Master Quest needs to be more challenging

According to forum search this was last talked about a couple months ago, but seeing as how I just finished it I think it bears re-mentioning. (Also because I guess we're supposed to be on bug-fixing and balancing only patches now.)

The Master Quest was too easy! Granted, I brought in 7 pretty-well-leveled heroes, but it should still be challenging. As much as I really hate enemy-level-scaling (I'm looking at you, Elder Scrolls) I think this is the one place it is justified. The dragon-lord dude was level 15, and I was 21. Maybe lore-wise it's allowable for me to be more powerful (I am taking the throne, after all) but game-wise and (there's that word again) fun-wise it shouldn't be. Even my girlfriend, sitting on the couch doing her own thing (her eye was drawn by the awesome figure of a dude on a dragon) commented that it was anti-climactic. (And I was playing by my house rule of not using surrendered-Karavox because he was bugged with a bunch of flame-blade spells.)

Suggestions:

Have his level be maximum of (15, your level + X), where X is 5 or something.
Give him more spell resistance! Slowing, shrinking, etc. can take him down, so make the player have to work for it (i.e. if shrink gets through on the 4th cast then you've earned it).
Give him more abilities--he's the final boss!
Have some or all of your army run away, as hinted by the flavor text.
(That one may be tough b/c it's a big difference between having a hero run and a unit of darklings run, so you may need some algorithm, and now things are just getting complicated. But maybe a random chance is fine b/c hey, it makes it more epic if some low-level dude stays and your trusty sidekick of many years is nowhere to be seen.)

Also, when you start the master quest it should be a serious diplo-hit. It wouldn't have mattered in my case b/c I had basically already won, but still. [Though there is that tough line of when does the AI play-to-win and when does it play-to-be-realistic, where "realism" is defined as "Pariden has always been my ally so we're really winning together".]

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well its not only master quest, all end game content need to be extremely hard, dragons need to be demigods, etc etc

master quest is another thing, right now is nearly a joke but its not so hard to fix this

your suggestions are all good, but most of them should also go on other monsters

the final boss though should have all of that stuff and more

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I think the main problem is with champion-scaling. It is relatively easy to get high level unstoppable champions. I think that regardless of scaling the last boss should be a lot tougher anyway. Maybe make him magic immune like the obsidian golems. Slow/Haste alone makes him a piece of piss to beat.

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Quoting ddd888,

reply 1

well its not only master quest, all end game content need to be extremely hard, dragons need to be demigods, etc etc

master quest is another thing, right now is nearly a joke but its not so hard to fix this

your suggestions are all good, but most of them should also go on other monsters

the final boss though should have all of that stuff and more

Generally you may be correct, but I prefer not to have auto-scaling for this reason: if something is easy, you get a crappy reward (an item you won't use, 35 gildar that doesn't mean anything to you at this point in the game, etc. This also gives a good way to level-up later champions (and henchment). I would say that for the master quest, auto-scaling is allowable because the reward--winning the game--has a value of infinity (so to speak) so it must always be a difficult fight. I do agree that the top-end things should be harder, but perhaps this has to do with what MiamiBigAL said about heroes being super-powerful.

Quoting MiamiBigAL,

reply 2

I think you are right about the champions, and maybe that has been/will be fixed. A good test would be for me to go back with all my top-level troops and see how it goes.

As for magic-immune, I think maybe 90% resistance would be good. In Baldur's Gate II, you could eventually wear a dragon down by casting reduce-magic-resist spells and then plinking away until something got through. It felt, to me, pretty epic to have your fighters trying to hold on while your mages tried to get something through. So I stand by my earlier if-you-get-slow-after-5-tries-it's-ok statement. But maybe 5 tries should be more like 10 (or just salt and pepper to taste).

I also think it would be cool if you could have a "Wait, just one more turn..." option when you win where your sovereign has a summon-badass-dragon spell and you could conquer the rest of the world for fun. But there are certainly higher priority things to be done.

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Quoting pomalley,

reply 3

yes i agree

i dont like autoscaling games tbh, thats a cheap solution for devs that dont have a clue how to balance things

I do agree that the top-end things should be harder, but perhaps this has to do with what MiamiBigAL said about heroes being super-powerful.

some end game stuff is very weak, not all of them , but some have way low statistics

also we lack some skill on them (some are bugged too), so yes we know heroes are still op in this stage but even with normal heroes late game need to be much tougher and challanging

In Baldur's Gate II, you could eventually wear a dragon down by casting reduce-magic-resist spells and then plinking away until something got through. It felt, to me, pretty epic to have your fighters trying to hold on while your mages tried to get something through.

yes i like this very much, im making my modded game similar to this, more intense fights where top end monsters are very though and take time to go down and you really need to struggle to survive long enough

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