final battle (minor spoilers, potentially)

[Michael_Galt]

So, I have to say, I have greatly enjoyed the game.  I'm not some "OMG I'm awesome!!" player, that thinks, "Trial of the Damned is too easy".  I played on normal, and enjoyed the experience.  I had some really tough fights, but never had a full party wipe, and in general, felt the difficulty was just about perfect. 

 

Now, let's fast forward to the end.  I go to the final act, with EVERYONE maxed out level-wise, everyone equipped extremely well, and tons of hours of experience playing with my current party (meaning, I know how to use their abilities as best as I can hope to).  I get to my final boss fight, and...  I get wiped, 3 times in a row, trying 3 different strategies.  I ALMOST do it, but by almost, I mean, it might have been a possibility, but even if I had been successful, it would have been by the slimmest of margins. 

 

I can go into explicit detail regarding who I had with me and what I tried, but it seems to me that it was just way overpowered.  I mean, I literally could not have had higher level characters.  I basically completed every quest and side-quest possible, so had no shortage of practice.  I honestly had no real trouble for the last 20% of the game before the final battle.  I FELT extremely prepared.  And then I got destroyed 3 times in a row (2 of those times, truly "pwned").  This is extremely frustrating to me.  I don't feel like reducing the difficulty to "easy", as I absolutely didn't need to do that at any time earlier in the game, and it would be highly unsatisfying to finish it like I was some "nwb" that can barely play the game, but I don't know if I have much of a choice. 

 

Has anyone else had this experience?  Am I just crazy?  To put it in further perspective, I literally have 4 of my characters with "2nd Chance", so it's not like they even went down 1 time, but twice!

[Sonntam]

Have you used stuns? More specifically Repulsing Seal, level 2 priest ability?

 

Also, what about Mind Plague (cipher level 6 charm ability?). 

 

If you took Binding Roots (an optional talent) on Sagani, then the fight should have been a piece of cake too.

 

 

I personally only abused the first to abilities (Repulsing Seal and Mind Plague) and that was how I dealt with all difficult encounters in the game. On the other hand, I wiped more often than you, so I had to try out more different abilities.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Sonntam

[Gallenger]

My tank had gone *most* of the game without being hurt, ever. 

 

The first thing I noticed in that battle, was he was taking damage - I knew it was going to be some BG1 final battle stuff going on once I saw that happening. 

 

Everybody dropped except grieving mother and Durance in the end lol, and grieving mother finished the fight by blasting thaos in the face with her boom stick lol.  Had it not been for that I'd have had to reload . 

 

The big thing is that a lot of the bodies on the way have some pretty good rings that'll protect you from a lot of the nonsense that will go on in the fight, and then I did the #1 all time D&D no-no and split the party, so that the statues would go on my beefy types to keep them from squashing my squishies when they found themselves able to move from time to time. 

Edited April 5, 2015 by Gallenger

[Longknife]

There's a corpse thingy on the path to where you fight Thaos. Yknow, the ones you touch and then they disintegrate? One of them has three rings of something that explicitly give you and people around you immunity to movement-impairing attacks and spells for a brief amount of time. So you equip the ring, and you get three uses of a movement immune buff. The whole thing is like a giant broadcasted "THIS WILL BE USEFUL" because I didn't even know what was coming but saw that I got not one but three of those damned things and proceeded to stick them on the classes I felt I desperately needed active at all times.

 

  Aside from that, counter-stun them.

[Lasci]

Using crowd control on the giants is important. Knockdowns, stuns, paralyze, etc. You can make scrolls of paralyze en masse if need be.

 

Petrify effects are overpowered. With a druid, it's fairly easy to petrify the two giants and kill them quickly.

[Michael_Galt]

Alright.  I'm going to give it another go.  Unfortunately, don't have any knockdown ability (2 paladins, wizard, rogue, priest, and cipher).  All those damn knockdowns are so annoying. 

[Jasta11]

-Focus on one giant at a time. if you spread out your damage Thaos heals them.

 

-Spread out your party! Thaos's damage output is fairly low if you don't bunch up, only his Pillars of Faith/Fire spells do significant damage.

 

-The giants have fairly low resistances to anything but Fortitude. You should be able to keep them CCed. If you have no spells that can do so, craft Scrolls of Paralysis. Your Cipher should have a CC spell or two.

 

-You have a priest, and one of their 6th level spell burns positive effets on enemies. Use that on Thaos, if his defenses aren't buffed he dies very quickly. Like, his deflection goes from 150 to 80ish.

[Lasci]

Use the Cipher's knockdown ability that targets an ally at the beginning of the fight. Follow it up by using paralyze scrolls on the giants, and Thaos too if you can avoid hitting your own party. You should be able to craft a lot fairly easily.

 

I don't know how you've built your paladins, but Pallegina didn't really do much for me here. Drink eldricht aim and other accuracy boosting potions like crazy with your front line damage dealers. Have your priest do the same. 

 

Or, if you're level 11, just have your wizard cast Gaze of Adragan and win.

[sanshin66]

Played on hard lvl 12 party Eder, Grieving, Drood PC, Durance, Custom Barbarian and Aloth, First of all the trash was so easy and didn't feel like epic lead up to the end, I rested before the Thaos fight but it really wasn't required, Run your entire party behind Thaos, send Eder to 1 golem and your other melee to the other golem while your druid and aloth cast abilities that do AOE knock prone, then unload your entire party on thaos he should die before he can stand back up, then tank and spank the golems and 30 seconds later you have won the game. 
I'll do a POTD playthrough later hoping it will be significantly harder than "hard" every fight is just AOE Disable -> AOE nuke with druid and aloth gg.
Also scroll of paralize and Maelstrom GG.

[Khrysophylax]

Use the Cipher's knockdown ability that targets an ally at the beginning of the fight. Follow it up by using paralyze scrolls on the giants, and Thaos too if you can avoid hitting your own party. You should be able to craft a lot fairly easily.

 

I don't know how you've built your paladins, but Pallegina didn't really do much for me here. Drink eldricht aim and other accuracy boosting potions like crazy with your front line damage dealers. Have your priest do the same. 

 

Or, if you're level 11, just have your wizard cast Gaze of Adragan and win.

 

That's the thing, I DID cast Gaze of the Adragon. Twice. In a row. It did absolutely nothing.

 

Personally, I found this battle outright impossible and had to cheat via the console to get through it.

 

For one thing, Thaos seems completely immune to stun and paralysis. I don't know what everyone else is talking about, but I cast Gaze of the Adragon on him twice consecutively and it did zilch. Had no observable effect whatsoever. Likewise, Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring didn't actually freeze him and only did pitiful freeze damage, etc. The only thing that actually worked was, of course, Slicken, but given that this was post-1.03 nerf it didn't last very long.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Khrysophylax

[Lasci]

Paralyzing or petrifying Thaos himself is hard. Doing it to the golems is fairly simple.

 

Maelstrom is also a very good scroll to create for your high-lore folks.

[Kaldurenik]

I had the same problem... I tried the fight a few times... Then i found a spell with my wizard that 1 hit him... @_@

 

 

Also he is not immune to stun / prone and so on. He have so high deflection that almost nothing hits him. It gets even worse because he can "mass" buff his deflection multiple times. In one of the encounters he had over 300 deflection for me ^^.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Kaldurenik

[Khrysophylax]

Good point. Very well, what's the best way to 'debuff' his Deflection, then, so you can actually disable him?

I'm not too used to debuffing since PoE in general places a considerably de-emphasized role on buffs and debuffs, especially compared to D&D and the old IE games. Wizards and clerics in this game generally go down easy and you don't even need to worry about stripping their defenses, as they generally have none to speak of. I pretty much ignored scrolls throughout my game as well, as I had no problems dealing with 90% of what the game threw at me.

[Lasci]

I know priests have a level 6 spell that speeds up the timer of buffs on enemies. I'm too lazy to check through spell lists to see if there's anything else for getting rid of enemy buffs.

[Michael_Galt]

Finally did it.  I ran everyone to the other side of him, and then put everyone on him.  I kept doing AOE stuff to the giants, until eventually, they both died.  I tried to interrupt him when he was casting spells, and was maybe a little successful with that.  The whole, I get to resurrect myself 3 times thing for him was a little stupid.  I know Irenicus did something similar, but that is just plain cheesy (and highly irritating, when they won't just die...   It was still extremely close, but, I won.  If I didn't have the "revive companion" ability on both my paladins, I would certainly have been screwed.  Though, to be honest, Grieving Mother was just plain useless, because she couldn't regain her focus- I really wish she hadn't been there and I had had a fighter instead.

[abelhabel]

Wizards have an amazing level 3 spell called Arcane Dampener which puts all beneficial effects on hold for the enemey. Cast that spell until you get a successful hit on Thaos. At that point, use Cipher's Amplified Wave power which knocks down and do damage and the level 1 Blinding power, Priests Shining Beacon and Devotions for the Faithful spells and Wizards Expose Vulnerabilities. At this point you should reliably be doing damage to Thaos with melee and ranged. Thaos goes from 150 deflection to 50 deflection which should give you a good chance to land crits.

 

The two statues have to be dealt with as well. You can either send a tank to block them from your other characters or you use scarabs to summon help to take on the statues. In this way you can deal with Thaos first so that he does not debuff you and buff the statues.

[redtalisker]

Signed up just to comment on this. Been playing this today and I found there is a difference between pre and post patch.  Before the patch paralyze just wouldn't stick on Thaos. Made the battle a lot harder. Post patch it works like a charm and quite frankly the battle is a doddle.

[Khrysophylax]

Signed up just to comment on this. Been playing this today and I found there is a difference between pre and post patch.  Before the patch paralyze just wouldn't stick on Thaos. Made the battle a lot harder. Post patch it works like a charm and quite frankly the battle is a doddle.

 

You mean post-1.03? That's what I was talking about earlier. I just beat him on Saturday, and I had to cheat in order to do so, because his Deflection was so sky-high nothing could hit him and he effortlessly wiped my party over and over.

[Primislas]

This is why I like Sagani - Itumaak. Playing on normal, my PC tank was holding Thaos, Eder without Defender and with a 2H poleaxe was occupying one giant, Itumaak was tanking the other. We had no trouble whatsoever. Zero CC used throughout the fight.

[pherenika]

Also a small reminder: Don't forget crafting.

 

I was completely wiped two times on normal. The third time I remembered crafting (which I had basically not used during the entire game) and proceeded to make all the endurance potions I could. After that, I made it through without losing anyone...