That moment when you encounter an overpowered boss.......

[Hooyaah 2,817]

I have been anxiously awaiting your update and am pleased to find out that you have been progressing well. I would advise you to forget about Constitution for now and master Ancient Magic first. The reason is that at this level you will need its extra power to defeat those bosses that are weak against fire and physical damage. They get much harder to defeat in Niobium. You can increase your Combat Art Range with Nlovae's Mystery and it also helps with improved Casting Time and with decreasing Regeneration Time. Beware the Abishai of Dissension. If I had a look at your most recent stats I might make a few helpful suggestions, for I feel that your character is as family now.

[Hooyaah 2,817]

I did feel it necessary to point out that increasing the Combat Art range for the High Elf is quite advantageous except for Incendiary Shower. When the C.A. range is increased for I.S. the boulders are spread out in a larger area which means that the focus in the center where you need it for bosses is lost. The number of boulders remains the same and therefor it makes it difficult to hit mobs gathered in close quarters as well. For that reason it is best to switch from Nlovae's Mystery to an alternate weapon slot when employing Incendiary Shower.

[Androdion 875]

3 hours ago, Thorin Oakshield said:

Right. To get one thing straight, I didn't enter the fight with Narmul, thinking it would be "easy". English may not be my native language, but I have read several times this fight would be a hard one. And seeing who wrote those warnings and knowing the amount of top level chars that person made, I'd be a fool to ignore those warnings.Thus I went into it with one thumb at the spacebar and one finger at F8 to teleport to the nearest ressurrection stone if that was needed. And it was needed, so I was glad I had made my preparations.

Wise move, though that comment I made wasn't meant to sound as snappy as it probably did. I just so happened to get the same toon killed by both Narmul and the Abishai!  Poor DM bargainer, though in all honesty he wasn't properly built for those fights, ha ha.

Glad you're still having fun with it. I haven't played in a few days but I have been playing with my SW in Niob, doing all quests in each area and reaping all the XP I can get my hands on. I can say that I managed to climb some 8-9 levels in Niob, starting at lv.122, just by doing the Tyr Lysia region. XP rewards for quests in Niob with EE 2.1 do make a ton of difference, and I'm glad they do because I can actually feel progression instead of just slowly creeping up one level every other day. I can climb one, maybe two, levels while questing and killing mobs so it's all fun. And I'm starting to complete some sets so better still.

But, and there's always a but, I can already notice a huge difference in damage dealt by mobs between the first two areas. I can anticipate that the longer I travel the more this feeling will reappear... Niob really is a whole different level.

PS: On an interesting note, if you're playing with EE 2.1 and you're thinking about rushing through Platinum do be careful. At lv.122 with a SB making mobs lv.141 those Elite temple guardians on the Great Machine managed to redline me with their traps. And I mean each and every time! I then tried to understand just how much damage they were doing with them and it was "just" the tiny amount of 27k!  Boy I'm glad that I have Constitution mastered and a really high Grim Resilience, but still at around 34k worth of HP getting trapped for 27k felt almost like a minor stroke. I don't even want to know how much they'll do in Niob when I get there... FYI, I didn't have the courage to try the Abishai of "look at how many different traps I can lay, oh they're four" Dissension. No way! 

[Thorin Oakshield 260]

I'm wondering if I should rename this topic or have it renamed into "That moment you realize your worst foe is yourself." The reason: I just discovered that I somehow messed up the Excel spreadsheet, giving me the impression I was only 3 points away from mastering Pyro Focus. But when that didn't happen at my next leveling, I stripped my HE at a save zone, only to find that she wasn't at 72 skill points, but at 62. Well, 67 now.
Which in turn means I need to gather over another 14 million of XP to get that level.

At first I thought it was a bug. I've experienced a few with quests not updating properly in the blood forest, so I thought it may be related to that, as I did level in that area once or twice.
However, after comparing my skill points with the stats I posted at the first page when my char was at level 99 and ading the 75 points of the 15 levels I gained, I ended up with the amount of spend points I got now.
So I can only conclude I made some errors at some point, and kept working with those, resulting in the current state of disapointment I'm in now.

So right now I think I'll just finish the Epic Office Quest as well as the main quest and take the chance in Niob. If  that's going to be to hard, well, there's always the option to jump back into Platinum.

 

Thorin

[Androdion 875]

You'll be fine, Tyr Lysia and Artamark aren't that difficult in Niob so you've got a lot of ground to cover. Just don't exaggerate on the T-Mutants and Spiders.

PS: Spoke too soon I guess, and given that this is the topic for banging your head against the wall for loosing your entire SB then I have to say that now it's my turn...  Just lost 87% of SB in Niob after three and a half days of game time. To what you ask? To some of the toughest meanest bosses in Ancaria? No, to the freakin' Gar'Colossus! How I just died to that with 3,5%LL with a lv.90 Killing Spree/Rousing Command combo active while casting Frenzied Rampage is utterly beyond me. I mean, I'm leaching for 3,5%(!) at over 150% in speed and that thing kills me in two seconds? Oh come on...

Now Niobium is total crap as enemies are at character level. If I was already killing them well enough with them being 22 levels above my toon now it's like I don't even care if they hit me or not. Sheesh, I may retire this SW entirely because of that. It's just a complete and total drag right now.

Oh the bile, the bile...

[Thorin Oakshield 260]

Oh man. I feel your pain.

 

Decided to do what I already said and finish Platinum. I noticed I had one quest open while I  thought I had finished it, so went back to the Crystal plains to finish it, then went on with the main and the Epic Office quest and finished both. One of the machines almost managed to kill me when dropping a trap on me and immediately hitting me with some combo, but somehow I managed to survive. Don't ask me how much health I had, coz I really don't know. I do know it was near zero; so that was a real close call.

 

Started in Niob, but didn't do much other then the opening "battle". Will see how things are going in Tyr Lysia soon enough. Fortunately my HE got one of the most powerful Area of Effect CA's, being blazing tempest. And I've noticed it's capable of even killing mobs before they get to me, so at least I will be able to decimate most opponents before they get to me. And in case things are heating up a bit too much; there's always the Forrest Gump tactic....

 

Thorin

[thejynxed 30]

This has been a good read, even though HE is my absolutely least favorite class (next to Dragon Mage) to play. I'd be curious to know if you chose mitigation or reduced chance/duration effects in any of your armor slots, as I know choosing to stack mitigation made a huge difference in the survivability of my Dryad and my Seraphim vs the other two.

[Vexxter 5]

Hello guys and sorry for reviving the old topic,

I have a question regarding the Narmul (phoenix) boss - do you know if his attacks are either scripted to avoid the damage mitigation or his CAs have some unique damage type?

When approaching him with a level 200 Seraphim that has +75% mitigation to all damage types from gear and additional 30,5% damage reduction coming from toughness skill I was almost killed twice when fighting this boss once it dropped that ice shower attacks.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Vexxter

[cruisenut2001 6]

I'm playing the older community patch. Played many times but at the low difficulty levels. I don't play games very well. Anyway, I started playing the HE silver using Loco Pyro guide. I don't know what the Seraphim has but the Expulsive Magic saved my butt killing the Narmul. After it easily killed me and my mount I decided to read up on this thing. I didn't know about destroying the crystals first and then reading here at one of the first replies I put in 3 of the highest ice things in the armor ring. I stayed as far back as I could to use the Fireball (shower didn't work that good) and stayed inside the Expulsive ring.  It was an easy win. after that. I'm level 75 and Narmul was level 80 with 112k hit points. Good Luck to all players.

[idbeholdME 388]

On 3/7/2023 at 12:27 AM, Vexxter said:

Hello guys and sorry for reviving the old topic,

I have a question regarding the Narmul (phoenix) boss - do you know if his attacks are either scripted to avoid the damage mitigation or his CAs have some unique damage type?

When approaching him with a level 200 Seraphim that has +75% mitigation to all damage types from gear and additional 30,5% damage reduction coming from toughness skill I was almost killed twice when fighting this boss once it dropped that ice shower attacks.

Narmul is one of the few enemies who has Ancient Magic as one of his passive skills. Meaning that from level 75 on (enemy passive skills are equal to their level), he has access to its Mastered version, making his spells ignore a very large chunk of any and all damage mitigation. Especially if you are fighting him at level 200, where he is presumably in the 230+ level range, he will have around 67-68% penetration of mitigation.

This means, in your case when you have 106.5% mitigation, it will get reduced to ~35%. Combined with the VERY HIGH base damage of his spells (probably the strongest scaling enemy spells in the game, based on his level), you can die very easily no matter what. The safest way is to keep constantly moving and avoid all his delayed and telegraphed attack.

 

Only very few enemies and some bosses in the game have it, but are especially dangerous if you are relying purely on damage mitigation. Here is a full list from Vanilla:

- Small Red Dragons in Dragon Caves (both normal and elite versions)

- Temple Guardians that throw Traps (Elite versions only)

- Narmul

- Fire Lord

- Ice Lord

- Poison Lord

- Abishai

 

I assume they still have Ancient Magic even with the CM Patch.

Edited January 8 by idbeholdME