Hello all,
I was wondering if anyone could give me pointers regarding the fight with Aksha. The rest of the game has been pretty simple in terms of encounters, but this fight is really perplexing me even after trying a dozen different times.
Party background - level 5 Paladin/Cleric/Rogue/Mage. Almost all of my spells are exhausted, though I do have a number of scrolls.
Basically, if I enter the room, Aksha and at least one of the spawn attack me. The other around half the time seems to get caught on the first story and not be able to path up to my body. Then they make short work of my party - level draining me/hitting me until I am dead.
There was one time I successfully killed Aksha. That particular fight I moved the entire party into her cloud of darkness, which ensured that even though I had a hart time hitting her, she had a hard time hitting me as well. After like 12 turns she went down. I tried to re-obscure with Fog Cloud to deal with the spawn...and the game crashed.
I've been experimenting a bit with trying to use Dancing Lights and Spiritual Hammer to deal with them. They do not attack the hammer, and dancing lights will actually do damage every turn (though it has to be right next to where one of the vampires is standing, and not be obscured by Aksha's cloud.
I attempted to send my entire party to the other side of the map and have the dancing lights go in to trigger combat alone. Doesn't matter - they track my characters regardless.
Last incarnation I attempted to go down into that pit where there was a choke-point, and put my Spiritual Hammer on the step. Didn't matter, as the vampires can climb walls.
Anyway, some tips would be appreciated.
Never mind, I just exploited the bug where she wouldn't come up the stairs if you stood by the railing.
Killing the spawn is pretty easy without Aksha casting darkness, since basically every turn Dancing Lights is doing 10 damage or so. My two front liners got hit a lot, but survived.
Then it was basically just waiting her out down below. I kept trying to pelt her with arrows even with the darkness (along with my mage casting cantrips). Sometimes my Spiritual Hammer would get in a melee attack. And every few rounds she'd randomly teleport to the back end of the room, allowing me to use Dancing Lights to get in a turn of damage before she retreated into darkness again.
Did you try breaking the boarded over windows with a cantrip? (I used firebolt)
For me that lets daylight into the room, that and dancing lights is a pretty good combination.
Miles to go before I sleep
I took advantage of the lights coming through the windows and fought from a distance when possible. She took damage in the sunlight and I believe had disadvantage on attacks (or maybe it was saving throws).
I think that when I knocked her down with a shove all my melee attack got an advantage against her, even when we both were in darkness.
Setup for these tougher fights ahead of time. I have my mage constantly crafting Mag Missile Scrolls, my CL once they hit lvl 3, constantly crafting Healing Pots and Bless Scrolls, Pal, constantly crafting Healing Pots.
Early levels, Magic Missile is WAY potent.
I kited her into the other rooms. Basically engaged her casted flaming sphere in her path and ready action ranged attacks and cantrips. She eventually got to attack the wizard and he dropped the flaming sphere, but she was all alone and only 3 rounds away from defeat.
I didn't know about the windows, that is a nice catch. The battle ended in the area with the 6 blue lights or torches.
Since the enemies don't drop agro, you can use this strategy on a lot of battles. You can also plug a doorway with a tanky fighter or paladin and range behind them as you buff them with shield of faith.
If you already have 5 level cleric you should be able to use daylight spell as well. In theory it should make your life easy. Also magic missiles are pretty good. If you got MM wand it also will help you much.
BTW, did anyone try “Turn Undead” against Aksha and her troops? Does it work well?
Turn undead works really well against the mooks in the two big fights, although the range feels very short. I wouldn't expect anything from Aksha.
Personally, my strategy was the to prep by unblocking the windows in the rooms leading to her chamber, then conduct a fighting retreat through light sources. Once they caught up I used turn undead to send one guy running. This limited threats while I did damage, but I was still losing until the Aksha AI decided to stop using her teleport effectively and just jump around the same part of the map where I could wail on her pretty freely.
I was also drained of spell slots at that fight, so after clearing that floor I went back down to the previous level and took another long rest to regain everything and then did the fight again.
Definitely destroy the boarded over windows, I recommend focusing down the mooks first and then dealing with her, I ended up just kiting her around the room to get her out of the multiple darkness patches she had created and just hit her repeatedly from range.
Thanks for this. I noticed that she and her two companions took damage when they were close to Dancing lights. And I was scanning the room looking for a way to get more light. But I never noticed the boarded-up windows. :-P
I applied a Charm spell to her using my wizard. The result was that she assisted in killing her minions and afterwards just vanished finishing the battle. Not sure whether that is a bug or a feature though.
I used Light on the shield of my fighter, who tanked the fight.
My wizard and cleric had cast the cantrip Shine on them. That caused them 11 HP damage at each of their turns. Also they had disadvantage at attack and saving throws.
Dancing Light and the shining shield of the fighter drove them away from me, while Shine caused them continuously damage.
Darkness from Aksha I countered with Day Light from my cleric.
The rogue shot them with bow and after shooting went out of sight and went in stealth again.
Wizard and cleric used div. spells against them, mostly Magic Missile and Sacred Flame.
Unboarding the windows or lighting wall torches with cantrips didn't work for me in the whole building. Wall torches I could only ignite with a torch in my hand. I couldn't target the windows, torches or magic laps with cantrips. Later in the game targeting objects with cantrips functioned again.
1st play through I got wiped.
2nd time I somehow muddled through.
3rd time I cast daylight near the doorway and then backed everyone out. Used magic missile and +1 arrows to take down Aksha and then the broods were easy (plus I'd used that oil of sharpness I found to make a bow +3 temporarily). Only my cleric took any damage. Weirdly easy.
Turn undead works really well against the mooks in the two big fights, although the range feels very short. I wouldn't expect anything from Aksha.
I like using turn undead in general. It's highly effective but it's also real annoying. The monsters keep running and they end up three or four rooms away. I'm too lazy to chase after them after I killed all its buddies. So I wait for multiple turns for the monster to run back to me. I wish they would just cower in the corner of an adjacent room for the same amount of time.