We got up to the third bullet-hell phase before we bombed out and couldn't continue. That fight is a nightmarish challenge... how much more was there to the fight after that? Another, harder bullet hell? 5 magma Trojans?
Does he drop anything special if we actually kill him?
The fight was awesome but seemed beyond too hard, even as challenging as the rest of the firestorm levels were...
That was the last danmaku phase, you guys are pretty much home free after.
Still, with how thing works now I would be surprised if they number of a complete vanaduke fight is in double digits right now.
In phase six, it's just like phase 2 and 4 except now there's ANOTHER red orbiter, one that goes really far out so the safe-ish area around the water fountains is gone; there's a new, farther out red orbiter that goes right through that area. Phase 5, we got lucky and the two magma trojans aggroed on him.
I couldn't even get to Vanaduke.
WHAT. He used to have just THREE.
My party made up of all borderline superheroes couldn't even get past the first phase. :C Of course, some of us assumed health would be provided before the fight...
They really don't want us to beat this guy.
This guy used to be hard before. Now, well...
You used to get automatic full healths immediately before fighting him. So of course we limped in there on half health, and nope! Just 4 vitapods of a size we already had. Great.
He still seems to spawn skellies (constantly!) at the same rate he used to, which are each many times tougher than they used to be. You really need to concentrate fire onto each individual one to take them down - without getting hit yourself at all, because they do a ton of damage. By the time we gave up, there was barely a place you could move without a skellie that could swipe you. We probably only killed about three. Vanaduke himself must have twenty thousand hitpoints or something.
Getting set on fire does enough damage that it is basically a death sentence if your shield breaks, even with 70 fire resist.
To those that made it further - how high were your revive costs when you quit? Ours were still around 20 to 40 per person. Also, were you using super powerful equipment(silversixes, damage bonuses)?
The thing that annoyed me most was that all the above wasn't even what made the fight impossible.
I'm playing on the lowest resolution, lowest graphics settings, with no other programs running. I did a fresh restart of my client during the level so there weren't any memory leaks. And yet, every time that stuff fell from the roof: my framerate dropped, responsiveness got shot, and there was simply nothing I could do to either keep myself alive, attack anything or even dodge the stuff falling on my head. This doesn't happen to the same degree in any other part of the game (at least not with a freshly restarted client; after a few floors with a full party, everything causes this) and certainly not with any other game I play. I simply can't fathom what could be so complicated about dropping some debris on my head that my computer can't handle it.
I hope the memory leaks get fixed in time, but in the short term could you please do something about Vanaduke's roof? It makes the whole boss fight unplayable for me in this state.
As for the rest of Firestorm: I like the new stuff, although the wheels can be a bit hard to navigate when they are all firing in sync.
We died so often that we only got through by constantly reviving each other with health; it would be hell to solo. It was hard, but doable if we worked together; perhaps this is the level of difficulty that you should be aiming for, to encourage people to adventure together.
@shango
They're counting the mace-whomping and bullet-hell phases seperately. There's still the same amount of phases (as far as we know, has anyone killed him yet?)
Omfg, this guy is a pain, It's imposssible to kill even on 1st phase.
~Xiros
It's not just the roof- the bullet spam also lags my low res computer quite horribly. I think it's just the number of simultaneous moving objects, rather than the detail on each.
Vanaduke hasn't changed...
He's still the same as the last incarnation of himself. There's 4 stages of him hitting stuff with his staff and charging much like a Trojan. During this phase he will summon File Skellies and Fire Skelly Tojans; the Trojans really do not have that much health. In between the walking stages is the fireball stage where his mask flies around. This will occur 3 times. Hit the mask with water then attack the mask, rinse and repeat. You can solo him, I would have on 3 revives had I not idled out on a bathroom break. You can solo the entire Gate if you know what you're doing
what gear were you using though? OP gear such as the ones with "damage bonus: ultra" and the antigua follow-ups? :P
I have as my current line up level 10 items unless noted:
Helm: Crown of the Fallen lvl7 (Health +5, Damage Bonus: Ultra, Fiend Penalty: Low)
Sheild: Aegis (Peirce Defense: Ultra)
Armor: Rock Jelly (Health +4)
Weapon 1: Wild Hunting Blade (Beat Damage: Ultra, Charge Reduction: Ultra)
Weapon 2: Needle Strike (Charge Reduction: Ultra)
My defenses are: 260 NML, 160 PRC, 0 ELE, 130 SHD
Status Modifiers at: +25 Stun, +30 Poison, +30 Fire, -5 Freeze, +25 Stun, -75 Curse
I can only take 3 or 4 mallet hits and fire damage is absurd and breaks my shield a lot. It's more a test of how well you can dodge everything. Most of the time I was using my Strike Needle and circle strafing. That's 65 damage a hit to the skellies and 89 a hit to Vanaduke. The floating head phase was all sword with 249 on the major hit and 129 on the minor.
The fireball phase isn't too hard for me cause I love the old side-scrolling shooters that were quite a bit more difficult.
...Well okay, maybe "holy" isn't the right word. But despite its difficulty, I like Firestorm Citadel to the point where I'd want it as a subtown for my character(s) to live in. :)
Anyway, in response to Kharnor's question about the energy costs for revival, I believe it was somewhere around 2,000. Yes, you read that right; we put everything we had into making Vanaduke roll over and die. Our failure was more of an error of ignorance than anything else though: one of the Slag Knights decided to attack Vanaduke and had him pinned into a corner, so we just sat there dead and watch. And then, all of the sudden... we wound up back in town.
Why were we not aware that there was a TIME LIMIT to how long we could stay dead!?
I'm definitely changing my equipment before I jump back down there. I'm planning on going with a Chaos set to increase my DPS, a Driver if I can find the recipe, and if fortune should smile upon me, an Antigua which I'll turn into a Blackhawk and then a Sentenza (need the recipe for the latter).
On that note, does anyone know that the 5* Firotech is called? I know it's "Something" Driver, but unlike every other Driver-type weapon, this one is NOT on the Wiki.
"If we all revive each other as soon as we get in..."
Lol, you guys doin' the ol' leave the party and come back in for 10 energy trick? :P
Congrats, though! Vanaduke was sorely missed, good to have him back.
Ya know, I found him harder when on a team. I'll have to him solo properly later. The exit/return won't work for most people as he can 1 hit a returning player. Also, Vanaduke still doesn't drop items. At least not for us.
We managed to reach up to the fifth phase, where he had two fire orbs orbiting around him.
I'm assuming there would be another bullet hell phase after that, then he'd probably finally FALL DEAD.
dfsdlkhfakjfhalk!!!