User:Quizzical/Nightfall Easy

Chahbek Village
Difficulty: (no stars)

Jokanur Diggings
Difficulty: *

Don’t stand in the fire jets, and don’t stand under the vertical hammer traps. If you’re going to do the bonus, flag your party well away from the sunspear ghosts. Grab the tablet as necessary and then run away to keep Kormir away from the sunspear ghosts.

Blacktide Den
Difficulty: *

Consulate Docks
Difficulty: **

Kournan bowmen can take a while to kill with whirling defense, and their focused fire can kill someone in a couple places. Stay with it and they’re not that big a danger. Don’t step in the fire fairly early on, as that’s instant death.

Venta Cemetery
Difficulty: *

Keep away from the fort in the center of the map.

Kodonur Crossroads
Difficulty: **

The mobs at the end can be a little overwhelming if you charge in, but they’re three separate groups and can be pulled separately. Alternatively, you can kill some of them before blowing up the gates if enough henchmen and heroes bring enough attacks that do not depend on line of sight.

Rilohn Refuge
Difficulty: **

Bringing winter can neutralize the thirst of the drought environmental effect. Bring heroes with interrupts (which is, incidentally, better than players with interrupts). If you want master’s reward, be careful about using semicolons to select and pick up drops, as it’s easy to accidentally turn off a water pump that way.

Clear the rest of the room with the drought before attacking it and its two linked droughtlings. Kill the drought first of that group. If you bring heroes with interrupts, the drought’s attempt at casting sand storm usually gets interrupted, making the fight easy. Occasionally it doesn’t get interrupted, and any player or henchmen standing in it dies within seconds. Use flags to move out of it if necessary.

Pogahn Passage
Difficulty: *

Moddok Crevice
Difficulty: ***

The corsair runners can be tricky to catch if you want the bonus. Clear up to them but don’t come near them. Bring deep freeze and mind freeze. Deep freeze the back mob, which will hit and slow both, then spam mind freeze on the front corsair runner as often as it refreshes. The group should kill the back corsair runner first, then come back for the front one.

A hero elementalist like Zhed with high water magic can handle this if you disable all other skills, lock target on the front corsair, and then manually order the hero to use deep freeze on the back corsair. Call the back corsair as the group’s target running right behind Zhed, and once it dies, call the other corsair runner as the group’s target.

The end bosses can be tricky as well. They set a trap with eight kournan bowmen at a very high altitude shooting down at you. Trading fire with them is dangerous, as there is a huge damage discrepancy from the altitude difference, and many of your attacks will hit their ledge or be blocked by whirling defense.

Instead, run under their ledge and past the bosses, far out of range of the bowmen. Flag the henchmen all the way against the back wall to ensure that they keep running. General Bayel will not follow you. If the hunger does, kill it, and all of the mobs will run to the back gate. At that point, move up to kill Bayel quickly to end the mission, and get out of range of the bowmen if you can. If the hunger does not come with your group, you can run around up to the ledge with the bowmen and kill them up there, at which point finishing the mission is very easy.

Tihark Orchard
Difficulty: *

Bring defensive skills, especially a self-heal. If the Vabbian guards don’t engage the harpies when you do, run past the harpies and the guards will follow you into combat.

Dzagonur Bastion
Mission difficulty: ***

Master’s reward difficulty: ****

This mission can be very confusing and doesn’t seem to have a clear explanation anywhere of what is going on and what you’re supposed to do. When you start the mission, you’ll be next to Ahmtur. Talk to him and he’ll open a portal to start the mission in earnest.

Down below, there are three bombards, three gates, and three disciples of secrets, each accompanied by three vabbian guards. You can talk to a disciple of secrets and tell him which side to defend, and he’ll take his three accompanying guards with him to stand next to the bombard you choose. There is an additional group of three vabbian guards in front of the center bombard, which you cannot move elsewhere.

Shortly after the mission starts, mobs will start coming. The mobs generally consist of groups of three kournans and one margonite. Each group will run to a bombard and try to destroy it. Bombards can be captured by standing near them, with each character of a side granting one pip of bombard ownership movement. Characters of opposite sides can cancel each other out. The net change in bombard ownership rate cannot exceed four pips.

The bombards start out entirely allied with you. Kournans will try to make them neutral, and then try to capture them. If they fully capture a bombard, it will be destroyed and you cannot recapture it. You can recapture a bombard at any time if it has not been fully captured by the Kournans. Bombards supply substantial fire support at nearby enemies until they are destroyed, but they can’t really defend themselves against capture without allies there to help.

If Kournans destroy a bombard, they will head on to the corresponding gate, which is captured in the same manner as bombards. If they capture this, it opens a path into the bastion. The mobs will move into the bastion and try to capture it as well. Capturing it is much slower than capturing gates or bombards, but if they capture it, you fail the mission.

The initial phase of the mission is easy: several groups of four mobs will come down and attack a bombard. They’re slow enough that they’re easy to fight off. Each group will target a fixed bombard/gate entry. If one gate is completely breached and the group is set to target a different one, it will still take the time to attack the relevant bombard or gate rather than rushing into the bastion.

After the several initial groups of mobs are dead, four margonite bosses will spawn at four fixed locations, out of range of the bombards. Each boss is accompanied by three margonites, and more importantly, a rift. The rift will periodically spawn groups of three Kournans, which come down to attack the corresponding bombard. A rift is closed when its corresponding boss is killed, at which point additional mobs no longer spawn from it. Kill all four bosses to complete the mission.

A boss cannot be pulled while a corresponding bombard its groups head toward is still intact. Once the bombard is destroyed, the boss will come down to the bombard, but stay away from the gate. Once the gate is destroyed, the boss will head into the bastion to help capture it.

If you only want to beat the mission and don’t care about master’s reward, then assign a whispers group to each bombard. Help them out in the initial waves of mobs, but once the bosses spawn, abandon them to hold out as long as they can before dying, while you go kill bosses. Kill the elementalist boss to the far east first, then work your way westward. If a boss isn’t there when you arrive, his corresponding bombard is down, so you’ll have to go there or into the bastion to chase him down and kill him. The last boss will almost certainly be gone by the time you get there.

If you want master’s reward without having other players to group with, you’ll need a ritualist hero. If you don’t have one and took Master of Whispers rather than Margrid so that you need to finish this mission to continue, then just complete it without master’s reward and come back once you finish the game and have Razah. There are a variety of tactics on the wikis and various other sites to purportedly get master’s reward without a ritualist hero, but as best I can tell, none of them actually work very well.

Your party should consist of a ritualist hero, Master of Whispers, and a party of six that is reasonably well balanced when excluding the first two heroes. Set Razah as a restoration ritualist with recuperation, life, a couple healing spells (spirit light weapon is good), and whatever else you like. Set up Master of Whispers with some melee minions and well of blood. Ranged minions are bad, as they will trigger whirling defense and possibly kill your NPC allies. The rest of the party can be anything that you feel comfortable fighting Kournans and margonites with as a group of six, without help from Master of Whispers or Razah.

Assign all three whispers groups to defend the east bombard, and flag Razah and Master of Whispers over there as well. Put them a little to the east of the east bombard, with Master of Whispers right about where the guards you send over there stand, and Razah slightly behind him. You want any mobs that come to get attacked by both Master of Whispers and the NPC allies. The minions taking damage and Razah healing both them and the guards is enough to hold the east bombard indefinitely. You can then ignore the east bombard and have your group of six run around worrying about the rest of the mission.

In the initial waves, kill the mobs that head toward the center or west bombards. The last group will run toward the guards in the center. Kill the rest of the group, but leave the two bowmen for the guards. Run to the far west where the warrior boss spawns so that you can start attacking the boss as soon as he spawns. The guards can handle two bowmen on their own.

As soon as the warrior boss spawns, your group of six should focus fire on him to kill him as quickly as possible. He’ll heal himself with healing signet when he gets low on life, so it helps to have a skill interrupt to stop this, or better yet, disable it with distracting shot. As soon as the boss dies, retreat to the west bombard, perhaps even past the bombard to make sure that henchmen follow.

Margonites that were with the boss may or may not follow you; if they don’t, you can ignore them for the rest of the mission as they’ve basically taken themselves out of the fight. Kill whatever mobs do follow you with help from the bombards, and you may need to run back and forth between the center and west bombards to hold on to both. Be sure to target the priests, as they can greatly slow down your efforts at killing the mobs. If there’s no real risk of losing a bombard, it may be good to help out the guards in front of the center bombard as well.

Once the situation is under control and the center and west bombards are fully recaptured and clear of Kournans, go attack the monk boss which is a little east of the boss you already killed. As before, focus fire on the boss until it is dead, and then retreat to the bombards. Again, kill any mobs that follow and fully recapture the center and west bombards as necessary.

Once the bombards are secure with two bosses dead, finishing off the mission is actually pretty easy. Go kill the paragon boss which is to the east of the monk boss, focusing fire on the boss as before. Once the boss is dead, retreat to the center bombard. The west bombard will be secure, with the first two bosses dead. Once you finish off any mobs that follow, the center bombard will be secure as well. Go kill the elementalist boss to the far east at your leisure to complete the mission. Killing the boss ends the mission, without needing to kill any mobs accompanying it.

Dasha Vestibule
Difficulty: **

Don’t stand in the ice jets, and more to the point, don’t let Goren wander into the ice spikes, as one blast can kill him.

The three djinn bosses at the end can be pulled separately, though sometimes you’ll have to wait quite a while for them to separate. The ruby djinn boss is a potent fire elementalist. Ward against harm and extinguish can help blunt its attacks. If you accidentally pull multiple bosses, focus fire on the elementalist boss if it comes, as it can wipe your group quickly if ignored.

Grand Court of Sebelkeh
Mission difficulty: ***

Master’s reward difficulty: ****

At the start, strafe right slightly while charging forward into the middle to avoid bringing a lot more mobs from one side. Plant a flag in the middle of the altar both to keep the altar firmly in your control and to keep the henchmen from running off and aggroing more mobs. Twelve margonites will rush into the center, never more than six at a time unless you come too near one of the wings. Kill eleven of them, but leave a margonite executioner standing. When you kill the last center margonite, the blasphemy starts spawning, which makes things harder.

When only an executioner remains, plant a flag in one of the rifts and go kill the four mobs at that rift. Be sure to bring interrupts to interrupt torment slash, and call the claw as a target so that henchmen will interrupt it if you’re not going to interrupt it yourself. If you run too far ahead of your henchmen, the torment claw may start torment slash early and finish it as the henchmen arrive so that they won’t have time to interrupt it, and this can devastate your group. If necessary, flag the henchmen short to give them time to interrupt torment claw, and then flag then back in the rift. Flagging the henchmen in the rift will start them on capturing it while you fight the mobs.

The executioner from the starting rush may follow you, in which case, avoid killing it. If it returns to the center to capture the altar, ignore it as it will take a long time. Once you’ve captured the rift, head to the next rift and repeat. When you capture the second rift, the blasphemy will spawn. Kill it and the last margonite and reclaim the center altar. Go capture the final rift, ignoring the blasphemy when it respawns, then return to the center, kill the blasphemy again, and the mission will end.

There are other tactics that will work just fine for finishing the mission, but take longer and perhaps cost you master’s reward.

Jennur's Horde
Difficulty: ***

Alternate between killing one group of pre-spawned margonites and a group of runners. Don’t try to kill more than one group between groups of runners, or there may be several left while you get hit by runners. It’s also quite possible to get tied up with margonites on one side while runners slip by on other, which is how you end up getting horticulturist Hinon killed and failing the mission.

Don’t kill a harbinger until you’re ready to kill a group beyond them, or it‘s easy to get the spirit of sebhorin killed. If you’re going to do the bonus, kill all margonites down below except for the harbinger of nightfall first, so that you don’t aggro them while trying to do the bonus. Kill a group of runners, then run up to kill the margonites and extra harbinger. It may help to only kill about half of the extra group before running back down to catch the next group of runners, then returning to finish off the group.

Nundu Bay
Difficulty: **

Don’t accept the purified water immediately. Instead, wait for the gates to open and clear any margonites nearby so that you don’t accidentally aggro them while the groups come and attack.

Several margonites will rush in when the harbinger of nightfall gets to 50% life. Unless you’ve got a group built to finish it off very quickly, run away the way you came in to intercept some of the margonites, kill them, then pull the other additional margonites away and kill them before finishing off the harbinger.

Gate of Desolation
Difficulty: *

Flag the party at the top of the hill facing the sulfur, and don’t bring melee henchmen or heroes, so that they don’t run into the sulfur and die. Acolytes and cavaliers can resurrect, so kill them first, and interrupt their resurrecting attempts. The mobs in the starting rush are undead, so you can get double holy damage against them.

Ruins of Morah
Difficulty: ****

Varesh hits very, very hard, especially in paragon form, and has thousands of hit points. Spoil victor can wear down Varesh, and weakness can keep her attacks from doing enough damage to devastate your group.

Bring Olias or Master of Whispers with enfeeble and spoil victor, and a build that won’t let him use enough energy on other skills to be unable to spam these two, as they‘ll only last half the normal duration. Awaken the blood, a corpse exploit (which will be paid for by soul reaping when a mob dies), and some signets or disabled skills are good. Bring Norgu with empathy, inspired or revealed hex, and some interrupts. Don’t bring any melee henchmen.

When the enter the mission, lock Olias on Varesh, while the rest of the group ignores Varesh to kill the margonite clerics. Target and kill the cleric in back first; if you target one of the front ones, henchmen will shoot the ground a lot instead and take too long. Once the clerics are dead, pull your group back toward the entrance to the mission. Unflag the group to let henchmen move around, so they can get out of Varesh’s vortex skills. Norgu’s inspired or revealed hex will completely neutralize Varesh’s enchantment collapse skill.

When Varesh dies, she will be resurrected in the middle of the mission, and many torment creatures will spawn. Varesh will aggro from very far away, but if you get out of her aggro range, she’ll run back to the center. Keep your party out of Varesh’s aggro range for a while. You may have to reflag henchmen against the wall repeatedly, especially Morgahn.

Pull and kill the first pair of torment creatures, and two more will respawn in their place. Pull and kill them, too, as well as the pair that moves in right behind them. As soon as you can reliably kill a pair of torment creatures well before the next pair arrives, move up a little to pull Varesh, lock Olias on Varesh, and focus fire for the rest of the group on torment creatures as they come, before returning to damaging Varesh. When Varesh is close to dead, ignore the next pair of torment creatures that comes and just finish off Varesh.

Gate of Pain
Difficulty: **

Terrorweb dryders use meteor shower, which can be a devastating combination of interrupts and damage if you stand in it. It takes five seconds to cast, though, so there’s plenty of time to interrupt it. Either bring interrupts yourself (lightbringer’s gaze doesn’t work) or bring Norgu with several interrupts. Switch between all the terrorweb dryders in a group to see when one starts casting meteor shower. Start attacking that one and Norgu will interrupt it.

The tortureweb dryders are fire elementalist bosses with the usual high damage output. Dispatch of them with standard anti-fire elementalist boss tactics such as shelter or protective spirit, ward against harm, and interrupts.

There are six tortureweb dryders in all, and the mission ends shortly after killing the sixth. If you want to do the bonus, don’t attack the last tortureweb dryder until it is done.

Gate of Madness
Difficulty: ****

The four star rating is more for being complicated than hard to carry out the strategy if you know what it is.

There are three critical roles that henchmen cannot fill. First, you need an extra healer, as Mhenlo, Kihm, and Sogolon just can’t keep up. Dunkoro or Tahlkora as a healing monk or a human healing monk or restoration ritualist, in addition to those henchmen, will provide adequate healing.

Second, you need a warrior with wild blow and frenzied defense. Disable frenzied defense for most of the mission to avoid the double damage. A human warrior or assassin (with wild strike instead of wild blow) works fine here. A human paragon with wild throw is not an acceptable substitute, as it will not recharge fast enough.

Third, it helps to have a necromancer with enfeeble and spoil victor. Olias (or Master of whispers) can handle this. Enfeebling blood can replace enfeeble, and spiteful spirit or insidious parasite can replace spoil victor, but these are far inferior substitute skills. A defensive corpse exploit like well of blood is good, too; don’t bring minions or a corpse exploit that will do damage, such as putrid explosion. Barbs will help as well, but isn’t really necessary. If you’re using spoil victor, 10 or so blood magic is plenty; you don’t want to nail Shiro with huge amounts of damage at once from 19 blood magic, or he can use that to wipe your group in a hurry.

If you can handle one of these duties yourself, go ahead and do so and add another hero. I like Norgu with empathy, spirit of failure, and a lot of interrupts. This is helpful, but not really necessary.

When you get to the portals, wait a bit for everything to spawn, so that you don’t have mobs unexpectedly spawn on you. There are five portals, each of which has three portal wraiths and a pair of respawning margonites or torment creatures. There are also some creatures not linked to any portal, including titans, margonites, torment creatures, and a torment claw. Both types of margonites and torment creatures wander a good bit, so you can’t distinguish between them except by killing them and seeing if more spawn to replace them.

You want to kill the mobs not linked to portals in the area of a portal before trying to attack the portal. Once those mobs are down, you’ll have to take on three portal wraiths and two margonites or torment creatures at once to shut down a portal. Kill the portal wraiths first, as that will prevent the other mobs from promptly respawning. It’s not technically the same mobs that respawn, but two margonites or torment creatures chosen at random from within their type.

When you get to Shiro and the Lich, you want to pull and kill the Lich first. Flag the henchmen back, go through the doorway, stay along the right wall, and inch forward very slowly. Once you get close enough, the Lich will yell at you and walk toward you. Wait for him to get in range of you, then back up, making sure he stays with you, until you’re far enough behind where you aggroed him to not risk a henchmen running in front and aggroing Shiro, too. At that point, bring the henchmen up and kill the Lich. He’s not hard if you get him solo.

At this point, lock Olias onto Shiro, and disable all of Olias’ skills except for enfeeble and perhaps a defensive corpse exploit. The idea is that you want Olias to spam enfeeble on Shiro to prevent Shiro from causing much trouble while you run around killing margonites.

Shiro doesn’t hit devastatingly hard if not being attacked. However, all three of his skills are far more powerful if he’s taking a lot of damage than if he isn’t. As such, you want Shiro to take minimal damage until all the margonites are clear. If Olias shoots Shiro with his staff a bit, that’s fine; if the rest of the henchmen do likewise, or if someone hits Shiro with a strong attack like spoil victor or lightbringer’s gaze, that’s not fine.

Run to one of the shrines with margonites in it and place flags frequently along the way to force henchmen to come with you. Flag the henchmen in the middle of the shrine to capture it while clearing margonites. Call a margonite as a target to keep everyone but Olias from attacking Shiro. When one margonite dies, call another as a target, and repeat until a shrine is cleared. At that point, take the group to the next shrine and repeat the process until all but Abaddon’s shrine are clear.

Once all of the shrines are clear, take your group back out to the area where the portals were, and make sure you run far enough out that Shiro doesn’t follow. Disable all of Olias’ skills except for spoil victor (or insidious parasite or spiteful spirit) and perhaps barbs if you’re using spoil victor. In particular, be sure to disable enfeeble.

For Koss, disable all skills except for the blocking skill. The double damage for frenzied defense is not a problem, as all of Shiro’s attacks are melee, and it’s the lifestealing that really hurts, not the straight attack. Keep the window of Koss’ skills open, as you’ll have to manually have him use wild blow.

Shiro’s most dangerous skill is battle scars, a stance which gives his attacks lifestealing equal to the greatest damage he takes while in the stance. As such, you want to hit him with zillions of small attacks, not a few big ones. Anything up to the 60 or so damage he should take from spoil victor is fine. It is also important to end battle scars quickly, typically by manually having Koss use it.

Shiro uses two stances, and the other is riposting shadows. Koss using frenzied defense will end riposting shadows fast enough for it to not be a serious threat. That Shiro has two stances does mean that you can’t let Koss use wild blow on his own, or he may waste it on the wrong stance, leaving it unavailable to use against battle scars.

Shiro’s other skill is impossible odds, which makes his skills double strike and hit everyone (except himself) nearby. If these attacks have a lot of lifestealing, this can completely wipe a group in a few seconds. On the other hand, so many attacks at once can deal massive damage to Shiro if he has spoil victor, empathy, or other such skills on him. Shiro starts using impossible odds once he gets below about 1/3 life.

Impossible odds also transfers any conditions off of Shiro onto whomever he hits. As such, if you try to use conditions on Shiro, you’re really just putting conditions on your own group, which is a bad idea. If that puts crippling or blindness on whoever is supposed to end battle scars, that can wipe your group. Impossible odds also removes a hex. Hexes last a short duration on Shiro to begin with, so they’ll have to be recast often.

Flag the henchmen slightly out of range of where they would aggro Shiro. Put the two heroes other than Koss (or all the heroes, if a human has the stance-ending skill) likewise just out of range, but off to either side a bit so as not to bunch up. Flag Koss in front, just inside the aggro range, and Shiro will mostly focus on Koss.

The main thing you have to focus on when fighting Shiro is ending the battle scars stance. Unless you’re carrying the stance-ending skill yourself, having Koss use wild blow at the proper time is more important than whatever skills your own character may use. Battle scars does have an 11 second recharge, leaving plenty of time to use your own skills after using wild blow.

This is the heavily nerfed version of Shiro, with his two deadliest skills from Imperial Sanctum removed. Shiro isn’t that hard if you’re prepared. People who aren’t sometimes have horror stories of dying to him many, many times in a row before finally making it through.

Abaddon's Gate
Difficulty: *

Bring tons of healing and condition removal. Kill the torment claws promptly when they spawn. The pair of monoliths near Abaddon must be killed last after chaining down both his hands. You can time when to get away from Abaddon to avoid the respawn of this pair by using lightbringer’s gaze on Abaddon as soon as he becomes vulnerable, attacking him until you can use lightbringer’s gaze a second time, and then running away.