Part 84: Act Three Chapter Twenty - Hail To The King

Rest up and ready yourself. This is the final bossfight.






The King of Shadows, ladies and gentlemen.



The King of Shadows' dialogue alters depending on whether you're Good, Neutral or Evil. Good and Neutral are largely similar (with 'balance' subbed in for 'peace'):


As for the Evil path, well...

: Ambition and evil has brought you here. Those who follow you are blind to your true nature and purpose.
: You know nothing.
: I see into your mortal heart, and everything that guides your actions. Those that travel with you are tools, nothing more.



: [Lie] Agreed. These are my friends, my allies.



Say what you like about Casavir - that he's boring, or predictable - but I feel these lines redeem him as a character. The delivery is really good - Casavir sounds cut-up, disappointed not only in you but in himself as well.

: As we have traveled, I have seen your nature - and perhaps in following you, I have committed evil as well. But the King of Shadows must be stopped.
: It does not matter, not now, perhaps not ever. All that matters is destroying the King of Shadows.
: And so our leader becomes a reflection of you, Ammon Jerro, and it is little surprise to me that you welcome it.
: Know that this path has brought us to our destination. All... that matters is that the kalach-cha is with us now, as was intended.





: I'm not saying our leader's perfect, but that's better than a land of shadow any day. Besides, I've been looking forward to this fight for too long to turn away now.
: I will stand with you for the sake of standing against shadow... and for the hope you may be redeemed by this action.



Let's rumble.



King of Shadows Battle

The first phase of the King of Shadows fight is a straight-up beatdown against his avatar.



Get your Ritual powers out right away - the King of Shadows has an energy-draining aura and unless you've been lucky with your item drops, your only defence will be the Shining Shield.

Don't worry about using them up... the Ritual statues scattered around the Inner Sanctum give you new charges whenever you touch them.



And don't stress out about your party, either - at a minimum there's seven of you and you can do only so much micro-management. Just try to avoid casting all your strong spells straight away.

If you must, focus on Zhjaeve and Sand/Qara. The others can take care of themselves.




The King of Shadows is only a 20 Outsider/5 Fighter, so he will go down eventually. Do watch out for his teleport, though, and keep an eye on your casters at all times.





: The King of Shadows' presence still echoes loudly.




: Oh my...



The second part of the fight is a massive brawl with dozens of King of Shadows clones. The clones are only Level 7 but there are a lot of them.



This is the one instance in the game in which Ammon's Web of Purity power comes in handy. Paralysing the clones leaves them vulnerable to melee attacks...



...and the Cleansing Nova, of course.

The only negative is that the Web of Purity and Cleansing Nova statues are on opposite sides of the Sanctum, and neither is close to where you start out. So every time you use them, you have to run your PC and Ammon off to different sides of the room, then run back to your main party - trailing multiple clones behind you.

Also, Zhjaeve is a githzerai and thus counts as an Outsider, meaning she is vulnerable to both Web and Nova. If you're indiscriminate in firing off your Ritual powers you could end up killing her.

You know, if that bothers you at all.



I'm a little confused on this one.

On the one hand, because the King of Shadows is an Outsider and not Undead, he's vulnerable to Sneak Attack. This only really applies to the clones but it's still helpful. And it's another advantage to the Web of Purity.

On the other, he's still supposed to be immune to Sneak Attacks and Critical Hits because he's the big bad final boss.

I've got screenshots of both, mind, so...



Anyway, you're looking at about twenty-five clones or so but they spawn in over a period of time, so you shouldn't be too badly overwhelmed. Eventually you'll kill all the clones and that'll clean out the statues.








: The King of Shadows uses the statues to empower himself.
: Then the statues must be destroyed to sever his link to them.
: Don't we need the ritual powers to beat him?



You'd better be fucking right, Ammon.



The last phase of the fight is against this Mega-King of Shadows.

Hey, that's what Obsidian calls him.

The King of Shadows is now a 20 Outsider/10 Warlock/10 Frenzied Berserker, which I suppose is the optimal class combination for a rather dull-witted AI.



Anyway, the King of Shadows is immortal so long as the statues stand. The statues must be destroyed to turn him mortal again.



Destroying a statue reduces the King of Shadows' health by one-tenth, and decreases his Strength and AC by three each time (well worth it, because he starts with 36 in all stats).

Don't forget to recharge your powers before you destroy the statues!



This is a job for the main character. Unless you're using Puppet Mode for your companions (i.e. you give them all commands and directions, they do nothing independently) then they won't destroy the statues.

More accurately, they'll bash at the statues for one round, then the AI will kick in and send them off to attack the King of Shadows, even though he's invulnerable.



The other advantage of sending the main character out to assault the statues is that it keeps them out of the way of the King of Shadows... although special spell-powers like this affect you wherever you are on the map.




Eventually all the statues will be destroyed... but there's still one source of power that the King of Shadows is tapping into: the portal.

Ammon Jerro will shout this out in case you don't realise this. In fact, Ammon Jerro will shout commands at you constantly throughout the battle, even if you're already doing it.



Buff up and equip the Silver Sword of Gith. The portal has special damage reduction and cannot be hurt by normal weapons. The Silver Sword of Gith is usually your only guaranteed weapon that can destroy the portal.



If you have it, the Hammer of Ironfist works as well. To be exact, the portal has a Damage Resistance of 25 and is only vulnerable to Alchemical Silver, so the list of weapons that can hurt it is fairly small.

High-level spells might work too - if you haven't already used them against the King of Shadows.



Once the portal has been destroyed, there's nothing keeping the King of Shadows alive anymore.

So cut the cord.




Mission accomplished. Game complete. Time to head on home.



The King of Shadows has a very pretty death effect... kinda like film burning. A flickering light effect as reality tears and crumples around him.

All right, let's go. We're done here.




Um...





Guys...?