So I just did the fortress assault on the snowy region (Seregost) and the Overlord had Iceproof/Arrowproof + Extra Health and Mega Heal; over the course of the fight he "adapted" and got Immune to Executions, Vault Breaker, and Immune to Ground Takedowns; he was weak to stealth but evidently even if you use the overhangs you can't do that in Overlord fights, I had like a 16% chance to poison on critical hit so that and normal attacks did some damage, fight went on for 30 minutes (sped up most of it) and he eventually killed me except one of my captains just randomly showed up and instakilled him (from 90% health) instead; curious if this guy's always super difficult and if you fail you get bailed out, or maybe its just an internal detector in the game that your fight went on for too long or something. I was 3 levels lower so I couldn't have recruited even with the one time I got him into green. There was probably some way to setup my gear and maybe level it up mid fight to get a fire proc; maybe (he wasn't weak to fire or poison but it did damage). He also had instant kill on Caragors which was one of my sets of reinforcements. This is on NORMAL difficulty.

Not sure if there's an internal timer for captain fights, and the game giving you leeway if it goes on too long. I'm playing on Nemesis difficulty. Had a 3 minute fight with a Hunter captain that killed me with poison from just 2 spear throws. During the cutscene when Talion is on the ground anticipating the killing blow, I was saved by a random no-name guard in Gondor. The guard one-shotted the remaining 75% health of the orc captain. This was super early in the game, before I had bodyguards or captains of my own.

@tuxedocruise: Does the game ever directly tell you that it has a system where if you're downed by a strong captain/overlord/whatever, there's some random chance that an ally will show up and just one-shot the enemy to death, even if it has a zillion HP? It seems kinda fucked up if the game just rubber bands fights into victories for the player without ever justifying why.

Stuff like this really pays to have access to all of the elements via skills poison/curse/fire/frost early to quickly guarantee damage :)

But yeah I've had plenty of run ins with fortress commanders who are only vulnerable to stealth especially online, since you can't stealth in the overlord arenas and people know it.

If all else fails you can also take over their own possy via other skills and make his own dudes chip him down.

@bisonhero: Not explicitly but if you ever run out of second chances in the very first intro area of the game you're gonna likely get saved by a soldier (there are a lot of them around). It gets rarer as the game goes on.

@tennmuerti: I know you can get elements from arrow explosions, but what else? Also this is the second fortress I did so don't have a fully explored skill tree as of yet (though I do have baseline and even spent 5 points in the video). I'm sure this happens frequently online at high defense (which is presumably when you stop playing online due to tedium/already getting the trophy) but I'm more curious how many people experienced this just as a random PvE occurrence, particularly on normal. Could mainline my way to spiders as one of the summons I suppose.

@tuxedocruise: I'm really interested in the mechanics of the early game/Minas Ithil; will probably spend a good deal of time dicking around with it when I do a Nemesis playthrough.

@fredchuckdave: There is also Elven Light. (plus another ability in the lategame but its spoilery). That's the general elemental stuff. Theres is some other garden variety nastiness scattered around the tree but a lot of it you can't Bring into the arena (like say a graug). Tho there are definitely commanders that can get you some ghouls or spiders too.

Speaking of random occurrences, I just ran into a tactician orc that was like yours arrow proof, was adaptable and also had a shield and was immune to about 3 elements including frost, and i think poison and curse, had that mega heal and basically adopted to everything. So I just said have it your way, summoned my own pet commander who had like over a dozen troops and just stood there watching then slowly beat that ass to death :P

Orcs ironically will easily get hit by other orcs even if they can block the main characters every attack.

The two first overlords I fought were like this. Not totally immune etc, but vulnerable to stealth and immune to all the easy tricks. Really soured the whole concept for me. Like my first guy was an archer with the poison floor traps, extra HP and adapted vault and execution immunity right away. Eventually got him with arrows, but I hadn't really invested in those skills yet so it was a complete drag.

@tennmuerti: Thanks. I do have an Olog with Olog Super Gang and so on; was trying to save him but if this happens with some regularity it might not be a bad idea to make him a bodyguard.

@ares42: Arrows are in plentiful supply for warlord fights so simple enough to just dump a bunch of headshots or teleport stabbys into them and then pick up some more; albeit that might just cause him to adapt quicker.

Let me tell you about Az-Agur Drake-Killer: an Epic Olog captain I once knew.

I recruited him as a young whelp in Sereghost. Big burly Olog Destroyer with beautiful full plate feral armor who'd glass the area at the faintest whiff of trouble. After sending him through the fighting pits and eventually making him my bodyguard we tore through the ranks until only one warchief and the overlord remained. The chief had one particularly nasty bodyguard but I was too occupied with other matters and so I sent Az-Agur after him. Well turns out I should've paid more attention to the tooltips because it turns the captain I'd ordered the hit on was Az's blood-brother. He reluctantly slew his friend but betrayed me immediately afterwards, yelling that I'd pushed him too far and forced him to kill his friend. He gained Iron Will (can't be recruited) so sensing a lost cause I sadly once of my best Orcs down.

Fast forward about 3 hours. I'm finishing off a captain somewhere and in walks a hulking half naked Olog, pale as frost, crawling with stitches and emblazoned with purple LEGENDARY badge on him. Az-Agur the Stitch was his new name and he had a bone to pick with me. I slammed Identify.

Arrow-proof, fire-proof, frost-proof. Vulnerable to stealth but also enraged by it. Vulnerable to beasts but also a beast slayer. Epic: Great Strength AND Olog-strength. Poison Warder. Fire weapon, fire mines, fire bombs and Sappers. Still has Iron Will.

Here's the kicker, whenever I lose the fight (which is about 50% of the time on a nearly max level character) he REFUSES to kill me. Just humiliates me and leaves the area. I've tried shaming him multiple times to try and remove Iron Will but the only effect is a really nasty hand print burned into his face and a look of utter confusion and meekness whenever I see him in the Army scren. At this point I'm considering letting him live out his days alone in peace purely on principle.

Oh my... these sound like launch-version Diablo 3 boss modifiers. As you climbed up the difficulty ranks of that game, bosses would go from having one unique trait to four... and in the initial release, they had some really BS combinations. You'd have stuff like a fast, arcane, rooting, invulnerable minions boss that would root you to the ground, have a mass of invulnerable hench-monsters swarm you (and they would often absorb blows aimed at their boss / trap you in their mass as yet another crowd control), spit out high damage arcane stuff at you (that you couldn't avoid because you were either rooted or trapped in an orgy of invulnerable minions), and even if you got out of the root and swarm... the boss would just root you again and the minions would catch up in no time. It got to the point where inferno-difficulty players would just run past these kinds of bosses; they weren't worth the effort considering that their reward was probably no better than that of an easier boss further on down the cave.

Took several patches to remove some of the cheesier combinations and tweak things to avoid impossibly obnoxious bosses. I wonder if Shadows of War will get the same treatment or if they view these invulnerable orcs as "working as intended" difficulty scaling. *shrug* It is leading to some memorable stories, but it also sounds potentially grating if the player winds up with a nigh-invulnerable psycho-orc that keeps popping back up to screw him or her over at regular intervals. Not to mention that thirty minute long, almost unwinnable fortress boss fights against creatures immune to almost everything except element X sounds rather... well, less than great.

@renegadedoppelganger: and THIS is why this game can really, really rule.

Just encountered a "neat" lvl 61 legendary in the fight pits:

• fireproof
• frostproof
• immune to curse
• arrowproof
• epic poison warder
• no weaknesses

This guy is gonna be my new warlord :D

@lazyimperial: Oh man, arcane fucking SUCKED when D3 first came out. I remember reading some of the patch notes when they eventually changed some of the boss combos and being ridiculously thrilled about it.

I also remember orcs like this from SoM, and they were obnoxious and made parts of the game completely not fun to play.

I put a majority of my points into stealth, so all overlords whoop my ass. Rip.