How difficult are the Warden's bounties?

[Crucis]

I never had to reload them on normal but I did have at least 3 people knocked unconscious in all the fights. If I didn't then I probably would have reloaded lol. I should say I was around level... 5 or 6. The rewards I find satisfying along with the difficulty.

 

On my first run through the game, I had a little difficult on Normal against 2 or 3 of the later bounty groups.  The Ogres were particularly difficult.  And the Vithracks were brutal.

 

Ogres become less difficult once you realize that things that charm, dominate, or confuse them and get them to fight each other makes like a LOT easier.  I'd imagine that having a cipher in this battle would make like really difficult on the ogres.

 

As for the Vithracks, it took me 4-5 times to finally beat them.  I know what I did, but I don't  really know why it worked.  I moved my archer ranger well away from the rest of the party and allowed the Vith's to work on them, while my ranger used his warbow to pound away on the the Viths.  Now maybe the best tactic is to send in one or two guys to suck up the Viths attacks and keep the rest at long range and spread out and just pepper them with ranged fire and spells.  I don't really know.  Regardless, I did beat them and collected the bounty after a couple of painful massacres.

[WebShaman]

The Viths were great! Started with figure spam, then status spells followed by ranged spam. Concentrated on one after another, no real problems.

 

Cool fight.

[billythegreat]

there are 3 tiers of bounties

Actually , there are 4 tiers of bounties.

Edited April 21, 2015 by billythegreat

[nemesis205bw]

I did it on lvl 4 with 3 man team: 2 ciphers and 1 fighter tank. Cast 2x ectopsychic echo on tank and just run with him and watch everything melt. It deals insane damage. Without ciphers it would be very difficult on that level even with 6 man party I guess.

Edited April 21, 2015 by nemesis205bw

[Vasya]

I did it on lvl 4 with 3 man team: 2 ciphers and 1 fighter tank. Cast 2x ectopsychic echo on tank and just run with him and watch everything melt. It deals insane damage. Without ciphers it would be very difficult on that level even with 6 man party I guess.

How did you even get ectopsychic echo on lvl 4?!

[Necros99]

 

there are 3 tiers of bounties

Actually , there are 4 tiers of bounties.

 

There are 4 tiers listed in various locations, but how can you get past Tier 2?  Tier 1: Nalrend is in Elmshore, which you cannot get to until Act III (which locks down Defiance),  Tier 2: Daroth is in the Catacombs of Defiance.  What am I missing here?

[Varana]

You can go back to Defiance Bay at some point.

[JONNIN]

Only the ogres seemed hard to me. 

The rest were relatively weak.  I dunno, the rest of them are on par with other "big" fights like the mini-dragons (firey cave with bomb piece type) or raderick's hold boss etc type fights --- harder than 'random' wilderness fights but not really that difficult. 

 

The issue with the ogres is their spell caster is dangerous, has a lot of health (so the 1 volley of guns before weapon swapping does not kill it), and it hides way back out of range,  and generally they hit pretty hard...  all around it can be dangerous.

[Idleray]

How to make all of the bounty fights trivial even on early levels.

 

1. Have a Cipher.

2. Cast Tenuous grasp from stealth.

3. While the mobs are focusing on their confused comrade, Cast Whispers of Treason on another one of them.

4. Repeat.

[Enoch]

You can go back to Defiance Bay at some point.

 

Specifically, when you walk into Twin Elms for the first time, the gate guards mention that the riots in Defiance Bay have subsided and that the city gates are open again.  It's their not-subtle way of saying "go away, estramor."

 

 

I was overleveled for the bounties I've tried thus far, as I waited until 1.05 reduced the XP payout.  There isn't much that letting loose with all your 5th-level Druid spells can't fix. 

Edited May 18, 2015 by Enoch

[Anentropia]

I found them all easy on hard+expert. 

 

Except one - the Dweller. The Dweller took me like 10+ reloads lol. Not sure whats up with this encounter but even with good positioning and defensive buffs my party took so much seemingly random damage that people started dying all the time. 

 

I eventually managed to do the encounter by opening with slicken and unload all my 10 fireballs + lightning attacks from my 2 mages from the side. 

lol, I'm playing a 2weapon focus Rouge at char-lvl 5 (13,5k exp atm), and almost killed dweller and his group solo (I'm doing a solo-run on normal+expert). The other bounties I don't have a chance in hell (getting gangraped :D)

 

ATM I searching every point of exp, so I can lvl up to 6 (15k exp) before I get into Act2

Edited May 20, 2015 by Anentropia

[the streaker]

I did the first round of bounties on my first playthrough, Trial of Iron, and would not recommend it. The ogre one with the endless insect swarm had me sweating bricks, I was nearly toast.

[LordHellscream]

Sly was exceedingly tough for my first play through at level 5-6, i barely survived after half a dozen retries. However, on the second playthrough I did it at the same level with much easier results --- the predominant factor was using figurines for the 2nd time.

 

Just having the wooden beetles figurines (can be found at the theater in copperlane, hidden), and phantom figurine (in a locked chest in vailian embassy, potentially need a few lockpicks to open if your level is low).

Starting battle to summon one set of creatures near the wizard, and another set of creatures near the priest (i have the figurines on two frontliners), then just task the beetles and phantoms to attack the casters. Since there are 6 creatures summoned, at least half or more will focus on those creatures and the creatures will kill the caster very quickly. This massively reduce the amount of damage your party take, you can methodically using your DPSer to take out sly and other heavy hitters (rogues, rangers etc).

It was a landslide victory my off-tank (a dps focused monk) barely lost 1/4 of health and rest of my party was almost completely unscathed.

[Razorchain]

I did the first round of bounties on my first playthrough, Trial of Iron, and would not recommend it. The ogre one with the endless insect swarm had me sweating bricks, I was nearly toast.

 

Yeah, that was the bounty I had most problem with...those insect swarms.  Then I decided to cast a confuse spell on those ogres and managed to affect them all while my barbarian had Shod-in-Faith active, so to my suprise I started to heal up the Ogres again with consecrated ground.  At that moment I did not find it funny at all.

[Madhava]

Pretty easy.  Except for Nalrend the Wise.  There is no room to kite inside that cave.

 

I finished them all at levels 6 through 8, with a party of four (watcher = chanter, Eder, Pallengina, & Grieving Mother), on hard difficulty.

 

In most cases, you can safely parade all of the opponents around the entire zone with a paladin or chanter speed-buff.  Then just pick off stragglers using ranged weapons + figurine abuse + the occasional sacrificial phantom.  Enemies will haphazardly lose interest during the chase (except the Dweller, he's always the fun one).  After you've got a diminished parade, just turn around and focus-fire one of the persistant guys + use summons to block any extras, if needed.

 

^ Does not work with Nalrend the Wise.  I had to reload that one a few times.  Thankfully, stupid orge druids are happy to waste their spells on summoned wood beetles.

[cctobias]

Most of the bounties are fairly fine once you have a decently hard hitting weapons and some OK to good CC/AOE.  If you can deal with casters and a large crowd then you are fine except for the ogres which hit too hard and have to many HP but are otherwise similar so you need either to be tough or have some really overwhelming damage to deal with the Ogres and that cave is like the bear cave so you basically have a room with a chokepoint entry

 

Most bounties you can, say, kill a couple casters pretty fast by having 3 people alpha spike them with arbalests and then AOE/CC/tank (w/e) everyone.

 

When you get that sort of thing will depend on your build and where you have gone, but basically you will have a crowd of about 8 things and there will be some casters you want to kill fast.  You will want to tank and/or AOE burn down/CC the melee/ranged guys.   The caster could be wizard or priests or pwgra. 

 

You could kite too, that is a somewhat specialized strategy and depends on class and/or gear.

 

Generally 6-8 should be doable for most.

[Tennisgolfboll]

The ogres in the first tier is harder than all the ones in the final tier imo.

 

Makes no sense

[Exoduss]

I found Vithracks to be harder than Ogres ,

Petrify > Insect Swarm ( i mean insect swarm isnt that bad if you got a cipher who can paralyze them when they cast it )

[dilemma]

I have little trouble with bounties now that I have the Confuse spell. But first I send my fastet runner with a bow to entice away fringe members of the bounty group, retreating the whole party far enough so that most other enemies turn back and you can pick off just one. Repeat this tactic unless three of more insist on following you to the edge of the map. Then hit them with Confuse and get the party far away. Often they will kill or severely damage at least one of their number. I was able to isolate the Dweller by killing off all others in his group. Then he was easy to kill with enough hold spells or knock-downs.

[Viperswhip]

I only had problems with one of the last ones (on Hard), the Vithrack....ouch. Two people survived and only because near the end, before he died (thrilled they don't go down when he does) Kana managed to summon two Ogres.