Killed Arricaxerxes - Breaking the Ranks

[Dabima]

The quest Breaking The Ranks, as we are all aware, has a Dracolich, "Arricaxerxes" that wakes up during the Orc wave, and bombards the battlefield for the remainder of the quest. If you damage him at any point, he says:

(Say): Arricaxerxes says, 'Run, tiny morsels! Run! Your fear only makes me stronger!'

Followed by a DM line of:

(Dungeon Master): The Dracolich roars triumphantly and his wounds seal. Only those with true courage will be able to defeat it.

Once he's taken any damage, he fully heals himself in <1 second, and keeps repeating his "Run tiny morsels" line. The DM audio hints at some way to either get him to come down and fight, or at least stop regenerating, and I've tried greater heroism, being in a Paladin's anti-fear aura, among any spells that seem like they would bolster courage, but never seem to get a different result. This life before TRing, I decided to go in on casual with a capped wizard and toss a meteor swarm at him. This did enough damage to reduce him to <0 HP before his half-second full heal procced, and I got a couple extra dialog lines, and he actually died. His extra lines were:

(Say): Arricaxerxes says, 'Look at you! Holding on to your pitiful hope! You will beg me for death when I am done with you.'

(Say): Arricaxerxes says, 'My phylactery still exists! We will meet again!'

Note that there was no optional XP, and no extra DM lines, nor did the quest change in any way, other than no more bombardment. This makes me think that initially they had planned to make him fightable, and perhaps there was an optional geared toward stopping his regeneration and killing him for an optional, and perhaps this just was never implemented before the expansion came out, seeing as how there are extra dialog lines and he is in fact killable, there's just no objective for it. At least I got him in my Monster Manual!

Any dev comments? Was this something that just never got around to being implemented, like the Vampyr Dark Gift transformation that was planned for Ravenloft but never implemeneted, though the dialog lines for it still remain?

[zehnvhex]

My guess is since they already had a Dracolich fight planned they just scrapped that one.

[Tilomere]

I'm impressed regardless!

[Sam-u-r-eye]

kick ass

[AbyssalMage]

Congratulations!

It does sound like they planned on doing something more and never got around to doing it. Maybe in Patch 50 they will have time to do something.

[janave]

I'm impressed regardless!

This,

It always just felt wrong ( have a special hate reserved for scripted events with no real choices in any RPG). I ve asked this in many parties over the years if anyone found a way to kill the thing .

[FuzzyDuck81]

Welp, I know where I'm going to be heading while playing tonight... gotta catch em all!

[cpw_acc]

My guess is that this is a case of "the devs think of everything". At least in this case.

Often you have some plot-situation which is designed to go one specific way (or has a number of known cases), but then you think "hmmm, those players are sneaky...what if they do something that causes the code to fall off the bottom of this code-path?".

So you add an extra clause into the script as a "just in case".

[Dabima]

Welp, I know where I'm going to be heading while playing tonight... gotta catch em all!

He can be pretty hard to hit up on the ledge, as he's out of range of a lot of spells. If you walk up the chains of the gate that opens during the Orc wave, he is in range of some spells like meteor swarm. Alternatively you could try fury-shotting him

[J1NG]

You'll need to be slightly further back from the central part where the Bell is if you want to hit them with anything other than DoT effects, as a significant portion of the ledge they are on will block most projectiles and spells from reaching them. Some spells and effects ignore that and can be put to good use. But other ranged definitely needs to head further back or onto ledges in order to gain the right angles to get direct hits on them.

J1NG

[FuzzyDuck81]

He can be pretty hard to hit up on the ledge, as he's out of range of a lot of spells. If you walk up the chains of the gate that opens during the Orc wave, he is in range of some spells like meteor swarm. Alternatively you could try fury-shotting him

I figure taking an arcane nuker & meteor swarm would be the best bet... are dracoliches immune to acid? acid well is another good one for big hurty power

[Saekee]

Sweet! I would deeply enjoy witnessing this...

[Steelstar]

Interesting!

Yes, there were early plans (far enough for dialogue triggers to get hooked up) for an optional fight against Arricaxerxes up on the high-level platform he sits on. It was ultimately cut for technical reasons.

[Dabima]

Interesting!

Yes, there were early plans (far enough for dialogue triggers to get hooked up) for an optional fight against Arricaxerxes up on the high-level platform he sits on. It was ultimately cut for technical reasons.

Nice! Figured something like that happened, and some remnants of that were still in the game. Thanks for replying

[Aelonwy]

Interesting!

Yes, there were early plans (far enough for dialogue triggers to get hooked up) for an optional fight against Arricaxerxes up on the high-level platform he sits on. It was ultimately cut for technical reasons.

Well patch it back in there. It sounds like fun. Technical reasons? Just have a snowy path with a gate that opens up after a couple waves that leads to his ledge. Solo difficult, split the party to get this optional done.

[leesun]

Run the quest heroic casual to get the monster manual update before the devs "fix" this!

[CSQ]

A similar, but much easier, enemy that can only be killed with very high burst damage is Marguerite Dryden in Setting the Wards: The Patriarchs' Crypt. She has much more health than when you're supposed to fight her and regenerates very quickly, but it can be done.

[Graskitch]

Interesting!

Yes, there were early plans (far enough for dialogue triggers to get hooked up) for an optional fight against Arricaxerxes up on the high-level platform he sits on. It was ultimately cut for technical reasons.

wow dabima - well done, this is amazing, especially that you accomplished it, and got Arricaxerxes into your Monster Manual - do you have any idea what Arricaxerxes' approximate hit points were on casual if you saw them before your meteor swarm hit?

it is even more amazing that we got some insight into the background of this as an optional. I know there is no incentive for the devs to go back to that quest Breaking the Ranks, but it would be amazing if as a traveler's festival egg it was made into an actual accessible optional encounter fight.

[droid327]

That would make a lot more sense why it was called "Waking the Beast"

Incidentally, when are you going to change the questgiver dialogue that still calls it by the wrong name?

[Sho-sa]

Nice find!

Thanks for the reply, Steel.