50 réponses à ce sujet

[Gimme H]

is this the biggest difficulty spike ever or am i being really stupid?

attack the thing, hit the switch to get rid of the RIDICULOUSLY powerful adds, and repeat

but i can't get any companions to survive the first phase, even with complete micro-management,  on hold or attack they just die too easy,

i can stealth most of the way through the second phase, i could probably see it through if i tried enough times and took my time, but it just seems stupidly hard

am i missing something?

my map shows 2 switches but i only see one, anyone know what that's about?
(im playing on the 360 btw)

Modifié par Gimme H, 18 août 2010 - 07:19 .

[TJPags]

I'm on the 360, and never got the switches to work, no matter how many times I tried - and it took me, oh, 6-7 reloads to beat that damn thing.



And yea - HUGE difficulty spike . . insanely huge and outrageous.

[keesio74]

I just started GoA and I think just the DLC in general is a huge spike in difficulty. My DW rogue is level 34 and breezed through Awakenings on nightmare. But I find all the fights so far in GoA very difficult. And it doesn't help that I have no mage or archer.

[Last Darkness]

Also note the Harvester becomes Immune to all damage when hes not in the "real world"

It is a huge difficulty spike, it helps if you bring in characters from Awkenings.



Make sure to bring in stuff for your warden, gear for a rogue and gear for a warrior, Grab as many health poultices as you can and bring a few manuals of focus so you can respec Jerrik and Brogan properly so they have decent stats and abilities.

[TJPags]

Last Darkness wrote...

Also note the Harvester becomes Immune to all damage when hes not in the "real world"
It is a huge difficulty spike, it helps if you bring in characters from Awkenings.

Make sure to bring in stuff for your warden, gear for a rogue and gear for a warrior, Grab as many health poultices as you can and bring a few manuals of focus so you can respec Jerrik and Brogan properly so they have decent stats and abilities.

Cleanse Area (the templar spell) works on that.  (I'd given it to my HN Warden as he progressed through Awakenings at an insanely easy pace).

[Aenima82]

good sir first of all as a rogue you should be able to tank those skellies if you have awakening equipment. Non orange ones at least. i have a mage nightmare help thread can take some general stuff from it. its about micro management and cc nothing else really.

oh the link to mage thread

http://social.biowar...29452/1#4449657

EDIT: Shouldnt compare this dlc to awakening. Awakening was so easy with the new talents they implemented it was an overkill.

Modifié par Aenima82, 19 août 2010 - 09:56 .

[Gimme H]

okay, beat it this morning by respeccing jerrik as archer and by getting lucky,

With two of us using accuracy got through the first phase easy enough, then for some reason i had only 2 white skeletons to deal with in the second phase, no orange appeared at all (on one run i had two of the bastards on me), and then when i was left with just the harvester (and i'd laced the floor with traps) he refused to attack, just stood there and let me shoot him to death.



to me this counts as cheating,

but so is putting a spike like this on a final boss,

then again... it's nice to have something truly troublesome to deal with,

so i'll probably try again later without the respec and glitch...



punish me bioware, i've been a bad boy...

[JHByrne]

I too noticed an enormous difficulty spike.



I went in with a level 35 Elven Mage AW/BM. Some gear from Awakening, but figured I wouldn't need much, just odds n' ends, as my Warden had a kill rate of over 1800 by then.... what could a couple of Golems do to me?



Wellll.... my hotshot Warden, the terror of Ferelden, was last seen running around the Red Room at the end, a horde of skeletons clattering behind him, companions lying in a pool of blood, and him crying like a little schoolgirl... and all because of 3 tons of rancid meat and a sour attitude took a dislike to the cut of his jib.



So, I had some difficulty in the game, playing on Hard... but still manageable, up until the final battle. I nearly had that thing beat many times, but alas, all my killer spells were doing minimal damage, while that thing was maximally stomping me out of my misconceptions.



I even hit it with 'Entropic Death', for 449 points. Looking at the health bar over Mr. Harvester, it did about 1% damage... which tells me that thing must have well over 10,000 hps. And it hits like a freight train. AND it has lots of angry friends. Oh, and did we mention it also takes killing, TWICE?!?



To my everlasting shame, after running through GoA on 'hard', I finally beat the boss by switching to 'normal', thereby earning 'Reaper' but not the vaunted 'Grim Reaper'.



After all this, that idiot Dwarf companion of mine wants to preserve Angorrak. If I had a dialogue option, I'd slap him and scream 'are you out of your mind???'

[Parrk]

I was working on the harvester fight this morning and ran into trouble with the skele cripple spam.

Does anyone have any idea what the phys-res check might be set to for that ability on nightmare versus lvl 35 orange skeles?

The difficulty spike on this DLC is amazing.  I completely agree with others who have said as much.  

I figured I'd run it first on my dagger/dagger/dex rogue since she hasn't taken a melee hit since about lvl 12.  This is the toon that solo'd the architect without him casting a single spell.  She never had a chance.  I blame my having been rushed since it was nearing time to shower for work and I didnt exercise due diligence in my party tactics strat.

The thig is though, you pretty much solo that fight even if you allow the other 3 to run their tactics during the fight.  I can imagine that had I respecced the brothers and spent an hour or so getting their tactics in order that it may have been different, but they just got demolished.  They didn't have the dps throughput to down the skeles, and the golem was jsut getting owned which rendered his 1 group heal ever cd virtually useless.

The harvester himself was simple.  he rarely hit me, and only with aoe.  It was those orange skeles. 

That cripple spam really put me out of my element.  I was not prepared with 5 different types of health pots because I'd never needed them before.


tbqh though, I loved it.  I was really enjoying the challenge of trying differnt strats.  It was fun to actually use abilities that I'd never needed before.

A couple of criticisms:
1) I think they could havve tuned the fight more tightly without having to rely on gimmicky "gotcha" kinda stuff.  This is the same thing that annoyed me about awakening, except instead of an endless chain of overwhelms, it was cripple spam.  I think they could have made it more difficult by simply putting a few casters into the fight and it would have felt far more solid.

2) I do not know enough about the calculus of the game's mechanics to say this for sure, but it felt like they may have tuned the skeletons using stated values rather than relative stat values.  By this I mean that it felt like I was working under an arbitrary hit penalty rather than what would have occurred naturally by having made the mobs 2 levels higher and elite.  This is problematic because the balance of the interplay between stat values and their mechanics are exactly what makes a game feel solid.


In closing:  I really am enjoying this fight.  My chief compaint about awakening was that it was far too easy.  Even quest-reward-only-geared toons were insanley overpowered.    The overarching switches puzzle was really fun to figure out.  I particularly liked how throwing certain switched refilled rooms with differnt mobs.  I covered every corner of the map about 5 times which made the dungeon last about three hours as opposed to the 20 mins of ostagar.

[JHByrne]

Okay, enough whining, team. I figure the above posters are all experienced players... so, let's put our minds together, and figure out how to kill that thing on 'hard'.



1) I found that a Mage does work, as I did it a lot of damage through the first 'round', and killed Big Meaty, before the lil' Potato Head thing and his 9 skeleton homies took me out. Micromanaging got me that far... but if you lose just one companion, the rest go quick. You've got to keep everyone at near full health as long as possible, and that cuts into your effective damage time.



2) One of the best things for skeles is BattleMage 'drain life' aura (the first spell in that chain). Hurts them, heals you. Doesn't seem to work on Harvester, though. However, BatMage's last spell, elemental sphere, does some limited damage to it. Mass paralyze will stop 50% of the skeles, for maybe 6 seconds. Crushing prison works on one, but not on Harvester.



3) Generally, 'spirit' damage spells do best on it. Also effective: arcane bolt did about 60 hps... entropy storm did about 40... entropic death did 400, IF your death hex is not resisted (this thing must have a 85% spell resistance!). Vir Walking Bomb works, doing about 23 per tick for my character. Cone of Cold works, doing about 60 hps, and briefly freezes it, maybe 1 second. There's no time for 'charge up' spells.



4) A respecced team should therefore feature spirit damage... I didn't have the respec manuals, so I was stuck with those two badly set up dwarves. If I could respec them, I'd set the warrior to spirit warrior/templar. Spirit warrior can do spirit damage (and ignore armor). Templar can hit with holy smite, for spirit damage. I wonder how that would do on 'hard'?



As for the dwarf rogue, I'd probably set him on archer, and give him a bereskarn in addition to the bronto. I don't much like oversized companions like the golem/bronto, but in this case, any little bit counts. I'd also have brought better armor for the rogue... leather just ain't cuttin' it.



6) Grenades: I hate them. Do more damage to my party than the target. Poison (I tried Silent Death) doesn't seem to make a difference.



7) Blood Magic: forget it. I thought the Bloodmage Sash found in a chest in this module was a clue, to use bloodmagic.... however, Harvester is not affected by blood control or blood wound, and skeles have no blood for blood wound.



8) You can't animate dead here, either.



QUESTIONS: how about ShapeShifter's improved swarm? It's supposed to be hard to hit, self healing...



Any ideas?



I'd be curious to see how my human warrior would do. I left him at the end of Origins... level 23. I dunno... he could hit hard, but that's all relative. What good is a solid 40/40 damage, when the bad guy and his pals hit for 400?



5) I'd recommend going

[konfeta]

Created a brand new level 20 mage for this module to see what it would be like. Seems like a mistake - the little slimy **** spawns 6-8 skeletons in the second phase that hit for 100-150 damage a swing and cannot be run from during the empowered red state. All CC spells last too little or just get resisted.

So is this even doable with a fresh level 20 character on nightmare, or one absolute has to import an overpowered Awakening char?

The closest thing I can come up with is abusing Force Field + Taunt to delay until the skeletons auto-die in the second phase.

Modifié par konfeta, 20 août 2010 - 12:22 .

[Elhanan]

Nature dmg should/does not work on the skeletons, though Stone Fist still knocks them down. But these attacks will hurt the Harvester. VWB and that Drain Life spell do work, but it costs a lot of mana to maintain in a crowd.

[JHByrne]

Vir Walking Bomb is useful against Skels, but if/when they explode, they do a lot of damage to your own party. Everything gets clustered up a lot. I had to avoid anything explosive... VWB turns every victim into a grenade, especially if your mage is powerful. When one goes, another follows in a chain of explosions that cuts your own party's health in half. When you are desperately trying to manage health to keep them alive longer, anything that hurts your party's health is a bad thing.



Most effective thing I found against Skels was the Drain Life aura that a BattleMage has. Another good one was the Elemental Aura of BattleMage (the 4th spell in that tree).



My own mage HAD a lot of mana... with a 60 willpower, + buffs, it came out at something like 900 mana. So, I had enough mana to maintain that, and other buffs as well.



A particularly good buff for the party is 'telekinetic weapons'. Cast it. It triples your armor piercing ability. REALLY useful.



I can't imagine that a level 20 character can do it on Nightmare. I had a level 35 mage, on 'hard', and I couldn't do it. Had to finally get my boss kill on 'normal'.



ForceField and multiTaunts might work... but you'd have to have about 3-4 different taunts going at the same time (taunt + fearsome presence + vile epithet, etc). The trouble is, you'd have to really monitor that forcefield, and make sure your mana was up to it. Also, I don't know if it would work on version 1.04, as the forcefield might dissipate before the spell cooldown, leaving your aggression magnet in the center of a swarm of skels + harvester.



Clearly, 'Golems of Angarrak' was intended for high level finishers of Origins/Awakening... it is designed/leveled for overpowered characters, to humble them.

If I did GoA again, I'd have to carefully complete Awakening first (you all remember that once you leave Vigil's Keep, and go to Amarantine, you can't revisit your party chest for the last 1/4 of the game). In other words, at that final 'leave Vigil's Keep' moment (just before your last talk with Seneschal Garavel), you would have to plan for GoA....

1) stock up on potent lyriums/health/stamina potions (or higher than 'potent'... just so long as you don't have a mixed assortment of the same potion, and especially don't have any lesser potions).

2) stock up on runes, and raid your party chest or the merchants for the best armor you can get.

3) bring along 3-4 respec books.

4) bring along a couple of flawless diamonds/rubies (would those work as golem buffs?).

5) bring along the best weapons you can.



You would then have the ability to respec the party in Golems of Angarrak... and you need it, as their starting attributes are poorly distributed, especially the golem. I don't think it is possible to respec the golem... so can you buff it with flawless diamonds/rubies?

[Parrk]

I was able to beat this encounter yesterday afternoon. I found that all I had to do differently was to spend a bit of time getting the npc tactics tight, and then do a better job at kiting in phase 2.



One of the mistakes I had made was having the golem do damage, which was pulling aggro onto him. I set the golem to spam group heal at every cd, and do nothing else. I found that I couldn't even set him to quake close clusters without him dying immediately thereafter.



Another mistake I had made previously was having the group stand away from the boss in order to avoid the AOE. The problem is that they cannot handle the skeles alone and will die. The answer I found for this positioning issue was to simply turn the boss around, and have them on his back. I parked the boss and the party right atop the closest switch spawn and found that doing that causes that switch to be the only one that spawns. That got me through phase one easily.



Phase 2 was about buying time. Eventually the cost of keeping the support group alive simply becomes too great, the challenge is to try to push their death back as far into p2 as possible.



The warrior's threaten ability is the chief benefit of the support group, so focus on keeping him alive. the golem isn't healing enough to justify sacrificing anything to keep him alive. The rogue is only important so far as his being alive keeps the bronto up.



Ideally what you want is to be able to have the group hold the skeles on one side of the room leaving you free to damage the boss while he is at those nodes he visits. He will not do anything while at a node, and he will stay there for a set time regardless of how much damage you do.



By the time the warrior died I had done enough damage that it allowed me to finish him off in one defensive cd cycle.









Standing on the switch spawn makes the first phase a non-issue.







I will do this fight on a caster mage today or tomorrow. I plan to spam paralysis explosion on cd, and use virulent walking bomb on white skeles during the paralysis freeze.



If I am having trouble I may cheat by taking AW but not using the form. this will be to enable me to equip Cailan's boots.I am pretty sure the orange mobs are shatter-proof, but I suspect that I can shatter the white and yellow mobs pretty easily. Using virulent walking bomb will help immensely.



keeping haste up will make the kiting a breeze.

[Rrend]

My experience to date, I only roll on nightmare:



1. First attempt, got owned, phase 1 maybe half complete when I wiped. Never even tried the switches.



<read forums>



2. Second attempt, tank holds aggro on harvester, respecced the rogue to archer and he stand by the switch and DPSs harvester and selectively draws skele aggro, hits switch as soon as possible. golem does nothing but group heal and bronto stands in front of archer. Main is a DW rogue and he backstabbed the harvester the whole time. Both tank and main have all buffs possible up, including spirit damage weapon treatment. Phase 1 was pretty painless, no deaths.



Phase 2, 4 orange skeles and 1 yellow quickly kill all but my main character. I try to kite them and then stealth out, but they quickly own me.



Next steps:



1. Figure out how to get the additional golem upgrades that I have seen referred to but have no idea how to get (even though I explored everything I think I could have...) Pimp my tank and have him kite all the skeles while my main disassembles the harvester. Run away or stealth during red period. Conserve highest potency poultices during phase 1 (I burned most of them in phase 1 on my second try. I have hope, but when I saw those 4 orange skeles, I knew there was no hope this time around.

[Rhuakah]

After resorting to setting this fight on 'easy' and still getting killed in the first phase, I'm resigned to say that this campaign isn't for me.

[SEsterline]

I'm with Rhuakah on that one. I've not dropped down to "easy" juest yet... but I'm about to. I wanted to jump right in, so I made a brand new Mage (AW/SH) and just found out that my paralysis spam doesn't do *crap* against these guys in the red room. (I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read JHByrne's comment above... I *too* spent the last few minutes of my previous game running in circles around the room with a gaggle of chattering skeletons behind me before my revival attempt failed--the spell fizzled??)



And what's with the Golem who ignores your command to revive your fallen comrades? (His spell fizzled too??) Apparently, when he/she/it gets low on hit points, all it can do is attack until it dies??

[termokanden]

I completely agree that it is designed for overpowered characters. However, there are ways to beat this that work for less powerful characters, they just involve a lot of running away.

The strategy that worked for me on Hard (never went back on Nightmare, don't really like the place anymore ) was as follows:

1. Use archers. More than one, high dex and Accuracy.
2. Use Ranger pets as diversions.
3. If skeletons/Harvester targets someone, have them run in circles around the pillars.
4. Always have one party member near the switch. It can even be a pet.
5. Use the switch as often as possible. I tried many times to wait for more skeletons, but it was never better that way.

You WILL survive this if you are patient and keep an eye on all party members.

Here comes the single most important part. When Harvester is ALMOST dead, stop DPS and wait for the switch. When it appears, hit it and immediately have everyone attack Harvester.

You should now have zero skeletons and an easy phase 2.

I want to add that this worked for me with a level 20 character that wasn't even imported. So only the few potions you get, only one respec book and so on.

Modifié par termokanden, 26 août 2010 - 02:10 .

[Durandel76]

First post ever, but I felt compelled to add some input. I ran through the DLC on Nightmare with my lvl 33 DW warrior, overpowered like crazy as Awakening characters are. Expected a challenge from the start. A little disappointed until facing the golems that appear after looting the Reapers Cudgel, pretty good fight, I must say. At the time, the biggest challenge this toon had faced. Then the Harvester, talk about difficulty spike. After several attempts, I resigned myself to lowering the setting to hard. Still tough but after realizing that the only characters that mattered were myself and the dwarf rogue (can’t remember his name) I ignored everything else and focused on burning down the Harvester.

Phase one, I turned the harvester toward a corner and laid into him with elemental coating on my blades as well as the rogue’s. Burn it down fast enough. All stayed alive but the dwarf warrior.

Phase 2, the golem fell quickly. The rouge and I double teamed the Harvester hard and fast, dealing damage up close and personal, several health and stamina pots were used but I held aggro the entire time to keep the rogue alive. Instead of trying to kill off skellys as I had done previously, I concentrated on the Harvester, I used Unending Flurry when available (I would pop a stamina pot just before to load it up to full) I'm not sure but it may be bugged. When I start an UF attack, the harvester appears stunned and does not move for the length of the attack. In short order the Harvester was dead, and I was very happy. Right away, I tried it again on Nightmare, and with the exact same strategy, I killed it again on the next try! Nice feeling.  

Also I kept Beyond the Veil up all the time to reduce damage from the skellys.

Modifié par Durandel76, 27 août 2010 - 06:40 .

[Phaelducan]

I think there must be some issue with the Harvester and not using the switches. It also happened to me where I had killed all the adds without using any switches (didn't know about them until after the fight when I looked up the encounter), and he just stood there glitched while I shot him to death.

I died to him the first time because I got Evasion/Locked with the adds and couldn't heal, so on my second attempt I just stood in the back and shot everything yellow and lower while I had the two dwarves and the golem turtle up and chain-heal. Well, he wiped my party while I killed all the skeletons in phase two, and he just stood there dieing from arrow shots. No idea what causes that behavior.

I'd like to give it a real shot though, maybe with a different class though as I breezed through the rest with an accuracy rogue.

Modifié par Phaelducan, 27 août 2010 - 09:23 .

[termokanden]

I believe that's how it's supposed to be in phase 2. Harvester in his basic form is not particularly strong. At first he flees from you. When confronted and cornered, he jumps into this corpse THING and attacks you from there. Afterwards he will actually just try to flee and summon skeletons.



So I think that's actually what they intended. Because the skeletons were too strong for me to kill in phase 2 (did not import a character, might make a big difference), but Harvester was not.

[Lord Gremlin]

At first, I've also though it was impossible, my first run was as level 34 rogue. I'm on PS3 so first I couldn't see the switch as selectable, but after several retries I've finally noticed that it can be turned off " hit the switch to get rid of the RIDICULOUSLY powerful adds" was the key.

I didn't need my party to survive. They're weak and they all died. But I had "ghost" talent from Awakening so... The second phase was me running from a crowd of skeletons and harvester until ghost recharges, turning it on and going for harvester, then repeating. BTW when you turn ghost on harvester actually tries to run away, smart AI I guess.

[SaberGator]

First off, I only have one switch during the first phase of the final battle despite the map showing two. Is this a glitch??? Second, during the second phase there aren't any switches at all and my last two guys keep getting overwhelmed by the dang undead gang. I'm getting kind of frustrated...any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[SaberGator]

First off, during the first phase of the final battle I only see one switch despite the fact that the map shows two. Is this a glitch? Second, during the second phase there are no switches at all and I keep getting overwhelmed by the undead gang with my last two guys. Is there a secret here that I'm not seeing? Is the location of the switch removed or triggered somehow? Or is it just removed entirely? If there was a switch for phase two I think I'd have no issues. I'm getting a little frustrated...any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. 

*sorry about the double post...I thought my first one didn't go up for some reason.*

Modifié par SaberGator, 28 août 2010 - 02:18 .

[Elhanan]

AFAIK, there is only a single switch, and it should be gone for Phase 2. I spend most of my time running the perimeter and firing as able.