Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Help dealing with Death Knights

I have the spell to make them vulnerable but they are still quite tough (I am level 18), they have a lot of HPs and they hit hard and often and they are kicking my butt and preventing me from reaching Leandra in the Phantom Forest. I would appreciate it if you guys could share strategies for dealing with them effectively.
My team is made up of 2 elemental casters, a ranger and a meleé character. Thanks a lot in advance.

I had a Tank to take the damage as others did the damage. I also did a lot of placement strategy so that I didn't argo a lot of them at once, kind of picking them off one or two at a time. Don't know if your melee character is a tank or DPS. Also be sure to use T element weapons obviously.

I found that they were quite susceptible to status on my last playthrough, so I kept them stunned most of the time thanks to their blood spurting all over the ground.

Depending on your build, it may also be viable to just burst-damage them down individually. A Flurry would almost finish one off in a single attack for me.

Edit: Also, a tank build makes them pretty much harmless kittens. They won't do anything except attack, as far as I recall.

Madora is a tank, but a pretty useless one, very low APs, low hit % too. She has a hand crafted two-handed sword that does around 200 damage plus another 50 or so tenebrium damage and my rangerï½´s bow also does tenebrium damage but they still wipe the floor with me. The only time just one attacks me there are other enemies (goblins) that do their fair share of damage and keep casting spells, which makes dealing with the knights harder and the latest patch didnï½´t help with the changes made to leech and the elemental resistance cap (I had Madora up to 115% fire resistance before)

Well in that case I fear it might not be the DK's being very strong, but more the case of your characters are weak.

Madora should have a pretty decent amount of gear by now and assuming you saw the insane potential of glass cannon, she should have that aswell. That should lead to Madora being able to instakill them with a flurry. Oath of desecration+rage+flurry = (death)knight *pun intended*

There is even room to cast nullify resistance and assuming madora goes last from your 4 characters you can have somebody else cast the oath of desecration or wildfire for that matter. Blinding/stunning them or freezing them are also valid options after you have lowered their saving throws with drain willpower/divine light etc. etc.

If you do have an archer related character which hopefully also has glass cannon you should be able to cc 1-2 before they even get a turn via stun arrows/knockdown. Which should all synergize with bully.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

by lvl 18, you should be able to spam summons every round. use summons to block their paths and use status effects on them, when they're being stunned, blinded (memory is fuzzy, not sure whether they're immune to knockdown or not), your fighter and ranger can do their things...

(Slight sigh) I assure that you can fight 3 death knights at the same time and not take a single hit on your characters (level 17).

The one key to an easy victory is always the same - lower rsistances and blind/stun/knock down/freeze whatever.

The first round of any serious fight should see your group doing nothing else than taking opposition figures out of the equation temporarily. After killing them one by one while holding the others in place.

To be honest - the death knight fights in Phantom Forest were among the easiest of the whole game.

Regards,
Thorsten

Thanks for the pointers. I do have summons (pets actually, wolves, one for each character) and use them to block the knights, but even though they have some 1400 HPs they are almost killed with the amount of damage and attacks the DKs have each turn.
Madora does not have flurry, I donï½´t remember seeing that skill book in any of the vendors (damn random loot system) and I certainly never found it either or I would have kept it; I never took glass cannon, but I do have bully. I try to haste her and give her oath of desecration whenever possible (all of my characters have the oath).
I will try lowering their resistances and using status attacks.

you gotta have flurry...especially already at lvl 18~

each time you lvl up, all vendors refresh their inventories, need to check more often.

anyway, OoD Madora only when they're affected by status effects, otherwise, she's more than likely to miss~

It turns out I did have flurry, but I only found out after having scoured every single vendor in the game and buying one (and after that I found it on every guy :/). Madora has some many skills that it was "lost" in the fifth skill bar. I?ï½´ve only used it the once and the damage it dealt was less that spectacular, but at least I?ï½´ve manage to defeat 4 death knights so far (after lowering their resistances with one of Madora?ï½´s skills).

The one skillbook (or scroll) I cannot find anywhere is lava core, and Iï½´ve read that itï½´s incredibly powerful. Any idea where to get it?

As a newbie to RPGs (my vast game experience was solely strategy before) I found the way the devs handle "nudging" characters in the right direction a bit disappointing.

Especially the first map Cyseal leaves the impression that youï½´ll get through with raw power alone, as fire is the way to go against the undead and freeze with Ice shards works 9 out of 10 attampts against the fire enemies in the east. Thus the first real difficulty without the man in arms and witchcraft spells lowering resistances, willpower and body building occured against the enemies at the lake in the white witch cave.

In my second playthrough (first one abandoned) I now have witchcraft on 3 characters, man at armes at on 2 and the fights are a breeze, even accidentially getting in a cross fire in Phantom Forest swamp against a group of the generic defenders and the mud lords group combined.

I likewise (as a newbie) have to admit I am slightly disappointed by devs balance decisions. E.g. 2 handers, even enhanced unique ones, are pretty much useless compared to the combination of tenebrium enhanced "Sword of Planets" and a good shield. The damage output of the one hander is better (!) if action points are taken into the equation (one hander only costs 3 instead of 4) and the 80% blocking with a level 20 shield means the tank usually takes very little physical damage even when surrounded.

To summarize it simple - with 2 glass canon mages, enough witchcraft and a good tank there is nothing like a difficult fight in DOS. While with other combinations some fights can be extremely difficult, like the one mentioned against the knight tomb guardians. Just for comparison - I had one on paper totally screwed sword fighter in the Spellforce RPG/RTS mix, trying to combine heavy and light fighting skills and white magic into one figure. The character nevertheless made it into victory easily, I was only informed after finishing the game that the build was "screwed". In DOS you can really screw your party to the point having to revert to henchmen, led into that path by the first dozen fights.

Regards,
Thorsten

you can buy Cain in Homestead at hero rome. he is lvl1 fighter with 10 strength and 5!!!! man at arms. Best hero ever. But you must take him very soon cause you must level him