Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Corpse of Alice Alisceon

Going to be blunt here. This enemy is unfair and grossly overpowered. First time I encountered it, my entire party was instantly one shotted. Returned 5 or 6 levels later with way better gear, was instantly one shotted.

Yes I know how to defeat her now, but enemies that more or less require foreknowledge to defeat are badly designed. I can't fathom it being even remotely expected that the player will defeat this enemy the first time they encounter it playing normally and with no knowledge of it unless they are very lucky and don't encounter it until they have done just about every other possible thing until then to power up.

Level 16 and I've been steamrolling enemies that used to give me trouble, even my character that has almost 50% fire resistance and 800 magic armor gets one shotted by her fireball.

Terrible enemy.

it's not really that bad, especially if you have a ranger

it's meant to be one of the harder (if not the hardest) fights in the act

if you mean the fight's hard enough to catch you by surprise, then yeah, but i can think of several other fights in this act alone that can do that. some good positioning of party members and maybe some pre-armoring makes the fight manageable

Careful with that kind of sensible talk there pal, posting any kind of logical disparagement of this horribly designed game will bring down upon you the wrath of a thousand jerking fanboys.

the enemy is indeed quite tough, but it is an optional encounter with little reward if you do kill her. the opening fire ball is indeed quite nasty, but it can be dealt with. there are some other enemies that are designed as well in that direction for example the trolls, but again they are optional.

personally i would not change the encounter, but drop a bit of game lore that hints at her strength and weaknesses, e.g. a book that describes her tactics if you loot her home in the driftwood fields (similar to the troll books).

I feel that, according to her level, she should be tuned down a bit.

I think more fights should require strategy and planning, theres even an autosave in front of the boss for those oblivious players.

She as many weaknesses to exploit and personally I kinda dislike the number of baby/pointless fights this game already as where you win without even trying because your characters are so powerful. If you did your homework correctly for example this boss can be 1 shotted by a skill like most mobs in the game.

I was login to complain exactly about the same thing and my comments wouldn't have been as kind as yours...

I'm playing honor mode, at lvl 15 I went over there and got one shot my entire group after talking to her, meaning more than 2000 damage.... I had one character resurrect but he was playing last after all the totem, I didn't even stayed

Fortunately, I have my ways of thing and already knew how to roll back my entire game so I've waste just few hours ....otherwise Larian products would have been banned for life...and I'm not even kidding....

In a game offering the player to play honor mode just like diablo 3 hardcore, you're not suppose to implement this kind of behavior into a game where you would simply loose instantly by standing in the wrong place....

Now if she would have been shown as as a lvl20 character which is basically what she is....then I wouldn't have even tried it and I would have been able to pursue my questing elsewhere...

It is utterly ridiculous that people are down to engage in some ways where they are circumventing the game so that they don't get shot at or use one character has a dead meat (or summons I guess which I'm not playing with)

Through the game, I haven't used a resurrection scrolled so far as all fights gave me the proper challenge to always find a solution to survive...but this wasn't even a fight because I never even get to play

I would rather have a honor mode where there wouldn't be any resurrect scroll but let you save anytime (auto reload if you die....maybe one save or a second one that would keep a savegame 2 lvl backward) instead of autosaving when a character died.... It would at least prevent retarded behavior like this

Why are you playing Honor mode if you're just going to cheat? There's no difference in difficulty between Honor and Tactician.

Stabbey, this is not the point of this discussion, but I did make sure to test how to roll back in case of need (especially knowing that act2 and 3 weren't intensely play tested thus far...for obvious reason now)....and it came handy as the game cheated on me

It's a troll that the game autosaves upon initiating the fight with Alice, thus locking you in with Honor mode. A troll, I tell you. Other fights do not autosave.

afaik most boss fights have an autosave on initialization.
when she talk you can at any point in the conversation:

-examine her with other party members
-move other party members (including running away)
-teleport her away

the fist thing you should do when facing bosses is spread your party, to avoid aoe damage, in that regard she is a fair boss. the lvl 18 troll can oneshot your whole party and you have a much harder time spacing your party on the narrow bridge.

when i read your posts i conclude that:
-there is information lacking on how powerful her opening is -> introduce game lore, so an attentive player has knowledge. however there are a lot of corpses that should tell you: warning dangerous boss ahead.
-the game should maybe teach you more about what your options are, again unless you close the dialog you can still run away with 3 out of your 4 party members, or drink fire resistance potion or at least space out your party

i like a game where you have side-content that actually is difficult and even if you don't know the boss there are many things you could have done.
i really disagree with the notion that you should be able to walk into the hardest optional bosses unprepared and come away victorious.


try path of exile hardcore, this game has a lot more unforgiving mechanics and content than all of dos2. again: even if you are locked in the conversation with her you can:
-examine her for weaknesses and strengths
-move you characters (the ones who are not in the conversation)
-analyse the battlefield

you don't have any time pressure, nobody forces your party in that encounter to stand together so all can die from the initial fire ball. you are not forced to fight her in the fire, you are not forced to deal with the totems, you have a lot of options that you could have taken to prevent a party wipe.

90 % fire resistance potion...there is also that thing about blessing her, although I fought her without that. I just chain knock-downed her. Easy...

More like, my thing about her is that she is just slapped there without any sort of background . Not a bad encounter per se, but just out of context. Which also applies to a lot of the Reaper's Coast bosses.

Still.
'I'll kill your shining lights!!' I could say that to a random passer-by in an ominous voice just to see reaction ;D.

Yeah, examine her, observe that she has -50% cold resistance, memorize spells accordingly, enter fight, she gains +100% cold resistance for a total of 50% and immunity to Frozen. Don't use elemental spells, you say? Well OK, guess it was pointless examining her; my options are even more limited than they already were, and is more evidence that elemental attacks are vastly weaker than physical, as if we needed any.



Those are cheesy out of combat options to perform in dialogue, unless Larian intended it as a nod towards the infinite dialogue exploits in BG2 where you could initiate dialogue with Lichs and then kill them as they stood there expecting to have a conversation. I expect you were also an advocate for stealing Kangaxx's ring twice, since not many people seem to object to thieving their way to victory in Original Sin 2.

Getting 1-shot by a side-boss who hits massively above her level and suddenly plugs her only elemental resistance hole for no apparent reason is MMO Raid nonsense. It's beyond MMO Raid nonsense and into trolling territory.

1000-1500 damage with an AOE spell is enough to be dishing out at that level, not 5000 or whatever it is.

My one issue with videogames is when they confront me with an obstacle that challenges me and requires me to carefully consider my options. Especially when these things are purely optional and has absolutely no bearing on the progression or the story of the game. Baldur's Gate did that with the demi-lich. They actually put it in the game knowing full well not everyone would want or be able to defeat him, which is ridiculous. +4 to hit and 90% physical resistance? Nonsense, I say.

I sense some sarcasm there, but I'm saying that encounters like Kangaxx and Alice Alisceon aren't just a little bit more challenging, they're infuriating and absolutely require advance knowledge.

"Quaff fire resistance potions or read a Scroll of Protection from Undead and 'x' monster will barely touch you, if not you're dead in one hit no matter how good your armour is."

she initializes the dialog only if you come quite close to her. she only wipes your party if you basically run straight to edge of the fire, ignore the floating crazy fire witch, don't prepare with fire resistance and unlink your party to space out your group a bit so you don't get one shot.

i learned a proper setup before a boss from the lvl 18 troll who can also wipe your whole party with a single battlestomp.

you may call it foreknowledge, but seeing a crazy burning floating witch in a large fire area littered with corpses should tell you:

-warning dangerous
-she probably does fire damage
-take precautions in case you can't beat her straight away


they are as cheesy as you want them to be. i don't find it particular immersion breaking that your other characters slightly shift away from the person who distracts her with dialogue.

the assumption that she will start with some hefty fire damage (burning witch floating through fire, quite above the area level, magister corpses) is basic observation, not cheese or arcane farsight.

/warning semi serious hyperbole
do you really want a game where a totally oblivious player walks his tightly spaced party into a heavily indicated powerful boss and still comes away with it?

i learned my lesson with one of the trolls and who thought me how dangerous bosses 5 levels above your party can be, maybe other players learn that lesson with the witch.
i only played through on tactician mode, but even then i always keep one character a screen away when the game tells me difficult fight ahead to recover from mistakes.

I want a chance of walking away with it even if you're not aware of the encounter, certainly not insta death on the first turn and the massive patching up of her resistance hole if you survive past that. At the very least I expect her to have to leech source from you (warning that she's about to cast a powerful spell) and then on the next turn cast it. If I have a highly defensive level 15 party equipped with shields and, say, 40% resistances across the board on each player (leadership) I would not expect to be wiped with the initial cast, which is exactly what has happened. It is in no way fair to make a normal spell like fireball which doesn't require source OP.

You're right, it's entirely sarcasm. If you find them infuriating you don't have to do them, and so what if something requires foreknowledge? The only condition under which you wouldn't reasonably be able to gain foreknowledge is if you played Honour mode, and if you're playing Honour mode the first time you're playing the game you're playing it wrong; this is not a game that lends itself to permadeath and it only exists to be a challenge for people who think they can already make it through the game without a single failstate.
My issue with AA is that she's the only character in the game you can't stomp when at the same level. There is no other enemy who is as threatening pound for pound and she's still a whimp. The only danger she really poses is her ability to one-shot you, after that her damage is "meh". If you don't like her don't fight her, she occupies a miniscule amount of the map, she has no bearing on the story or the game, she barely has any flavour text, and is entirely avoidable. It's like complaining that killing everyone in Driftwood at the same time is too hard. I've never seen anyone come with a legitimate reason why she should be nerfed or removed beyond "I could not beat her the first time I fought her." which is something that is true of many enemies.

CatR, that is one way to look at things...

"The only condition under which you wouldn't reasonably be able to gain foreknowledge is if you played Honour mode, and if you're playing Honour mode the first time you're playing the game you're playing it wrong" -> That is your way of reasoning.
The game is suppose to be challenging you into a fight

And when you're one level under your enemy but using all legendary items giving you more than 2000-2500 damage resistance ...in this case health and magic armor and some with fire resistance.... while you're pyrotechnic mage maxed out intellect and pyro at somewhat 17 is doing about 800 at most....this gives you an approximative damage that something should do to you.... so you shouldn't expect a fireball that does 5000 whatever damage....

If she does 5000 damage, then it shouldn't be a lvl 15.... show her as a lvl 20 and you would know not start a fight yet...

Now if the fight is "meh" after the initial fireball, then the fight has been poorly designed and should be rethink to tone down the initial fireball and increase the difficulty during the fight....

I'm playing honor mode as I've started to play Diablo 3 hardcore right away....

side note on diablo 3, nothing kills you one shot because they know better to let you time to adjust to survive....
Of course I had to restart a few times but when I got it going, it was easy to get to lvl 60 ...I was lvling my 10th and final character (since 10 was the maximum) to lvl60 using the special hc gears I had been able to find along the way....playing under lvl by 5 the whole time....and being OP ...but my 10th character I started to get "out of sync" issue with their server...I was moving around on my computer and my character would stay fit not doing anything on their server.....so I lost that character but more precisely that special gear...
Told blizzard, you had issue with your server and I died for that, I don't care about the character, but you're giving me my gear back or you're banned. They didn't want to.... never played or purchase a blizzard product since ...and I think it's the best gaming company...and ever once in a while when I receive a personal message from their end about their product, I simply remind them that I'll consider this once I get my stuff back.....even though I won't be playing d3 and it's been somewhat 10 years....it is about honor more than anything else

I don't understand this concept of "fairness" in a player vs AI encounter in a single player rpg. The AI should have stacked mechanical advantages over the player in order to pose any challenge at all. As such I approach fights like Alice as a puzzle solving element of the game. I walk in, get wrecked the first time, then ask what are the rules? What tools do I have? How do the mechanics work? How can I use tools and mechanics in ways that help me solve the puzzle? It may take many attempts to understand what you need to do and why.

This iterative process also works for a blind Honour playthrough, you just have to be careful. It is clear long before Act 2 that this game has for lack of a better term "f*** you" encounters. An argument can be made that if you play blind Honour you should never initiate combat under-levelled without a means of escape i.e. initiating with 3 of 4 characters and joining combat with the 4th once you know its a fight that can be won. You don't get to blame the game when carelessness is the reason you lost.

It turns out after getting wrecked a few times, you can easily beat Alice at level 12 on Tactician where you move 1 character far in advance of the rest of the party, pre-emptively cast "Living on the Edge" on them and initiate combat (thus wasting Alice's first turn on a target that can't be killed). Then you teleport her away from her totems (so she can't heal), shred either physical or magic defence and CC chain. I suggest physical knockdown/chicken because you have plentiful sources of this type of CC for 1 point pre-requisites.

If done correctly with level 12 weapons and somewhat optimized builds, Alice will not get to attack at all beyond her first turn. It can be done with full hybrid parties and mixed magic/physical specialists too which are very sub optimal. This is a case where the puzzle seems impossible to solve at first but it becomes easy when you know how it works.

So really, this fight is "unfair" to Alice since the AI is a dumb automaton and you are a living, thinking person, capable of pre-empting combat and approaching it with contingencies so you can extricate yourself from fights you got into as a result of poor decision making. Below Honour difficulty you can also reload if you get it wrong.