Unexpected wins and how they happen

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I'm heading down into the Shadow Dragon Cavern to take a crack at the Shadow Dragon, and I'm thinking it's going to be a heck of a fight. As soon as I enter the cavern I hit pause so I can get my tactics together. I have Nalia in my party, with the Robe of Vecna, and I set her to cast Disintergrate, while I have the rest of my party set to hack and slash away. I unpause and Nalia casts Disintergrate but before the rest of my party can blink the Dragon vanishes in a pile of dust. Disintergrate actually worked. Now, I know the RoV improves casting speed, but it's never been able to get anything off fast enough to hurt a Dragon before. I expected, as Dragons normally do, for the Dragon here to get it's defences up before I can touch it. Yet, here it is, laying before me as a pile of dust. It was very satisfying, if unexpectedly quick, victory.

Has anyone else got ready for a battle they thought would be epic and brutal only for the whole thing to be over in the blink of an eye?

 

Shadow Dragon: My solo gnome cleric/thief had just obtained the Implosion HLA. So she wandered in the room with the shadow dragon, set three normal traps, backed up a bit and cast implosion. Implosion caused a tremendous amount of damage, the shadow dragon turned hostile and was then hit with the three traps before any defenses could come up. And then the dragon just died -- I was expecting there to be at least a little fight left and had started to cast Bolt of Glory, but it wasn't necessary.

Firkraag went down just as quickly. My little gnome (who had a few THAC0 buffs cast on her)set one spike trap then cast Harm. I guess I was just lucky the big guy didn't fall on my gnome.

Then there was the pit fiend that came after my cavalier. Earlier in the game (maybe two or three levels) the lich in the Crooked Crane managed to gate a pit fiend that nearly killed everyone. My party was running from screen to screen with the pit fiend hot on their trail -- I guess the spell finally wore off or it got distracted by some peasants. So when Layette gated one in at the end of the twisted rune fight I thought I was toast. I was wrong -- one critical hit with Carsomyr and it was dead.

 

My overreaction to the Iroenicus battle at The Tree Of Life (before Hell) during my firts playtrough was really overpreparation. All the buffs were up, all magical items with abilities in use, Spell triggers and sequencers ready, the most powerful summons, anything was enabled. And I'm thinking: "This fight's going to be one heck of a struggle."

And so, my high-level party, bringing it's full might to bear, killed the man before anything even happened really... I was a little dissapointed, actually.

 

i had almost forgot about this but when my solo sorc was to fight kangaxx it was my first time against him so i was really pumped up with adrenaline and i had heard he was so hard so the fight begins and my CC fires with 3 horrid wiltings and hes dead. I just stood for like 15 seconds thinking of what happened.

 

Nalia killed the Black Dragon in the Suldenesselar same way, at the start of the combat she released a FoD and the beast just fell before he was able to hurt us...

I guess Nalia is just lucky when it comes to save or else spells.

And some people think FoD is crap. It was magnificent sight to watch that scary dragon fall like a tree on an instant!

 

Schwa? If Kangaxx fell to three horrid wiltings, I'd stand beside him quite baffled aswell, seeing as he's immune and all?

I can't remember any better, but I quite literally overwhelmed Tolgerias yesterday. Korgan bolted straight up to him after opening the door, and I assume it must've been milliseconds before his conversation started, Korgan landed a scullbreaker.

Kinda anti-climactic, since I had buffed with everything I had, prepared all my most flashy spells, chugged all kinds of spiffy potions, etc. to show off spellcasters in all theire glory to a friend I had visiting.

And clunk, a trigger-happy dwarf plants an axe in his scull just like that.

 

My favourite was when I soloed a monk character against the Shadow Dragon. I walked in hidden in the shadows without the wardstone, forgetting that dragons can see through invisibility.

Funnily enough, the dragon went hostile. I quickly realised that I had no protections whatsoever and actually no real plan. I saw salvation while flicking through my special abilities. 'Worth a shot' I thought and ran forward to the dragon.

It got Stoneskin up in time to take a direct hit from Quivering Palm. As the spell was active, it took no damage and the display simply read 'Death'. Absolutely excellent at the time!

 

I wish I had anything so excellent and climactic. Best I can do was I was getting beaten to a pulp by that first fighter in the drow fighting arena. Had to reset a couple times and my first Monk had just gotten quivering palm. So I cast buffs on my Monk and tossed it in. Hit the quivering palm as that guy ran up and he went down.

Managed to follow it up because I tossed a mage into one of the mage fights. It summoned two sword spiders. they killed the mage they were against. I thought that was easy so just jumped into the next fight without realizing that the spiders were still there. They immediately set into and killed the next mage as well. His protections went up as he fell over dead.

 

Oh yeah, the dragon in Suldanesselar, that was another of those nice victories I had.
This was on my second run, when my dragon slaying tactics plain sucked. But, being spell heavy, I just started launching every hinderance I could against the beast. Somehow I got it paralyzed, or under hold or something. Then I started blasting it with my low-charged Wand Of Lightning. Not enough, but I managed to take it to Badly Wounded. Then all of my three wizards unleashed the feared "Storm of Magic Missiles" (Spell triggers were used for maximum effect).
And so, the mighty dragon was ultimately slain by a barrage of 1st level spells

Oh, also, the wizard battles in the Drow Arena get very short if you have a Fighter/Mage. Just run him up to the caster and allows blades whirl! Not that epic, but it was fun.