I DID IT!!!!!

[SixOfSpades]

The Demonknight is dead. Long live the Demonknight. (Which is true, by the way.)

14 Skull Traps on the spot where he appears, a few Fireballs / Necklaces of Missiles / Potions of Explosions fired at the same spot, timed to go off right after he shows up, followed by a barrage of Arrows of Detonation from my Hasted Archers (I would also have used Chant, if I had it) and a rapid use of the Wand of the Heavens, and I got the intensely rewarding message of

Demonknight- Death

YEEE HAWWWW! It IS possible.

He DOES drop the Helm of Opposite Alignment, as well as another copy of the Full Plate+1 and a Large Shield+1. He does NOT drop the Soultaker, nor did I get any EXP for killing him, so I'm sure he's still alive on Durlag's -5.

I'll post a couple screenshots (or links to them) as soon as I upload them.

[Micah Foehammer]

Your spellcasters must have been a huffing and a puffing getting all those skull traps set. LOL Congrats!

[Xanthul]

Congratulations SixOfSpades !!

[SixOfSpades]

My spellcaster (singular) wasn't huffing or puffing, she only cast 2 of them herself--the rest came from scrolls (I bought out Sundries and High Hedge, and there were also a few others in the game). She's an Elven Mage/Thief, which is a BAD choice when using Skull Traps--Edwin would have been MUCH better: He would have had 5 Level 3 Spell slots open, as compared to my Mage's 2 slots, AND the damage deat by Skull Traps is a function of their caster's level. Not that I'd form a party of all Mages and take them all to Level 9 just so they could cast Skull Traps for this one event, though--I wonder how Lemernis's all-spellcaster party is faring?

Another tactic would be to go around the Sword Coast, getting EVERY recruitable NPC who can use a Bow, and taking them (in several trips, of course) to the first floor of Durlag's and dropping them off. Then one by one, recruit them, give them a decent bow and 5 Arrows of Detonation, kick them out, and quickly Charm them in case they don't like your Rep. Group everybody in a big herd, cast Haste.....and summon that Demonknight. Whoa baby!
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As for other folks in the world of ToSC: Dradeel is a surprisingly easy kill, actually. You can whack him before of after you give him his spellbook back (beforehand is easier); you don't get any EXP for his quest anyway. He DOES wear a Neutral Archmagi robe, and you suffer no Rep loss for killing him. (Actually, I don't think ANYTHING you do on that island can/should affect your Rep--it's not like your reputation can follow you back to the mainland.)

Shandalar, on the other hand, is IMPOSSIBLE to kill, without cheating, and it would take a hell of a lot of cheating (creating an instant-kill weapon, for instance) to do it. You can get some free damage in the first time you go to Ulgoth's Beard by having your best Thief open a friendly conversation by Backstabbing him. IF your Thief hits, Shandalar takes some damage (I think my Thief did a whopping 12 damage on him), but doesn't go hostile--he just tells you about the quest he wants to send you on.
But then comes the actual FIGHT, which you cannot win. I like to Charm Dushai and make her my Tank (she's Resistant to most of his magic), then Dispel his defenses and have MY Tank use a scroll of Magic Protection and start swinging, while my Hasted archers use Arrows of Piercing. I did 4 Damage to him, which I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't rolled a Critical Hit. Shandalar must have an AC of -20, Magic Resistance of 150%, perfect Saving Throws, and God knows how many Hitpoints. Even with a Charmed Garrick doing his Bard Song for me, I'd still have to roll a 19 even to touch the guy--and, like the Demonknight, he teleports away after his spells are cast. There IS no way to kill him.

[Lemernis]

quote:

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Originally posted by SixOfSpades:
[QB]I wonder how Lemernis's all-spellcaster party is faring?QB]

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First, well done sir! Prior to the recent threads on this subject I never even knew the demon knight appeared before the final battle at Durlag's. I'll have to try this out sometime.

The specialist mage party is doing great, actually. I'm very pleased with how the concept is working out, both in terms of how the battles are playing and the roleplaying idea of having them cast their specilization schools spells as first choice most of the time. I'm striving to use wands as sparingly as possible, and so far it is working (I did have to finish off Greywolf with a zap from the wand of lightning, though). Every battle is extremely close so there is genuine suspense--they always seem to win just as they have exhausted their spells. Very careful coordination is required in the attacks because resources are so limited (right now only three spell slots). They only just recently reached level 2. But already they have defeated the FAI and Nashkel Inn assassins, Bassilus, Greywolf, Sendai, and the 'world's fastest dart thrower'. When clearing the Nashkel mine above-ground map I did have to resort to charming a kobold commando to help take out the rest of the kobolds, but I'm trying to avoid using Algy's cloak as much as possible

Again I like having them all use their own specialization school's spells. It is neat to watch the elven enchanter save everyone's ass by successfuly casting sleep, for example. Or to watch the necromancer (who has quickly emerged as my favorite) after spending both of his Larloch's' cast Chill Touch and walk right up to the enemy and risk his life along with the meleeing cleric. The illusionist (protag) has the RoW, and I have him using Blind first but also casting MM's, which forms the backbone of the attack. The poor conjurer casts Grease whenever she can, but this is often not very practical, since I need to have the cleric to go in an mop up with Bassilus' hammer. After the conjuerer next levels up she will get Melf's, and then she will be able to contribute more offensively. But in any case, everyone contributes in their own unique way.

[Debaser]

that's impressive work, SixOfSpades...i don't think i'd have nearly enough patience to attempt such a thing

[Whailor]

You mean the same Demon Knight in Durlag's Tower, who appears when you first get there? I don't know, he was never much of a big issue to any of my parties I played. All party members were at the TotSC XP cap by that time, that's lvl 8-10 (depending on the class).

What the NPC's tell you is that there is the mirror behind the demon. So this is how I beat him, always without ANY casualities and without a bucketful of scrolls: I simply summon few mobs for distractions (scrolls and wands will do just nicely for that), get the attention of the Demon Knight with these mobs, while he's busy one of the chars cracks the mirror, some shadey figures come but heck, they aren't that big of the issue. Main thing is not to let the party to get separated, and attack all the same mob. Nothing is worse when your tanks get separated and each of them is fighting something on his/her own. If something then gets on the weaker party members, these will go down fast and your tank will be pretty wounded, if he/she will try to make his/her way to the party to save the weaker members. And will also then go down. Not to mention that from the broken mirror the stuff which comes out at times also helps you, in it's own way - the demon knight "clone" which came out fought the main demon knight, so it was even easier

Of course, I also play usually the tank char as my chars. I don't like men in dresses and so I don't play any such. I play on the Core difficulty rules, I don't want to spend more time on the game then I do by playing with the hardest of settings, and easier settings would be just too easy. Of course, as you noted I also did him with the party I aint a big fan of soloing, since I personally feel that I lose some of the "shine" that way. To take him down solo, that's of course significally harder, and you did so, so grats, good work indeed!

[SixOfSpades]

Fries are up! Or well, actually, the screenshots are.

Whailor, follow this link to see exactly which fight I'm talking about:

http://www.geocities.com/sixospades/durlags.htm


P.S. I also love the fact that my guys didn't so much as get singed in the fray. (The Druid's missing some hit points only because he'd just put on the Helm of Balduran. [img]smile.gif[/img] )

[Whailor]

AH, OK, you killed him the first time he appeared. That I was looking that the area is somewhat different then one I was fighting him in. Allrighty..

I let him do his "stuff" when he came first, not like he was going to be of any issue anyway to me - had fire protection on beforehand for his fireball (since I knew that he will come, where and when he will come and what he will do). I mixed up your fight with the one at the end.. I did the end one with the party I had (me, Minsc, Khalid, Jaheira, Dynaheir, Imoen) and that wasn't that hard of a fight. Of course, as I said above, all my chars were already at their level limit (160000 XP with TotSC), so that made it perhaps easier as well.

What did you do with the tourists btw? There were some of them, before the demonknight appears. Did you whack them down or something? Otherwise they would have all burnt in that major BBQ you did (maybe they also did heheh, saw one of them getting toasted on the shots)

[Lemernis]

Six, how do you display screenshots like that? Do you have a site that you set up for that purpose? I would like to be able to do that as well from time to time. How do you go about it?