mage in watchers keep is cheating

gojirasan · Post by **gojirasan** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 1:53 am

There is a mage at level 5 of watchers keep, one of the so called guardians, called aurumach rilmani, who seems to be cheating. He has a high magic resistance (unusual for a human mage), so I lowered his resistance a few times before doing anything. That seemed to 'work' in that it was reporting "magic resistance lowered by 23%" each time. So then I cast a couple of insect plagues at him hoping one would stick and sure enough one did or at least seemed to. He was getting bitten every round with all the appropriate animations and sounds for that etc. He did seem to be taking damage but he was casting spells continuously with a 0% casting failure instead of the 100% casting failure that I would have been subject to if he had cast it at me. Because I thought he couldn't cast spells i rushed in with my melee damage dealers only to find that my whole party was almost instantly killed by a few of his devastating area effect spells like cone of cold. I'm not going to cast insect plagues at him anymore since the whole point of the spell is to create casting failures. I guess I should report this to someone at the G3 website or something so that someone might be able to fix it if it is indeed a bug. Has anyone else noticed this mage cheating?

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:24 am

I don't think it's cheating. It was probably intended to be like this and besides, we don't really know that this particular group of individuals is human. This is done to make battles more difficult, like some enemies are immune to Timestop and just because you aren't, it doesn't mean that they are cheating.

QuenGalad · Post by **QuenGalad** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 3:45 am

Well, yes, we do not know he's human. But I would still object to such "making difficulties". In the vanilla game, there's one enemy immune to timestop, true, and quite understandable, but there's a lot of things like the one described here, which I would call plain cheating. Most of the mages you meet can cast spells on your party members even if they're invisible, and a lot of them have almost-infinite number of true sight memorized, without losing other six-level spells, like chain lightning. If I'm having a weapon that dispells magic on hit, it never dispells all effects. Some of them always stay, I can see the animations. But if one is used against me, it dispells everything, period.

I'm with gojirasan when he says it should be fixed.

Saros · Post by **Saros** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 7:48 am

Rilmani surely looks like a Drow on the outside. That's first. Drow have naturally high MR. Second, all of the Final Seal guardians are Demons. The first group is Aurnumach Rilmani who creates five or six copies of himself, each of them a fighter with some minor spellcasting power. The second group is Nalmissra's, where all of the attackers are demons with the exception of a Drow-Demon(cleric-druid) and a Hive Mother(beholder). The third group is a lich, yet 100% not a simple lich because the scroll of Prot from Undead doesn't help at all. It is a demon-lich, accompanied by 2 Flame Skulls.

Some enemies, like dragons, use PowerSpells, which cannot be interrupted in any way, and cannot be stopped by nothing. If you cast a Protection fromMagic scroll via a SImmy or PI on a dragon, it will dispell his buffs, but the dragon will continue spell casting without delay. And all of his spells will resolve. Also, Creeping Doom will not break a dragon's spells. Nor will Miscast Magic or similar spells. So, maybe Aurnumach uses PowerSpells which cannot be broken.

He's actually easy. Just make sure your party is well protected from elemental type damage with Protection from Fire, Cold, Electricity and Mgical energy, cast a few more defensive buffs, then Breach and True Sight him and kill him in melee. The Flail of Ages is the first weapon of choice here, because a slowed spellcaster is a dead spellcaster.

gojirasan · Post by **gojirasan** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:23 am

I was not referring to the immunity to insect plague per se as cheating. I was referring to the fact that all of the animations and sounds that go along with insect plague were still there despite the 'immunity'. And the fact that he seemed to be taking damage from it. I suppose he could be immune to the casting failure aspect of the spell but not to the damage, but why bother to do that? It just seems like unintended behavior to me. Or even some kind of programming shortcut to make him harder without playing by the rules. I have never seen this happen in any other part of the game. Normally when a creature is immune to a particular spell, you either get no message at all along with no evidence of effects taking place (which I find annoying) or, more commonly, you get the "spell ineffective" message.

@Saros: Good point about power spells. That could explain away this apparent bug as a feature. I believe he was casting cone of cold and ice storm a lot. Perhaps he has certain 'innate spell-like abilities' which simply are unstoppable by anything and that is why he seems to be affected by insect plague while at the same time being immune to the casting disabling aspect of it. And yes, he does look like a drow so that might explain his MR, but this guy seems *really* MR, like 75% or something. If only Viconia had stats like that I would take her every time. But then I guess he is a demon-drow anyway. I didn't mean to imply that the MR part was cheating or a bug however.

I am not really complaining about the difficulty. I am really enjoying the fight. I think I can beat him after maybe 10+ reloads and refining my strategies (removing insect plague from them for a start) And thanks for the tips. I will try them. I love battles like this. I am continually impressed by the overall quality of WK. I find this mage to be way more powerful than the elemental and shade liches (whom I remembered as being difficult from previous playing, but who seemed almost too easy this time), and even Kangaxx who didn't require any reloads at all. I also find this guy more difficult than Azamantes and his flaming skulls (who also seems harder than kangaxx). And aurumach can actually melee pretty well, which is more than I can say for irenicus or the demi-liches or the archmage of the cowled wizards.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:15 am

I Have just looked at aurumach rilmani's .cre file, it shows he's a Tiefling Mage with a Berserker Kit!!! He's also set to True Neutral (Right!!) and has three 'cheat' items, Two Rings and a really cheesy staff.

One ring makes him 100% immune to magic damage and gives him permanent Blur and Haste.

The other ring gives him immunity to non-magical weapons, and weapons less than +4.

The staff casts a spell which allows no save and bypasses MR that deals 2-12 Magic Damage, 2-12 Cold Damage, 2-12, Electrical Damage and 2-12 Fire Damage. It also protects against all missile weapons, Unholy Blight and Holy Smite, Entangle, Web, Stinking Cloud, Melf's Acid Arrow and all spells less than 5th.

The staff is a +3 Weapon that does 1-10+3 Damage and on striking:

Wing Buffet (knocks victim back 10'), no save
Renders victim unconcious for 3 Seconds, no save
Slows the victim for 3 MR, save -2

It's also incidentally useable by thieves, so if you could get it you could back-stab with it! Of course like all cheat items, it doesn't drop.

He also has a +3 Club of Detonation in his quick slot for some reason, does this get dropped on death? I can't remember.

You also might be interested to know that he doesn't have any spells, just innate Enrage twice a day, so all the spells he throws (apart from the staff) are scripted elsewhere. He has two stars in staff, has 100% resistance to Electricity, 50% resistance to Electricity and 65% resistance to Magic.

I agree with gojirasen, definitely a cheat monster, but BG2 is littered with them.

Celacena · Post by **Celacena** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:27 am

I have been playing WK over th elast few days and AR was a pain - I seem to recall that he did not get zapped by my spike traps and in the end, after he had killed the NPCs I finally started damaging by using a few charges from the wand of spell-strike and hitting him with a high + weapon - I think I might have used The Answerer +4 - which would have damaged both his AC and MR - at 4 attacks per round, I must have started bringing him down, but he was doing damage to me and I had to run around trying to heal through Gaxx' ring and potions. he kept up, which is pretty unusual.
my traps should have insta-killed him, but alas with these 'cheat' enemies the urge to build a powerful enemy overrides the rules.

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 1:45 pm

Well unless you *really* care about that club, he CAN be imprisoned. Even without that spell though, I find that battle easy, although the high weapon immunity is sometimes problematic.

Celacena · Post by **Celacena** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:04 am

the upgraded version is +5 and if you use dragon scale armour + other fire protection, a hasted character using it can do a lot of damage in the right circumstances.

I just don't lile leaving enemies laying around - even if they are on another plane...

QuenGalad · Post by **QuenGalad** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:59 am

I agree. It gives an impression of unfinished business. Does imprisoning an enemy give you experience points? I never tried that.

Saros · Post by **Saros** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:19 am

It does. And furthermore, after that you may cast Freedom, and Imprison the enemy again for more xp. Or kill him for that matter. Another XP exploit...

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:29 am

However, Imprisonment or Maze (in case of the mage, but more importantly the Bounty Hunter with a level twenty one version of the Set Special Snare ability) tends to disrupt the script on some enemies and leaves them just standing there.

Thrifalas · Post by **Thrifalas** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:28 pm

galraen wrote:In the vanilla game, there's one enemy immune to timestop, true, and quite understandable

Three last time I checked.

Anyway, it bothers me that so many monsters have scripted spells and not spells. It really takes away some of the tactics you are given.

Imprisonment is a wonderspell and should be used by every highlevel caster. Even if it steals your items, it is definately worth it in many of the tougher modded battles, Imp Irenicus, Red Badge etc. It bypasses pretty much everything except immunities.

I don't recall much about this mage, so the usual tactics should work, ie throw him a spellstrike/breach and pile fighters on him.