La Couronne de Cuivre

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Red Badge - Poison encounter (w/o poison resistance)

Before you read any further, i urge you to have boots of speed on every melee character and on mage / sorcerer!

Now this one is damn tough when caught off guard! They kicked my ass time and again before i got how to beat this fight. To trigger this encounter you need to either rest outside watchers keep or exit it. At first they'll just chat with you, the second time you rest / exit keep you will have to fight. I strongly recommend NOT resting outside WK otherwise you will get caught without any preperations (its a huge disadvantage) and trust me, they can wipe out whole party before first spell is cast. It wont trigger before you reach a certain amount of xp. 2 000 000 i believe. However i strongly recommend getting 3 000 000 for your mage, or getting high poison defense for every character that you have. Read the fattened text below if you have high poison resistance

There are 5 mobs to kill.

SE Bittersnake : Immune to elemental damage, partialy resistant to physical damage, vulnurable to magic damage.
E Bloodcaster : Immune to elemental damage, partialy resistant to physical damage (i believe that less to crushing and slashing, and more to piercing and missle), vulnurable to magic damage.
N Fallowmist : Immune to elemental damage, vulnurable to both physical damage and magic damage. Immune to magical weapons!
SW Redspike : Immune to elemental damage, partialy resistant to physical damage, vulnurable to magic damage. More hp then other enemies.
W Bloodspear : Immune to elemental damage, partialy resistant to physical damage, can stun with ranged attacks!

Some of them (i aint sure which ones, sorry) have project force, a knockback + unconciousness (if save vs breath fails)
Others (bloodcaster and fallowmist for sure) cast poison clouds, which can deal quite a bit damage.

Key to this fight is to counter their fast attacks with your own buffing and counter. If every of your characters has poison protection on at least 75 (or at least your main char and.. say.. two others), then you should go for bloodspear first, for he deals the most physical damage. Followed by redspike. Then Bittersnake. Then the last two. The fight is very easy when their main offensive abilities do you no charm.
If you DONT have poison resistance (this guide is just for you) then you must take Caster first, then Fallowmist, then the remaining 3. Here we go :

If you trigger this encounter with resting, you have only nanoseconds to buff up after they teleport you, and before they unleash hell (if you're fast enough you can start casting before they trigger dialogues). The one buff that you'll manage to activate :
- For priests use Armor of Faith
- For rogues invisibility potion (or greater evasion if you have HLA)
- For warriors potion of heroism / power (or hardiness if you have HLA)...

Your mage/sorcerer is a differend story...

Sorcerer, as always during my plays, is the key here. Your warriors wont be able to wipe all 5 monsters before harm is done, and project force knocks them through whole room making it very hard to deal damage. Sorcerers Horrid willings make short work of the snakes. The best way to prepare your caster is for him to have a chain contingency with 3 horrid willings, on enemy, when enemy is spotted (you can try to change it for : "last hit by" and "when hit", little more risky) and a normal contingency with pfmw, triggering when helpless. If you have any poison defense item (like ring of gaxx) give it to your main character, if you got two (there are at least 3 other items aside from ring of gaxx), give the second one to the sorcerer / mage. At the very beginning of the fight have the sorcerer rush south - southeast towards Bittersnake. So horrid willings will affect 3 targets instead of just hollowmist. 3 willings will make short work of Bittersnake and Bloodcaster. Redspike has ~200 hp so he will survive it, but will be weakened.
Warriors should charge north (with non-magical weapons!) to kill hollowmist, while mage casts his first spell.. which is pfmw (remember that he has another one in contingency!) and move west to Bloodspear. This is to try and 'catch' few of Bloodspear and Bittersnake attacks, and give rest of the party time to wipe Hollowmist. Next on the list is weakened Redspike, and as last wipe Bloodspear.

Stworca, Sep 30, 2009
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