my rogue warbow was a solid hit, for 15 damage.

 

I'll keep this thread up for recommendations. Otherwise I'm just going to assume this is one of those games where save-scumming is mandatory.

Edited March 27, 2015 by TekDragon

[Urthor]

Having cleared that area, I'd say it's just a really hard dungeon.  Shadows have 48 deflection which is a lot, that's it.

 

Honestly it's just a portion of the game that's a real test of game mechanics knowledge.  You probably want 4 party members not 3 AND it's a real test of your ability to line up buffs/debuffs so you're attacking with a buff to your accuracy and a debuff to shadow's deflection, AND doing the right type of damage.  

 

The next party member if fairly important for this area for several reasons.  

Edited March 27, 2015 by Urthor

[BrokenMask]

Yeah, the priest you get from area east(or was it southeast? I have bit of bad memory) of Gilded Vale is really useful, espicially once you have leveled up and got the priest talent that damages enemies(and bonus damage on vessels aka undead). Since that does burning damage, it kills shadows rather well.

 

Basically, this dungeon is much easier with at least four party members of level 4 or so

[TekDragon]

I'd buy that, except in the very next area, something Fork, I encountered a pack of 4 boars. They ripped down my tank in seconds then slaughtered the other 2. Almost every swing of theirs was a hit (a big hit) and most of mine were grazes.

 

Finally managed to get through it by save-scumming and getting some lucky hits and debuffs landed.

 

This **** is ridiculous. I don't feel like I'm playing heroes. I feel like I'm playing a group of plague victims.

Edited March 27, 2015 by TekDragon

[MasterPrudent]

Which difficulty level are you playing on?

[BrokenMask]

Eh, that didn't happen to me on normal, I mean, I did encounter five boars, but that was after I got the priest. Also, I followed road, you find the priest by staying on the road and you can't miss him since he lights the statue on fire.

 

What I've noticed is that hardest encounters tend to be off the road..(like the five wolves in north of the area were you get the preist) So if you are in right area, stay in the road and you'll find the priest guy if you are on right area.

 

I apologize if I remembered wrong and the priest was south from Gilded vale ^^; Now that I think about it, that is possible X-x;

Edited March 27, 2015 by BrokenMask

[PrimeJunta]

What you're doing "wrong" is poking your nose in places it's not wanted. That's a seriously hard dungeon for a less than full party of level 2...3 characters. Do something else, level and gear up, and come back later.

 

This is clearly not a game for lawnmowing, but for nudging your way forward and coming back later to murder things that were too hard for you now. Just like BG/2, for that matter.

[Sedrefilos]

Some places are intended for higher levels indeed. If a palce is too hard for you, maybe you should move along and come back a bit later.

Keep a personal note in your journal so you won't forget.

[teknoman2]

I'm in the temple with my PC (a rogue) and the 2 NPCs i've encountered so far, the wizard and the fighter.

 

I'm alt-tabbed from a combat with 5 shadows on the 2nd level. I've got my fighter in a doorway and my 2 ranged (rogue has a warbow) users as far back as possible to keep the shadows from teleporting to them and slaughtering them within a few seconds.

 

I've got all 3 party members focus firing on the shadow in the doorway.

 

I'm clearly doing something wrong, because EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT. IS. SUCKING.

 

Either a miss (50%) of the time, or a graze for 1 HP.

 

This is my 12th or so reload. Every other time the shadows have teleported out to surround my fighter and slaughter him (yes, he's in defensive mode) within seconds, yet I can barely hurt these damn things. I have no idea what I am doing wrong with my characters.

 

[EDIT] Two more reloads and I finally got it. Every shot from my rogue warbow was a solid hit, for 15 damage.

 

I'll keep this thread up for recommendations. Otherwise I'm just going to assume this is one of those games where save-scumming is mandatory.

use fire spray with the wizard and you can one shot them most of the time

[Oneiromancer]

I'll keep this thread up for recommendations. Otherwise I'm just going to assume this is one of those games where save-scumming is mandatory.

 

The game follows an old design style in which zones are supposed to be more heterogeneous, instead of being just small theme parks dvided by a challenge rating. Just because you are in a "low level area" it doesn't mean you won't find extremely hard or even impossible encounters you wil have to avoid: the bear cave in the beginning is a good example of this even though the game itself tells you to stay the **** away if you don't want to get a maulng to the face using a pretty smartly crafted interaction with an npc (smartly because the npc has his own reasons to want you to stay away  )

 

I was able to tackle the temple of Eothas on hard only after getting Durance (the priest), with a party of 4 and I still had to reload a few times because of how difficult those shadows encounters are (incidentally I had zero problems with the "boss", probably because I'm playing a barbarian)

 

As a general rule you should really use that scouting mode to see what you are up against and decide how to position and tackle the fight before the fight has begun. Don't blow your "per rest" abilities on a fight unless you're really having a hard time. Most of the *hard* encounters like the bear in the cave or those boars can be more easily beaten by smart positioning and the use of crowd control spells like slicken or repulsing seal and aoe blinds such as eyestrike or curse of blackened sight (you don't need all of them of course). 

 

I'll admit that the shadows in the temple feels wayyyy overtuned though. They have really high deflection, deals high damage and can completely ignore engagement by teleporting in the face of your backline characters. Not to mention they can summon even more shadows (though I heard it could be a bug with path of the damned enemies spawning on lower difficulties?) They seem to teleport less if you bring your ranged characters more close to melee, grouping up your party, but I guess you could consider that AI exploiting?

 

Another fight to watch out for in the beginning is the one with the two elementals at the small shrine of Galawain (don't remember the zone name but it was east of Gilded Vale iirc). They are easy to crowd control but, like the bear, they hit like trucks and can drop anything but your tank (and even him if you don't help him with some cc) in a couple of hits. I had the "great" idea of using my barbarian in scale armor to off-tank one of the elementals, instead of using cc spells, and he got dropped literally in 3 seconds (him being in frenzy didn't help )

 

Don't give in to frustration, overcoming these kind of fights is the best part about tactical rpgs. Good luck!

[Sherr]

well, some people playing at hard even if they suck, and then they surprise why they got ass kicked.

[Gallenger]

Honestly the way I worked my way through that whole encounter (because my squishy kept getting rolled) was I just crafted the bajeezus out of fire spell scrolls - shadows no likey the fire and I had the mats on hand.   

[Voss]

Yeah, it is important to realize when you're overmatched, retreat, gear up, level up, hire some extras and come back later. That said, with careful work and positioning, it is quite possible to get to the quest objective while skipping only a few fights.

 

But at least on hard, the game requires positioning and thinking out what you're doping, and lots of crowd control for bigger fights. Just grabbing everyone and clicking attack isn't going to work well.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Voss

[Tigranes]

1. Where's the fun if you can beat anything the first try? It's great fun to reload several times and finally win a battle - and also, dying and reloadding is a way to try different strategies and learn more about what works and doesn't. If you always win every battle you might as well just use the same ability every battle. 

 

2. I posted elsewhere, but shadows, your bestiary will tell you, have high DR and especially to shock damage. If you don't take that into account and just bash them the same as everything else, of course you're going to die:

 

 

 

The bestiary gave you all the information you need.

 

As you just said, the bestiary tells you that they have impressive deflection. If something has 16 DR you need to do more than 16 damage to do any damage. Now look at, say, a rapier, which usually has something like 8-13 damage. No wonder it's hard to kill them. 

 

One solution is to use slower but higher damage weapons, like two handed ones - which, when it hits, will get through. Eder was doing 15 damage a hit when I switched his weapon. 

 

Another thing the bestiary tells you after you kill a few is that they have different resistances to different types. My cipher had great joy with the shock wave ability until the shadows who have high shock resistance - so I needed to switch to something else. (Charm worked very nice, since they are able to hit each other pretty effectively.)

 

3. Lower the difficulty if you're frustrated by it, that's what it's there for if you feel like you have a party of plague victims. 

[Starthief]

Interesting, I don't think I ever had to face 5 shadows in there simultaneously.  Maybe because I'm playing on easy, or maybe because I was scouting and managed to catch them separately.  (There was one fight with three of them, after which two more showed up unexpectedly, so that was probably it.)

 

I cleared the temple with a ranged cipher plus the two companions from Gilded Vale.  I don't remember offhand whether blindness or paralysis lower DR, but I didn't have much trouble with the shadows -- except when stuck in a door with the wizard caught in front and the fighter unable to reach past him.

[khadoran]

Are you playing on hard? I changed to normal, did the same on dragon age, sure the normal fights are abit easy but the boss fights feels more right.

Im gonna enjoy this playthrough not reload and pause every second. I can try harder later when i know more about the game and mechanics

 

ofc i never finished dragon age, because i got bored not sure if it was because it was to easy.. hope I dont make same misstake.

Edited March 27, 2015 by khadoran

[Snuffdigit]

I played this on hard, as a rogue. Cleared it at level 3 with a party of myself, fighter, wizard and priest. I stealthed, placed a fireball trap and then pulled them to the doorway where my group was waiting. On the way over they triggered the trap.

 

Now on hard, there were 2 shades and one shadow. The shades are level 10, and will summon a shadow. If you kill the summoned shadow they will summon another, but if you kill the shade the shadows go away. I took out the non-summoned shadow first, then focused down the shades. They are weak to fire. I used the increased defense and increased accuracy party buffs from the priest, along with the level 2 ground zone regeneration spell he has. Knocking them down doesn't seem to work, so don't bother but that wizard cone flame spell did wonders. My rogue didn't seem to have a lot of luck with his bow, but sneak attacks with his estoc sure seemed to work well.

[ShadowTiger]

I cheated so that I could have a custom party of 6 characters right away. They were all level 2 except main character level 3 and I had zero issues with the dungeon. The problem you have normally is simply that you do not have enough per encounter abilities. My cypher and my chanter both have AOE lightning damage that ended the battles in 10 20 seconds so I didn't really have any issues. The priest would daze them and then turn on the healing aura with fire damage to enemies for an added boost.

I wish I had played on hard in retrospect but I wanted to see how much easier it was than the livestreams I watched with only 3 or 4 characters.

Edited March 27, 2015 by ShadowTiger

[tnc]

I suggest using the right weapon and armor type, for example if your opponent uses slashing attacks, some of the lighter armors can be even more effective against it than some heavier armors(e.g leather armors with high slash dr). I also suggest using buffs from foods and potions, you can craft them really easy.

 

It's amazing to see what you can do with the right tactics in this game. For example i was able to kill those two bears at start (you'll notice it's really hard to solo with a melee class on hard difficulty) with my level 2 monk alone with the help of a food buff(chicken), a healing potion used at the right time, and starting the fight with a crossbow attack then running away and switching to melee.

 

Btw here's a good tip regarding potions: if you order an attack right after you used the potion (pause the moment you get the healing) your character starts attacking right away. If you don't click the character waits for about 2 seconds.