Emridy Meadows pain

Hey all,

I'm finally playing ToEE for the first time and I'm having some trouble in Emridy Meadows. When I loot the rainbow rock an evil Skeleton Priest appears with 3 Skeleton Guards and immediately desecrates my poor 2nd level party! I've tried several times but can barely scratch them, they make mince meat out of my fighters and are immune to entangle which doesn't help. I've even tried running away but they chased me down. Weird thing is that I can't find anything about this in the walkthroughs I've read. They only mention the giant (who I have robbed).

Any suggestions? Should I be having this encounter? Or do I go away and try when I have some more levels?

 

That's definitely NOT a 2nd level encounter. I don't even think about it until I'm 4th level at least. It should be in the walkthrough somewhere. One of the NPC's in town specifically mentions the rainbow rock when giving you a quest.

 

Don't forget to use blunt weapons.

 

Thanks for your replies!

The quest was from the head priest bloke at the temple (Terjon?), so I thought it was going to be an easy one... I've tried searching in the forum and on google about this encounter but couldn't find it - not that i've searched extensively.

I've got blunt weapons and have been dealing with the normal skeletons ok, just having trouble with captain desecrate. I'll try again when my characters have gone up a couple more levels. I've done Welkwood Bog so i'll try the Moathouse next then.

Cheers

 

This is a lvl 3 encounter. Be sure to stock up on blunt weapons, holy water & disrupt undead for the wiz/sorc.

 

There is a clerical spell that will work against desecrate.

Look at your available spells when you rest.

You may need to be 3rd lvl for it.

 

You can do it at 2nd level but you defiantly got to use some strategy, not just go in swinging. the above poster hit it on the head I would say 3rd level makes for an even and challenging fight. Though I do tackle it a 2nd level quite often, a lot of this will depend on your party make-up and how you approach but here are some tips that might help. I wrapped it in spoiler tags so highlight if you want the tips.

Spoiler

1. The desecrate spell Is stationary, so you can move out of it and draw the skeletons out to get rid of that penalty.
-so when you go to open the rock, move in a heavy armored fighter or a Maul/great hammer wielding barbarian (then add rage) to open the rock. you can move other heavy hitters, such as a well armored cleric in and around the rock as well.
- keep rouges, mages and bards, and other low A/C or Hp's characters out of the circle area prior to opening the rock, and as mentioned above have them prepped with disrupt undead, magic missiles, holy water and slings.

-Use the inner circle melee men to wail on the priest you want to get him dead ASAP the quicker the better. he will start with the buff spells but will soon start using sonic burst and your fighters are most likely going to have low saves against it, and they will be frozen for a round with all those long sharp pointy sticks surrounding them.
- you can use slingers if you want to ready vs. spell and try to disrupt the priest as well

2. If you have a Cleric with the sun domain and improved turning feat, hit them with the greater turning on your radial dial even a second level cleric with that domain and feat is now turning like a 4th level cleric and it can overcome the desecrate with a good roll (high charisma helps too).

3. Get injured people out of the desecrate and sharp pointy things circle of death. I don't mean when they have 2-3 hp left I mean if you have a 2nd level fighter with 20 hp and he is down to 8-12 hp's get him out of there and get him healed then he can go back in.
-use the withdraw option on your radial dial to do this, by using this option they may take none or only one attack of opportunity. most likely they will still get one on them, thus not waiting till they are down to 2-3 hps.

4. if a man goes down and is dying in the circle don't use cure light wounds that may cause him to go to plus 1-3 hps and when he tries to stand he will receive multiple attacks of opportunities with those reach weapons and most likely go to -10 and die, if he is at the neg. 1-3 range just let him be and hopefully they will stabilize before you need to take action. If he gets to -6 or greater hit him with cure minor wounds to stabilize him but this will keep him on the ground and out of the fight which is the best thing for him at this time.

5. Summon monster I, hey the creature might be weak and won't exist past a round but put it among the spear wielding skeletons and that might be 1-3 attacks that round not against your fighters you have in there wailing away at the priest.

6. A good Bless prior to opening the rock never hurts though you have to decide if you want to give up a cure spell prior to battle, this may once again depend on party make-up and other resources such as scrolls and potions.
-Inspire courage prior to opening the rock if you have Bard is a good pre-battle buff here as well.

7. Enlarge is good on an inner circle melee combatant as well, especially if you have it as a domain spell you can save a slot for a cure or bless

8. And lastly a little used spell but can be well served during this battle is "Sanctuary" cast this on your cleric and he can walk among the spears without taking AAO's and heal those fighters

This isn't full proof and will still be a tough encounter and will take some strategy and planning at 2nd level, but the difficulty just makes it that much more satisfying when you win.
I always snag the slings off the kobolds in welkwood bog and distribute them among the party just for emirdy meadows their great against tracking down those running turned skeletons as well.

 

Not to mention, a sling adds your strength bonus to the damage.

 

use [TURN UNDEAD] OR [REBUKE UNDEAD] cleric class feature spell

with a good cleric, this instantly kills and destroys all of the undead

enimies. crumbling their bodies with holy era and releasing the soul

posessing the rotten corpse body.

dont forget also that healing spells harm undead

healing has oppisite effect on undead

 

Also, if you are not high enough level when you attempt to turn undead you will in fact just turn them and they will run away .... Then you get to hunt for them all over the freaking map

Remember turn undead is strengthened, or weakened by your charisma and you cleric caster level.

 

Yea, that is true, but if you plan it as a tactic, you can get

free attacks of oppertunity. Hack them down as there trying to run off.

hopefuly you already cleared the surrounding area. Otherwize you could wake

more undead if you have to chace them too far.

I usually dont do meadows until I have already cleared out the moathouse, and

maybe visited nulb and the temple a few times, because of the giant being so

overpowering. a level two party would be crushed into the ground by the giant and

his bear.

 

The giant and bear are easy. I do them at ~4th level. 2 entangles and missile weapons. Throw in a few summoning spells to keep the giant in side the entangle spell area and just pelt away. It is even easier if you get a stinking cloud scroll or 2. I love scribe scroll, who needs sorcerers anyway?

 

Or, if you could find a way to charm the bear into switching sides .... Hmmmm, he does have more attacks than the giant anyway.

 

Yeah, Charm Animal is my preferred way for dealing with the Giant. The bear can take him on quite handily. Should the bear fall though, then I employ the Entangle and ranged attacks.

;_;

 

Or ... the giant laughs himself to death(tasha's from bard/sorc/wiz) while yr mele boys poke him with stuff and naturally the fascinated bear gets to watch the movie 'my giant master gets killed i ill probably be next'
Required stuff : a single bard(if lucky enough/correctly feat-ed) and a bunch of melee monkeys.
As far as the skelliees go :an improved tripper and some 1 or 2 more melee monkeys to help the skellie priest resume its nap
Required stuff: a hevy duty improved and preferably enraged tripper and melee monkey(s) to provide the insta kill efect by simply being there' when the priest decides to 'stand up' and 'take it like a man'

But then again u really should play it safe and wait for a level 'n' so yr uber mage can show'em the 'finger' (of death presumably ?) or perhaps something 'weird' could be employed .. ?? nothing like crushing stuff that was due 5levels or more ago :roll: