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Druid Grove Frustration

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Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Darvin on Thu Aug 18, 2011 3:30 am

It seems that almost all of my druid grove attempts fail because the boss keeps teleporting behind a barbing bramble. Occasionally I'll be able to get at him with a WEYTWUT combo or break through the walls, but this costs a fair chunk of mana just to get back to the fight and doesn't prevent him from just teleporting back later (this is what happened to me in my most recent run; I used WEYTWUT to extract him, then used WEYTWUT on another monster to extract myself, then hit him and he teleports right back into the same little alcove). It's bad enough when I have to mana burn myself to run after him in some situations, but the brambles are game-enders. Often times this only happens after the map gets absolutely littered with plants in longer attrition battles, but occasionally it will happen early. A few attempts back I got trapped on my third hit, as he teleported away from a dead-end corridoor and left a bramble to trap me.

The berserker gets the job done quickly enough, and high-damage classes in general can take him down before he puts down enough plants. However, a more attrition-minded class (such as a bloodmage) needs to wear him down and this really causes the map to get littered with plants. At a certain point, the boss gets jammed behind brambles and I cannot touch him. In many cases, I'm on course to coast to victory if I don't take too many additional mana burns. Losing this way isn't fun or challenging, this is just plain frustrating.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby q 3 on Thu Aug 18, 2011 4:16 am

I did it with an Orc. ENDISWAL + BLUDTOPOWA early on to clear out most of the walls, fireballs plus mana potions on high level Wraiths and Bandits to level up (you don't want to save your potions for the boss the fight, as he's not especially weak against magic and they cost too much HP at high levels), leave as many bloodpools as possible untouched, then convert all glyphs before starting the fight to max out damage done (the fewer hits you need to take him down, the fewer plants he spawns). Those brambles are really annoying, though, and I agree that they should be toned down.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Darvin on Thu Aug 18, 2011 5:13 am

I was using elf bloodmage up until now to get a lot of value out of those mana potions, using poison blade to level up and start the boss fight before exploration is complete. In my best run, I had 24 mana, 5 mana potions, and was able to level up twice during the boss fight. That's 32 fireballs, in theory more than enough to beat the boss without ever having to land a physical blow. I'm giving up on that approach since BURNDAYRAZ does too little damage on each individual hit. Even if I can out-attrition him with spellcasting, he almost invariably bramble locks me before I'm even halfway through the battle.

I've actually never found ENDISWAL on the druid grove (and I've played it many times), and was under the presumption it didn't spawn in.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Wargizmo on Thu Aug 18, 2011 5:48 am

Yeah you definitely want to go with Orc for this quest and focus on getting your physical damage as high as possible. Also the venom sword REALLY helps if you have it.

As far as in game items go, just buy whatever will increase your damage. Convert pretty much every glyph you can, just save ENDISWALL or WEYTWUT, and dont convert fireball until the end.

To level up, fireballs + Poison attack will allow you to take out monsters 2-3 levels higher than you with ease, basically anything that can't 1-shot you can be taken down.

For preparations, make sure you take the smuggler's den, but don't go in there until you fight the boss, same with the other subdungeon, you want to save those tiles for healing yourself while the boss is poisoned. Take Swap MANA for HP to allow you to have enough HP to take him on at level 8.

If you don't have venom sword, your best bet is probably to farm a sensation stone or use trisword and just hope you saved enough bloodpools and potions.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Darvin on Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:07 am

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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby q 3 on Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:32 am

AFAIK, you don't actually need insurance to protect locker items. Locker items will remain in your locker even if you die; the only way to lose them is to convert them. Insurance only protects items that you pick up or buy in a dungeon. Kind of silly, if you ask me.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Darvin on Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:34 am

Okay... gunna remove insurance from my list of preparations then. That's pretty worthless.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby TigerKnee on Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:53 am

What are you going to replace insurance with though?

Let's see, the good preparations from Thieves guild are... Smugglers Den (duh), Bet on Boss (only when farming, don't use this on Vicious dungeons dur)...

MAYBE double gold pile. It would be more useful for gold farming in alpha if it existed but now that gold has been completely changed... nah. Maybe a Tinker would love this. Thief maybe? Still not as high in power level vs Smuggler.

Gold Chests are more likely to screw you over than help the last time I tried and... are there any more preparations in that building?
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby Deadman on Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:14 am

Smugglers Den is by far the best.
It's true power relies in it being an extra room of darkness you can uncover at a tactical time.
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Re: Druid Grove Frustration

Postby bla0815 on Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:11 am

The problem i have with the den is, that you either waste that regen early or have to run around without the power ups (and in some cases the xp) for a while. You usually need the regen late, since very early you have to explore more to find suitable enemies anyway.
That's why i often prefer the double gold pile. It's not worth for farming since the price roughly equals the amount of money you find, but it lets you buy more equipment. Orcs, who benefit greatly from additional conversion points, love it.

EDIT: I hope OP doesn't mind the thread hijack, since he beat the grove...
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