Similarly, getting Fus Roh Dah'd but because I get so laser focused on that loot scamp spawning in the dragon boss that I forget the boss can knock me off the platform while I chase this little rascal.

Or my companion forgetting to taunt the big bad marauder while I'm still in my squishy setup so the marauder just chases me while I run around hoping my companion will do their dang job so I can finally place some AoEs.

And occasionally getting the 2 stacked verses that do hyper amounts of damage, like having Orbital Echoes and Magical Multitudes all perfectly stacked on a non-moving boss and watch its health bar just magically disappear.

Glad you've been having fun! It's such a unique challenge, especially to get far. Dungeon DPS builds don't do too well on their own a few Arcs in, and many Visions introduce new scaling factors like status effects, health recovery, and max resources that reward unusual builds.

If you're working on beating Arc 4, my advice is adding 5-7 Heavy Armor pieces and focusing on DoTs, resource recovery, flame/poison/bleed damage, and max health–based heals. Blocking bonuses help a lot. You get one Marauder each Arc (starting at Arc 2), and they can two-shot you without large resistances and health pools.

My best run so far is Arc 3, Cycle 4, Stage 1 for 90000.

Probably not great by most people's standards, but I'm pretty happy with it so far since I've only been engaging with it for almost a week.

It seems like base game Group Dungeon level of difficulty in Arc 3, right?

Yesterday, I was in the very middle of one of the cycle boss fights, and the game simply froze solid. The music (of course) kept playing, but the controls were locked up completely. I had to do the console equivalent of force quit, although I did grab a screen shot for posterity first:



BTW @robwolf666 - there's a 'tell' just before the shout which, if spotted, you could avoid. Also make sure you don't stray too much to the side or you'll get wing-bashed off the platform.

Dragons in IA are chumps! Just focus on the Pilferer and kill the dragon in cleave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ckQlW2eaY

robwolf666 wrote: »

One thing I'm having genuine trouble with, to the point I'm so cheesed off I'm not longer enjoying it, is the final stage of Aramril's Training - where she has herself, 2 crystals and 2 shadow creatures. No matter what I do I can't beat her.

Stupid difficulty, sorry. It's this kind of thing that puts me off content.

The trick to Aramril is to focus the crystals first, minions second, Aramril last. Aramril's normal attacks don't hurt much at all, except her special barrage attack which needs to be interrupted immediately.

What I do, is start the fight with light/heavy attacks to build Ultimate. The moment the first crystal pops, drop Ultimate on the crystal, then immediately bash Aramril because she will be launching her special attack on you as soon as this happens. Once Aramril is interrupted, focus crystal and finish it off as your ultimate is doing it's thing. Focus Aramril until minion spawns. Destroy minion. Focus Aramril until next crystal or minion spawns. Rinse/repeat all the while avoiding tentacles.

And above all, any time Aramril launches her barrage, drop what you're doing and bash/interrupt that barrage. I usually dodge roll right up to her, give her a couple good bashes, then return to where I had left off.

If you focus Aramril while crystals or minions are still alive, you will burn her down and another crystal or minion will spawn. Leaving you with even more to contend with. So keep control of the battlefield by controlling their numbers.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

One thing I'm having genuine trouble with, to the point I'm so cheesed off I'm not longer enjoying it, is the final stage of Aramril's Training - where she has herself, 2 crystals and 2 shadow creatures. No matter what I do I can't beat her.

Stupid difficulty, sorry. It's this kind of thing that puts me off content.

The trick to Aramril is to focus the crystals first, minions second, Aramril last. Aramril's normal attacks don't hurt much at all, except her special barrage attack which needs to be interrupted immediately.

What I do, is start the fight with light/heavy attacks to build Ultimate. The moment the first crystal pops, drop Ultimate on the crystal, then immediately bash Aramril because she will be launching her special attack on you as soon as this happens. Once Aramril is interrupted, focus crystal and finish it off as your ultimate is doing it's thing. Focus Aramril until minion spawns. Destroy minion. Focus Aramril until next crystal or minion spawns. Rinse/repeat all the while avoiding tentacles.

And above all, any time Aramril launches her barrage, drop what you're doing and bash/interrupt that barrage. I usually dodge roll right up to her, give her a couple good bashes, then return to where I had left off.

If you focus Aramril while crystals or minions are still alive, you will burn her down and another crystal or minion will spawn. Leaving you with even more to contend with. So keep control of the battlefield by controlling their numbers.

Always crystals first. Save your ultimate for the crystals as well. They spawn when Aramril is at 90 and 50% health. After the second one is gone just burn her down to 15% and she gives up... ignore the ads at 50%.

Speed helps here, major minor expedition... also you will need a good amount of stamina recovery.

robwolf666 wrote: »

One thing I'm having genuine trouble with, to the point I'm so cheesed off I'm not longer enjoying it, is the final stage of Aramril's Training - where she has herself, 2 crystals and 2 shadow creatures. No matter what I do I can't beat her.

Stupid difficulty, sorry. It's this kind of thing that puts me off content.

if im on a full dps, yeah sometimes its annoying cause can get bursted down between her and the minions (usually my problem is sustain due to the tons of CC)

the adds only spawn when she ports, which is at 75, 50, 25, though ive had enough dps to burn her down to the required 15% before even killing the 2nd crystal sometimes, kind of varies

theres no time limit on the fight, so basically only have to push her a little bit until the next phase triggers if thats easier to handle

Thanks for the insight on how to handle Aramril - it pretty much lines up with what I already try to do. I just don't destroy the crystals fast enough, and more often than not I have both crystals going at the same time, and sometimes both shades. I didn't realise she herself was pretty harmless except for her rapid fire attack.

I've been shouted and exploded off the platform, good times lol.

Yesterday was an awesome milestone for me, beat the 4th Arc and didn't need a transformation buff, and Isobel managed to survive all the tanking lol.

All the stage buffs lined up in my favour and it made the boss fights go by easily.

Best advice I can offer, buy the upgrades from one of the vendors in the IA. What a game changer that was.

upgrades,pet, good choice of verses/visions and a tanky build - magDk with a mythic for example -help a lot and can get you easily Arc 5 with or without companion
save transformation scroll for arc 4 end bosses, good luck

DenverRalphy wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

One thing I'm having genuine trouble with, to the point I'm so cheesed off I'm not longer enjoying it, is the final stage of Aramril's Training - where she has herself, 2 crystals and 2 shadow creatures. No matter what I do I can't beat her.

Stupid difficulty, sorry. It's this kind of thing that puts me off content.

The trick to Aramril is to focus the crystals first, minions second, Aramril last. Aramril's normal attacks don't hurt much at all, except her special barrage attack which needs to be interrupted immediately.

What I do, is start the fight with light/heavy attacks to build Ultimate. The moment the first crystal pops, drop Ultimate on the crystal, then immediately bash Aramril because she will be launching her special attack on you as soon as this happens. Once Aramril is interrupted, focus crystal and finish it off as your ultimate is doing it's thing. Focus Aramril until minion spawns. Destroy minion. Focus Aramril until next crystal or minion spawns. Rinse/repeat all the while avoiding tentacles.

And above all, any time Aramril launches her barrage, drop what you're doing and bash/interrupt that barrage. I usually dodge roll right up to her, give her a couple good bashes, then return to where I had left off.

If you focus Aramril while crystals or minions are still alive, you will burn her down and another crystal or minion will spawn. Leaving you with even more to contend with. So keep control of the battlefield by controlling their numbers.

All of these tips and the ones from some of the other posters are great, and exactly how I get through this. I will add that the very first thing I do is run past her and go into the right corner of the room all the way to the corner so she will run over and be close to the first crystal she activates. I come back out of the corner a bit when she makes it close to the crystal and attack her until the crystal activates and then focus on the crystal. She will teleport across the room at one point, hopefully after the crystal is destroyed, and the other mob will spawn. I run over toward her to get close enough to bash her when she starts her special attack, but I focus my attack on the mob that spawned until it is dead, and if needed, I bash her another time and then run to the left corner to get her as close to that crystal as possible. As soon as she activates the second crystal a mob will spawn at the same time and I keep focused on the crystal until it is destroyed then I focus on the mob, but I still sometimes have to run over to wherever she is at that point and bash her and then go back to killing the mob. If you make it through this period where all three things are going at the same time, it’s pretty easy to get her down to 15% after that by just focusing on her even when she spawns another mob.

Edited to add: I’ve thought about taking the morph of a skill that allows you to bash things from a distance with your destruction staff, and then just swapping in this skill for this battle, but I just haven’t tried that yet. In theory, it would save the steps where you have to run over to her to bash her.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

I've been really getting into this over the past few days - I've actually avoided doing it for some reason, but went in with Isobel, and have been doing surprisingly well for someone who doesn't tend to like harder difficulties.

That said, I had a very Elder Scrolls end to my run just now - I was fighting a dragon boss and got Fus Roh Dah'd right off the platform, ending my run.

Anyone else had any poetic or very Elder Scrolls experiences in IA, especially to end a run?

That Dragon 'mechanic' has always been a problem. Haven't run IA in a looong time but I think you need to block to prevent getting shot off the platform. It's one reason I played IA for a while, got what I absolutely had to have and just took a break, which turned into a hiatus, which is turning into not coming back to that hot madness anytime soon.

Also, I dislike the side encounter where you have to kill the little annoying flying tomes. IA isn't a bad thing but there are some aspects to it which make it painful and that sticks in your mind down the road and makes people want to avoid it rather than return to it.

When I see the Tomes minigame I just step back into the portal and port out. Ain't nobody got time for that one!

I know exactly what you mean! And the problem doubles if you are running it with another player because there are eight tomes to get instead of four! But for the past three or four runs now, when soloing for fortunes I was determined to at least try it again, and I actually succeeded more times than not, with one of the creatures getting me by just looking at me funny. I’m sure it won’t be long before I just step right back out again too and stop trying it again. 😂

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

I've been really getting into this over the past few days - I've actually avoided doing it for some reason, but went in with Isobel, and have been doing surprisingly well for someone who doesn't tend to like harder difficulties.

That said, I had a very Elder Scrolls end to my run just now - I was fighting a dragon boss and got Fus Roh Dah'd right off the platform, ending my run.

Anyone else had any poetic or very Elder Scrolls experiences in IA, especially to end a run?

That Dragon 'mechanic' has always been a problem. Haven't run IA in a looong time but I think you need to block to prevent getting shot off the platform. It's one reason I played IA for a while, got what I absolutely had to have and just took a break, which turned into a hiatus, which is turning into not coming back to that hot madness anytime soon.

Also, I dislike the side encounter where you have to kill the little annoying flying tomes. IA isn't a bad thing but there are some aspects to it which make it painful and that sticks in your mind down the road and makes people want to avoid it rather than return to it.

When I see the Tomes minigame I just step back into the portal and port out. Ain't nobody got time for that one!

Yeah, I only completed the Filer's Wing side portal until I got the achievement to unlock the upgrade. After that, I personally don't find the time vs reward worth it. Sometimes I turn around and portal back out so quick that the instance bugs for a bit while I wait for the game and the server to sync back up.

Aramril takes even longer, but at least I know I'm going to win that one, so that one just depends on my mood.

Thank you all loads for all the great advice here

Since reading this I've managed to get through the final levels of the filers wing and theatre of war to finish all the optional bits!

I also used the same advice to slow down and focus each thing to finally make it to the 3rd arc. Not sure I've got it in me to get much further (I'm only there for the leads) but happy I've managed to get this far at least