How do I beat Bane, the final boss?

Question

When I reached Bane, I did all the sidequests, reached level 50, had decent equipment, had two conquered towns, all allies and a decent mount...

...and I failed miserably 3 times trying to kill him.

So, logically, in order to prevent Bane from conquering the world and crushing it under heel of tyranny, I trained my Griffon mount to level 32+ (and later raised it to 41), conquered the whole world and crushed it under heel of my tyranny by skipping all tedious unnecessary random encouters and collecting monthly tribute.

I did the last part for 5 hours. I trained my Morale from less than 10 to 48, equipped the most game-breaking gear I could find, conceived the most game-breaking strategy I could think of.

I have cheesed the hell out of the game, optimised everything I could think of, grinded it in a way shouldn't be possible started Bane fight and...

...lost yet again 3 times in a row.

Bane doesn't have any weakpoints, and no strategy that could work earlier in the game works with him:

• you can't rush him, because he has the most HP in the game,
• you can't ignore skulls to build up mana reserve, because he hits like a truck from the get-go so you have to deny all skulls matches,
• you can't beat him down with spell wombo-combo, because he has 16% of every colour resistance and that keeps raising further during the fight,
• you can't ignore spells and wear him down with just skulls matches, because you deal at most ~10 damage from skulls and he can randomly heal that every turn and also heals from Morale buffs,
• he can rearrange the board and buff himself as a free action for no cost at all - so strategy of starving him of mana don't work either,
• since he has all his skills buffed into the stratosphere, he gets A LOT of extra moves.

He's just a big brick wall of pain.

How do I beat him? Is it actually possible or did just everyone singing praises about Puzzle Quest abandon the game before finishing it?

Answer 1

I think there are probably as many ways to beat Bane as there are to play the actual game. That being said, Bane is a difficult adversary, and you can expect to spend a few tries beating him.

Some general advice includes: trying to go 1st (otherwise he'll snowball and kill you quickly), take your time (and plan ahead - I hope this goes without saying), and trying to get some Legendary or Godlike items that can buff you nicely.

That being said, there are a couple strategies I found here, which I'll summarize below:

Druid - you can research the Death Gaze spell, which will 1/2 Bane's HP and create a random skull for each 5 damage dealt. this spell may take some time to research, and in the meantime you may take a lot of damage, but if you can use Death Gaze you can kill him in a couple of tries.

Warrior - make runes and increase your fire mastery until your starting mana is around 60. Also try to make it so that your other masteries or equipment will give you around 18 of the other 3 types of mana. Then keep casting death strike, which should deal enough damage on multiple casts to kill Bane.

If you're still having trouble you can lower the difficulty of the game to easy, which should help make the fight easier.

Answer 2

The answer turns out to be simple:

1. ask a question on Gaming Stack Exchange how to beat Bane,

2. let the laws of irony flow through you and have a perfect luck when you try one last time after posting.

...

...If anybody has a better answer, I'll be glad to hear it.

---

The strategy I used, playing Warrior (item and skill names might be off, because unfortunately I had Polish version):

You need following equipment:

• head: Jewel of Elements (+2 to all mana reserves at the start of the turn for every mana reserve that is full)
• torso: whatever you like (I used Mirror Armour)
• weapon: Gnoll's Kris (adds +1 to current and maximum HP for every 4 points of damage you deal)
• misc: Greater Ring of the Troll (adds +3 HP at the start of the turn provided you have at least 15 blue mana)

...and following spells:

• Revenant (lvl 50 Warrior spell, doubles your Fight ability up to 999)
• direct damage spell of your choosing that doesn't use blue mana

The actual fight is supposed to go like this:

1. Prevent Bane from matching too many skulls (as far as you can) until you fill up at least 1 mana resoirvor to full; be mindful not to cause "no moves left - mana drain".
2. Try to get all other mana resoirvors full, also while preventing Bane from matching too many skulls.
3. When it is safe (ie. there are no potential skulls matches, fours or fives on the board) cast Revenant.
4. When the board is safe and you have mana, cast Revenant again; if you still have less than 999 Fight, go back to 2, otherwise move on.
5. When there is a skulls match, a four or a five - match it; otherwise, spam direct damage.

Even though that strategy makes every other enemy in the game a breeze, with Bane it can go either way - as I demonstrated.

Answer 3

My version of winning the final battle is in short: I played as Warrior I mounted a Griffon (up to Level 50, preferably) Helms & Crowns: Halo of Plague Clothing & Armor: Armor of Minogoth Weapons: Great Axe Miscellaneous: Ultimate Troll Ring Spells: Throw Axe, Berserk Rage, Stone Gaze, Fire Bomb, Charm, Entangle Prefer to match (when you can) the Blue and Yellow gems And most of all TAKE YOUR TIME. After a few days you'll understand why, (as I did).