Gnoll Fight - Need to vent

[Mr. Biggles]

Stuck at the infamous Gnoll fight in act 1 on Tactician. Not sure if it's bugs, or what, but the fight seems nearly impossible at this point. I've read that you can talk Flind into attacking the other gnolls, but I don't get a dialogue triggered after multiple attempts. Here's what I've tried with the fight:

Straight up fight on the high ground outside cave: High ground advantage is negligible against the multi-attack. My characters still get dropped after two multi-attacks. Meanwhile, most of my attacks only have a 40-60% chance of success. Casting anything that requires concentration is pointless - one multi-attack against that character and concentration is gone.

Boulder trap inside the cave: I painstakingly set up my characters inside the cave to try to lure the enemies into the boulder. Painstaking, because jumping over the trip wires still triggered them about 70% of the time, seems like a bug. After many reloads and quicksaves, I finally get them into position and then had a character drink a speed potion and start the fight to lure them down below. Most of the gnolls just went to stand above the cave then turned around to go through the entrance, seeming to sense the trap. So that didn't work. I've tried bottlenecking them at the entrance with surface spells but it does little good. The gnolls just shoot my characters through the cave walls.

Other issues: I swear sometimes a character's turn will get skipped. I had Lae'zel enter the fight late by throwing bombs at the gnolls. They each got to mult-attack her twice before her next turn. Managed to get a hold off on the boss. He randomly breaks the hold and gets his next turn as if nothing had happened. These seem like bugs as well. I've now wasted several hours on the fight and almost feel like deleting the game. And I don't want to have to drop the difficulty - I shouldn't have to.

[buttawise]

Starting in the Cave is the worst possible place to start on Tactician.

[Landomart]

Have you tried barrel cheese with the firewine barrels in the cave?

[Cryptic]

this fight was my absolute favorite honestly. my friend and i beat it on our first try but holy hell it was tough.

we had 1 melee character and our mage go up on the right on the hill and sneak up. then 1 melee character and our archer stay on the lower ground on the left. the archer was up on some rocks and the melee character blocked entry from enemies

[Damphair]

What level are you? Try hold person on the Flind, then have someone like Karlach or Lae'zel take it out with 100% crits in 1-2 rounds. Cloak of daggers is also a good spell to throw at the cave entrance, the archers and lesser gnolls will just run through it. From here on you can individually snipe the leftovers or just put pressure with throwing bombs and stuff

[lar unuruur]

i think you have to rest to have power of absolute. plus use sneak approach to boss. never start this fight from inside cave.
approach boss with one character on sneak mode, others should stand preferably on high ground splitted by "g". now, thing is, you have start fight being close to boss with sneaking character(get out of seak on that character turn), so on boss turn it approach that character and cutscene starts. make her fight her own, then eat herself.
encounter over.

[Phero]

It's a really tough fight, those archers hit HARD. Still, both times I tried it, Flind initiated dialogue. (even after the fight had started in one instance)

[jonnin]

circle around behind them. They all face the cave, and you come up with just enough not-red area to sneak up on the flind and open up a surprise round on them (her only, really) which hopefully puts her in a world of hurt before they can react. If you can faery fire the flind, she goes down really fast.

I don't understand the talk options well. I always get one to send them at the cave to kill the guys there, which closes off access to the traders so you may not want it and it may also break oaths if you have a pally (not sure on this). But I have not seen one to send her at the other gnolls since way back in EA. If it is still there, triggering it is a mystery to me.

If you send her to the cave to kill the guys, that ends combat so you can heal up and ambush again. She keeps her injuries (always? usually?) from the first attack.

on tactician you probably need to blind/darkness/something deal with the 3 shots per round archers. Those guys can hurt you, and of course the flind is nasty too if it lives long enough to get to you.

[Wedge]

drop a cloud of daggers at the cave entrance or some other aoe. sit at the top of the ladder and throw them off if they try to come up, block their paths with garbage crates barrels wtf ever, your squishy characters run out from behind the wall at top of ladder shoot hide, hyena ai is bad if not broken and they usually don't even bother trying to climb up, you'll want to be rested for the fight beyond that it's not that hard.

[Finkle and Einhorn]

I'm on balanced but when i did this I had killed two gnolls already when suddenly there was a dialog scene with the leader. I had snuck up on them from the hill next to the cave and was prepared to kill them all but after the dialog i didn't have to do anything.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

the important thing is murdering the archers before they get to really dish out damage. Use special arrows and spells - scrolls if you have to - just don't let them do their thing unopposed. If you can do that - Flind is annoying, but she won't overwhelm you by herself.

i did the fight from the top of the cliff on the outside. there's limited space for their melee types and a lot of potential for Thunderwaving gnolls back down the cliff.

i also used the Vision of the Absolute spear, it doesnt get a lot of damage but the Blind effect help keeps the gnoll damage down. If you can't stop the archers from enraging, consider using Frighten spells - or even Shovel the quasit - to give their attacks disadvantage.

[Moffin Bovin]

i don't know what triggers the ability to talk to flind. I've only done it once in one game and about half a dozen other games i never get the option.

[Acronen]

I embraced the Larian cheese for the fight. Threw some water on the ground (from up on the cliff outside the cave), shot it with a ray of frost, and watched the gnolls slip n slide their way to getting smashed by me from range.

[Necrof]

My imp triggered the scripts while exploring the map and when my party arrived - two zhents were dead and gnolls were all in the cave. I started a fight by throwing alchemical fire and then just savescummed all the attacks. I hate D'n'D mechanics in ALL D'n'D games. It's eather suffer or abuse the system. After a while I stopped playing on tactician because PC cheating with +2 on dice rolls have nothing to do with any tactics. It's just stupid hardmode.

[Chrystal]

You can't talk to the leader BEFORE combat.

I've done that fight multiple times, when combat starts, they will start dialogue with whoever they try to attack first on their turn.

[Unknown Sender]

Use a scroll/spell of darkness It will shield you from arrows and they wont willingly enter the smoke. You can pop out and hit and go back, cause while in the dark they dont get an opportunity attack. Just dont stand in the edge of the dark where they wont get blinded to hit you.

They can shoot over the darkness either, so have your guy who concentrate on it to be passive and hidden while inside.