So I am in Rivellon, and Damian has revealed himself to me, and we fight.

He suddenly jumped 9 levels higher than he was before to level 42 (I am 33), and I cannot hit him at all, except for no damage. I am a Crossbow archer. I unlearned pretty much all my skills, and filled up on Accuracy, Point-Blank damage, Critical Hits, and I am using Power Arrows.

I do NOT feel like drudging through the remaining 3 Battlefield Dungeons (I didn't find the key to the level 6 one in Act 4), which might not even get me TWO levels worth of experience.

Apparently I am supposed to win this fight, as I just get a game over when I die. Yet this seems to be impossible. Explain.

Whatever level you are on, Damian will jump 9 levels (I was 29, and he jumped to 38).

Just before going through the final rift (or to be more accurate, after going through unprepared, dying and reloading) I had the DK unlearn all of his skills, and invest in summoning doll upgrades (levels and skill point transfer). After that I had the skeleton doll leveled up to 31, and learned Crossbow Expertise: damage, point blank and reload time (as an archer I always tried to max reload time, but a point or two in damage / accuracy / point blank was good enough).

With the other 2 dolls (or 3 if you managed to keep the Raanaar doll from act 3) summoned as a distraction, my hero (just recently switched to a bow) and the skeleton doll (with my previous crossbow) using power arrows, I took him out by avoiding too much melee combat (have whoever he attacks run away, while the others, set to aggressive, continue to attack).

Only having the one holy water for most of the game (act 2 quest reward), I decided to enter the BF a few times looking for more, and (after finding a nice bow) managed to get another 5 (all the BF merchants get one at the same time), to make permanent agility potions for my hero to use.

So it doesn't matter if I go level up some more, he'll always be 9 levels higher?

Right now, my problem is that my shots aren't connecting, even with an agility of over 100 and 7 points into Improved Accuracy. I can't kill him if I can't hit him.

I found a bunch of Holy Water, but I made all of them into Permanent Health potions and, um... gave them all to the Death Knight.

Yes, he will always be 9 levels higher.

Did you learn the Hammer skill, and keep any skill points in reserve? That spell does damage and has a stunning effect. Maybe if you take him down some, arrows would start hitting more. Alternately, if you have the mana or potions for it, just keep going with Hammer.

Do you have any temporary boost potions?

What is your survival stat at? That helps with accuracy and initiative.


This certainly isn't the only viable build, but my hero's stats at the end of the game, with and (without) equipment, were:

Level 29

Strength - 65 (50)
Agility - 130 (98)
Constitution - 38 (11)
Intelligence - 24 (1)
Survival - 41 (19)
Speed - 72 (22)

With Bow Expertise, my hero had reload time at 12, and accuracy, point blank and piercing all at 2. The skeleton doll had Crossbow Expertise with accuracy, reload time and point blank at 1 (18 skill points in reserve)

Level - 33

Health: 900 (530)
Mana: 345 (85)

Strength - 67 (53)
Agility - 126 (96)
Constitution - 41 (22)
Intelligence - 9 (1)
Survival - 21 (5)
Speed - 32 (10)

Skills

Sneak - 2
Healing - 4

Crossbow:
Accuracy - 7
Reload - 10
Point Blank - 8
Critical Hits - 9

I have no points in Hammer, nor any reserve points. This is an RPG. I assumed that I could beat the game without requiring points in one particular skill.

I didn't put any points into Summoning Dolls because they were worthless.

I of course do have saved games after Samuel if I need to, but I don't want to grind for levels. My stats are not all that different from yours.

Alright, I beat the game. With my 3 summons providing a momentary distraction, I was able to sneak away, after that it was a matter of whittling him down and sneaking away some more. I didn't even need to un-equip the Death Knight or put points into the summons.

BTW, I only put points into the summoning doll skills at the end of the game. You are going to loose the DK's points anyway, so they are better off transferred to your dolls than not used at all (though it took almost all of my gold to have my DK unlearn everything). I found the skeleton doll handy once in awhile for tough fights at the start of the game. At the end of the game in the fight with Samuel, the doll and my hero made short work of the summoned minions using splitting arrow in a confined space, from the SW and SE corners of the room (I then had them switch to power arrows).

I went back and cleared out the last 4 Act 4 Battlefields. (In the GOG version, the key you find after going all around the act looking for different chest does unlock level 6).

As I suspected, it wasn't really worth much. I gained a whopping one extra level, so I'm level 34.

I unallocated all my DK's skill points and I put them into the following Summoning skills in preparation for Act 5:
- 10 points into Extra Radius. That gives a big enough radius to cover an entire dungeon level from the middle.
- 20 points into Level Upgrade. I haven't settled on a final distribution yet.
- 11 points into Extra Skill Slot

My plan is to have one summon (probably the Raanaar Skeleton) be a tank and the other (the Demon) will be a Mage giving support. The skeleton will probably stay at level 1 because I need an item mule, and he would be too expensive to level up compared to the others.


What happens in act 5, if I then decide to put points into additional summon skills? Will my Paladin's skills stack with or override the Death Knight's skills?

With the level upgrade and skill point transfer, learning the skills gives an immediate increment in the summoning doll level / skill point pools. Having your paladin learn these will simply add more to the current values.
I would guess the extra radius skill probably adds to the base value stored somewhere, so having your hero learn it would probably stack with the previous levels. I didn't try that, however (I left extra skill points in the summoning doll pool, and had the skeleton learn the radius skill in the after game BF). If you get to the after game BF and your dolls keep the same range, then you should be able to increase it by having someone invest more skill points.

After testing out the summons in Act 5, I changed my decisions. The demon makes a terrible mage, and the Raanaar isn't that great a fighter.

I gave the Demon enough levels to reach level 30, and the Raanaar skeleton enough levels to reach level 40.

I put every single point of the Demon's skill points into Constitution. His role is a walking shield. He can't actually hurt anything, but with him in the lead, he draws a large group of enemies to him, perfect for Explosive Arrow.

I wasn't paying close attention to my Raanaar Skeleton, and it ended up with one attribute point shy of what was needed to equip a bow... not that I'm even sure they can equip one, a crossbow didn't work, even though the skeleton had the stats for it.

Why can I equip arrows on the demon who can't use any kind of weapons?

Only the act 1 skeleton doll can equip a ranged weapon (crossbow).

I don't know why the demon has arrow slots.

Or just buy a lot of life potions(i bought 50), and just slash / drink life, and after a while you will win

The difference if you attack Damian with melee weapons is that he will then summon some random minions to help (from 4 to 8, depending on the difficulty setting). The only one you should have to be too concerned about, though, is the necromancer, who has an effective fireball spell. Other than that, enough healing / restoration potions will see you through as long as Damian can not kill you in a couple strong hits. Strength / Agility / Vitality / Speed potions would help, as well.


Welcome to the forum.

I reached the final boss fight again, this time using a ranger-trapper. This build required me to put points into strength to carry traps, AND agility.

I was level 31 and I had over 100 base Agility entering the fight. It was very hard to hit the boss occasionally.

Later on, when the boss's health bar was below the "D" in his name, I activated my level 10 Berserk, giving me 210 agility, and I STILL whiffed a heck of a lot when swinging. I was keeping my stamina topped up as much as possible. I barely managed to kill him before Berserk wore off.

Seriously, can someone explain to me the formula for how to hit an enemy? There must be some part I'm missing. I must be doing something wrong. It isn't supposed to be THAT hard to hit a level 41 enemy when you have Agility over 100, is it?

The chance to hit an opponent depends on their Evasion (Speed and Agility) and your Accuracy (Agility and Survival). If your Initiative (Survival and Speed) is low relative to your opponent, that would have an effect on combat, as well (if they usually go first, they will be more likely to interrupt your attacks than vise versa).

So I guess my not putting any points at all into Survival and Speed was a problem?

This is why I hate the attribute system in this game. It's too confusing and complicated.

The final fight is intended to be quite tough. Some points into Survival and Speed may have helped, but other people have created successful builds that neglected those stats.

Actually, that is one of the reasons I liked the attribute system in BD (though was in the minority of a discussion of the stat system a few years ago). With DD pretty much every warrior ended up with 2 parts strength, 2 parts agility and 1 part constitution. In BD there was much more flexibility in creating a viable build of whatever type of characters you wanted. In the main forum discussion on this, someone decided 5 primary stats for Larian's next game would be a reasonable compromise between the limits of 4 in D2:ED and the complexity of 6 in BD (Larian came to the same conclusion, though possibly not entirely for the same reasons).

The topic Killing Fergus contains some initial stat point distribution advice (I initially neglected Speed and Survival, but had an easier time with Fergus after restarting and adjusting my stat distribution), or you could look at the math appendix in the Beyond Divinity Strategy Guide.
With my archer, the only weapon expertise skill I maxed was Reload Time, since that gave a direct boost to Speed (the damage and accuracy sub-categories only got a point or two).

Funny, when playing through I felt like this system was much LESS flexible, because I kept running into problems hitting things, so I would have to put in more points into Agility.

Reading the mathematics appendix again, I'm even less convinced that this system is flexible. Your damage with weapons is based on Strength and Agility in something ratio (2:1 Str:Agi for melee, reversed for bows), but the best gear is heavy enough to require a LOT of points just to be able to use it. After that there aren't enough attribute points left over to spend in things other than Strength, Agility and Constitution.


Here's what my paladin had at the end:

Naked (Fully Equipped)

Level: 32

Strength: 47 (63)
Agility: 64 (81)
Constitution: 23 (53)
Intelligence: 1 (15)
Survival: 3 (16)
Speed: 3 (4)

Unallocated: 30 points

Some of my gear required 56 strength or 60 agility to use. Okay, I'll take 4 from Agility, put that into Unallocated, and then add 9 to Strength to get it up to 56.

Strength: 56 (72)
Agility: 60 (77)
Constitution: 23 (53)
Intelligence: 1 (15)
Survival: 3 (16)
Speed: 3 (4)

Unallocated: 25

How am I supposed to be flexible boosting Survival and Speed with only 25 points between the two of them? That would only get them up to 15 each. The points simply aren't there to get 5 stats up to decent levels, not with attribute requirements as high as what the game demands.

I gave my final stats in a post above.

While I did have trouble with my hit rate a couple times, it wasn't a persistent problem, and could be easily rectified by better equipment or a change in stat point distribution the next time I leveled (if I didn't have any points in reserve), etc.

It wasn't until very near the end of the game that I had the BF merchants offer me some holy water, and I was able to make some permanent potions. The 48 extra points (8 stat points per potion on action or tactical difficulty, one holy water from a quest and 5 from the BF merchants) certainly helped with the final fight, but I wasn't struggling before then.
I switched my hero to a bow for the last 3 or 4 fights of the game, and used the holy water to make permanent agility potions.

When I bought the holy water (before using it) I was still using a crossbow, and my stats were as follows, equipped and (unequipped).


Level 28 (a little before getting to 29)

Strength - 61 (45)
Agility - 53 (34)
Constitution - 26 (11)
Intelligence - 12 (1)
Survival - 21 (14)
Speed - 35 (16)

unassigned - 32

I just discovered something really neat!

Once you're in Rivellon, you CAN still Enter the Battlefields. I did that during the fight with Damian, and I discovered that ALL FIVE merchants suddenly had Holy Water for sale. That can't be a coincidence. That's a really smart (if surprising) design decision.

You may have just been lucky. I reloaded my save with Damian almost defeated twice, and entered the battlefield; neither time did the merchants have any holy water. There may be a check, though, and they offer it if you had not gotten any before, or something.

I didn't see any holy water when I entered the BF to sell loot or look for equipment, etc (don't recall how far I was when the patch added the chance to buy holy water; it was either act 2 or 3). Near the end of act 4 I decided to reload repeatedly to check for holy water. I found a couple equipment upgrades, but didn't have much luck with holy water. After my watched beep I realized I had been trying for an hour (some of which was equipment sorting, etc), so figured I was going to reload one last time and quit, which was when I got the holy water.

Lucky? Maybe for two Holy Waters. But FIVE? All at once, and after not having found any at all in Acts 3 and 4?

I found One Holy Water before in Act 1, and another in early Act 2, and one from the Imp Hermit in Act 2, and nothing since.


I also just ran another check - I loaded a save with my first character just before going to Rivellon, I went through the rift, and as soon as I got control again I went into the Battlefield, and again all 5 merchants had a Holy Water for sale. That is definitely intentional.

I tried again from a save just before taking the rift back to Rivellon, and didn't get any holy water. Maybe it didn't effect my save because it was started in the unpatched game? I did have the 1.45 patch installed in the middle of act 3.

As far as I know, if one BF merchant has holy water, they all will. I didn't know there were any to be had otherwise, except for the one from the hermit's quest.