Wrath of the Righteous Dance of Masks
Oct. 30th, 2025 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have done all the Festival bit of the DLC, including all the arena has to offer.
Played a bit later than I intended but around the time I was planning to sleep I was instead stuck in a rolling battle that just kept getting worse. I was thinking I did not know how to survive it but if I did survive it I would have bragging rights forEVER.
Details under the cut: The arena gives you fifteen fights calibrated to your likely level. By the final five each stage of the fight is chosen to be challenging to a party of six level 20 mythic 9 characters. By that point you are fighting the shadows of small gods. It is tricky, is what I am saying.
Due to a weird interaction between abilities and fight triggers, I was fighting three of those at once.
And due to the situation getting steadily worse if I waited, I ended up fighting a fourth before the second was resolved.
So it starts with some pretty simple nested demons, easy enough to kill if you go one at a time. They start as low level whatsits so I used the Witch ability to turn them into *allied* animals. This is important. They go green and count as part of your party.
So once you have done that to everyone the fight is over.
But it won't trigger the next one.
So, here is where I did a Bad Idea. I thought hmmm, I can use these demons to fight the next guy, so I went to the arena boss and asked for the next fight.
Which was an epic challenging bastard so I actually had to quickload back out of that beforw TPK and drop a bunch of spells where the enemy was about to spawn. Feels cheap but my characters have done 11 rounds in the arena and know where the other guys always arrive.
So that worked better, and I tried to send Ulbrig in to grapple the King of the Wild Hunt, and then I experienced regret and an urgent need to drop a Heal spell on Ulbrig.
But then the fight triggered the auto heal it does when you win a round. Because my allied transformed animals had got their arse kicked, which triggered the end of the first fight as far as the computer was concerned. So I chose to keep fighting, because why not?
Why not is it triggered the next guy.
So now I am fighting the Wild Hunt and someone who has some name like Death or Reaper. Both at once. But the new dude brought a bunch of humans labelled 'crop' who are red outlined already, but is himself green outlined. So he registers as an ally. Which would usually make him hard to hit, though I have some ideas later in the fight about the kind of area effect spells I usually avoid using withiut Selective Spell on them, and the zappy thing you get real early on from the Good mythic path will also both hit him and do damage. Healing spells think he's a friend though so that number is going back and forth. But mostly he's weighing in on our side against the Wild Hunt, so that seems nice?
And then the Wild Hunt Monarch turns into the Lantern King, an actual first world god, and I have so much to worry about at once.
I used so many scrolls of mass heal. And I did Raise Dead on Ulbrig because Sosiel could quicken it and it should have worked to quicken raise then mass heal. But it didnt so Ulbrig was standing there massively injured and not interactive yet. Not a great moment!
Somehow we won against the Lantern King. Don't ask me how though, it wasn't Ember because she got turned into a dog by prismatic spray. Granted that spell did a lot more to the other enemies than it did to us but still, not helpful. And our attempts to remove curse mid battle were not working. And so when the fight end triggered and healed and uncursed us all, I said we needed a break, and quick saved the instant that became an option.
So we were behind the fire and officially not fighting.
But.
The dude with the scythe and the scary death theme? Was still having a battle on his own out in the arena.
Not! Good!
Because the more people he killed the stronger he gets.
Already the epic triple battle has given him more death charges than the fight was designed around as far as I can see. And he is out there chasing down the last of them.
So not good.
So at this point I abandoned all pretence of not going back to the quicksave whenever it seemed prudent, and I tried to come up with a way to get at him. The ones with the spells can't cast them past teh fire wall. Ulbrig can do death from above but only on a red lined enemy, so on the victims not the scythe dude. Then he's out there alone and that is not going to work out for him. So I tried to dimension door in but for reasons best known to the xbox it will not take the whole party, it just leaves half of them behind and refuses to act like there's room. I cannot get my party to the fight that is still in progress. I tried a few times but every time the scythe guy reaped the whole crop and got the kind of AC I can't see how to touch.
So I quick loaded once more and triggered the final fight.
I can't kill him but if I do it fast enough the guy is still green allied with me and might maybe make it the linnorm dragon's problem.
... not quite how that went down.
We're too good at dragon slaying and yet still don't have anything very high level that can touch the green lined enemy. Ember kills the dragon and we're left with the scuthe guy going red lined. He is going to kick our arses so so bad. So I try one of the Chains spells on him but he saves so he'll only be stunned for one round. He still manages to kill Ulbrig while chained. We are so screwed.
Then Ember explodes because the linnorm has a death curse that really bites. Just explodeso out of her.
So we need to resurrect two people and kill one fuck off huge dragony linnorm.
... simples!
Sosiel raised dead on Ulbrig and Resurrected Ember. Then Ember killed the linnorm a second time with maximised Hellfire Rays. ... if there were alignment implications to Evil spells in this game Ember would have gone dark side long ago but the spell lists etc just treat it as a fire spell with bonus damage type. So a lot of things get to eat maximized Hellfire Rays.
At this point the scythe guy was about to get unstunned and, as far as I could see, kill us all. Because he has been soaking up deaths from triple the fights and on the whole we haven't.
But!
Killing the last boss triggers the big
You Won, Have A Shiny And Get Out.
We never beat the scythe guy but the arena turns out not to care.
So we got out of there alive despite me having not one clue how we were going to live long enough to do anything to that enemy.
It is undignified, and I am not sure the bragging rights apply, but still:
Triggered all tbe fights and Won Them.
... wait where did the shadow monks go in that sequence? I remember realising they were undead and it seemed like when one died their strength got redistributed so I was going to have to kill them with area effects that hit them all at once. Mass Heal and Firestorm made that fight swift and simple. It's kind of the exact opposite needs of the nested demons. They get stronger when you hit them either way but the detail changes the tactics.
ETA: that was the fourth fight of the five, so I wasn't just fighting three at once, they all overlapped at least partially. Also the online guides say I'd guessed wrong about how it worked and it was some kind of duplication situation? They all died at once though so *shrugs* /ETA
We just blew through the arena in few enough game minutes all our buffs and Guarded Hearth all applied. Guarded Hearth is usually a 'win boss battle' button but we set it too close to the entry door and also these are some very harsh boss battles.
This time though the possessing entity fight didn't hurt a bit, I saw the cat running in and realised that dispelling cats all day had been working out great, Greater Dispelled all her defences when she was still yellow, then wiped her out with Ulbrig and Seelah before it was ever her turn. Painless, and that can't be said of last time I did that fight at all.
So many fights in a row. I should have rested in between them but felt like that was a tedious waste of buffs, then had to pay for it in scrolls and running out of 9th level spells.
I still don't know what to do with Sosiel. My plan with summoned things does kind of work sometimes but he needs a better one. At the moment he keeps landing on being Daeran but much worse at it,
So then I finished off the Festival quests but now I am on to the next section I noticed:
Arue still has the Reaper buffs.
I think she has +16 of buffs.
Which could be considered a lot.
Don't think it's meant to be permanent, don't know when it will wear off, but that's a bit handy that is.
Almost makes the epic yikes of triggering all the fights overlapping at once worth it.
... almost. My characters deserve better looked after than that.
So that was the kind of very exciting computer game day where you spend a lot of it going
yikes yikes yikes yikes
and trying to figure out what is going on because there's too many overlapping graphics on the screen and it is lagging so so bad
but then I won
so now it is fun excite again.
Pretty good apparently nine hours today.
... now if it only gives me my achievements that'll be grand. I got one of the ones I earned yesterday but it hasn't pinged up the second from yesterday or any today.
If I lose the achievement for finishing on Core I shall be very, very, very annoyed.
... but I do seem to be kicking its butt on Core.
Played a bit later than I intended but around the time I was planning to sleep I was instead stuck in a rolling battle that just kept getting worse. I was thinking I did not know how to survive it but if I did survive it I would have bragging rights forEVER.
Details under the cut: The arena gives you fifteen fights calibrated to your likely level. By the final five each stage of the fight is chosen to be challenging to a party of six level 20 mythic 9 characters. By that point you are fighting the shadows of small gods. It is tricky, is what I am saying.
Due to a weird interaction between abilities and fight triggers, I was fighting three of those at once.
And due to the situation getting steadily worse if I waited, I ended up fighting a fourth before the second was resolved.
So it starts with some pretty simple nested demons, easy enough to kill if you go one at a time. They start as low level whatsits so I used the Witch ability to turn them into *allied* animals. This is important. They go green and count as part of your party.
So once you have done that to everyone the fight is over.
But it won't trigger the next one.
So, here is where I did a Bad Idea. I thought hmmm, I can use these demons to fight the next guy, so I went to the arena boss and asked for the next fight.
Which was an epic challenging bastard so I actually had to quickload back out of that beforw TPK and drop a bunch of spells where the enemy was about to spawn. Feels cheap but my characters have done 11 rounds in the arena and know where the other guys always arrive.
So that worked better, and I tried to send Ulbrig in to grapple the King of the Wild Hunt, and then I experienced regret and an urgent need to drop a Heal spell on Ulbrig.
But then the fight triggered the auto heal it does when you win a round. Because my allied transformed animals had got their arse kicked, which triggered the end of the first fight as far as the computer was concerned. So I chose to keep fighting, because why not?
Why not is it triggered the next guy.
So now I am fighting the Wild Hunt and someone who has some name like Death or Reaper. Both at once. But the new dude brought a bunch of humans labelled 'crop' who are red outlined already, but is himself green outlined. So he registers as an ally. Which would usually make him hard to hit, though I have some ideas later in the fight about the kind of area effect spells I usually avoid using withiut Selective Spell on them, and the zappy thing you get real early on from the Good mythic path will also both hit him and do damage. Healing spells think he's a friend though so that number is going back and forth. But mostly he's weighing in on our side against the Wild Hunt, so that seems nice?
And then the Wild Hunt Monarch turns into the Lantern King, an actual first world god, and I have so much to worry about at once.
I used so many scrolls of mass heal. And I did Raise Dead on Ulbrig because Sosiel could quicken it and it should have worked to quicken raise then mass heal. But it didnt so Ulbrig was standing there massively injured and not interactive yet. Not a great moment!
Somehow we won against the Lantern King. Don't ask me how though, it wasn't Ember because she got turned into a dog by prismatic spray. Granted that spell did a lot more to the other enemies than it did to us but still, not helpful. And our attempts to remove curse mid battle were not working. And so when the fight end triggered and healed and uncursed us all, I said we needed a break, and quick saved the instant that became an option.
So we were behind the fire and officially not fighting.
But.
The dude with the scythe and the scary death theme? Was still having a battle on his own out in the arena.
Not! Good!
Because the more people he killed the stronger he gets.
Already the epic triple battle has given him more death charges than the fight was designed around as far as I can see. And he is out there chasing down the last of them.
So not good.
So at this point I abandoned all pretence of not going back to the quicksave whenever it seemed prudent, and I tried to come up with a way to get at him. The ones with the spells can't cast them past teh fire wall. Ulbrig can do death from above but only on a red lined enemy, so on the victims not the scythe dude. Then he's out there alone and that is not going to work out for him. So I tried to dimension door in but for reasons best known to the xbox it will not take the whole party, it just leaves half of them behind and refuses to act like there's room. I cannot get my party to the fight that is still in progress. I tried a few times but every time the scythe guy reaped the whole crop and got the kind of AC I can't see how to touch.
So I quick loaded once more and triggered the final fight.
I can't kill him but if I do it fast enough the guy is still green allied with me and might maybe make it the linnorm dragon's problem.
... not quite how that went down.
We're too good at dragon slaying and yet still don't have anything very high level that can touch the green lined enemy. Ember kills the dragon and we're left with the scuthe guy going red lined. He is going to kick our arses so so bad. So I try one of the Chains spells on him but he saves so he'll only be stunned for one round. He still manages to kill Ulbrig while chained. We are so screwed.
Then Ember explodes because the linnorm has a death curse that really bites. Just explodeso out of her.
So we need to resurrect two people and kill one fuck off huge dragony linnorm.
... simples!
Sosiel raised dead on Ulbrig and Resurrected Ember. Then Ember killed the linnorm a second time with maximised Hellfire Rays. ... if there were alignment implications to Evil spells in this game Ember would have gone dark side long ago but the spell lists etc just treat it as a fire spell with bonus damage type. So a lot of things get to eat maximized Hellfire Rays.
At this point the scythe guy was about to get unstunned and, as far as I could see, kill us all. Because he has been soaking up deaths from triple the fights and on the whole we haven't.
But!
Killing the last boss triggers the big
You Won, Have A Shiny And Get Out.
We never beat the scythe guy but the arena turns out not to care.
So we got out of there alive despite me having not one clue how we were going to live long enough to do anything to that enemy.
It is undignified, and I am not sure the bragging rights apply, but still:
Triggered all tbe fights and Won Them.
... wait where did the shadow monks go in that sequence? I remember realising they were undead and it seemed like when one died their strength got redistributed so I was going to have to kill them with area effects that hit them all at once. Mass Heal and Firestorm made that fight swift and simple. It's kind of the exact opposite needs of the nested demons. They get stronger when you hit them either way but the detail changes the tactics.
ETA: that was the fourth fight of the five, so I wasn't just fighting three at once, they all overlapped at least partially. Also the online guides say I'd guessed wrong about how it worked and it was some kind of duplication situation? They all died at once though so *shrugs* /ETA
We just blew through the arena in few enough game minutes all our buffs and Guarded Hearth all applied. Guarded Hearth is usually a 'win boss battle' button but we set it too close to the entry door and also these are some very harsh boss battles.
This time though the possessing entity fight didn't hurt a bit, I saw the cat running in and realised that dispelling cats all day had been working out great, Greater Dispelled all her defences when she was still yellow, then wiped her out with Ulbrig and Seelah before it was ever her turn. Painless, and that can't be said of last time I did that fight at all.
So many fights in a row. I should have rested in between them but felt like that was a tedious waste of buffs, then had to pay for it in scrolls and running out of 9th level spells.
I still don't know what to do with Sosiel. My plan with summoned things does kind of work sometimes but he needs a better one. At the moment he keeps landing on being Daeran but much worse at it,
So then I finished off the Festival quests but now I am on to the next section I noticed:
Arue still has the Reaper buffs.
I think she has +16 of buffs.
Which could be considered a lot.
Don't think it's meant to be permanent, don't know when it will wear off, but that's a bit handy that is.
Almost makes the epic yikes of triggering all the fights overlapping at once worth it.
... almost. My characters deserve better looked after than that.
So that was the kind of very exciting computer game day where you spend a lot of it going
yikes yikes yikes yikes
and trying to figure out what is going on because there's too many overlapping graphics on the screen and it is lagging so so bad
but then I won
so now it is fun excite again.
Pretty good apparently nine hours today.
... now if it only gives me my achievements that'll be grand. I got one of the ones I earned yesterday but it hasn't pinged up the second from yesterday or any today.
If I lose the achievement for finishing on Core I shall be very, very, very annoyed.
... but I do seem to be kicking its butt on Core.