Orc Stockade (minor spoiler)

by **screeg** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:59 pm

After getting trapped inside and running into successively deadly foes, I teleported out of the Orc Stockade. Now there isn't any way back in!

by **BlueSalamander** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 10:04 pm

Thank you for the bug report! Will fix that in the next update.

by **Noumenon** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 6:40 pm

But I just walked out of the exit of the orc stockade today (the one where you hear birds singing before you make it out and get slaughtered) and I can't get back in either. The barricade is still there and I can't find the exit I came out of.

Do not tell me I have to reload my saved game and play through all the other rooms in that dungeon with no 3rd or 4th level spells left if I want to clear it. I am not going through that final battle again. Even after reloading and special crafting I only won in a complete squeaker where it was my fighter with 7 hit points left against a single wizard with no spells and a dagger that did 1d4-2. We went toe-to-toe for like 20 rounds and he hit me like five times with his +3 to hit and I was missing with my +8 every time, hiding in a bush for the concealment and waiting for his buffs to wear off. I was at 1 hp for like the last ten rounds.

by **BlueSalamander** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 4:20 pm

As far as I can remember, you can access the forest clearing through the world map.

by **Noumenon** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:21 pm

Ah. It's not visible on the world map, nor can you see it if you hover over the square, but if you go one pixel above the orc stockade tower you can get in there. That's definitely the smart man's way into the stockade. I definitely think most people would consider themselves locked out and give up though.

Before doing this I fought it again coming up from below, about two levels higher (level 9) and with all my spells, and I still lost several times, and once again I beat it with my last fighter, with 17 points of strength damage so he had a 4 STR, down to 2 hp. That thing is such a squeaker every time!

by **Noumenon** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:57 am

Noumenon wrote:once again I beat it with my last fighter, with 17 points of strength damage so he had a 4 STR, down to 2 hp. That thing is such a squeaker every time!

Here's my latest squeaker. (Major spoilers this time, not just for the orc stockade.)

Walking around checking stuff out at 14th level, got teleported inside the tower. Blue Salamander, like the complete *&#!@ he is, not only gave me no way out, but lured me into thinking he was actually going to be fair this time by putting some level 4 encounters at the start and an actual campfire inside. I swear the guy wants you to get stuck three hours down the road with no chance of winning. So once again I had blown a bunch of good spells on the vampire fight and I was surrounded by the Vrocks, the lich, and the balor with no way to level up past 16.

Well, the genius of Blue Salamander is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. So I reloaded and instead of the Vrock encounter being a squeaker that took all my castings of Freedom of Movement and Stoneskin, and even Magic Missile, I backed out in the hallway and did it with plenty of HPs to spare. I was even able to use up my healing wand so I could charge it with Death Ward (before I had lost so many HPs that I had to recharge the wand, but not enough to use up more than 43 charges, so I had no free wand.)

So during the fight, one fighter gets paralyzed and coup-de-graced so early I almost give up right there. Then I fireball the second one to spare him the same fate. Now the lich has only 26 hit points left but my cleric has nothing but Cure Light Wounds II to fight with, which is 18 max damage. Then it goes like this:
* skeleton grapples wizard
* fire elemental kills skeleton to free him
* last skeleton kills wizard before he can act
* Cleric uses his last spell to silence the Lich and pulls out a +2 mace that he has never even used in combat before.
* fire elemental kills the last skeleton
* Lich paralyzes my cleric (no still spell feat)
* fire elemental hits lich with both slams
* Lich goes for the coup de grace on my last character, standing there completely helpless.
* Fire elemental saves me on the AoO before he kills my last man. You cannot cut it any closer than that.

Anyway, my reason for posting is to ask, am I going to be able to get back in the tower to fight the Balor, or am I going to have to give up that entire five-hour process if I want to get the chalice from him? And what is the deal with the dungeon that has the end of the game being something you can just walk into with no sign up or anything and no way to get back out once you're inside? It's like putting a pipe in the first level of Super Mario that came out directly under Bowser's butt so you're automatically dead if you didn't have the mushroom. This game is so fun but the game design philosophy is so sadistic it's just mean.

[Edited by BlueSalamander: please don't swear, especially as a direct personal insult against ME! Final warning!]

by **Archangel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:14 am

You confused me here. End game is the fight with the Dragon (and what a fight it is). Anyways I play with two clerics and balors, liches and other beasts are all wuss with 2 clerics

by **VentilatorOfDoom** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:04 am

Noumenon wrote: rant

calm down, chap.
Here's advice: reload a save before you entered the tower, there is no way out but by defeating the lich and you can never go in again iirc.
If you can't defeat the lich, your chances vs the Balor Lord are probably zero.
Do this area before you go to the endgame in Vanizia when you're higher level, definitely do it at least after the Fire Giants. Actually you might want to have access to L9 spells which is the safest bet.

also: the undead tower was awesome, reminded me of Darksun and Dagolar

edit: also you have to fight the Lich twice, so heh, come here later

by **Archangel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:45 am

I need to do this with my lvl 20 party

I wonder how much trouble they will be

Heal/Harm against undead and Balors

by **Noumenon** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:38 pm

Here's advice: reload a save before you entered the tower, there is no way out but by defeating the lich and you can never go in again iirc.

That is not good design IMO. You don't punish the player for exploring by saying "You did this too early, now you can never finish the full game or explore any rooms you skipped and wanted to come back to later." It's as though Grand Theft Auto had a mission where if you did it all of a sudden you couldn't visit the third island ever again.

I did beat the lich, by the skin of my teeth the second time, as I was describing before, and it was awesome, but it is all wasted now because the Balor has the Chalice in his inventory and I am not going to "finish" the game without getting the Chalice.

If you are going to make a dungeon that you can only visit once and never again, at least make that dungeon all appropriate for one level! Except for the Balor, every room in this dungeon is challenging and fun for a 14th-16th level party. If I come back with 9th level spells, every fight except the Balor will be boring and easy instead. With a dungeon where some parts are easy (the ghoul and mummy fights), some hard (the lich), and some impossible (the balor), it would make much more sense to let the player exit and re-enter once they reach the point that is too high-level for them.

It was a fun dungeon, though. I liked having everything undead because it let me equip my Disrupting weapon permanently, made me use my anti-undead spells sparingly and made me craft stuff out of silver and cold iron instead of just using my weapons I'd been using for hours. And even though being trapped in there is frustrating, it turned out to be a perfectly designed challenge for my party that really made me optimize my tactics to win. It's a nice microcosm of the strengths and the weaknesses of this awesome, player-hating game.