How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Since most of my xp come from SP i have no idea how to get rid of this pretender.

I m playing abysia so i have high fire, blood & earth magic and a pretender with high astral.

I m actually overwhelming his troops but his pretender is jumping from a territory to another and ofc killing everything without a scratch.

I m thinking of doing a "bleed" rush, i saw somewhere else it can have good results on pretender, but i need to catch him ... Or stuffing my pretender with astral & magic piercing stuff and try some paralyzes while some troops with some cold protect go on him.

Any better idea ? maybe some crafting idea or SC?

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Infernal Prison.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Make his supporting army run away, taking away the surrounding provinces.

Also, 22 MR is rather low. If he doesn't have 100FR, blindness spam. With boosters and in a communion. (so you get even more penetration).

Just casting soul slay with a boosted pretender might be enough. (give the pretender some penetration boosters, and he will go down quickly). Rune smasher, ring of wiz/sorc, + spell focus, is already +4. Add a 16 slave communion for even more + astral and thus penetration. The 2 astral boosting spells. Assume base Astral 6.

That would give +4 penetration from items, +1 from the base level, +2 from the communion, +1 from the boosting spells. For a total of +8. Total roll he must resist 20 (base mr check is 12). Which gives a 30% chance of each soul slay spell killing him outright.

Just pilling on the horror marks might also work. And why is that dude not cursed yet? There is a D1 spell that does that.

Life for a life spam might also work. Iirc it does 40 AN unresistable damage.

Also, get some quickend thugs to dualwield the axe of hate. With a lot of attack boosters. If hit, an axe of hate does 50 fatigue damage iirc. So he will be unconcious in seconds. (Of course, the aegis is a problem, you need both high attack skill and high mr, expect to lose all thugs and this not to work. An Axe of hate, burning pearl, quickness and a ring of the warrior should give +16 attack. Summon some sleepers with starshine skullcaps and rainbow armors for a attack 31 mr 20 commander).

You could also try the spell that causes him to be attack by the souls of everybody he killed. Just cast it with a boosted caster. Forgot the name atm.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Aahh that s a nice help.
The massive boost remind me some bad memories. ^^

I ll give a try of some of your tricks, if any1 has other ideas i m listening!

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Infernal prison is still the easiest option btw. Catching the guy is going to be the problem. You need to be able to guess where he is going.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Try Mind Hunt with your god. Those boots let him teleport around without a lab. Still, the Mind Hunt will catch him 50% of the time, depending on ritual cast order. Use Pen items like Soy suggested. Mind Hunt gets a secret Pen bonus that plain old Soul Slay doesn't have, too. When the god's in your dom, his MR is weaker. So continue to blood sac.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Too bad i have 0 in this research cause i have a guys with blood 6 fire 3 and astral 3. he has everything needed to TP and cast.
I think i will keep this solution if others fail.

Unfortunately we are fighting in what used to be his lands, to be more precise most of his remaining land are those with a fort on it, so the dom his him atm.
But i ll give a try to mind hunt also. ty

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Your best bet is horrors i think. You can both spam him with send horror/lesser horror and teleport a bunch of warlocks on top of him scripted: call horror/call horror/returning. Make sure to take out all surrounding provinces and you just need to stack enough fear aura to make him retreat.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Also, don't get lured into blowing to much resources on this one guy. If you can just do more damage than him in the bigger picture his single badass sc won't cut it in the long run.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Uhh, Morale 30 on the pretender means that stacking fear auras won't help. As an example, you can send 50 hydras against a(properly kitted) pretender god and it won't route.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Some good ideas here, the problem is that with the Boots of the Plains there is no way to teleport something designed to kill him on top of him, since he'll be off wreaking havoc somewhere else by the time the battle resolves, so you really can't go hunt him down. (Yeah, those boots are one of the very best items in the game.) I think the only reliable way to actively go after him would be Mind Hunt spam with as many boosters as possible. (Provided he's not moving around astral casters to protect his pretender from this.) Half of them will fail because they resolve after your target teleported away, but (if you have enough potential casters) you can make sure some hit the mark by choosing casters near the top and near the bottom of the casing order.

Other than that you're stuck with using expendable raiding forces to take terriotory and clean up after him while deploying some of the measures suggested by the previous posters in the army(s) that you really want to keep protected from him. (The various blood counters are perfect if the pretender acts alone, but in my experience targeting of said blood spells is wonky, and often won't target the big-hp targets, so if he's supported by other troops you might want to look at the other options. MR 22 (+4 in battle presumably) is not at all unsurmountable if you have a couple of casters with penetration bonuses.)

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

The brute force is to Wish the Boots away, then teleport some kitted out warlocks casting life-for-life.
Until then, keep pestering him with Lesser horrors.

The 22MR would also be less in enemy dominion (for Mind Hunting).

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Thx for all those advices.
Unfortunately i don't have many astral mages.
I can recruit some indies with S1 and give them some stuff but it s quite costly.

I think i ll have to dig in blood magic to find a solution.
But it sounds like he will remain troublesome for a while.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Depending on the circumstances, it may be worth attempting a domkill. Build up a few temples and blood sacrifice.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

As he is already Horror Marked, just put up astral corruption. You will go to war with everybody else btw.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Why aren't you going to try Mind Hunting him with your god?

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Horrors. Lots and lots of horrors. He'll succumb eventually.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Vengeance of the Dead. I don't know if they have modified it lately in CBM or something, but that spell autokills any SC, period.

Probably that SC has a lot of kills done. If you cast it on him, he will face all that troops as ghosts. Even if he can kill all the ghosts, that only will double the amount of body counts in his record. Cast it again, and he face double that. Cast again, and it's quadruple. No matter how powerful the SC is, it soons enter in a combat he can't win during the number of rounds allowed for battle. Then, he will rout (he's the defender) and die.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

He isn't horror marked enough. S1 mages means you can just hit the guy with 5 horror marks per mage, and while he looks pretty though, Umor could still bring that god down.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Abby's curse. So many interesting mages and most of them are all capitol only.

I would expect anything that would bring down this kind of character would be expensive. Lots of gems in this guy.

Mind Hunt, fer sure.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

For Vengeance of the dead, keep in mind medusa shield is likely the best counter against it.

Since spell options have been covered pretty well, I'll go on the SC options.

Keep in mind gargoyle is immune to Aegis petrification, as its a stone being. Don't know if you have the paths to summon + GoR them though. Crusher shows as stone being on the database but I've heard it's bugged, you will want to test it before GoRing them.

GoRed Gargoyle would make good patrollers against tele raider if you can get a couple of them equipped.

If you are using CBM 1.8x, vine whip has irrestible 1 AoE vine lock. Gargoyles with a vine whip and chi boots (might want cold immunity from ring or armor just in case) can probably kick him to death 1 on 1.

If CBM 1.9x, a gargoyle with gladiator gloves, speed boots, stone bird and astral snake have a fair chance 1v1 against him especially if you can get the snake paralyze hit in 1st. Again Rime hauberk optional for cold immunity.

Barring gargoyle, high MR SCs will have to do.

Finally, an example patrol team (many other types of patrol team that can work):
1. Bane - Eye of aiming, summer sword. Script cast
2. Bane - Piercer (or Just man)
3. Bane - Piercer (or Just man)
4. Chaff troops
Chaff troop buys time along with any PD, Sword bane attempts vine lock. Position to have enemy pretender as close to your sword bane as possible when you vine lock (have chaff hold a few step in front, or maybe anchor to an extra commander). Archer bane will proceed to peg him to death, piercer and Just man can both fully/partially bypass shield block. If enemy is cursed he'll also build affliction like crazy in the meantime.

In 1.8x vine bow also had AoE 1 vine, not sure if there was a change in 1.9x, if not it can replace summer sword.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

And how do you get these horrors in a position to attack him? (other than waiting and hoping some show up naturally from his horror marks.) Remember that he's moving every turn in the magical movement fase, so you can not go after him. Send Horrors are not assassination spells, so they'll just attack the province the Frost Father allready left. (Usefull and cheap way to take back the province with the help of a scout, but that's not really what we're looking for. :) )

I don't get the massive love for Vengeance of the Dead in these parts. It's only useful in a very limited set of circumstances. In this case it's strictly inferior to Mind Hunt in every way. (Significantly harder to cast and a succesful cast isn't a sure kill - remember, we're facing the Aegis here, so the pretender will need to have accumulated a massive amount of kills to succumb to the turn timer - I am assuming the pretender isn't protected by S mages here: Since the pretender is moving every turn, any astral mages used to keep him safe would be left stranded and easy prey. [Barring stealth-capable S mages, but we're getting really far into counter-counter-counter territory here...])
Patrol teams along these or other lines might be able to beat the monster pretender, though I'm not sure of it. (I haven't really experimented with missile weapons of various kinds to kill SC's) The problem is: How many patrol teams can you afford to just have wandering around in your territory on the off chance the pretender teleports on top of them? (And not something else, that is able or designed to take them on.) Sure, you might defend a couple of important provinces, or incorporate them into your real armies you want to keep safe, but protecting your territory this way? Not so much I'd say.

I'm sorry to be such a downer, it's just that the Boots of the Planes take away so many options to counter a SC it's not even funny anymore. (Unless it's you who has them, then you can laugh evilly all day long. :cool:)

Really, barring Mind Hunt success I'd just make sure the real forces you have out in the field to conquer defended enemy castles have an option to take him on (Either anti-SC's, MR or die spells or the blood counters, as discussed above.) in case he drops in to spoil the party, and otherwise ignore him while retaking the lost provinces as cheaply as possible. (And making sure you have nothing valuable in the field that you can't protect from him - though you might try to bait him with a juicy medium-sized force)

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Don't forget Stellar Cascades.
It can fatigue anything.

You still have to attack through the Aegis though or have some ranged attack.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

If you have high astral you can maybe try wishing his aegis away.
Provided you can procure the 100 pearls.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

If you are going to wish, wish the boots of the plane away. way more valuable

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

If he keeps the boots on for that long, he may also get lost in the astral plane. That'll make him an invalid. He'll be out of commission for a while and he'll come back stark raving mad.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Eventually, of course.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

The Aegis is the key difference. Other than that single artifact (or the Gorgon Pretender), it's better than mind hunt in every aspect, assuming you can cast both. It's harder to counter, has no backfire aspect, only needs a single MR fail (opposed to Mind Hunt, which need two), and, the best part of it, requires Thau 4, instead of two paths at 5/6. Depending on your nation, S3D1 is easier to have than S4 mages, and you can have potentially higher penetration with a high Astral mage. A S9 mage will get +3 bonus to Vengeance, and +2 to Mind Hunt.

In this particular situation, yes, Mind hunt is probably better, assuming he does not have S1 mages protecting him, becouse he has bassically the only item in the game that does not become VotD a insta-kill. But overall, VotD is a incredibly powerful spell against SC, and it's cast only at Thau 4.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Thx for all those answers.
I keep in mind many of your ideas.
I think i ll mind hunt with my pretender full of magic pene (i m crafting the stuff actually) while i prepare some other trick in case the hunt fail.

I don't have a good enough income of S gems to wish, and btw he s free to craft again the item after that. (unless i m wrong)

And i m still hoping he s getting lost in astral planes :) 1/100 chance if i m correct that s not so bad. (it sounds even a bit high to me to put this kind of shoes on my pretender)

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Not sure if it was mentioned, but curse him... this will bring other afflictions which will help break him.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Wishing doesn't give him the option to forge it again. The boots go into your laboratory, and he can only get them back by wishing for them or by killing something you have that's equipped with them.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Indeed =/ i should spend more time on wiki...

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

I don't think Wish is so farfetched, even if you don't have enough pearls.

What level S is your pretender? If you need to empower him, then yeah, it's too much.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

No need to empowerment but the problem is the lack of research.
If i have to aim a lvl 9 in a research path i think it would be blood. (actually i have most at 6)

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

One of my Anointed just took a gift of Kurgi from one of his commander.
Could it be of any use in my crusade ? or lesser horror will remain insufficient ?
Anyway how would you kit it ?

Also he was about to storm a fort alone (with troops though) should i wait one turn to bring few other commanders or i can try like that ? i m afraid he get killed by the horror and the army rout.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Cool! :)

25HP, pretty good defense, built in fire shield... don't be hasty! Put some nice gear on him (more def would be good), and some bodyguards (you've got devils, right?), and he'll be a nice raiding package. E boots will let you summon earthpower, for reinvig & cheaper ironskin. Divine Bless if you've got a nice bless, Phoenix Pyre if you like, & off you go!

Or you can just sit back and use him to Send Lesser Horror every month. You can do it from right where you are, you don't need a lab.

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Yeah i have few devils in stock :)
I think i will use it as you suggest.
But about not to be too hasty, i read on wiki that the insane level is raising hard so i ll have to be a little. (he get already 11 at 1rt turn !)

Re: How do i get rid of this pretender ?
 

Here, right? http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/The_Gift_of_Kurgi

Insanity should be 10 to start, then +2 per turn, I think.

Horror Marking is rapid in the sense that it's 7 times the rate of a lightless lantern, and if you have low Defense, you'll get more marks the more you are attacked. But it's still just a base 20%.

Make sure to send a scout in wherever you're attacking, so you can take of any expensive gear, in case guy goes crazy and you think he's going to get killed.