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Post by Zipp on Aug 4, 2019 21:48:23 GMT
Hey all! Just a question I was thinking on: are there books that are impossible if...
1) you play that book solo and roll 0's for both CS and END? 2) you play that book with all past-book bonuses and roll 0's for both CS and END?
And if the answer is yes, what are the base stats you would need to make the book not impossible?
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Post by Oiseau on Aug 5, 2019 1:29:21 GMT
The original version of Book 8 was mathematically impossible with anything below a 3 for starting CS if played standalone. They fixed the final Vordak battle in later editions. Now it's only next-to-impossible if played standalone.
I'm pretty sure you can't win Book 11 with a fresh character when picking 0 for CS. It's already very hard with all past-book bonuses and maximum stats.
Book 6 seems pretty unwinnable with a fresh CS 10 character (consider the Undead Summonation, the River Pirates, and the Dakomyd with CS 25).
The newfangled Book 1 is nigh-unbeatable with a weak Lone Wolf.
And let's not even get into attempting any Grand Master books with CS 25…
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Post by kurz81 on Aug 5, 2019 10:40:56 GMT
Gear >> Stats. Many books are impossible for a fresh character. Special items and weapons can buff Lone Wolf up to +16CS at the beginning of Book 13. Missing the gear will put you at huge disadvantage vs major bosses. There are known balance issues with the Sommerswerd, but you are severely gimped if you miss it.
Lw11, 15, 17 an 20 are too hard for a new player without the gear. If you played all the books and gathered all the items, you can win anyway with 10 cs as base. It will be hard and you will rely on potions.
On the other hand, some of New Order books are impossible with low Stats. Especially lw21, 22, 25 and 29. Mandatory fights that you can't avoid with very high CS requirements.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Aug 5, 2019 14:38:51 GMT
Book 11 is tge killer. If u have tge Sommerswerd, u cant get the IronHeart Broadsword and thus will die in the hands of Chaos Master. If u didnt bring tge Sommerswerd, the final battle with the 5 villians and Vonotar will be impossible.
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Post by kurz81 on Aug 5, 2019 16:30:56 GMT
Book 11 is tge killer. If u have tge Sommerswerd, u cant get the IronHeart Broadsword and thus will die in the hands of Chaos Master. If u didnt bring tge Sommerswerd, the final battle with the 5 villians and Vonotar will be impossible. In the Lone Wolf Saga app, you can take the Ironheart Sword even if you have the Sommerswerd. This will give you +6CS bonus vs Chaos Master and will help against the Villains of Sommerlund. I do believe it is not intended, but it will let you complete the book even with 10CS base, providing you have the gear. If you have the gear and the stats, you can face the Chaos Master with the Sommerswerd.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Aug 5, 2019 17:41:34 GMT
Book 11 is tge killer. If u have tge Sommerswerd, u cant get the IronHeart Broadsword and thus will die in the hands of Chaos Master. If u didnt bring tge Sommerswerd, the final battle with the 5 villians and Vonotar will be impossible. In the Lone Wolf Saga app, you can take the Ironheart Sword even if you have the Sommerswerd. This will give you +6CS bonus vs Chaos Master and will help against the Villains of Sommerlund. I do believe it is not intended, but it will let you complete the book even with 10CS base, providing you have the gear. If you have the gear and the stats, you can face the Chaos Master with the Sommerswerd. I thought u have to return tge IronHeart Broadsword before you face the villains...
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Post by Ofecks on Aug 5, 2019 22:49:40 GMT
That is correct. You give it back right after defeating the Chaos-Master. I think he just meant that you'd get easier battles with CM (using IHB) *and* Villians/Vonitar (using The 'Swerd) if playing book 11 in Lone Wolf Saga's current state. And yes, that's a bug. One among many that I've been documenting for a large effort-post in the LWS thread once I've finished book 20. Assuming you can get there with max EP, fighting CM with the 'Swerd is generally OK with the revised Mongoose edition stats. PA uses those by default. I'll try some fresh start 10/20s to see if those are feasible (going to guess half will be near-impossible). Also, there's an Achievement in Seventh Sense for finishing books 1-12 on a 10/20 character (and books 1-20[!] in the S fork), maybe I'll start a campaign for that as well and document my findings. To address the OP directly - book 8 with a fresh character will still be problematic. Even with the revisions, you need a fully-buffed CS of 18 or more to finish book 8 without the 'Swerd. However, at 18 CS you have to roll extremely well every round to do the required damage. The max CS you can get on a fresh start 10/20 character is 19 (+4 Psi-Surge, +3 Weaponmastery, +2 Alether Potion, Psi-Screen for penalty negation), and you're basically railroaded into that setup and path through the book. Looks like there's some info in this thread from many years ago about 10/20 characters. The poster covers the first 4 games in extreme detail: projectaon.proboards.com/thread/397/survival-stats-2-filled-spoilers?page=1
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Post by Ofecks on Aug 6, 2019 3:11:51 GMT
Got Shadow on the Sand on the first try. There are several ways this could be done, I think, but I just picked one strategy and it worked out mostly ok.
Setup: Weaponskill (mace), Mindblast, Mindshield, Animal Kinship, Healing. Took a mace, the shield, a meal, and the potion for equipment. I was pretty lucky in that I got the 3 for skill in mace without having to restart, but it would be wise to do so.
Basically, you'll want to take the "secret" route through the sewers (not getting Limbdeath), so you can both buy potions and kill the Yas for the Jewelled Mace. For potions, you want a tincture of Graveweed and as many Alethers as you can afford (I bought 2). Getting Limbdeath and acquiring Oede works as well, but you're at the mercy of the RNT on finding the cave to trade it for the Mace. Without Limbdeath, you also have to make a choice between fighting a 3rd battle in the palace (before the Yas) or risking a 70% chance of running into Hammerfist. I managed to sneak past him but I was very lucky, that probably wasn't a wise decision. With the Copper Key in hand, you can reach the Itikar pens in part 2 without any combats, but without the sleep dart or Mind Over Matter, you'll have to fight the Sentry. It's a 50/50 to get the fight where rolling a 1 at any time will kill you. Once airborne, heading east towards Chula is the least risky: you'll have to fight a 20/28 enemy, but only for one round and the EP loss discrepancy options afterwards do not matter as far as gameplay goes. I used one of my Alethers on the Drakkar in section 361 since it is unavoidable.
The rest of the book plays out normally, and thanks to the Graveweed, you can enter the tomb without trouble. I actually had to fight the tomb guard because I didn't think to buy the Graveweed at the potion shop, and it was very risky because I was below 10 going into the tomb. Thankfully I had two Laumpsurs and an Alether that sealed the victory. Dhorgaan is a formidable foe, but fully buffed the ratio is +3. I rolled completely average, and killed him in 5 rounds with 7 EP remaining.
Book 6 is going to be a doozy, as mentioned upthread, you have to fight a 25/25. I'm thinking Psi-Surge, Weaponmastery, Huntmastery, and the Bronin Warhammer. e: hahah it's immune to Psi-Surge, yikes
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Post by Ofecks on Aug 6, 2019 5:34:38 GMT
6 is indeed very problematic. I just spent 30+ attempts with the following setup and route:
Weaponmastery (sword, bow, WH), Huntmastery, Nexus Equipment - meal, Bow, Quiver, Waistcoat, Laumspur
In Quarlen - North gate, spend gold on fees and services (except eat your own meal instead of paying for one). Shoot Roark. Skip archery tourney and go to Castle Taunor. Aim for the legs of the Yawshath. It's a 90% chance to evade the fight without penalty. If you miss, you have to survive 4 rounds unarmed before you can evade, so you might as well restart. Having Circle of Fire lets you do either following option to dispatch the Yawshath safely. Save the water for later. Search the chapel and use Nexus to get the Bronin Warhammer and equip it.
Undead Summonation is -3 ratio fight. Thankfully you have Nexus. Rolling well here is important for the rest of the book. Getting a 0 swings the advantage greatly. After the fight, use The Taunor Water and the Laumspur as long as you get full value out of the restore.
Wager all your crowns on the conjurer (and pick the right answer, obviously). Buy all 3 handfuls of Alether Berries at the shrine.
Varetta - go west onto Coachcourse and meet Redbeard to skip the backstabber encounter. Ask the tavern-keeper for directions. Splurge for the room with bath - you need all the EP healing you can get. After meeting Gwynian, head towards Soren, ignore the statue but for the graverobbers: use an Alether dose and fight them. It is risky but it's the highest ratio of the book (0) and the prize of 27 crowns will be essential in the future.
Soren - find and follow the captain. Use your bow on the pirates. You need to make the initial shot (80% chance), you cannot afford to lose any more EP before the berzerkers. Use Alether and pray for good rolls (-3 ratio). In Luyen, buy whatever healing pots you can afford and use them to restore (hopefully) to full.
Part ways with the captain at Eula and take a swim across the Storn. Use Nexus to open the sewer door. Use the last Alether and prepare to fight. You need to do 25 damage at a -8 ratio.
As previously stated, I had 30+ attempts by my estimate. They were all failures. Theoretically if you can get past the berzerkers you should be in decent shape due to buying potions. The final boss fight is still unfavorable for you, but do-able I think.
Being limited to only 3 disciplines is a real struggle. As is not having the Healing loyalty bonus. Curing might be necessary for the fresh-start, but what do you replace for it? Huntmastery gives you the lore-circle and without it you're -9 with Dakomyd and have a 10% chance to die instantly. Nexus saves you a ton of damage from the Summonation and guarantees you the BWH *and* opens the sewer door for free. Weaponmastery is too valuable to substitute, I would assume. Maybe someone who is good with math can crunch the numbers.
e: this strat likely can't be done with either version of Seventh Sense because they use older versions of the PA books that restrict buying potions in Luyen to 1 each. The current PA editions do not contain this restriction.
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Post by Ofecks on Aug 6, 2019 9:03:22 GMT
Book 7 - the good news is that, from what I can tell, there will only be 2 combats needed. And that they're both relatively low on stats. The 3 best disciplines each pull double-duty:
Divination - used to get onto the isle safely and finding the invisible bridge Psi-Surge - used to skip the bats, access to Mindblast for the two fights Huntmastery - helps with 2 insta-death rolls (invisible bridge and guard with crossbow)
You could also substitute Invisibility for Divination, but you'd have to fight the Giant Fist (10/42) for Tavig's bottle of water and you still have a 50/50 chance of fighting the Oudagorg.
Rope, Laumspur, Lantern Nothing else is useful. Depending on the way you're playing, the rope may be optional as well (it's required in Seventh Sense). You'll get a free weapon before the first fight so no need to take one here. The only prompt to eat a meal in this book is an easily-avoidable section, which is an interesting oversight by Dever.
Steer your boat towards the jetty and use Divination. Pray. You'll land unharmed, head down to the beach. Jump across the stones and enter the fissure. Light it up and continue. Don't step on a pit trap and avoid the trap door. Check out the damp storage room for a very useful Shield! Open the triangle door with 13, then use Psi-Surge to ward off the bats. North tunnel. Meet Tavig and follow him, but nope out of there when the giant fist grabs him.
Off to the maze. If you're not using Seventh Sense, don't use Divination and just grab the sword. Run away from the wolf. With SS, you're forced to use Divination so use the rope to get the sword. In either outcome, take the left tunnel and slash the bubbles. Use Divination to find the invisible bridge and ignore the whip-wielding enemy, just cross the bridge. Huntmastery gives you 90% success rate. Yell "34!" to the statue and get ready for your first fight - the Oudagorg. Use Mindblast (not Psi-surge) and you'll be at -1 ratio, but the monster only has 17 EP. Once it's dead, climb its carcass or use Divination to get out of the maze.
Go right towards the torture chambers. A guard will fire a crossbow at you, but Huntmastery ensures you survive to fight him. Again, don't use Psi-surge, it is too risky. You should be at 0 CR. In the storage room in the tube, pick up the Platinum Amulet. Destroy the doomstone, grab the lorestone, but avoid the magic elevator. Avoid the insta-deaths and you'll end up back at the jetty where you started (minus a backpack), and the adventure is done.
Book 8 is near-impossible as I mentioned above, but what about Kimah in 9? Well, without the Dagger of Vashna you have to fight him normally, and he has 29 CS using the Psychic Ring. The best you can do here is a -12 CR and he has 38 EP so I'll call this one near-impossible as well.
10 is entirely do-able without a single combat, you just need some lucky rolls. Some reeeeeally lucky rolls. To make it across the ravine to the Isle of Ghosts, to break Tagazin's amulet, to get past the Krorn, and to avoid Big Ugly Sarge at the end. I wouldn't call this one "near-impossible", just unlikely.
11? Forget it. With all the bonuses, you're at -13 on Chaos-Master and he is also a large chunk of EP. Not to mention the Villains, Vonitar, and even possibly the dragon or lizard.
12 is also near-impossible. You're looking at a CS of -11 for the final battle (Weaponmastery, Bronin Vest, Silver Bracers, Kagonite Chainmail, Helshezag, and Adgana). Using Psi-surge only serves to drain more of your precious few EP every round, so it's not advised.
So to sum up from prdwong's old thread and my own initial findings: None of the first twelve books are literally impossible for fresh-start 10/20s. In fact, all 5 Kai adventures (minus Mongoose ed. FFtD) can be done without too much hassle. However, aside from 7, 10, and maybe 6, the Magnakai adventures can't really be done with any sort of feasible probability.
That's it for tonight, I've been distracted by Zipp's thread for long enough. I'll look into the GM books later if someone else hasn't done it already.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Aug 7, 2019 9:24:40 GMT
Why do u prefer Bronin Warhammer over Silver Bow of Duadon?
Bronin Warhammer is a special item?
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Post by kurz81 on Aug 7, 2019 11:47:46 GMT
Why do u prefer Bronin Warhammer over Silver Bow of Duadon? Bronin Warhammer is a special item? In Lone Wolf Saga app it's a normal weapon with +1cs. In magnakai books you use the shield. In gm books you can dual wield with the Sommerswerd + Bronin Warhammer. Again, I believe it is not intended, but it is a nice bonus if you have low stats.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Aug 7, 2019 14:31:54 GMT
Why do u prefer Bronin Warhammer over Silver Bow of Duadon? Bronin Warhammer is a special item? In Lone Wolf Saga app it's a normal weapon with +1cs. In magnakai books you use the shield. In gm books you can dual wield with the Sommerswerd + Bronin Warhammer. Again, I believe it is not intended, but it is a nice bonus if you have low stats. Why cant we use shield in GM series? It is so stupid to have the limitations on Special items being imposed on book 13. I tend to ignore all the rules on special item limitations and play it with my custom rules on pencil and paper.
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Post by Ofecks on Aug 7, 2019 19:27:24 GMT
In Lone Wolf Saga app it's a normal weapon with +1cs. In magnakai books you use the shield. In gm books you can dual wield with the Sommerswerd + Bronin Warhammer. Again, I believe it is not intended, but it is a nice bonus if you have low stats. Unless something is different in the GM series, I'm pretty sure the dual-wielding capability in LWS' combat UI provides no actual bonuses. Its functionality only seems to exist to use a shield in 1-12 and to implement the restrictions of using a two-handed weapon. I'm currently on book 19 in LWS: I don't have Grand Weaponmastery but I do have full loyalty bonuses, I'll test it again using 'Swerd/Helshezag next time I have to fight something. Also, I started a 1-12 10/20 run in Seventh Sense S last night. Book 6 was no problem, other than winning the archery tournament at -8 CR. Would've been -10 had I not brought over an Alether from book 5. It took 10 attempts. I got to book 7 and mistakenly went in with the elixir I bought in 6, forgetting about the forced backpack loss. So I went to restart the book and accidentally chose the "restart this book from scratch" which wiped all my progress. I then stared at my monitor for a few minutes, then the floor, then closed the program. I'll come back to it at some point in the future. Why do u prefer Bronin Warhammer over Silver Bow of Duadon? Bronin Warhammer is a special item? For the 10/20 fresh-start, that +1 CS keeps you from slipping into a -9 CR and having a 10% chance to die instantly (a "K" on the results table) in combat with the Dakomyd at the end. All that matters in that case is surviving that one book. For the full 1-20 10/20 run, the bow is, theoretically, much more valuable, and you'll have all the equipment from the Kai series to carry you through most fights. Aside from the struggle to acquire the SBoD, I really think that either Kimah in 9 or the infamous gauntlet in 11 will be the brick wall of a 10/20 series playthrough. The GM series will not be feasible unless you cheat by re-rolling your stats to 25/30 as well as keeping all equipment and loyalty bonuses. It's not possible to do this in Seventh Sense (or LWS) so, unless I'm wrong, I won't bother trying.
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Post by kurz81 on Aug 10, 2019 19:40:22 GMT
Just completed books 21-28 on "Lone Wolf New Order" app with GM base stats 25/30. It's doable (with Valiance Kai-weapon) but very difficult. Used all potions + Deliverance on books LW21, 22, 25 and 26. Most challenging unvoidable fights are: 1) Dromodon the gladiator in LW21 (-7 combat ratio) 2) the Nigumu-sa in LW22 (-5 combat ratio and 50 END to burn...) 3) Zorkaan the Soultaker in LW25 (-9 CS combat ratio, only 3 rounds but risky). Sesketera in LW22 (-8 CS) and Zorkaan (-8CS) in LW24 must be avoided. The Shom'zaa can be faced. Books LW23, 24, 27 and 28 can be completed without issues with lowest stats, providing you collected the gear and have right GM disciplines.
Playing the LW books from 1 to 28 with 0 base roll in combat skill was quite fun and challenging. As stated before, I used the "Lone Wolf Saga" App and the "Lone Wolf New Order" App. Sad thing, I had to skip fights as much as possible. Sometimes I had to restart the book, but still doable with a good strategy. I invite you to try.
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