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Had a fair fight in Barracus secret cave after the talking statue. 4v4. Was really hard, but manageable. Killed 3 Trombdoys and the remaining one was at 80% health. My party almost down, but we'll win this 100%. Three still alive at 5%, 60% and 60% health. Next strike, Trombdoy at 70% health. Larian decided that he spawns four new Trombdoys all around me. They charm me, then stun me. Absolutely no chance to reatreat. No chance to win. All four dead, 24 hours of game time for nothing.

Larian, you can't pull that shit off in Honour Mode! That is like randomly pulling a death card and deciding to wipe the players party and to end his game. I'm totally for perma-death and I never played Diablo 3 in any other game mode. But you need to announce shit like that(!) so it becomes a players fault if they ignore the warnings!

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I see only two reasons to play a game with perma-death. Either because replaying it is rewarding ala modern roguelikes, and an intentional aspect of the game design. OR you do it because you want to test your skill and knowledge at one particular game with any failure resulting in total failure, the risk heightening the tension. This is definitely not one of the former games so seems to me that honour mode worked just as intended in that one.
I think you just got pooped on, buddy. As a side note there is actually a "correct" way to beat this fight which should become apparent to you if you survey the battlefield in detail, it is after all a dungeon themed around illusions. WINKETY WINK WINK.

I feel you though. Honour mode is cruel.


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I feel you too, sorry for your loss frown

There is a trick to that fight that may have saved the pain. Hopefully. My condolences.

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> OR you do it because you want to test your skill and knowledge at one particular game with any failure resulting in total failure, the risk heightening the tension

That is the reason I do play in Honour Mode. And I play and plan my fights very careful and retreat rather sooner than later. Get some more XP and then return when I am confident. I also already had to invest like 6k in resurrection spells because of my mistakes, which I consider quite severe punishment.

But I kind of disagree with testing knowledge. I failied so many persuasions because I I hadn't any knowledge, like when the fire slug queen asked me whether Barracus wields his axe in the left or right hand. I'm sure there was a memo about that somewhere, which I didn't read or didn't find. My wrong answer provoked a fight I wasn't quite ready for. But at least I had a chance to retreat.

But what Larian pulled of with Trombdoy wasn't fun. It was too hard of a punishment. It was like walking on a zebra crossing after looking left, right and left again and being hit by an invisible bus. That is not right, and while Honour Mode is perma-death, Larian should at least try and make any death feel like the players fault.

By the way, what is the correct way to beat this fight?

Edit: In my opinion, the fight was hard enough against 4 Trombdoys in that difficulty and the trick enough to reward the attentive player, or punish the unattentive.

Last edited by Daniel213; 13/10/17 07:48 PM.
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Honour Mode is, in theory, just a Hard Mode mixed with Ironman. In practice, however, it is solely the domain of players that have experience with the game. Honour Mode is 'intended' for players that already have foreknowledge of every puzzle, outcome, and ambush and can use their veterancy to optimize and outplay the entirety of the game's content; otherwise the content and mechanics will harshly punish the player for mistakes and unpreparedness.

It is possible to complete the game on Honour Mode completely blind, I would have accomplished that myself if it were not for a certain impish device; but it certainly is not recommended or accommodated for in the slightest.


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We're about to fight Alexander in our Honour Mode campaign, lots of prep work first though. smile

R.I.P. that campaign, it happens. We've had to restart twice now. First time, we accidentally triggered High Judge Orivald or whatever his name is by blocking the pathway because we're silly and walking into range. Second time, we forgot how hard the Voidwoken jerk face hits for near those skeletons outside of Fort Joy.

Playing anything other than Honour mode is boring now, tbh. You just need to prepare better. I recommend beating the game on Tactician first and then attempting Honour mode. The Trompdoy fight is one of the easier ones. You just need to know it's coming, which is where experience comes into play.

EDIT: Also, make sure you do the content in the correct order and remember to craft spell books. There's some great combinations you can get a hold of really early. Combine a Warfare + Pyro skill book = Sparking Swings.

Last edited by Alexstrasza; 13/10/17 08:16 PM.
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Originally Posted by Daniel213

By the way, what is the correct way to beat this fight?

SPOILERS:


There's one "real" Trompdoy. Killing this guy and all the others will be gone. As for how you can tell which is the real one... keep in mind that this guy was *cursed* by Braccus.


"We make our choices and take what comes and the rest is void."
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So I need to see if he is missing his ....


pecker?

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Lol +1

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Originally Posted by Daniel213
So I need to see if he is missing his ....


pecker?


I haven't tried that, actually. Maybe next playthrough, if I can remember.


"We make our choices and take what comes and the rest is void."
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I beat the game in Honor Mode after having played Tactician up to the end of Act 2. If you think the Trompdoy fight was cruel, I have a real cruel story for you. Towards the very end of the game, somewhere in Act 4, there is an area where you can accidentally kill your whole party with deathfog if you carelessly turn a valve.

Before I continue, let me say that the 100% sure fire way of surviving in Honor Mode is to have one party member with high wits, the escapist talent, and/or tactical retreat, cloak and dagger, etc. exploring far ahead of the rest of your party. Honestly you can't really complain.

So, in my playthrough, when I turned this valve, it set off some deathfog and killed my buddy (we were doing lone wolf). We were in different locations of the area and I thought I was still safe, until suddenly the deathfog renders on my screen and suddenly it's Game Over....but it wasn't.

This is how I learned that the Glowing Idol of Rebirth makes copies of itself if it's set off inside of a container. I was being resurrected in the deathfog and dying, but the bug kept on making copies of the idol, so I was stuck in a loop of sorts. Both my friend and I were dead, but we didn't get the Game Over...we were simply stuck in the game. In fact, we were somehow able to use the waypoint to teleport back to Lady Vengeance, where after a few reloads I was able to appear alive, and I was then able to rez my friend's character on the ship.

Anyway, we got lucky that this bug saved our game, but again, the moral of the story here is that you should never send your entire party to explore something in Honor Mode. Good luck in your playthrough!

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Lmao, you think that is bullshit?

Wait until you open a door and deathfog leaks out.

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I'm going to have to completely disagree with you there OP.

If you don't want the risk of losing your save, don't play honor mode.

If you want the risk, but less risk: check a guide before you do fights and quests.

If You're playing honor mode just for the achievement, and you don't like Ironman, download a save and get the achievement in seconds.

If none of the above apply but you still want some kind of safety net: make a manual backup of your honor mode save.


All 4 solutions should solve your problem. Your proposition, on the other hand, would mean that some interesting fights have all the fun taken out of them, the player should definitely NOT be warned when something hard is coming, you should however, be prepared for anything.


SPOILERS BELOW
To save you time, currently there are only 3 completely bullshit ways to die in the game:

1 - Act 2 Ferryman - After you take the ferry to bloodmoon island all non undead characters will die (this might be a bug, since there is dialogue sugesting the trip was safe and the ferryman was lying about it not being safe).

2 - Act 3 Impish Realm - If you press the "emergency flush" valve on the impish realm everyone inside it dies.

3 - Act 4 Dwarven death fog - After the Isbeil fight you can choose to carry on her plan and release deathfog, that might kill you if not undead.



If you lost in a fight, I'm sorry, but it was not bullshit (unless something bugged). I 100% the game and there are absolutely no fights that are bullshit or impossible to prepare for. Even if you aggro an enemy that is 10 levels higher than you it is very likely that one party member can run and then come back to revive the party.

As a general hint for honor mode, explore with a single character, not all of them, preferably unlink them too, should save you a lot of trouble and actually completely remove the danger, since even 1 survivor can always res the whole group from very far away. If the 1 character runs into a hard fight (like the one you did) let him die and res (unless you can just flee), go back better prepared (the fight you died on is actually VERY EASY, you only need to kill 1 enemy).


Once again, I hope this helps your future honor mode games, but, I'm completely oposed to inserting "warnings" for difficult situations (and to be quite honest even those 3 bullshit non combat instant death scenarios have minor warnings).

Last edited by NeoAnubis; 14/10/17 04:12 PM.
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There is another lethal valve in The Nameless Isle. You may survive this one if you have a undead in your party. But you would still die to that one.

Anyway, traps are more dangerous than enemies in Honor Mode. You could escape and comeback later if you fxxked up in combat 95% of the time but it does not work for traps.

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Honor mode is not for first playthrough.

All around through the game, you will get encounters with lots of surprises, and in order to beat them on higher difficulties, you will need to know them in advance.

I'm kinda surprised that Larian devs haven't locked Honor mode until game is finished at least once.

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Escapist Talent. Or Tactical retreat (grants haste for the current turn, so use it first before moving)+The Pawn or other jumps should be enough to escape in one turn.

[Spoilers]
If you answered and talked to the Statue's in the room before the fight, it will tell you that Trompboy is guarding the cave because he is under a curse.

Now, even if you didn't keep that in mind -- if you are observant you'll notice something that should hint a way to solve that seemingly unfair fight.

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Resurrection spell isn't your get out of jail free card. Overleveled is.

And not their fault if you decided to playing honor mod in FIRST play-through. It wasn't meant to.

Last edited by Violet Gekko; 15/10/17 12:18 AM.

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