At Twin Elms, My Party is no longer good

[Anatolici]

Hi Everyone,
 

I've been pretty dispirited in the last few days. I was having a great time playing on Hard with a Paladin PC, 1 Priest Custom Adv, Grieving Mother, Aloth, Eder, and Hirav. They're all on the cusp of 10th level. I was challenged, but never had any real problems. 
 

However, now I've reached Twin Elms and am completely unable to do anything in 3 large combats: the return to Raedric's Hold, the Dragons, and the Ogre Bounty. I am cut apart and massacred by the former 2, with roughly 75% of my spells missing (thus my casters useless), and my fighters only scoring grazes, and everyone but my Paladin and Fighter failing almost every spell effect resistance. The ogre fight just entails my party being overrun, surrounded, and all killed.
 

My Paladin has good defense and always stays alive long after the rest of the party, but does very little damage on his own.
 

It's been really discouraging, as I've done almost every Side Quest and thus don't have many opportunities for further XP gain. I'm a veteran of many RPGS, including both BGs, Dragon Age, and many others, all of which I beat on Hard. I literally don't know what to do now- have I done something very wrong, or am I missing something? Do I just need to find some way to level to 10?

 

Has anyone else had this issue at all?

[LadyCrimson]

I haven't done the other two yet but the Ogre bounty was definitely tough for me (also at lvl9), because of the troll druid in the back which I didn't see until everyone was otherwise engaged. Wiped. Once I reloaded, ate some chicken, used a couple summons and focused on the druid in back it went a lot better. I didn't do any fancy positioning tactics and none of my guys are high dps either, but I did use some spells I never used before.

 

I think one issue is getting used to using certain attack thingies most of the time, because they've "always worked so far" and then running into a situation where those aren't any good...and then not having enough to time between realizing this isn't working to almost-dead, to save the fight.

[Varana]

Yes, I did as well. Go level some more. Level 9 is quite low to take on the ogre bounty or Undead Raedric, specifically. I tried Raedric at 10 and went under and returned just before the end at level 12, at which point it was doable. Well, I'm sure it's possible quite earlier, but if you're getting stomped, come back later.

Proceed to Twin Elms and do some of the quests there which don't include fighting Dragons and whole ogre tribes.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Varana

[LadyCrimson]

^ Some battles do feel like "gear checks."

Because of the toughness of the Ogre bounty quest, I certainly decided I wasn't going to try the (just received) Raedric one quite yet. I still haven't done much of the Paths, working on those as well as some of the regular sidequests.

[Crucis]

I found the Ogre bounty difficult the first two times I did it.  The way to deal with large groups of Ogres is to use mental spells.  The level 4 Wizard Confusion spell works wonders!  When facing a mob of Ogres, cast no other level 4 wizzy spell other than Confusion.  Basically the best spells to use against the ogres are those that will get them to attack each other, be it charm or domination spells, confusion, or some other spells or cipher "spells".    There are usually too many ogres who have too much health for you to deal with using only brute force.  Getting some of the ogres to switch sides and start attacking each other makes these battles a LOT easier.  

 

And a tactical tip.  If by chance you happen to get every single ogre confused by a single casting of the spell, target one of the ogre druids with ranged weapons to get him to turn red again so that his still confused buddies will start attacking him (or vice-versa).  And when it seems like they're just about to become unconfused, have your wizard ready to zap'em with another confusion spell.

 

Confused ogres are a very, VERY good thing! 

 

 

===

 

 

The bounty battle that I had the hardest time with was the Vithrack bounty.  A mob of Vithracks are absolutely murder!  They'll just paralyze, stun, frighten, and/or terrify you, and you can never seem to get the right buffs active before you're disabled.  I remember in the Endless Paths dungeon that running into a single Vithrack wasn't a big deal because you could focus fire your entire party's ranged weapons on it and take it down fast.  But a mob of them is a completely different story.

 

I ended up crushing them on my 3rd or 4th try, though I don't really know why I succeeded.  What I did was split off my PC, a Ranger, and put him far to the side of the rest of my party.  And when the combat triggered, I was having him fire arrow after arrow after arrow into the V's from max range.  And for some reason, it worked wonders. 

 

One thing that did occur to me about trying to deal with the V's was this.  They're all about mental powers and their Will defense is very strong.  So trying to attack them with Will based spells seems like it wouldn't be a good idea.  The best way to deal with them might be to spread your party out, a lot.  Enough that a single area effect spell can't get more than a single character.  Then send in your toughest tank to trigger the battle, hoping that they'll focus entirely on him, while the rest of your party is hitting them with ranged weapons or spells.  You might want to switch around some of your party's items to try to give your sacrificial tank the best Will save possible to give him some chance of resisting those mental attacks.  Pallagine might be the best choice here, if her base Will defense is greater than, say, Eder's. 

 

Anyways, just a thought.

[Crucis]

^ Some battles do feel like "gear checks."

Because of the toughness of the Ogre bounty quest, I certainly decided I wasn't going to try the (just received) Raedric one quite yet. I still haven't done much of the Paths, working on those as well as some of the regular sidequests.

 

How and where do you get the mission to go back to check on Raedric?  I'm well into Act 3 and have not seen any such mission.

[LadyCrimson]

How and where do you get the mission to go back to check on Raedric?  I'm well into Act 3 and have not seen any such mission.

There's a "frightened villager" or something like that in the Inn. He'll mumble stuff as you walk by, which is probably meant to make you curious enough to click on him, but probably can easily be missed.

[Evange]

The idiotic Fampyrs have unlimited charm/dominate. Make sure your priest has the Prayer Against Treachery spell. Or you have a cipher to charm your party members back to your side again.

[HozzM]

Ogre Druids are pretty much the toughest thing at their level and that Ogre Bounty in the cave has been the toughest fight in the game (relative to my party's level) for me, by far.

 

On a related note, I found level 3 of Od Nua to be harder than the next 5 levels because of the few fights that had Ogre Druids.

 

What I ended up doing was a lot of Durance buffing, GM CC/Charm, and I used as many of those summons figurines as I could.  

Edited April 12, 2015 by HozzM

[petrivanzyl]

I want to see the solo run people hitting them ogre druids...

[Anatolici]

Thanks a ton for everyone's response!