I failed maybe 20 times months ago and ended up abandoning the game, but it was my favorite character, Kruklya (dw rogue/dualist/assassin), and it felt wrong leaving her down there in the sewer next to that blob monster, so I finally went back to, erm, rescue her.
I found that I truly didn't build her right despite her being 35th lvl from Awakenings, had diddly squat for runes, decent blades- Velvet and Rose's Thorn- but nothing spectacular. Her fellow dwarves had less than diddly armor and weapons, and I'd brought no respec for them so there were all those diddly Reaper and Berserker talents.
I tried maximizing the damage, thinking if I can just blitz the Harv fast enough there wouldn't be time for the boss corpses. Yeah... Fast enough wasn't happening. And despite Kruklya's 100+ DEX she was an easy kill by the elite corpses unless they were stunned- i.e., stopped slashing. Melee pile-on's just gave the Harv the opportunity to splatter, smash, and knock us down.
Then I tried stationing Kruklya next to the switch with a bow. This changed things slightly because she wasn't being splattered, smashed, or knocked down anymore. Ah ha. I also started noticing that Taunt worked well on the Blob because it would ignore all the melee fighters wailing on it- or attempting to since melee is hard when your target keeps moving away, so Brogan and Jerrick did diddly damage trying to get a shot in while the Blob ineffectually chased the fast-moving Taunting rhino. And still the boss and elite corpses would come in and overwhelm everyone.
But I recognized:
1. archery doesn't require a stationary target...
2. Snug runs faster than even the corpses after they accelerate their chase speed, so that could buy a lot- even an indefinite- amount of Harv-killing time
3. The Healer Golem is better just spamming the Group Heals and staying well out of the fight.
So then it became clear how to beat it with diddly equipt and builds and no wizardry: go Baldur's Gate on 'em- i.e., firing squad + leading a chase (or kiting, as I've recently read). After all, it's how she'd beaten the initial ogre and Uldred in Origins, always the backup plan.
Except for two tricky aspects:
1. the corpses would arrive from different locations at different times, so Snug couldn't be assured of being able to Taunt them all easily, and thus stragglers from the corpse parade would go attacking people and golems, causing their wanton instakills.
2. Instakills tend to kill instantly. Must stay away from those boss corpses...
So the Taunting rhinobronto had to successfully both run away and also attack- since Taunt doesn't always work on its own unless the Taunter hits, and Snug isn't the best hitter. Oh, so coincidentally, however, Snug has Charge as well which seemed to be an auto-hit, so I'd reserve that for when a hit was necessary.
Others have lauded spamming The Switch, but I'd discovered through repeated deaths that it's not much of a guarantee of safety. Often corpses would return immediately after, and they'd be bosses and elites rather than regulars. So it was not always wise to make the exchange for 10 sec of corpse-free battling and more a matter of reserving it for, say, being set upon by two or more bosses, three or more elites- or in any case when a new crop could hardly get worse. That never seemed to happen. Being chased by four regulars made the switch a poor idea since that pretty much meant survival even with several odd hits. In the victory battle they didn't use the switch once... though luck may have played some part regarding what rank of corpse they got. That said, the very first corpse to arrive was a boss... which didn't bode well but never got a single blow in before the game auto-killed all the corpses the first time. And, mind you, despite never flipping the switch at all, twice during that battle all the corpses died with an eery atmosphere change anyway- once during the 2nd phase even- the death knell for Critter Harv.
So I pretty much gutted everyone's Tactics- or rather created one specially for this fight. Kruklya and her Dace comrades were put on Ranged and told only to:
1. Attack bosses (I had to watch to make sure no one fired on boss corpses and drew their lethal aggro, of course)
2. drink Potent health pots (Kruklya was assigned the 11 Superbs (of which she did use 3 total)) when <25% health.
No one had a single archery talent. Well, Kruklya had Rapid, but she was switching between archery and melee repeatedly, so it was hard to sustain it. Even Brogan became an archer. Kruklya did fortunately have two spare bows (with no Runes despite three slots each) on her. So those got parceled out.
The Rune Golem got to just stand there in Cautious and heal mode and fire off Group Heals every time anyone got below 75%. In the 1st part the only one getting regularly damaged was the Taunting rhino anyway, so this minor healing was perfectly sustainable. Every once in a while a corpse would break off or join from outside and attack a dwarf, so then Mr./Ms. Stone Healer would toss a Hurl to help kill it.
It started with just Snug, sent her/him/it directly at the Blob with a Charge and Taunt. After Snug was en route, everyone else got in the center by the columns. Runey took the very center to extend the healing circle to everyone and maximize the area of healing to where Snug could pass through it during the chase to get some extra heals. Brogan took the one side, Kruklya the other, so fresh corpse arrivals would target them, not Jerrick, if they failed to join the throng on Snug's tail. After all, if Snug were to fall, a back-up tank would have to suffice until Jerrick could "summon" another bronto from out of the stone.
Many here have suggested leaving someone near The Switch, but that tended to leave them an immediate target for new arrivals of corpse fodder. So I tried to keep the archers and golem tucked away behind the stone partition columns in the center, out of sight of any arrivals. Didn't do a great job of it, but when it worked, it worked.
Well, the plan went like a breeze- no one but Snug even hurt- until the Blob was at 1/5 it's health. Then a couple new elites arrived to start slicing into Kruklya, and when Snug paused to Taunt them, bye-bye rhino. It was a lot of micromanagement to get them off Kruklya and Jerrick and onto Brogan, but it worked, and Brogan led a more heal-potion-intensive chase until a new Snug arrived to relieve him. Well, relieve his corpse, but then Runey revived Brogan and he returned to his archery station. Kruklya did have a few instances of being forced to revert to DW melee talent spamming to eliminate stray corpses on her or Jerrick, but she remained the heavy hitter on archery.
Then the head suddenly popped off (I'd never managed that before) and soon afterward Snug stumbled again and... back to Brogan as the lure, this time with even more Elites and Regs (and thankfully no Bosses). Except this time the loosed corpses killed Runey first and then Broggy, so... uh oh. But Kruklya was able to distract them from Jerrick- going in and out of stealth- until yet another Snug (all his summoned brontos are coincidentally named Snug) came to Taunt the day. Then it was a fairly easy chase and firing squad action, and when Critter Harv was down to 1/4 health all the chasing corpses suddenly died for some reason (I'll take it!), so that shift was Harv's death knell.
As usual everyone but Kruklya got naked to celebrate the final victory, but she didn't mind their donation to the Duster Collection Agency. The least they could do for the Gray Warden. What? Hey, it's not what you think!
I'm sure the battle could be easier with magic and better talents, stats, and equipt, and I could've spared myself some agony by better micromanagement of Snug's movements or better archer positioning by the columns so that arriving corpses would see Snug first, but the approach I used did win it on the first try. Took about an hour..
I found a good vid on YouTube where one guy does nearly the same thing using a Lvl 20 character and ultimately lost his entire party except for Jerrick who just kept summoning Snugs from Stealth and nevertheless ultimately pulled a victory. So it's not a perfect strategy and requires plenty of pausing, but it works. I'd never upped Jerrick's Stealth skills enough though, so I had no way to work that same set of tactics. Also my rule is to never let Kruklya die, so... wouldn't have resorted to it anyway.
Btw, what's with that swarm of Harvs at the end? The hell? Way to make their victory look diddly. And why didn't the critters intervene when they could've assisted their, erm, sibling? Is there supposed to be some battle with them that happens off-camera? Reeeeaaalllly wish they'd have just made the ending more of a slow sweeping gaze back into the murky depths while the player's adrenaline simmers down...
Now if only Kruklya had found all the research notes to win the 3rd Achievement of the GoA DLC, I'd have no cause to return to that revolting Blob fight once again... *sigh* Oh, well. Next victim...
Modifié par Bhryaen, 05 mai 2013 - 01:04 .
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