Super Firkraag Mod Released!

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Several months ago, Strifestrike presented me with a challenge that I accepted. Disillusioned with the simplicity of beating even the Tactics Firkraag, a tougher one naturally had to be made. This is the first incarnation of said mod.

@Beren and Strifestrike
The version that the two of you were sent was considered the beta version. The cheese tactic that worked in that version won't work any more.

Anyone who wants to actually earn that Carsomyr is encouraged to check this mod out, but trust me... don't download it if you're a newbie to the game! I'm told that it's quite a fun fight, though.

The download page of this mod can be found at the RPG Dungeon downloads page . I don't have a problem with anyone that wants to mirror it, but please let me know if you do so that I can make sure that you keep getting the latest version.

 

Ok this was a very good attempt Rastor. But you forgot about something so essential its frightening. You forgot to give the dragon a death spell! I played him so far with one char. I consoled him up to a solo sorc build to see how he would fair against him. I gave the sorc 3.5 million, a very fair amount in my opinion. All that was neccessary to beat firkragg was to hold out against the initial abis. Very very easy to do with the 5th level spell called spell immunity necromancy. Furthermore this scroll is easy to come by, and with the anyone can use scrolls trick will assure ure entire party health and happiness against firks most dangerous attack, his opener. Dragon contingency was a real cutie, but the invisible stalker were overkill, and useless to him for that matter, simply because more often than not he killed them with his constant wing buffets. Those would have been extremely powerful if I was playing party mode (which I will tommorow), but my sorc simply laughed them off. The dragon contingency was well thought out, but lacked spell immunity abjuration (with one pierce sheild, not only was I able to drop all of his spell protections, I was also able to drop his resistance) In the end its easy to Force him down to the bottom of the map a corner of the map and have it wing a planetar, sword, or even skeleton warrior (untested) into the corner while your warrior attacks from behind. Anyway I was able to completely ignore the planetar and imprison firk right from the beggining. I realize that I treated this like a chapter 6 fight, and was really look to test the limits of the mod, more than to make a realistic battle situation.

Ill adress the mod as I should have tommorow, coming up with a party, the proper amount of exp (obviously this is not a fight that a just coming out of chatue irenicus chapter 2 party will win, no matter wat tactics it uses, the lack of exp just hits to hard on spell repitiore, which is very important in this fight. However this fight is possible to beat by chapter 2 provided you've done most of the other quests in amn, and some of watchers keep.)

Anyway to just summarize the mod and what Ide like to say:

a) The mod adds an UNFAIR script to the dragon Firkragg located in windspear hills. Do not complain when he uses abilities that you will be able to even see on the interface for the infinity engine.

b) Just because the mod adds unfair advantages to firk does not make him strictly hard (ill admit the first time you face him you will die, its very very likely), he still lacks a versatile ai and the ability to change tactics. I realize this is very very difficult to script.

c) This mod is not meant for a crap gamer looking to add a challenge, its a battle on par to the undead sola battle, or the eclipse battle. If you have trouble beating the game without any mods at all you will never in a million years beat this guy without cheating. You really need to know the ins and outs of the game to beat him.

d) Some advice on how to make him harder, automatic death spell in the presence of mods. I know this can be scripted. Wether you choose to limit his number of death spells is up to you, however to keep in the spirit of impossibleness i suggest you give him death spell as an innate ability with infinite casts. This removes the element of summons in this battle and will probably make it impossible, but thats what your going for anyway, right?

e) Play with his contingency a bit, some bits are useless, instead of protection from evil give him spell immune to either divination or abjuration (abjuration better). Nextly remove absolute immunity and give him protection from magical weapons. And stoneskin. Good now hes looking more protected than before.

f) Lastly I strongly suggest that you give him a higher vision range. Give him the ability to view things off screen, he had that in tactics even. (Im not sure, he might be able to do this, but everytime he is off the screen for me he spends all his time healing himself, which I find very stupid of him, is his healing overriding his script to chase you, or is his vision as abysmal as I think?)

Overall a difficult mod, although solo characters will have an easy time of it for now in its current state. As a party however, I can already imagine how hard hes gonna be with a party.

Edit: I guess the beta you gave me is different from the regular release. Should I dload that one or stick to what you gave me? Sorry if any of my comments are redundant, im not sure wether to dload the new version or stick to the one you gave me.

 

The primary difference between the beta and the current release is that he'll no longer target a character with that contigency that is wearing the cloak of mirroring.

He actually does have a death spell, but it will only fire if there's no creatures close enough to trigger the wing buffet. I'll fix that problem with the next release.

I could have sworn that I gave him Spell Immunity: Abjuration. If not, I'll fix that with the next release too.

He has vision as good as the vision in Tactics, but what I did is used a line that is meant to prevent cloudkill-exploits and that is that if the PC can't see him then he completely heals himself and regains all his spells. I'll give him a bit better code in the next version.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to change tactics in the middle of the fight. I could give him some randomization so that you don't always know what exactly he'll do, but it will still be somewhat predictable after you've played the fight a few times.

What I could very easily do is to scale the battle based on your difficulty setting, but that's something for later.

 

Gee, i gotta take a shot with this mod

I'm gonna edit my post later to comment it

edit: Dont know why but it doesnt wanna load the game... it's loading all right, but just when it should show the game then it thrown me to the desktop.... no explanation.
Might be becouse i dont have all the mods installed anymore *shrugs*

[ December 30, 2003, 16:45: Message edited by: Gothmog4230 ]

 

That isn't a problem with this mod as far as I can tell. There have been no changes to the install program from either the version that Beren, Strifestrike, and I used. It worked fine on all those machines.

Did the install program work fine? If you were talking with Firk on your saved game while you installed the mod, that may cause problems. The installer won't work if the game is active while you're trying to install.

What other mods do you have installed? Mine doesn't touch any files that would be causing that problem.

It's possible that that problem was actually caused by a faulty uninstall program for another mod.

 

Just console firk, I did. It might take away from the battles difficulty a bit though. Whatever, up to you. Ive been able to beat him with a party, however I have not been able to actually keep all of my party alive, bummer.

 

Whether you console Firkraag or actually fight him in the Windspear Hills shouldn't make any difference, unless you've already met him. Unfortunately, due to the way BG2 saves the game, I can't make this mod affect Firkraag at all in saved games.

If you console him, then you can't force-attack him, so it may actually make the battle slightly tougher.