I know some of you are getting close. Heh heh heh...

Sooo, I just Nightshade.

And I'm pretty sure I've eaten Switzerland out of all the cheeze.

74 initiative thingy with 30AP that murders your whole party right off the bat and vanishes into thin air each time it's not hard CCed (while it's immune to 2 out of 4 types of hard CC) is kinda mean. Well, okay, enemy AP numbers in the mod are mean in general. I've seen a charmed caster kill another mob singlehandedly in a single turn spamming basic magic missiles. Considering mob hp is generally well over player hp, traditional tanking is an exercise in futility.

I had to precast invulnerability off a scroll on Madora pre-fight and drop her with a teleport in front of the boss to draw all the aggro and survive.

And then savescum like there's no tomorrow.

Basically the idea was to chance on the detection (chain lighting yay!) and manage to chain debuff the boss in a single turn to the point where I can land a stun (impossiburu because the way stun and shock interact in the mod) or a KD (possiburu) and then murder it (soulsap, infectous flame, cruelty, OAD, Rage, debuff piercing resist into negative double digits) before it gets out. While controlling the minions. The reason I could manage that was because 3 out of 4 character were invulnerable.

PS:
1) There are few places in the undead city with the same surface problem as in the Phantom Forest. It's where the brickwork is black.
2) ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ buildings. In the main storyline you can see through the buildings when inside, but here it's dont, and you have to zoom in until the camera is inside.
3) Caves too monochromatic and dark. To the point I didn't notice some crawlers during a battle until I literally stumbled over them.
4) Is it me, or battle initiation distance is larger in the new content? I think in the main game it's within a typical long range spell cast distance, but in the mod I'm spending a good chunk of starting AP just moving into the fight (running away is a bad idea - most enemies can run much faster).

Oh dam you killed Nightwalker? Well done! During testing we had found that it takes a very dedicated and well-prepared character to "traditionally" tank him--or protect your backs somehow. You killed Nightwalker before the vampires? That's pretty brutal :) What level is your party, by the way?

It can definitely take some luck in finding the bastard, of course, but some particular spells, like thunder jump, can clear the illusions very cheaply and effectively.

1. Noted, we'll look into this.

2. The structures should all fade and/or do the "pidgeonhole" effect, this isn't working for you?

3. Noted :)

4. It is longer, yes. I disagreed with the sight range of enemy creatures in the base game. We'll see if this appeal to realism is outweighed by practicality, I suppose.

@Infine: sounds like you had some fun with Nightwalker. Don't worry, now that you've gotten warmed up, it should all be downhill from here. :)

>You killed Nightwalker before the vampires? That's pretty brutal :)
Well, I killed one vampire and mazed another, but in retrospect it was probably unoptimal. It would be cheaper to blind/KD/Mute+curse+slow them and concentrate on the boss, but the problem is, during the first round the amount of fake nightshades on the field is insufficient to propagate chain spells, so basically my rogue had nothing better to do until there were enough of them to make chain lightning clear half the room. As soon as the boss is visible, it's crucial to all in on him, because what makes it possible to kill him before he vanishes is stacking stat debuffs so he could be hard CCed, and those have cooldowns.

>What level is your party, by the way?
Party is lvl 24.

>The structures should all fade and/or do the "pidgeonhole" effect, this isn't working for you?
It does in the main game, but does not really in the mod. Or maybe it's the fact that many fights are split between inside/outside, so the "pigeonhole" effect does not proc. I will try to look deeper into this.

PS: on the subject of blind. And I think this problem is present in vanilla game too. Eye Gouge. The adept rouge skill. The skillbook is somehow as rare as Elemental Tortoise. I respecced my rogue late game, and can't find the book anywhere (I think there were 2 copies - one was for me, went to Wolgraf). I visit vendors every time I have a chance, but no blind for me. Can we haz it seeded?

And while we are at it, on the subject of my current Eye Gouge placeholder - Daggers Drawn. It's useless. It's a skill that does 2 normal attacks worth of damage for the price of 2 normal attacks worth of AP. The only way I see it being remotely useful is for characters without sufficient dual wielding investment, so their normal attacks are more expensive.

With the books, I was trying to honor the base game's rarity for these spells, but honestly I'm not sure why they are that way to begin with. Yes, I think I'll either add them to the regular skillbook trainers or, at least, increase their rare of occurance at the "rare item" vendors.

Daggers Drawn is definitely best used on a character with only one dagger at the moment due to the nerfs we gave it. I think I feel the same way about it as you, though.

Soooo, today I slaughtered the flesh construct thingy. And, well, it was somewhere between killing the chicken in Cyseal and breaking the sphere in The Strongman quest.

It does not help that all the enemies piled up in the bottom of the initiative queue. So the flesh construct ate erosion and drain willpower, then divine light, then knocked down, then soulsapped and managed to be a potatoman for two whole turns, while crawlers had a menu of headvice, petrifying touch and maze (I almost hate the maze because fights don't last that long). The thing needs some scripting to be more threatening than an empty potion bottle.

As for the buildings, now I understand why I hate them.

The regular view removes the ceiling, but does not remove the walls, so I want to use the tactical camera, but it's tactical camera that's broken - it floats right above the ceiling when zooming out to the max.

Also, the texture problem is also present inside the buildings on the brickwork texture.

PS: Erosion is so broken it's actually funny. In a playing Blood Rayne kinda way. It's like an AOE drain willpower, only with no save and with better followups.

PPS: Crawlers are bad. Crawlers + slopes are harbingers of the Apocalypse. Their mouseover hitbox probably worked as a bullet hell protagonist in it's previous life. I just lob fireballs at them even at point blank, because being on fire beats pixel hunting.

@infine:

- I think I know which flesh construct thingy you're talking about. During testing we found he was generally one of the easier bosses, as he is pretty much a "DPS check." If you're tearing him apart, you're probably in decent shape to kill some of the others :)

- Noted, we'll take a look at those structures with the use of tactical camera.

- I'm glad that someone sees how good that spell is!

- The clickbox really is a problem on those, isn't it... I'll have to think of some solutions for that, but it's probably going to boil down to changing the model entirely.

So, today it was the Ghost Dragon popping out of an astral rift just as it should be.
Naturally it was a total wipe before I got my turn. What with the 70 initiative, instakill (for squishies) breath and some good nukes. I guess not having tank as your main with the improved AI means you get to the loading screen before your tank gets to do it's job.

As an accomplished cheeze connoiseur I handed Madora The Scroll (mindfully prepared beforehand. I think it's time to stack up on pixie dust) and done the Madora Drop (I so want a jetpack). As an accomplished cheeze connoiseur himself, casper responded in kind ignoring the tank and teleporting on top of my party that was standing far behind...

Reasoning that I ain't gonna win the initiative war anyway I handed Madora The Scroll and sneaked with the rest of the party. Then while the casper was choking on a tenebrium hammer, the trio walked into it's rightful position at the bottom of the initiative queue. Which was totally fine, because the casper was out of AP anyway. The rest is as per usual - erosion, drain willpower, headvice, divine light, soulsap, debuff everything, buff the rogue, boss dead without regaining consciousness.

On an unrelated note:
1) Fortify does not overwrite itself. If cast fortify at a target that already has it, it does not renew. Probably same with haste.
2) I had the Maze glitch on a casper rogue. It was knocked down and scheduled to get up later in the round, so I preemptively mazed him. When it's his turn, he stands up as if nothing happened and starts doing his casper rogue stuff... While being mazed and invisible.
3) There's an altar and a chest below the northern tower that's at the end of a long gallery with statues between 2 outer walls (it has a "mirror" altar at the other end of the gallery). It's inaccessible - the way inside is at the other side of the central aqueduct, and the aqueduct acts as a map border even though there's proper floor and everything.

Okay, there was a Nietzsche wannabee alchemist nearby. Abyss quotes and all. The things were going repetitive. Something had to change, and change fast. I decided to combo off petrifying touch. Well, headvice is better, somehow blind almost never terminates prematurely. Petrification went away on the next turn with subsequent immunity, so the boss got lucky to experience more than one type of CC in a row. Not that it helped him.

I just fought (and beat) the Abyssal prince, laughed the whole fight(s it took me many attempts before I finally got him), hilarious! Best moment was when my ranger tried a point blank fusilage and got one shotted by his centurion. My party has no rogue and 2 tanks (communists), what did he drop, 2 daggers and trash...

Got Nightshade today aswell (on first attempt), the fight started great with one of my mains killed on entering the room. But the boss decided to leave the cleanup to his lackey vampires, not the sparkly type, and I could beat those with my usual communist, ooze lord (toxic oozes are the bane of anything piercing), chokepoint tactics. Then the boss teleported back, but could not brute force his way to the squishies and so decided to not attack anyone and save his AP for whenever the oozes go away. So I hit him with decaying touch and heal nuked him down to where Madora (made her the ranger just because she has comeback kid) could finish him with her massive crits (very nasty tenebrium 7 crossbow).

I've gotta say I am enjoying the legion terrace a whole lot more now that the enemies no longer have 29 AP (I think on avg they have around 26 now) and I can actually damage them.

Uuuugh. I just ascended some weird bunch. 3 named guys and 2 big statues. They didn't have a chance to fight back. Especially with the charmed statues. Didn't see the emperor guy though.

On an unrelated note decaying touch got completely out of hand. Madora hit the statue for 23K dmg with atonement.

EDIT: oh, there are portals!

I love seeing your comments on this stuff guys, keep it coming. You both appear to have very powerful parties and you probably have a decent chance of winning (don't expect to beat everything though).

@Infine:
Many buffs don't overwrite, this is a super annoying thing to fix (because I need to make fake versions of these buffs instead of using the base game's), but I will do it since it's related to Angel. I should probably do the debuffs for Demon also (even worse)....

Maze bugging out is bad. Real bad. If you have any other specifics or if you're able to reproduce the problem, let me know.

Use teleport to get to the altar :)

This is Epic Encounters--you're damn right there are portals :)

@Furin:
I love the Abyssal Prince. I remember when I first designed him and we tested him; fight starts, Prince Battering Ram one-shots someone, continues to one-shot the rest of the group... Oh yes, fun times.

I'm glad you're having fun! I wish Nightwalker's AI wouldn't bug out though....

Oh man, Abyssal Prince... I was the guy that got one-shot with the Battering Ram. I was also the tank. That took some time to adjust to.

Whoo boy, I met cruelty.

So a line of adventurers with an invulnerable wizard (♥♥♥♥ wasting scrolls) in front walks into a bar^W pair of skeletons. The Bad Skeleton is not so bright and wastes his whole turn bashing Jahan the Invulnerable Wizard. Then he gets the standard combo of erosion, drain willpower, divine light, soulsap, headvice and is a potato for next 2 turns.

I see The Good Skeleton cast heal on everyone and think "hey, I'll decaying touch the Bad Skeleton and let him heal, lol".

PLOT TWIST. Decaying touch does nothing to the Uber Heal, and the next turn The bad Skeleton is as healthy as he can possibly be with 2 screens worth of status effects piled on. The Good Skeleton is actually The Ugly Skeleton, only slightly battered this time. Healing from hit points.

Ookay, let's do it the old fashioned way. Let's not underestimate the fully buffed rogue with soulsap, disease and lowered piercing resistance on the target. In a single turn (with some help from borrowed time from the rest of the party and adrenaline) The Bad Skeleton goes from 100 to 0...

AND PLOT TWIST. That which is dead may never die.

I hastily petrify the dude (he's immune to stun and KD) and watch the combat transfusion.

With all the dung hitting the fan I forgot about his base stats, and at the end of turn 4 he resists freezing, 3-shots Madora and oneshots everyone else...

A line of adventurers is at it again. Only this time I carefully monitor the status effects. 2 melees alternate divine lights, mages alternate drain willpower, erosion on cooldown, target alternates between soulsap and soulfire (I had to use a soulsap scroll the second time, because both were on cooldown). Debuffs cycle blind-petrify-frozen-blind... On the end of the frozen turn The Ugly Skeleton got tired of it and burned out. At which point The Bad Skeleton was doomed.

Cruelty down.

EDIT: Regarding the maze bug IIRC it was as follows:
I walk into a building, there's a bunch of guys there, I spread control and KD being the most common type for me (2 battering rams, 2 crushing fists and one trip), the casper rogue eats knockdown. On the next combat round Jahan is before the one who landed KD in the initiative queue, he can't cover everyone with erosion and when it's KD guy turn, the casper rogue is likely to resist KD, and I won't be able to control him. SO I preemptively maze him. Then he resists KD and starts doing stuff while mazed.

I think I reloaded and managed to reproduce the bug, but now I'm out of casper rogues to maze.