Oh man, greater dispel was the trick, along with the summoned creatures. One that worked really well was giving Nenio the belt of demonic shadow. The shadow demon was able to hit the playful darkness fairly often. Her fireball, even with ascendant element couldn't break the elemental resistance/reduction, which seems like a bug, since it claims to bypass all reduction.
That does not work anymore. Fireball cannto be cast across wall anymore and as soon as the fireball is launched the shadows spawn around the caster and kill it.
Greater dispell works better with those dispell glasses found. That makes it a lot easier at least on CORE difficulty and lower. On Unfair, it still leaves him with over 70AC and not everything can be dispelled. This strat doesn't work on harder difficulties. Easiest way to kill him? Creeping doom + anything that does unstoppable positive energy damage. Creeping doom is a Druid spell that Druids, Shamans, and Nature Oracles can cast. It creats swarm summons. Playful darkness only does single target attacks and he can't do anything to swarms. Just toss a bunch of swarms out before activating the fight around where he spawns. Then just sit back and use Channel Positive Energy or Pillar of Light. You can also use ranged or reach weapons and hit with Nat 20s. Mythic abilities destructive shockwave and thundering blows allow melee fighters to deal incremental damage when they miss attacks as well. With enough swarms out he can't get to you. Positive energy damage is required to kill him as well as stop his regen. So if you don't for some reason have Channel Positive Energy or Pillar of light, then use the level 0 cantrip ZAP instead that is available to any divine caster. The other easy way to do this fight is with summons only and the ring item Clemency of Shadows. Clemency of Shadows spawns a spider summon when anything in your party dies including summons. This includes the spider that was summoned if it dies. So it means infinite summons. Just jam the area Playful Darkness spawns with summons, even the mythic summons all main characters get as well as the summons from various items picked up until now during play. With a good amount of summons and Clemency of Shadows, Playful Darkness again can't reach your party as it has a never ending horde of summons in the way. Since Playful Darkness has no AoE attacks, it can't do anything against either of these strats. If for some reason you didn't research the Clemency of Shadows ring, then just spam casting summons works. Lastly, Mark of Justice bypasses all the damage reduction it has for your party and summons when they do hit. Level 14 paladin ability, but does make the fight easier.
The "almost any party" is kinda contradicted by all the required specialties; summons, multiple dispels, multiple casters, multiple ranged. Also requires items that you might have missed in act 2 which in terms of my playtime would be 30 hours before playful darkness. I'm about to fight it, and to do your strat I'd still have to reload back before descending into the fane and hire a merc or two.
well, to be fair most of this party is not ranged character and many of the spells and summons used are from scrolls... if you have characters actually built for ranged then that is an advantage. For many of these characters that is not the case... I simply added ranged weapons to the nonranged martial characters presented here. also unless you are pretty underleveled you should be a higher level than my party since I rushed this point without doing most of the side content from the previous acts. If you are playing at high difficulties then you need to have a party with dispels and such to do this and if you have not included that in your party you need to do so or things will only get more painful for you... THis video shows an underleveled party completing the task at the highest difficulty setting. If you are playing on lower difficulties then scrolls will likely get you by but if they don't then I'm sorry. Remember you can always do this on your later return to the Midnight Fane. Additionally, I guess if you are not using the same classes as I am it might not be as possible but most players should be able to beat this with whatever party they have by using the strategies presented here. If you are not prepared it may require a reload to just before you entered the Midnight Fane. If you aren't properly stocked and prepared, then yea, you might have to return to a save 2 hours earlier and buy the right items which kinda sucks but it is what it is... not sure where you are getting 30 hours prior... I don't recall anything used here that would require that, but it has been years since this video was created so things might have changed. Also, I do add the qualifier "almost" to the any party description. Hope that helps and if not send me an email and we'll work something out
@@Lorespire I got to actually test your strategy this morning. Turns out all of the arguments that it can be done with any party are moot seeing as in my game the strategy does not work at all. Playful darkness simply runs over the walls of the map bypassing the summons and directly decimates my party in 4 turns.
Great Strategy, this fight is just terrible. Avoid using the Duality of Conjuration and Summoning on a neutral character. This is because with a neutral character you have a 50/50 chance to get nabasu or devas. If you use the item with a Good aligned character you will get nabasu. If you use it with an Evil aligned character you will get devas.
Aye, that sounds much easier, but not everyone can be an Angel Oracle... Well actually they can... But this video is here for anyone who doesn't make that choice = )
