Tips for final fencing duel?

[corsair91]

Tips for final fencing duel?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/3920/discussions/0/3820796140095654362/

Fencing Montalban Thread Summary


Tom
...
He's bloody quick and never seems to make a false move. As you already know, the rapier's the best choice (fastest for thrusting), but as you age in the game you slow down, and as far as I know there's no good solution for it at that point except to try to improve your reaction time during the bout. Take on all the sword battles you come across and concentrate on staying on the attack and eliminating waste motion. Try to get the pointy end into him whenever he's open, to slow him down.

You probably know that the game does an automatic save (arrival.pirates_savegame) when you arrive at a port. Land at the English ports and find a sword fight against an English boyfriend who uses a rapier. Fight him, reload that save game, fight him again, rinse and repeat until you're demolishing him before he can even blink.

In a new game, select the fencing skill, get all the fencing buffs, and try to get to him while you're young if you can manage it



Sheap

Everything that benefits your fencing ability will help:
* Being younger (although 33 is not too old by any means)
* Having the fencing special skill (better when you are younger) or the medicine skill (better when you are older). These are the best skills to take anyway, but of course you can only pick your skill at the start of the game.
* Having the Inca mystic salve (keeps your health from deteriorating as much with age). This and the similar but less effective medicinal herbs are the only things you can do to keep your health up. Nothing else matters: winning or losing fights, getting hit in combat, being marooned or imprisoned, etc etc. Fortunately it does not matter when you get them, as long as you have them at the time, you get the full benefit.
* Having the perfectly balanced swords (faster attacks)
* Having the silk fencing shirt (faster defense moves)
* Having the metal cuirass (sometimes his attacks are deflected)

The pistols do not matter very much as they mostly make fencing duels faster, not easier.

Strategy: This sword fight is not like a typical ship boarding sword fight. Be prepared for a long duel, which is fine, because unlike a boarding action, nothing is killing your sailors while you fight. If you have fought a beautiful daughter's suitor, it's a more like that, except harder.

Take the cutlass, or at most the longsword. It's very hard to defeat Montalban with the rapier. The rapier is great for chopping up hapless trading ship captains but it's useless against Montalban, who is just too fast. The cutlass will make it so you can at least defend yourself.

Montalban can attack you pretty much at will, and it's all you can do to defend yourself. He also recovers so quickly that even if you dodge or parry his attack you do not usually have time to counter-attack. And you will almost never be able to simply attack him and land a hit - he will defend. You can't even taunt him.

Instead what you have to do is wait for him to attack, defend the attack using the optimal counter-move, and then when you would normally counter-attack, instead you have enough time to get in a taunt. Two or three taunts will slow him down enough that you can fight him normally. Unfortunately, taunts wear off over time, they also become ineffective if you get hit, and Montalban is smart enough to taunt you back, which will also work against you. All of these will force you to taunt more to keep him at a manageable speed. You have to balance between taunting to slow him down, and hitting him so you can eventually win the fight.

It's much harder than the usual swordfight, but Montalban is basically the game's end boss, so it should be!



Marcelis_Wallace

I always used the cutlass and played defensive with counterattacks.
Learn the animations for a top, bottom and middle attack and react.
The faster enemies did require thrusts but sometimes low/high attacks would work.



mrpopoo:
i read one guide that pretty much said thrust only in all fights. dont try and block, thrust. always thrust.

unca.alby

That won't work with Montalban. He not only attacks with his sword, he jumps forward at you, effectively deflecting your thrust an giving you a good distracting scare. He might not actually stab you, but he'll push you back which has the same effect.

You must practice the blocking techniques. If you're fast enough and use the right block at the right time, they will work, and he does go off-balance momentarily. But only momentarily.

Or, like somebody else mentioned somewhere, just forget about him. If you beat him, you'll get $100K gold and every specialist, but usually by the time you meet him, you should already have more than half million and already have all the specialists.

Oh, and he'll become your cabin boy, which honestly doesn't seem to have much advantage. It would be nice if the game had a few occasions where you could order him around, but it doesn't. After beating him, you will never see him again. The only serious up-side to beating him is to score the "Beat the Big Bad" points in the final tally.


daveschuller

try to dodge his attacks and make him dizzy then go for bigger attacks. also buy master-crafted swords and loose fitting shirts. (they can stack). also just have the fencing skill