Claws of Kokytos, how to defeat it.

[Lingchih]

I've recently run into some castings of Claws of Kokytos on some of my commanders. My Sleepers went down pretty quickly, but I did have a Pan that lasted through three battles.

Any idea on how long it takes to escape? How many battles one has to win to get out?

Thanks

[Gregstrom]

There's a flat % chance per turn of escaping, and it's unrelated to whether you have battles. A couple of artefacts might help, and Ice Devils have a rather better chance of finding their way out.

[Quitti]

Indeed, Ice devils escape it quite easily, if not even a quaranteed 100% chance to escape. Tome of Lower Planes also gives you some more +% to escape at least, like Gregstorm said about artifacts. I wonder if boots of the planes do the same. Either way, Claws of Kokytos and the fire version are a very powerful anti-sc/thug tools, but they don't actually kill the unit, like your pan there :)

[Aethyr]

So, upon escape, where does the unit appear?

[Foodstamp]

A random province if I remember correctly. It seems like I had a commander end up in an enemy province after it escaped, although I may be mixing the effect up with getting lost in the void.

[chrispedersen]

Ice devils escape kokytos easily.
they don't fare nearly so well in tarterous.

Also yes, boots of the planes helps you escape.

[Frozen Lama]

a unit that escapes kokytos or inferno can even end up underwater and drown.

[Lingchih]

It seems like the main thing is to have the unit doing variable things. My Pan was hard-scripted to buff and then charm (for his initial battle, in the real world), which he did throughout his kokytos turns, since he could not be re-scripted.

If I had known he was going to Kokytos, I probably could have scripted him to withstand the battles there, or perhaps even in tarterous.

[Aleph]

I've used it in conjunction with Astral Corruption to continue to cast large non-Blood spells. I can tell you that the Doom Horrors survive just fine, and will eventually escape to wreak havoc elsewhere, although it's quite a different thing to have a permanent Doom Horror on the map than a temporary Doom Horror trying to assassinate your caster.

[LoloMo]

Wait a minute here, the assassin horror unit becomes a permanent unit after being sent to Kokytos? Interesting!

[thejeff]

I think it goes away next time it decides to attack someone, but I'm not sure of that.

[Aleph]

I suspect this is not true, but I'm not sure. I do know that I've found one sitting in a province after banishing it (was likely to actually have been fire version of the spell, but don't see that that makes a difference), which under your hypothesis would only have happened if he appeared in a totally empty province.

I think I successfully tried to Hellbind Heart it and it did disappear after a short time, but that may simply be a property of the creature... IIRC it's even in the text description of it, but I don't recall, it was a year+ ago. Will see if I can repeat it in my current Mictlan game.

[thejeff]

I meant the next time it appeared to assassinate a heavily Horror Marked target.
I would expect it to stay in the province and fight all comers until then. Though, as you say, there may also be a random disappearance property.