What is with the wizards in this game?

Granted I have beat 2 of them to get this far but I really don't know that I won those, more likely just made the battle last so long the AI gave up.

How do you fight the speed and bullshit they shoot at you. I am constantly under some spell (curse or something) where I can't conjure my own creatures and where I am getting massive points taken from me.

Nothing seems to work with this beyotch.

Any help will be appreciated.

I am a survivalist leaning towards warrior with some wizard skills.

Josephine is arguable the toughest opponent in the game.

Do you have scorpion traps and the Deadly Gift skill?

Sneak or use a shadow potion until the spell effect wears off (she uses Blind + Hell Spikes), then try Curse a few times (it you hadn't noticed it can be quickly cast repeatedly, so level 1 is sufficient), then follow up with elemental or poison damage.

You can cast Aura of Command on the death knights Josephine summons to turn them to your side.

There are more suggestions in the topic Chasing Josie....

I do have scorpions and deadly gift maxxed out.

So the spell is blind. That makes sense as it seemed like I could cast skeletons and scorpions but I couldn't see them. It does seem like she can cast spells at an amazing speed and quantity.

I will have to reconsider my strategy in this fight.

I quit.

As much as I liked the first two thirds of this game I really have come to dislike the end. At level 44 most things can't even hurt me and yet this one boss (Josephine) I can't even get half way dead. I have 72 scorpions at max level, they don't even hurt her. She treats them the way she treats me.

This battle reminds me of the battle with Mellisand at the end of BG2 TOB. If you didn''t have the right spells or have someone in your party with the right spells you could not win short of some ultimate cheese. Well I would use that here but I was warned not to get into the freeze spells because they were too powerful, now I have nothing that will even slow her down.

There have been no fights at any point in the game that were near as hard or complicated as this. Had there been one maybe a player would put some skill points into those items but there was nothing indicating a fighter couldn't win the battles.

Josephine is just way too overpowered for my character and there is no way I am going back in time to add some cheese to my skills. Not this late into the game.

So it's an A for the first 2/3, even 3/4 of the game. But a D for the end. And hell, I never even fought the final battle.

PS...I have alwready played Eco Draconis and it's expansion really enjoyed it.

It sounds like you may have run into some kind of a glitch with Josephine; 72 scorpions should have been able to take her out, or at least provide a distraction for more than long enough for you to do so.

You could use DAD's item editor to add Frost and/or a large damage boost to a melee weapon to use long enough to finish that fight.

I will try that. Maybe it is a game bug as all the threads make it sound like the scorpions should be able to do the job themselves. Josephine is just too fast. I can have her surrounded by scorpions, I can sneak up to her and the minute I click to hit her (with either the Sword of the Gods or a really powerful damn axe I found) she turns and casts blind and hellspikes. I have rarely got off more than one attack per attempt and rarely connected when I have.

Her speed is just beyond anything.

I tried the curse (albeit with only one skill point) but I have no time to exploit it. I tried elemental whatever and that did nothing. I tried curse combined with poison bomb at two levels, barely scratched her.

And a 1 level freeze spell was useless, even when I went to two levels it didn't stop her.

Have you tried Hell Spikes, Deadly Disks or Poison Cloud, etc? I believe you can cast an area effect spell that doesn't need a target and remain in sneak mode if you don't directly attack an opponent.

I think you would have to either use Curse a couple times or max Freeze for it to work on a boss late in the game. Frost on a weapon is so effective because (unlike Freeze) it ignores the target's resistance.

If you left click quickly to cast Curse a couple times, pausing the game might help in switching to a different spell to follow up with, before you get blinded. One person playing a mage a while ago in the Larian forum liked using Curse + Polymorph on bosses.

I can't use curse + polymorph as I don't have both. I have tried a two level poison cloud on her with minimal results.

Maybe the Orc has a weapon with some frost damage on it.

It's her speed that is amazing. I have loosed 15-20 scorpions on her and she just fires blind and hell spikes at them, over and over.

Freeze on a weapon doesn't actually do any damage, it just holds them in place for a couple of seconds. With a decent level on it (3 or better) you can generally keep anything permanently frozen, which makes your life a lot easier. You won't be able to hit them automatically while they're frozen, though, so if your offense is low you can still miss them a bunch of times.

And poison cloud always takes absolutely forever even at higher levels. Its real strengths are that it can target a piece of open ground, and that it can affect anyone (even non-hostiles).

Personally, I found her to be very tough myself. On my warrior character, I used several shadow potions to sneak up on her until I could keep her permanently frozen with my boss-killing sword of Freeze(5). On my wizard character, I used Blind on HER before she decided to use it on ME, which helped immensely. I then just pelted her with spells and arrows until she died. That requires 5 points in Blind, though. Don't forget you can poison your weapon (or your bow) to greatly increase your damage output, and the constant "ow" animations can prevent her from casting spells at you, or at least casting them as often.

Oh, and don't forget that Kroxy often carries charms, which can massively increase your survivability. The top-level vitality charms add an obscene amount of health, and the top-level resistance charms add more elemental defense than you will probably ever need. Spend a few days camping and buy up everything he has, if you haven't already.

You can trade with one of the orcs at the start of the wastelands, as well. He is twice as expensive as Kroxy, though that isn't really an issue at the end of the game.

The first time I fought Josephine she was tough, but not overly so. The second time she was big a disappointment. The wastelands had been pretty easy (at the end of the game I was level 53), and I was looking forward to a good fight. She kept trying to summon a death knight, but I never gave her a chance to complete the spell (as a warrior, just using normal attacks, with the Stun skill). She summons first, then casts a spell on the knight, then casts Blind... in that order, without skipping any steps. I didn't even lose any hit points. At least she ran away a bit several times, the first 3 Black Ring members stood their ground and repeatedly threw themselves at my sword. I had to re-load and let her complete the summoning to find out what that white sphere starting to form was for (didn't notice it the first encounter with her).

Well, I ran around for two days killing everything that moved. There was some area in the south of the map I hadn't been to. I got money, I got experience. It turned out upon leveling again it was to lvl 45, so I got 2 skill points, not just one. Put them both into Hell Spikes after I bought the book off Kroxy. That and the 93 Scorpions I took into the battle turned the tide and I beat Josephine.

Even after she blinded me I was able to use the hell spikes on her, until I had to disappear and runaway to heal.

I never once was able to hit her with my weapons.

Saved him for tonight.

He was a cakewalk after Josephine. Killed him firsttime without even being close to going down myself. I do have questions about the end cut scene though.

I will try to find those answers somewhere if not I will start another thread with a spoiler title.

I don't think anyone reading this far in the topic is worried about spoilers.

Posted by Marian in a Larian forum topic;