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I've tried everything. Protection removal spells, summons, beating the crap out of him, chain-spelling him, everything. Nothing is working. Within less than a minute a minimum of two group members are dead, one usually gone forever. Imoen and Jan take WAY too long to identify the traps, and I have no cleric in my party. Any ideas?

Master Wraith, who is that again?

Bayle wrote:Master Wraith, who is that again?

My reaction too. Apparently I didn't have too much trouble.

The Master Wraith is the guy who pretends to be Gorion close to where you enter the Forest of Myr, the home of the witch that knows how to weaken Yaga-Shura.

I thought the battle was easy as well.

When you're fighting him, don't go further into the temple.

I suggest that, if you have a cleric, have him/her cast Negative Plane Protection on your group, to prevent the level drain. Try setting traps before you move into combat and have the priest turn undead, for the wraiths around him. You might want to kill the wraith mostly with spells, unless you have a nice cold resistance. Implosion seemed to have a nice effect on him.

Crenshinibon wrote:The Master Wraith is the guy who pretends to be Gorion close to where you enter the Forest of Myr, the home of the witch that knows how to weaken Yaga-Shura.

I thought the battle was easy as well.

When you're fighting him, don't go further into the temple.

I suggest that, if you have a cleric, have him/her cast Negative Plane Protection on your group, to prevent the level drain. Try setting traps before you move into combat and have the priest turn undead, for the wraiths around him. You might want to kill the wraith mostly with spells, unless you have a nice cold resistance. Implosion seemed to have a nice effect on him.

He said he didn't have a cleric. My suggestion would be Mace of Disruption and Greater Whirlwind. Should take him out quick.

Edit: Sorry. Must admit I haven't read the forum rules regarding proper language.

I fought him with an Undead Hunter paladin....Master Wraith was dead in 3 rounds. Rest of party was there for moral support

I must have missed that part. Don't forget that the mace of which you speak is located in SoA so it's possible that he does not have it.

I think we're talking about two different enemies. As I recall, he was called Master Wraith or something like that. I encountered him on the maze level of Watcher's Keep. After over 20 reloads, I finally beat him with 4 dead party members, and I'm now at the dragon that I'm supposed to fight for the spirit that talks about me needing to have 3 key qualities to have the final key to the last level. At this point, I am ready to throw my computer out the window. The game is on the easiest setting possible, and yet I'm getting my butt wiped over and over again. I just don't get how it can take everything my party has to kill that dang thing and then it heals and *poof!* might as well just kill myself, it would save me some time (kill my character, not me literally).
Earlier on that level, I declined to pick up the second purple stone or orb or whatever because I simply could not fight the shadow fiends that were coming with it. And all this is with the level turned down to Very Easy. I'm finding Watcher's Keep extremely annoying and too hard to fight.

I thought you might be talking about the Demon Wraith since you mentioned traps, but I didn't want to second-guess you.

I don't remember that particular battle very well, but I do remember that it is very difficult. I think the key to winning it is to kill the Demon Wraith first. Then his minions will fall. Or maybe it's the other way around. Sorry, I don't remember.

In any case, the Demon Wraith is resistant to just about everything, including fire, magic, and physical damage. My standard operating procedure for magic resistant monsters is to hit them with two or three Lower Resistance spells (or the Priest spell Magic Resistance to start with) and then hit them with Horrid Wilting or Skull Traps. Five Magic Missile spells (25-30 missiles) would also do the trick.

You need some defensive preparation before the fight. I suggest that you have a Druid, Cleric, or Ranger cast Find Traps before you enter the portal so that you can detect nearby traps immediately. Spells such as Resist Fear, Remove Fear, Spell Immunity, and Chaotic Commands will help prevent your characters from going out of control.

When i do this battle, i use a quite simple tactic and never found it really hard. First, before you enter the portal (north in cambion's room), you can buff your party, as that room is not a dead magic or wild magic room. This mean stoneskins, mirror image, etc for mages and armor of faith, holy power, etc for clerics. Don't forget party effects like protection from evil 10' , remove fear, etc.
Even potion of force if necessary (hell, it's a challenging battle, no?). Then you enter, if you have acces to HLA's, things are going to be easy. *hit pause button* Have your thief on "detect trap" and the rest of your team not moving while he is detecting those nasty traps, except one cleric or pally or mage who will summon a deva/planetar in front of the wraith. Then you may unpause, normaly your'e summoner will have time to summon a deva/planetar before the wraith can actually cast timestop! When the wraith will be able to do so, he will cast everything at the deva/planetar who will be unaffected most of the time. In my experience, even at insane, this battle is not very hard when you start like this... when the traps are disarmed, you can concentrate all your firepower on the wraith, whirlwinds are hot here.

If you don't have acces to HLA's, try another type of summon maybe, at least the wraith will target all his power words at it, even if it die... Hope that helped,

Lancelot

Lancelot122 wrote:when the traps are disarmed, you can concentrate all your firepower on the wraith, whirlwinds are hot here...

Since you mentioned a High Level Ability, the Demon Wraith is a 12th level monster. Have you ever tried killing him in one hit with Greater Deathblow?

For a really cheesy effect, you might try an Arrow of Detonation or Fire Seed with Greater Deathblow and see if it kills every monster it touches.

I've found energy blades work great on the demon wraith in Watcher's Keep. I don't remember if they're immediately able to start hitting him, but a chained remove magic at the start of that battle I think works quite well there. Plus, the blades they have enough range that you should be able to clear the traps if you can't clear them in good time. (Also, projected images/simulacrums/planetars shouldn't set off the traps so some immediate spawning should buy you some time in that respect)

Also, just now looking at the creature file, he only has 82 HP. Even if you can just land 22 points of damage (which could just be 1 or 2 fighter hits or, say, 4 energy blades), you can then Power Word Kill. Come to think of it, with a good roll, you could nail him with enough damage via the ring of ram (which can hit virtually anything for 5-30 points of damage) and then follow up with the PWK for a quick victory.

That said, not having thought before that the D. Wraith would be set at 12th-level, VonDondu's suggestion sounds like it would work and is quite elegant.

Ian Kognitow wrote:I've found energy blades work great on the demon wraith in Watcher's Keep. I don't remember if they're immediately able to start hitting him, but a chained remove magic at the start of that battle I think works quite well there...

I think Energy Blades do magic damage, so you probably have to lower the Demon Wraith's magic resistance (it's 100%) before you can hurt him.

Ian Kognitow wrote:Also, just now looking at the creature file, he only has 82 HP. Even if you can just land 22 points of damage (which could just be 1 or 2 fighter hits or, say, 4 energy blades), you can then Power Word Kill. Come to think of it, with a good roll, you could nail him with enough damage via the ring of ram (which can hit virtually anything for 5-30 points of damage) and then follow up with the PWK for a quick victory.

The Demon Wraith has 90% resistance to physical attacks, so I don't think the Ring of the Ram could reduce his hit points to less than 60. Also, the Demon Wraith might be immune to spells like Power Word Kill (he is immune to the effect called "Slay"). But it's worth a try.

You could also try a Harm spell, but I don't know if that would work, either. You could follow it up with the Ring of the Ram.

VonDondu wrote:I think Energy Blades do magic damage, so you probably have to lower the Demon Wraith's magic resistance (it's 100%) before you can hurt him.

The creature file that I have for it in Shadowkeeper only shows 75% magic resistance. I don't see an indication for resistance to magic damage so I'm not sure what that might be if anything. In any case, it's quite possible that the battles in which I've used blades were only effective after a few lower resistances. I typically have at least one mage loaded up with a spell triggered lower-lower-breach for just such occasions. Again, I may be remembering incorrectly, but for that battle I recall perhaps only landing something like 3-6 points per blade (at 1d4+5, it should be 6-9 so some resistance would be going on; and also no electric damage), but with getting 20 of them with the +10 Thac0, you're almost always landing them whilst getting 10 attacks per round. Get two mages and even if it's only a couple of points per hit, it will add up fast.

VonDondu wrote:The Demon Wraith has 90% resistance to physical attacks, so I don't think the Ring of the Ram could reduce his hit points to less than 60. Also, the Demon Wraith might be immune to spells like Power Word Kill (he is immune to the effect called "Slay"). But it's worth a try.

But doesn't Ring of Ram work as something other than physical damage? I don't have the game installed right now to check on the D.Wraith, but the Ring works normally, for instance, on Kangaxx's demi-lich form, which has similar physical resistances.

I shouldn't have relied on memory when I posted my previous messages. I just did some testing, and here are the results.

The Demon Wraith has 75% magic resistance, as you say, which means that 75% of the time, spells and magical damage won't affect him. He has 100% resistance to electrical damage and 90% resistance to physical attacks (slashing, piercing, blunt, missile).

Energy Blades do 1d6 slashing or piercing damage (depending on which description you read) plus 1d10 electrical damage. (I was thinking of Skull Traps, which do magical damage.) Given the Demon Wraith's resistances, you can do 1 point of physical damage per hit (or 2 points on a critical hit); the electrical damage doesn't hurt him.

The Ring of the Ram does 5d6 magical damage, so it can be blocked by the Demon Wraith's magic resistance.

Power Word Kill can also be blocked by the Demon Wraith's magic resistance, but he is not immune to it, and it CAN kill him if he is below 60 hit points.

I don't know which spells and items luz has available, but I found that the easiest way to kill the Demon Wraith is to get his hit points below 60 with Energy Blades (it's not hard to hit him 22 times), hit him with two or three Lower Resistance spells, and then hit him with Power Word Kill. Magic Missiles, Horrid Wilting, and more Energy Blades would also do the trick. The Ring of the Ram can't do as much damage per round on average as the other magical alternatives, and I couldn't get Harm to work. (Maybe it was blocked by Spell Turning or Protection from Magic Weapons or something.) I don't see why Greater Deathblow wouldn't work, but I didn't try it, and you have to watch out for traps and level drain. If you have Time Stop and Improved Alacrity, the battle is a lot easier, of course. I have to say, though, that it was a lot harder to kill him the first time I met him than it is for me now after playing this game several times, so advanced players should be careful when they describe any battle as "easy".

Excellent experimentation, VonDondu. Of course, a triple lower-resistance trigger thrown at the start (can be loaded in one of the other Helm rooms) could allow the blades to finish him in a few rounds by themselves (maximize the cast and attack through autopause) or guarantee another mage's PWK for a potential 1 round kill. Where do you see the blades damage as 1d6 slashing or piercing? At least on the Gamebanshee spell list, for both arcane and divine, it's listed as 1d4+5 missile, + the electrical.

I often refer to "missile damage" as "piercing damage", so that's why I use them interchangeably.

If you want to see the inconsistency I'm talking about, take a look at the item called "eneblade" with Shadowkeeper. That is the item that is created by the Energy Blades spell. That description says it does 1d4 slashing damage plus 1d10 electrical damage in contrast to the spell description which says it does 1d6+5 piercing damage plus 1d10 electrical damage. Based on what I can see in Infinity Explorer and IEEE Pro Item Editor, neither of those descriptions is correct. The blades actually do 1d10 electrical damage plus 2561d1540 + 5 slashing damage, whatever that means. Some mod-maker out there might be interested in correcting this if it hasn't already been done. I figure the best thing to do would be to change the description to say it does slashing damage, but I suppose you could make them do 1d6+5 piercing damage to match the spell description. Personally, I don't think it really matters.

In any case, I don't think Lower Resistance lowers a creature's electrical resistance. So even if you hit the Demon Wraith with three Lower Resistance spells, the electrical damage won't affect him.

The Ring of the Ram does 5d6 magical damage, so it can be blocked by the Demon Wraith's magic resistance.

Are you sure? According to my knowledge, the Ring of the Ram ignores Magic Resistance.

A rather cheesy way to kill the Master Wraith would be to load a Spell Sequencer with three Skulltraps, protect yourself with Mirror Image (which blocks area damage), run up to the Wraith and fire the Sequencer at yourself. This way you will completely ignore Magic Resistance.

Best regards,
Lark.

Lark wrote:Are you sure? According to my knowledge, the Ring of the Ram ignores Magic Resistance.

I'm as sure as I can be since I saw the message "Demon Wraith- Magic Resistance" with my own eyes when I tried to hit him with the Ring of the Ram. I don't mean to be rude, but you should put your knowledge to the test and try it for yourself. I summoned the Demon Wraith with the following CLUAConsole command:

CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("telwrai")

To be fair, I used to think the Ring of the Ram was supposed to inflict blunt damage, which is what you might be assuming. But when I checked the resource files, I confirmed that it actually inflicts "magic damage".

Lark wrote:A rather cheesy way to kill the Master Wraith would be to load a Spell Sequencer with three Skulltraps, protect yourself with Mirror Image (which blocks area damage), run up to the Wraith and fire the Sequencer at yourself. This way you will completely ignore Magic Resistance.

As UserUnfriendly, the master of cheese, would say, that's a very naughty exploit.

Lark wrote:Are you sure? According to my knowledge, the Ring of the Ram ignores Magic Resistance.

I thought that too, isn't it a common trick that RoR can hit Kangaxx despite his magical resistance? Or is Kangaxx "only" immune to spells of 9th level and lower, or however that worked?