50 réponses à ce sujet

[DWSmiley]

0-6 now but I came close on my last try! I got the little sucker down to about 1/4 hit points. Golem died early but the bronto taunting and kiting the skeletons really helped. But then the rogue died and the dwarf warrior and I got swarmed by skeletons. I should have kited at that point and attacked the Harvester only when we had carapace active. Trying to resist the temptation to dial down to hard. I don't think it would make much difference anyway.

[Gloatie]

Wow. Very fun. One of my few posts to the forums was to let developers know that one of my only real disappointments with Awakenings was that there is no truly challenging mode. Well, GoA is that.

Definitely meant to be played with a 30+ level import. (Although if you want a REALLY tough slog, roll a new character!)

All of the advice here is good. I would just add that having tons of pots going in made it possible to keep my whole team up to the end. (It seems that the main way they have made this DLC tough is to make you do it with half a healer if your Warden isn't a healing mage.)

The tips I think are relevant no matter Warden's class:

Hopefully you have lots of pots. Set tactics to use them liberally.

Have your Runic Golem set as ranged and using group heal when Ally<90%.

Snug makes a great off-tank. Put him on adds and focus fire on boss.

(No one has mentioned Ser Pounce-a-lot. I never used him, but if your Golem goes down, seems he could be let out of the bag.)

Modifié par Gloatie, 30 août 2010 - 06:59 .

[termokanden]

Sadly if you make a new character, you will have almost no pots. I personally restarted the whole thing and played through the first parts on easy to make sure I had some pots left for the fight. Otherwise, you can end up spending them all when fighting the golems.



With a powerful character, nuking probably works. With a non-imported character, I am completely convinced that kiting + lots of pets is the way to go. The more pets you have, the better.

[naledgeborn]

JHByrne wrote...

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???'

Is it sad that I find this post more entertaining than GoA itself? It is definitely a challenge, I'll give the devs that. The first hour or so in I was tearing my hair out trying to figure the lyrium switch puzzle. After the first time through it's cake though, other than the actual fighting - that is.

[W1tchHunter]

lol the harvestor and his skeleton friends could probs take on the archdemon and his whole army

[ussnorway]

Elhanan wrote...

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.

Yes and No... the skeletons will still (try to) attack the swarm so you could drop an earthquake and buz around them while your mage fire/ walking bombs them to death... assuming you have fire resistance gear on, of course.

[Elhanan]

The knockdown effect from Fireball makes close detonation inadvisable even if resistant. But Earthquake may be a good spell choice I have not tried, as it has no casting delay.

[DWSmiley]

Done! Holy crap that was hard. It took about 6 more tries but I knew I was on the right track. Kiting with the bronto was key and, yes, not getting an orange skeleton at the wrong time, i.e., not just after hitting the switch. But I just knew when the camera panned back down the stairs that...

[Gnoster]

I took down the Harvester on Nightmare first time around with my 2-handed warrior.
What I did was have everyone focus dps on the Harvester, my warrior used his 2-handed sweep, War Cry, and Holy Smite to keep the skeletons knocked down, and then when enough of them where up I used Massacre, which instant-killed all of them (the damage from 2-handed sweep and holy Smite made this possible). Rinse and repeated this with the dwarf warrior using Massacre next (I used the respec book on him), third time my warrior's Massacre was off cooldown.
Anyway beside this only two things I did was have the rogue dwarf run to the lever and pull it everytime the area went darkred again, and use the party heal from the Golem every 10 seconds when it was off cooldown.
At the end I did loose the Bronto, the dwarf warrior, and the Golem, but at that time the boss was down to 1/3 of his health and my warrior could pretty much solo him.

Modifié par Gnoster, 01 septembre 2010 - 07:22 .

[Sappy69]

This was a pretty fun fight (I only play on Nightmare difficulty).  It's a bit of a puzzle, but it helps if you think about it as an MMO-style boss fight.  I wouldn't recommend trying this with a new character, as it seems the difficulty is meant for twinked-out Awakening characters.  I beat this with a Lvl 34 sword-and-shield tank character.  Here are some tips:

- The fight comes in 2 phases, so you have to kill the Harvester 2 times.
- The first phase is not too hard if you know about the switches.  Skeletons will randomly spawn, but anytime you activate a switch, it kills all the skeletons.  However, it's on a cooldown, so use this wisely.
- You won't have the help of the switches on the second phase, so this is where it gets tricky.

The reason this fight is hard is not because of the Harvester (which is just a standard boss with a lot of HP), but the skeletons.  They are BRUTAL.  They randomly spawn and do a lot of damage, especially the boss-level skeletons.  They're all dual-wielding dagger rogues who attack super-quick (probably have Momentum on) and use the full suite of stun, slow-down, and other rogue debuffs.

It helps if you think of this fight as a race to kill the Harvester before the skeletons overwhelm you.  The Harvester can do damage, but is nothing compared to the skeletons.  The skeletons are a threat because you'll randomly get either a normal, lieutenant, or boss skeleton when they spawn.  You can get real unlucky and find yourself facing 3-4 boss skeletons at a time.  They attack super-quick, do 100+ dmg per hit, and don't really miss.  They also have really high physical resistance, so you can't reliably stun or knock them down with abilities like Shield Bash, War Cry, Holy Smite, etc.

The key in the first phase is to use the switch when you feel you're about to be overwhelmed by skeletons.  Note that the skeletons will spawn faster and faster the less health the Harvester has.  It also pays to not kill the Harvester if it has very little HP and there are a lot of skeletons left...wait until the switch activates, kill all the skeletons, and then finish the Harvester.  What I did was position the Golem and the dwarf warrior (forgot his name) next to the switch.  The Golem just heals (it's worthless for fighting), while the dwarf acts as a bodyguard for the Golem while using a bow to pelt the Harvester when not tanking.  The Warden (SnS warrior) tanks the Harvester and most skeletons, while Jerrik is my main damage dealer, backstabbing the Harvester.  The Bronto just adds damage to the Harvester (it sucks, so it doesn't matter what the Bronto pet does).

The second phase is trickier because the switch doesn't work anymore.  Here, the Harvester is smaller, faster, and hops away a lot.  It'll stop occasionally (for a few seconds) to summon more skeletons (instead of the skeletons randomly spawning like in the first phase).  Archers help a lot here, since the Harvester hops away a lot and is a lot faster than you are.  Since you can't just insta-kill the skeletons anymore, it's important to have a character tank them and able to survive them.  None of the dwarf companions can do it, so having a Warden as a tank character is a godsend here.  Just taunt and tank the skeletons, while everyone else focuses on finishing the Harvester as quick as possible...it's a race to off him before the skeletons off you.

Useful notes:
- The Golem companion is worthless in this fight.  His healing is garbage, has a long cooldown, and in the 2nd phase when you *really* need his healing aura, the fight moves too fast for him to keep up.  I only keep him alive because you need as many meatshields as you can get.  His Revival skill is useful, but I found it'll occasionally get bugged and just not activate.  The Bronto is also worthless.
- It helps a lot if you bring along a bunch of respec tomes.  The dwarves aren't statted very well, so it pays to be able to optimize their attributes/talents to your desire.  On the same token, it helps to bring along high-level gear for them.
- Bring LOTS of potions, especially if your PC is not a mage.  Again, the Golem healing sucks here, so you'll be chugging potions like crazy.
- ALWAYS keep your health high.  The skeletons will occasionally hit you with a stun that lasts for 4-5 seconds.  Since you're relying on potions to stay alive, they can EASILY kill you while you're stunned.
- Don't bother trying to kill the skeletons, unless you get lucky and are up against a normal-level one.  You're better off just relying on the switch in the first phase, and in the second phase you should just focus on the Harvester.
- Your map indicates that there should be 2 switches, but for whatever reason there's really just 1 switch.
- Neither of the dwarves has any chance to live for long against a boss-level skeleton, so don't even try tanking them.  I found that only my Warden could tank them effectively.
- My Warden was a SnS warrior focused on tanking.  I had his defense and dodge% pretty high, and that's probably the only way to survive for long against the boss-level skeletons (I imagine a twinked-out Arcane Warrior can do better).  Had a dodge rate of 55% (Cailan's Boots 20% + Spellward 10% + Vigilance 10% + 3 Dodge Runes 15%) and a Defense rating of over 200.  The dwarf warrior had less Dodge% and Defense was only 150-160-ish, and he dies real quickly against the boss-level skeletons.
- If your PC is a tank, always have Taunt ready.  Your party will NOT survive for very long against the skeletons, and new ones always spawn, so you need to take the heat off them.  You'll need their damage to focus on the Harvester.  Also, if you've specced/equipped Jerrik correctly, he should be doing a TON of damage backstabbing, so keep Threaten on for your tank to make sure the Harvester focuses on him instead of Jerrik.
- Carapace is a very nice ability here; both my Warden and the dwarf warrior had it.  It makes you invincible for a few precious seconds, but it has a long cooldown, so save this for when you REALLY need it.
- Did I mention potion-chugging?  Keep chugging!  Have every different type of potion handy so you can rotate through all the cooldowns.  Yes, sometimes you'll chug 4-5 potions consecutively.

Hope this helps for those trying to beat this on Nightmare.  Since the last DLC is coming up, I hope to see more of this type of difficulty (at least on the harder difficulties) from future DA games.

[DWSmiley]

@Gnoster – I’m envious you did it so quickly. Well, sort of - it was a rush when I finally won. My pc was S&S and I left Brogan that way, too. Massacre alone wasn’t worth the time and stamina. I’m surprised Holy Smite helped much.



@Sappy69 – A lot of good advice there but for me the bronto was key to keeping the skeletons away from the rest of the group, particularly in the second phase, as it can taunt and outrun them. The golem’s heals were helpful in the first phase but I never managed to keep it alive until the second phase. Lots of poultices would help – I only had about 10 good ones as they are never needed in Awakenings and you sure can go from about half health to dead quickly. I did see a second switch a few times – it’s a plate rather than a pedestal – but the one time I tried to use it, it disappeared before I got to it.



Besides the bronto, it helped when I started using Ghost in addition to Strength of Stone to keep Jerrik alive and I eventually thought to use some demonic poisons and 2 swift salves I happened to have. This fight required every useful talent and bit of inventory. It took awhile to shake off my laziness from Awakenings!



BTW - When little Harv was down to about one tenth hit points, all the skeletons suddenly died for some reason. I probably didn’t need that but it was great to see anyway. It would have been really frustrating to finally get that close and lose.

[Gnoster]

DWSmiley wrote...

@Gnoster – I’m envious you did it so quickly. Well, sort of - it was a rush when I finally won. My pc was S&S and I left Brogan that way, too. Massacre alone wasn’t worth the time and stamina. I’m surprised Holy Smite helped much.

I honestly think it is because of me running a 2-handed warrior. At high levels the damage output and battlefield control are both quite insane, which makes the game so much easier. He was also the reason for the quickest takedown of the archdemon ever for me, I remember thinking "this time you need to remember to call in some allies", but all of a sudden the archdemon was dead :-).
Running a SnS warrior now, who I playwise actually like quite a lot, so it'll be interesting to see how his fight with the Harvester goes.

[DWSmiley]

Gnoster wrote...
I honestly think it is because of me running a 2-handed warrior. At high levels the damage output and battlefield control are both quite insane, which makes the game so much easier. He was also the reason for the quickest takedown of the archdemon ever for me, I remember thinking "this time you need to remember to call in some allies", but all of a sudden the archdemon was dead :-).
Running a SnS warrior now, who I playwise actually like quite a lot, so it'll be interesting to see how his fight with the Harvester goes.

Were you using intensity runes?  I had purely defensive runes for my S&S including 3 dweomers in Vigilance, which were useless, of course.  But I wanted to avoid going back to Awakenings and rejigging things.

[shelafun]

Just did it on nightmare with no party death. Main was sns warrior, tactics was simple, all attacked harvester i controled only brunto, golem was set to heal and follow me close. With brunto i just run around using taunt when needed and pushing button when it pops up. In phase 2 same only thing needed is time your circles so adds will go on brunto with golem and rest of party just auto attack harvester. Pots (had lot of them) was set to drink on 90% health. 

Modifié par shelafun, 05 septembre 2010 - 10:05 .

[Tony_Knightcrawler]

Wow, that's a good strategy considering he is so fast and I've never seen him get Crippled.

[keesio74]

I played this fight again just now on nightmare. Found out that if you have a DW rogue, that a key talent is unending flurry. When you get to the second stage, have your tank occupy the skeletons and have your rogue stamina up and unleash unending flurry on the harvester. Game over. The flurries stun the harvester in place you can pile up damage. If you have a lot of stamina, that is it.

[HellWyrm]

It may be because I was using my Arcane Warrior, who had 150 Phys/Mental Res, and 85% Res all, as well as 189 defense/81 armor (Shimmering Shield FTW!), but I found the entire fight EASY as hell. And yes, I was playing on Nightmare. I only had to use 2 or 3 health potions.



Gear was Vigilince Longsword (Defensive and Flexible), Landsmeet Shiled with LotD Heraldry, Lifegiver, Ring of Ages, Spellward, Andruil's Blessing, and Full Sentinel armor set.



Buffs were Haste, Shimmering Shield, Rock Armor, Arcane Shield (with the Arcane Shield buff added in Awakening, w/e its called), Combat Magic (with Fade Shroud, obviously), Miasma, and I think Cleansing Aura.



Everyone else died though

[Beanpole2]

Quote: "(No one has mentioned Ser Pounce-a-lot. I never used him, but if your Golem goes down, seems he could be let out of the bag.)"

Tried it. Doesn't seem to work at all in GOA

[deathadder99]

Okay, just OWNED it on nightmare with about 3 potions. Took me a few tries though! Just pray that you dont get any boss skeletons, but anyway, bring 3 respec tomes.

- Respec brogan for tank - 42 Str, 26 Dex rest con, aura of insolence and carapace(+bulwark of the ages) and rest is personal pref.
- Set golem tactics to alternate slam, group heal and chain lightning.
-IF PC is a rogue, respec for archery and dump EVERYTHING into dex and respec Jerrik for unending flurry, else respec Jerrik to archery. Weak point and accuracy being key here.
-If PC is a warrior, go spirit warrior with dual wield (with unending flurry). DPS is KEY here.
- If you are a mage, arcane warrior!

If everyone stays on brogan then you should easily be able to down the boss really quickly. With a huge dex rogue and/or an arcane warrior you will have one effectively invincible character who can survive most of the skeletons attacking them (for instance at one point jerrik was tanking 3-4 skeletons and not being hit). Hit switch if you are being overwhelmed.

Once the harvester is down to very low HP wait for switch spawn then NUKE. Save the switch for a few seconds into Phase 2 then hit it and try to back the harvester in a corner. Phase 2 harvester is very physically frail so dies very quickly. Hope I helped!

Edit:forgot to mention that I was only about level 23-ish but having a high dex archery rogue makes it incredibly easy!

Modifié par deathadder99, 28 septembre 2010 - 08:18 .

[Hodyshoran]

I am trying as a mage but the Harvester is resisting most of my spells - can anybody name the spells he is most vunerable too?

[Elhanan]

Hodyshoran wrote...

I am trying as a mage but the Harvester is resisting most of my spells - can anybody name the spells he is most vunerable too?

Spirit dmg is a good choice (eg; Arcane Bolt, Walking Bomb, etc) And I found some of the Hexes to be of more help than usual in this encounter.

[Hodyshoran]

Thanx got it killed at the ned - used a console command after 3 nights of trying...

[invisiblezero123]

This fight is a joke when you kite with Snug spamming Taunt, and have your other teammates strictly auto-attack.