3001

Well, a few things to try first. Typhon does various magical attacks, so getting your resistances up helps a lot. Go and buy some powerful spells and unleash those, they’re not cheap but by the end of the game you should have several mill sloshing around, right?

You could also try respeccing. Find the magical guys in towns with the blue orbs above them, they’ll allow a complete respect of all your skills in the two masteries you’ve picked, so take my advice and get something with some ranged ability like - oh, say - Distortion Wave! (and the ones above it). That’s basically how I killed Typhon, hardly ever got close enough for him to hit me. But yeah, there’s a lot of strafing around necessary to stay alive. And of course, don’t forget the various Markers around the arena. Battle and Mastery can really do a number on him combined with powerful spells / phantom strike. Just get the hell out of there after a hit or two.

Dude, you’ve beaten Dark Souls. You can do this! ;)

3002

Typhon was much better before they patched out the ability to take down the pillars and therefore his abilities. It’s all about range when it comes to him, and he is by far my biggest complaint about the game since melee really gets the shaft. For TQ being my most played game of all time, Typhon is my least favorite battle in any game I’ve ever played.

Even if you have to resort to using a bow and pecking away at him easily from afar, get past him and continue on with the game. Don’t let him best you.

3003

Been there, done that, restarted as a new character with a proven build and finally beat him (and the expansion)

One of my least favorite things about TQ but the rest of the game was enough to keep me playing.

3004

Bear in mind that if you die, Typhon doesn’t heal any of the damage you dealt him, so it’s possible to plink him down eventually. But I’d definitely encourage you to get some kind of decent ranged attack, spell or bow, because sometimes you just don’t want to be right next to something (or lots of somethings).

By the way, Act IV (Immortal Throne) is the best one so far, really enjoying it.

3005

All, right. Just for you guys, I gave it another 90 minutes.

First I tried switching to the bow. I found the bow in my inventory that I’ve found that does the best damage. I dumped all the outstanding points I had into Dexterity and found the best bow-enhancing damage thingie I could add to it. Then I attacked him with the bow. The problem is the damage is not really visible on the screen. But if I hit him 10 times (hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit dodge), then it makes a visible dent in his health. You keep doing this, you can get him down to about a 3/4ths health. That’s nice right? But then he leeches your health, and he’s full health again. I tried many variations on this for a long time before finally giving up. He’s just too strong at leaching health. There is a possibility that if I dodge away from him every single time, then 1 time out of 5 that he does the health drain, I can be out of range of the health drain. But the other 4 times out of 5 his health drain is successful anyway, and he’s full health again.

OK, then I tried the scrolls sold by the shop keeper. Unfortunately, you can’t use another for a long time. I tried all the scrolls they sold along with my melee attacks, and the elemental damage protection thing actually gave me the best chance, and I got him below half health many times with melee attacks. But eventually his health drain would get him back up to full health again.

Ok, so then I tried respeccing. Basically anything that I can’t use right now against this boss, like dual wield chance, battle rage, everything that doesn’t add to my phoenix strike, I got rid of, and maxed out Phoenix strike or whatever its called, and basically ruined my character for regular battles. But hey, this is the only thing that matters right now. I can’t take back all the points I’ve put into Warrior base points or Dream tree, but everything else I consolidated into Phoenix strike. So I hit him with it, and run away. Wait until the timer runs out so I can strike again. Hit him with it. And then run away.

But that didn’t work. When I’m running away, if he chooses to do the health drain, then he’s back at full health again, so no matter how much damage I do, he’s back to full health.

Now can I finally admit that this game defeated me? Please?

3006

In retrospect, it occurs to me that if I hadn’t built my character around onslaught and attacking faster and faster and getting the best fast weapon I could and relying on DPS, it would have helped. I could have hung on instead to big slow, much heavier damage weapons which would have enhanced the Phantom Strike damage. So each Phantom Strike would have hurt him more. But then I don’t really have an answer for that health leach. Even if I was doing more damage on each Phantom Strike, he would still drain it all back, so why does it matter? I guess at some point, you can just do so much damage that the rate of damage is somehow higher than the 1/4 health bar he drains back with the health leech. Or maybe if I’d spent the game looking for equipment that prevented health leeching or something. I think I occasionally saw equipment like that, even though none of the vendors sell it now.

So it should be possible to beat him, but you have to plan for it from Act 1, and hang on to the right equipment, and plan for what you’re going to do at the end of Act 3 from the beginning.

3007

I have had a very similar experience. I’d talk about what worked but nothing really did as a melee based Spellbreaker.

3008

Regen bosses are the bullshittiest of all bosses.

Worst I ever encountered in my years in the trenches was (IIRC) in Spartan: Total Warrior. Some 70-80% through the game you got to the mirror boss, because someone on the team had a jones for 8-16bit console action games or something.

No big, we’ve all fought mirror bosses before.

Except this time, health powerups spawn randomly around the arena you fight him in. Well offscreen, because this is 2005 and 720p is a pipe dream foretold by the ancients. And motherfucker knows instantly when and where they spawn, and takes off running to go grab them.

You have no movement skills to overtake him - you just get to trail along helplessly while he outruns you to the powerup you had no idea existed until he just turned away from you and booked it toward the randomly spawned item.

Fuck that game.

3009

Well, they did warn you that this was Sparta, so…

3010

I bought this game, but haven’t played it yet. I skim these messages, getting a temperature for people’s reactions to it. @Rock8man’s struggles with the boss are bringing up a question. I gather you can’t reconfigure your character like in Diablo 3. I remember there being endless wailing and moaning on the boards here when D3 was new about how changing talents cheaply made the game worse because you would have less “attachment to your character”. Are we saying that what Titan Quest is doing is better? 25 hours of playtime to find out that your character build is invalid is an improvement on the Diablo model?

3011

Just to clarify @baren, you can buy back points you invested already, and reinvest them into other skills. But you can’t change the Masteries you chose, or take back points in that Mastery “tree”. So for example, in order to get the highest level Warrior skills, you need to invest points into the Warrior “Tree”. You can’t buy those points back. But you can buy back the points you spent on skills. So it’s a partial system. Unlike Diablo 3, where you can change everything, in Titan Quest you can re-invest within the same trees to a more limited degree. It’s just that in my case that didn’t help since the vast majority of my points were invested in the trees, not the skills.

3012

There are also 3rd party tools like TQDefiler that will let you respec your character completely out of game (among other functions. I don’t think they support AE yet, but I am confident they will before long.

3013

I am under the impression that the final fight has 4 statues, each of which give the boss a cool ability, including one that give him life drain. Since life drain is the most powerful of the statues, I believe the goal is to stay away from that statue. Also, there is some gear that should protect against life drain and vitality damage.

3014

I didn’t even know Typhon had health regen, but what legowarrior says makes sense. I recall my health plummeting around the red statue, so I kept well away from that thing. I don’t remember seeing Typhon regen any health (not visibly). I died I think three times, each time I went back his health was where I left it, so I was able to whittle him down fairly quickly using Distortion Wave (+Chaotic Resonance + Psionic Immolation) which a) does immediate damage, b) reduces his armour (so you can follow up with a Phantom Strike and a couple of hits), c) does DOT electrical damage. I spent the time waiting between cooldowns dodging his attacks pretty successfully (well, except those three times!), then waded in again. My build is Harbinger, but I don’t have many points in the Warfare mastery really (some in Weapon Training, some in Battle Rage). I have moderate resistances on my gear, but nothing remotely optimal.

Oh, I also have my little flying eyeball pet. It’s level 1, so it doesn’t last long under sustained attack, but it’s very useful for distracting enemies.

3015

I tried staying away from the life leech statue, but it doesn’t help. Typhon still rotates between fire breath, lightning strike, Meteor drop, life leech and energy leech.

What I did notice is that I had a completed charm called Demon’s Blood in my inventory which would give me 40% vitality resistance. That’s huge. I had one item I was wearing that wasn’t blue, my armbands, which already had a charm which added +50 lightning resistance. So I took it to the guy to get rid of that charm from it, so I could add the Demon’s blood. But after I destroyed the lightning resistance, I discovered, oh wait, Demon’s Blood only works on amulets and rings.

Anyway, so I found some random necklace that gave me intelligence and added the demon’s blood onto that. And went into the fight again. And that made the big difference. Now that he could only get a certain amount of health from me, I whittled him down in less than 5 minutes of fighting. Quite a difference from the hours and hours of fighting in the past, where he would just go back to full health each time he’d do the life leech on me. It was like I was using all those hundreds of potions I was drinking to keep HIM at full health. But the demon’s blood allowed me to kill him.

Thanks guys.

Maybe it’s the sadistic Dark Souls-lover in me, but this is the first time I’ve actually enjoyed the game. Having to somehow figure out how to kill this guy. Now, if I had given up, or not found a solution, I would have hated it forever, but after I beat him, that was the first moment when I had to admit, you know, this game isn’t that bad.

EDIT:

It’s funny that I completely disassembled my whole character though. Every time I quit and had to fight my way to Typhon, all these damned changes made the game harder and harder. Fighting all these common enemies without all the equipment and abilities I’d been using before were much harder now.

3016

Good to hear you got through it. The final act is probably the best act in the game. But you do need to consider your resistances as you progress through that part of the game.

3017

Someone came up with the answer on the Steam forums. I just had to change the Detail level to medium and it all went away.

3018

I love this game, I don’t want it to end. I can see how some people replay it multiple times. Not quite sure if I can start over in Greece though! I may just transition straight into Grim Dawn. :)

3019

I’m closing in on the ending too. I’ve got one more teleportation hub to uncover.

I beat the Cereberus beast last night. An interesting boss fight.

My objective was to finish the game before the time limit for Grim Dawn expired on the Humble Monthly bundle, and it looks like I’ll make that timeline.

I’m still not sure if I want Grim Dawn though. There’s definitely something about Titan Quest that’s missing compared to other ARPGs. I’m not sure why I don’t enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay, but I really don’t. I’ve definitely confirmed that for myself by playing through the Anniversary edition. Now I wonder if whatever is missing will be there in Grim Dawn? How can I know when I don’t even know what it is? Hmmm.

3020

Finished. I unlocked Epic difficulty for the first time! Yay!

Of course, the moment I restarted on epic difficulty, going through those exact fields again, I realized that there’s no way I can do this again. It was a decent journey though.

Don’t worry Titan Quest. I’ll be back in a few years to try out epic difficulty. Maybe throw out all my inventory and start over. Do a little house cleaning.

So now… To Grim Dawn or not to Grim Dawn, that is the question.