Fist Marcus And Isobel *Spoilers In Act II*

[JacobTheViking]

So. She can be zero'd from full hp to 0 hp very fast. I lost her three times at the Inn before finally managing to take out Marcus. I just want to know, what are some tips for keeping her alive without doing sneaky things before the fight?

[brendan_in_china]

Origineel geplaatst door Adam__86:

Unfortunately this is one of those fights that requires meta knowledge beforehand to plan

I think it's fine having encounters thrown at you when you're not ready. That's part of TT experience, and why you save best scrolls/arrows/potions.

And I think it's okay to lose this fight due to RNG, although that may well bork Karlach romance.

[Hawke]

Avoiding talking to her allows to avoid the battle. If the Harpers gave her the lantern, it is possible to steal without triggering the cut-scene. Otherwise, may RNG be with you.

[Aerohank]

Things that can help keep her alive:
-Alert Feat to win initiative. This will allow you incapacitate or kill Marcus before he gets a turn. In general the Alert feat is kinda overpowered and will help you massively in every fight.
- body block the Winged horrors. For example by casting a Spirit guardian or a Flaming Sphere in front of the doors.
- buff Isobell. For example by healing her whilst having the Hellriders Pride gauntles equiped. Or casting protection from evil or good on her.
- cast Sactuary on Isobell.

[big sword stoner]

I zeroed Marcus instead

[jonnin]

I formed a ring around her with my team. Marcus was able to hit her, but the danger is the stupid demons that paralyze her and then crit crit crit dead. The demons have to be blocked from reaching her, and your team isn't as big a wuss as she is, so your guys can take the beating even if one of them gets a paralysis on you.
Then you burn marcus with focus fire, he is not difficult, and then kill the demons as fast as you can while keeping them off her. They seem to lose interest in killing her when marcus is down, played/scripted as if he were commanding them and once gone, they don't know what to do.

If you do it wrong you get 2-3 demons on isobel on the 2nd round. If you do it right, you have dead marcus and 2-3 demons on your team, usually one of the demons is dead too.

[ahsanford]

Origineel geplaatst door Hawke:

Avoiding talking to her allows to avoid the battle. If the Harpers gave her the lantern, it is possible to steal without triggering the cut-scene. Otherwise, may RNG be with you.

Yeah. You can delay speaking to Isobel and you can run around a bit and level up to have a better chance, but I don't see this battle as particuarly 'high level is a must'. This isn't a battle you survive/outlast with the help of L4 spells or a lot more HP. This is a battle about making critical all-in decision on taking down Marcus -- that's the entire battle to me.

Much like with an infamous not-normal-at-all turn limited battle/event in Act III, this was a deliberate 'tough time-based quandary' the devs explicitly wanted to challenge you with. But what would have made this better would be a pause in the insanity and the narrator saying:

"From your linked minds, Marcus's goal is clear: he aims to take Isobel from this place. He must be stopped immediately or the protections of Last Light Village -- and all of its inhabitants -- will be lost."

Set the stage just a bit more about the immediacy of the threat and where it's coming from and I think a first-time player doesn't need to game the start of this battle.

- A

[ahsanford]

Origineel geplaatst door brendan_in_china:

Origineel geplaatst door Adam__86:

Unfortunately this is one of those fights that requires meta knowledge beforehand to plan

I think it's fine having encounters thrown at you when you're not ready. That's part of TT experience, and why you save best scrolls/arrows/potions.

And I think it's okay to lose this fight due to RNG, although that may well bork Karlach romance.

I feel that this battle -- much like the Grove decision to get Minthara (the OG evil way) -- simply has too high of a pain point price for failing if you do it fairly early after arriving at Last Light like Jaheira tells you to and the devs clearly wanted you to.

If you talk to Isobel fairly early and she gets taken:


Dammon RIP = his craftables and store RIP Karlach heart stuff RIP = Karlach romance (I think?) is RIP

Surviving Tiefs and Barcus at LL = RIP --> I'm honestly not sure if the remaining tiefs/gnomes at Moonrise have somewhere to go after you save them

Last Light and all Harpers (other than Jaheria) = RIP

Not sure Halsin can still reverse the Shadow Curse, can he? Does our sleeping Flaming Fist guy die?

Generally means you need to do all your commerce / resupply at Moonrise, which means you can't really aggro that place until end of Act II

So stacking all that up is a WHALE of a price to pay just for the RNG to smite you in that very challenging surprise battle.

- A

[Ironwu]

Origineel geplaatst door JacobTheViking:

Origineel geplaatst door Ironwu:

It really depends on your party and builds. Not much real advice can be given without that information.

That being said, the easiest way to keep her up is to have characters throw their best healing potions at her feet every so often, as needed. Ideally using your least useful in combat character to do it.

If you have a character that can Bless, be sure to cast it on her as one of the targets. It will help a lot.

In my two runs, I let Isobel tank Marcus while I take out the upstairs Flying Rats. Once they are gone, I deal with Marcus. Be aware that if you kill Marcus first, Isobel will immediately run of to fight the Flying Rats on her own. Not good.

Okay, so Tav is a Storm Sorcerer. Karlach and everyone else is default. The other two party members were Astarion and Shadowheart. Everyone's level 6.

Should be a good enough group. Be sure to have Shadowheart Bless Isobel and however many others you want to Bless. Proceed as outlined above. :)

[アンジェル]

Origineel geplaatst door insta†.Nefer:

the overlords of wisdom in this thread *sighs*

i found this fight incredible hard to save both her AND jaheira
what i did was close the 2 doors using magic lock, it only last 10 turns tho so you have to go into lap mode afer u cast it and than go into the cutscene otherwise the locks will been gone when the cutscene is over
u gona fight 1 horror and marcus
if you cant kill marcus fast enough i recommend potion of speed so oyu get 2 actions per turn that should pretty much do the trick

If you have issues in those situations, it is an indicator that something is not optimal in your party. Hence threadstarter has more success by switching a party member out to optimise their composition.

Also keep in mind: it is not necessary to keep those NPC alive.
It still become worthwhile stories with or without those NPCs.

[ahsanford]

Origineel geplaatst door アンジェル:

Also keep in mind: it is not necessary to keep those NPC alive.
It still become worthwhile stories with or without those NPCs.

+1. This is a classic battle to savescum a bit with, IMHO.

If things go sideways downstairs (away from Isobel), some good people on the ground floor -- some who have some skin in the game in some quests in Act III -- could get taken off the board. Barcus is down there. Rolan is down there. I want to say the Fist is holed up in their larger side room and are only in jeopardy if Isobel gets taken, and generally the folks outside rushing inside arrive too late to be in much jeopardy (it really is a 2-3 turn fight).

On my last tactican run, I downed Marcus immediately and Isobel was fine, but still one of the Tiefling (non-Harper) guards gets cut down. Thankfully it was a bit character who didn't have any cutscenes or dialogue in Act III.

- A

[Steffan]

Origineel geplaatst door JacobTheViking:

So. She can be zero'd from full hp to 0 hp very fast. I lost her three times at the Inn before finally managing to take out Marcus. I just want to know, what are some tips for keeping her alive without doing sneaky things before the fight?

If you follow the Mountain Pass way and the tieflings are dead, Marcus will vouch for you. Then you have a dialogue with him. My foolish bard attacked him and aggroed the whole inn against himself. However, on his turn, Marcus summoned the Winged horrors and the inn soldiers became my allies. As Isabel was far away, Marcus was never a threat to her. I saved here because I wanted to check something.

Out of curiosity, I reloaded and silenced Marcus in the same scenario. I killed him quickly (and nobody else) and escaped through the balcony w/o him summoning any of the horrors. Jaheira and Co were temporary hostile and were fine afterwars. Then I had a dialogue with Isobel where I explain to her that Marcus was the bad guy and we were all fine.

Otherwise, alert feat and high initiative and sanctuary help a lot.

P.S. If you fail the battle, you have a chance to recruit Jaheira earlier.
P.S.2 Level 6 is completely normal

[JacobTheViking]

Origineel geplaatst door steffan8:

Origineel geplaatst door JacobTheViking:

So. She can be zero'd from full hp to 0 hp very fast. I lost her three times at the Inn before finally managing to take out Marcus. I just want to know, what are some tips for keeping her alive without doing sneaky things before the fight?

If you follow the Mountain Pass way and the tieflings are dead, Marcus will vouch for you. Then you have a dialogue with him. My foolish bard attacked him and aggroed the whole inn against himself. However, on his turn, Marcus summoned the Winged horrors and the inn soldiers became my allies. As Isabel was far away, Marcus was never a threat to her. I saved here because I wanted to check something.

Out of curiosity, I reloaded and silenced Marcus in the same scenario. I killed him quickly and escaped through the balcony w/o him summoning any of the horrors. Jaheira and Co were temporary hostile and were fine afterwars. Then I had a dialogue with Isobel where I explain to her that Marcus was the bad guy and we were all fine.

Otherwise, alert feat and high initiative and sanctuary help a lot.

P.S. If you fail the battle, you have a chance to recruit Jaheira earlier.

It's nice being able to recruit Jaheira, but I really like Karlach and don't want her to suffer from Dammon's demise.

[Steffan]

Origineel geplaatst door JacobTheViking:

Origineel geplaatst door steffan8:

If you follow the Mountain Pass way and the tieflings are dead, Marcus will vouch for you. Then you have a dialogue with him. My foolish bard attacked him and aggroed the whole inn against himself. However, on his turn, Marcus summoned the Winged horrors and the inn soldiers became my allies. As Isabel was far away, Marcus was never a threat to her. I saved here because I wanted to check something.

Out of curiosity, I reloaded and silenced Marcus in the same scenario. I killed him quickly and escaped through the balcony w/o him summoning any of the horrors. Jaheira and Co were temporary hostile and were fine afterwars. Then I had a dialogue with Isobel where I explain to her that Marcus was the bad guy and we were all fine.

Otherwise, alert feat and high initiative and sanctuary help a lot.

P.S. If you fail the battle, you have a chance to recruit Jaheira earlier.

It's nice being able to recruit Jaheira, but I really like Karlach and don't want her to suffer from Dammon's demise.

I think the only thing that the absence of Dammon does is to affect her romance. Otherwise, it is irrelevant (to my knowledge). That being said, he only needs to apply two treatments on Karlach.

[ahsanford]

Origineel geplaatst door JacobTheViking:

Origineel geplaatst door steffan8:

P.S. If you fail the battle, you have a chance to recruit Jaheira earlier.

It's nice being able to recruit Jaheira, but I really like Karlach and don't want her to suffer from Dammon's demise.

It's not a choice of recruiting Jaheira OR saving Last Light. You can get Jaheira to join you even if you win the battle (the timing/circumstances just end up being a little different).

- A

[Jeronimosss]

Sanctuary + Feign Death (otherwise she'll lose Sanctuary when she attacks).