These Stupid Gnolls! Act 1

[Murgen]

These gnolls are just ridiculous with their multi-attacks. The first group of newborn gnolls was bad, but the other group up at the cave entrance is even worse!

I haven't had really any trouble with the combat until now (playing on the normal difficulty level), but then these gnolls show up and just multi-attack my level 3 party into oblivion. So I come back level 4. Same result. I turn off karmic dice after finding out it helps monsters as well as you to land hits. Same result. The gnoll flind leader has hit for 55 points of damage with one attack!!! That's instant death for a 4th level character.

I'm not asking for tactics, cheesy or otherwise, to beat this fight. I just wanted to vent my frustrations. Up until now combat has been balanced and fair, but this gnoll fight is ridiculous. Anyone else feel the same way?

[GloriousZote]

With a bad team they can be quite annoying, but generally they're not that big of a deal, my tactic tends to be "nuke everything down", and, well, that's a pretty good tactic in this fight.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Larian sucks at designimg combat.

[pezenwever]

Honestly, I had no issues with them on both normal and tactician mode. The ones at the cave have a leader who's open to tadpole suggestion.

[Geeves]

The Gnoll fight is one of those difficulty gates that, assuming you have not powerbuilt your party, nudges you in the direction of "stop trying to face-tank every combat".

Basically there several routes into that cave that make the fight more advantageous to the party, or just let you skip it altogether. You can also just straight force the leader to fight the other Gnolls.

The fight is balanced towards thinking before engaging.

[Mike Garrison]

Gnoll fight is one of the hardest in the game, considering the level you might be at when you reach it. They also, annoyingly, give the gnolls height advantage.

I just got a total party wipe from the first set of gnolls on balanced, but managed to (barely) beat them upon reload. However, I was underleveled (only level 3) and I knew it was going to be really hard before I tried it.

I think it is fine for a game like this to have a few fights much harder than the others in the same area, because you can always just avoid the fight, level up more, then come back to it.

[Hexoplex]

The easiest time I had with this fight was getting into the cave near the leader and funneling them into the mouth of the cave and tossing out Spike Growth, Cloud of daggers, and a Fog spell.

If that's not an option, try to have them gather on the small paths and AoE them down with things like Alchemist's Fire or grease and fire bolts.

[IRMcG]

Tadpole voodoo the Gnoll leader and she kills half of them for you. Get on top of the ridge and you can push or stab any of them that try to snipe. Dump AOE/control spells and grenades on them and most of them don't get to shoot back. Lots of ways to deal with them.

[Geeves]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Gnoll fight is one of the hardest in the game, considering the level you might be at when you reach it.

Except it isn't though.

Enter the cave from an alternate route, use tadpole to force leader to fight the other gnolls. Perfectly doable at level 1.

Even if you don't want to enter the cave, there are other routes that have you outside the cave but at a height advantage on the Gnolls. Explore the map a little.

Heck I haven't tried this tactic, but I'm pretty sure it would work to solo the fight by casting sanctuary on yourself, initiate combat, and do absolutely nothing while the leader slaughters its friends since I'm pretty sure the flail it carries forces it to attack allies if it can't hit an *enemy*.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by Hexoplex:

The easiest time I had with this fight was getting into the cave near the leader and funneling them into the mouth of the cave and tossing out Spike Growth, Cloud of daggers, and a Fog spell.

lol that is exactly what I did in my current savegame where I tried the druid and it completely destroyed them. Spike growth is so good it´s insane.

[GloriousZote]

BTW OP, you have Shadowheart with you?
Trickery clerics ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suck ass, switch her out or change her class/spec

[Moonbane]

Tip, start with searching for the source of the parasite instead of wasting the tadpole on killing the men in the cave. Then you get the option to make her kill her pack with a dc2 check.

Then you have to pass two wisdom checks to make her suicide after she pops all the gnolls. Recommend talking to the Flind with Shadowheart for that reason.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by Geeves:

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Gnoll fight is one of the hardest in the game, considering the level you might be at when you reach it.

Except it isn't though.

Enter the cave from an alternate route, use tadpole to force leader to fight the other gnolls. Perfectly doable at level 1.

I would love to see you post video of yourself winning that fight at level 1. Drop a link and I'll watch it.

[Moonbane]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Originally posted by Geeves:

Except it isn't though.

Enter the cave from an alternate route, use tadpole to force leader to fight the other gnolls. Perfectly doable at level 1.

I would love to see you post video of yourself winning that fight at level 1. Drop a link and I'll watch it.

You get out of the nautiloid at lvl 2.

[Hexoplex]

Originally posted by Moonbane:

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

I would love to see you post video of yourself winning that fight at level 1. Drop a link and I'll watch it.

You get out of the nautiloid at lvl 2.

Only if you apply the level.

[parent child bowl]

It's not a hard fight. It just teaches you to read.