Ok, so I finally decide to try and make it appropriately hard on myself and play expert iron-man, no cheesy training stealth etc.

So I get to Trynton with my guys at level 9, perfectly normal, party of 6 - fighter, bard, ranger, gadgeteer, psionic and mage, don't do anything unusual, somehow get by the leaf sprites at fuzzfas' (yikes they were hard - had to close to melee and let 4 of my guys die), resurrect the dead, go to the zoo area, kill bobo etc, rest up in his cage, move on like normal, and...

run into a party of 4 wood spirits.

not willow saplings though, or even the oak saplings that are so hard in the 7th bough area.

1 oak elder
3 willow elders

no chance.

I dropped the difficulty to novice immediately and still got absolutely slaughtered. tsunami, whirlwind, crush for like 75 damage - a nightmare.

a waste of a lot of hours.

There, official whine lodged. SOmehow I don't feel better.

I've never run into that difficult a spawned party, anywhere in the game, at any time, in any game. Man!...

Welcome to expert mode.

In expert you tend to get encounters that are significantly higher than your average level until you hit the max for the area. On expert you have to be alot more careful and choose your battles wisely.

If you want to challenge your self but not run the general risks of ironman, do your own version of ironman. Only relaod when you get completely slaughtered do some random monster spawn.

I think it's strange, but my guess is that you have taken too long to explore areas, and if you run back and forth it may respawn very hard monsters. Usually my parties are also level 9 in Trynton, and the hardest fight is always against leaf sprites or oak saplings. Maybe it has something to do with the version of the game. I play with the latest patch.

One thing you could do to prevent these things from happening is to cast fireball, noxious fumes against monsters around the corner. When they don't see you, they can't hurt you. Then you can use run button and look what level monster you face. If the level is way too high, then run back, and keep running.

[ 12-03-2002, 07:11 AM: Message edited by: el_kalkylus ]

I encountered the exact same group the first time I went up the trynton branches. Wasn't nice. Had to flee. No way to survive that magical onslaught.

One thing you could do to prevent these things from happening is to cast fireball, noxious fumes against monsters around the corner. When they don't see you, they can't hurt you. Then you can use run button and look what level monster you face. If the level is way too high, then run back, and keep running.
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I've found that any creatures that can cast spells can use this tactic on your party as well. There are numerous times where i can't reach a particular member of a party because of an obstruction, only to have area effect spells drop on me with impunity. This tactic, at least for me, is a sword that cuts both ways.

bb

No, monsters can't use this tactic, but some monsters however can cast death wish, psionic blast(?) and freeze all anywhere which is later in the game. If you face leaf sprites around a corner, they will usually cast eye for an eye and that is why the spells bounce back. Otherwise if your spell have backfired, it is easily fixed by casting at lower power.

When monsters see you even just a little bit, they will be able to cast all sort of spells. Be sure they don't with the help of x-ray.