The Wierd Werewolf Island

[danconnors]

The two Loup Garou at tthe end were relatively easy to kill. But the greater wolfwere on the ship was almost impossible. I ended up putting the game on the easiest mode to kill it. Neither of Drizzt's +3 scimitar's was effective against the beast. Exploding arrows fired point blank at it had no effect.

It healed itself so fast it's hard to say what affected it. The main character eventually got to it with a berserk attack, using the silver dagger (that he was not proficient with) backed up with "Call Upon Divine Strength" (his special Bhaal power). But that was only on the easiest difficulty setting. It seemed on normal mode the creature was regaining at least 10 hit points per second, and was unaffected by almost everything.

[////]

i tried everything what i could... only 6 fire breath potions at the same time worked. yep, he's a little... overpowered.

[DnD Detective]

Its not even that he is overpowered. Its that the encounter requires you to only use certain weapons. Which you aren't even told beforehand (which is particularly bad given that you are on an island).

Its because of that frankly I think this encounter causes a lot more grief than it should. It was not well thought out.

Fire breath potions work though. Casting Slow also can make the encounter a lot easier.

[danconnors]

The problem is that he regains lost hit points so fast that even damaging attacks are useless, unless they're followed up immediately by more damaging attacks. The game's propensity to suddenly have all your characters rolling ones and twos, missing many times in a row (against all the laws of chance), negates the occasional hit.

This thing was regaining at LEAST 10 hit points per second, probably more. I saw it go from badly injured to undamaged in just a few seconds of my people rolling back to back low numbers.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

yeah, it needs cold iron weapons (which the game does NOT TELL YOU which weapons are which), of which there's only a tiny handful (Balduran's Sword, Balduran's Butter knife, Bastard sword +1/+3 vs shapeshifters, another bastard sword i can't remember the name of (has passive poison immunity as well), and the not-implemented Root of the Problem (the only blunt cold iron weapon) (Requires on of the cut content restoration mods to add it). You're much better off sticking with spells.

[Revii Lagoon]

You need silver weapons, a few can be found around the island, one in the area with the boss. My strategy was much more entertaining, I only had one silver weapon, so I just polymorphed him into a squirrel and just went to town.

[DnD Detective]

Originally posted by danconnors:

The problem is that he regains lost hit points so fast that even damaging attacks are useless, unless they're followed up immediately by more damaging attacks. The game's propensity to suddenly have all your characters rolling ones and twos, missing many times in a row (against all the laws of chance), negates the occasional hit.

This thing was regaining at LEAST 10 hit points per second, probably more. I saw it go from badly injured to undamaged in just a few seconds of my people rolling back to back low numbers.

He has 66 total hitpoints. However he regenerates at a rate of 5hp per second. So in one round he heals almost 50% of his health. That is why it he is going from badly injured to undamaged. All it takes is for your characters to miss in one round of attacks and he will heal a big chunk of health.

[danconnors]

Have your game list to hit rolls with the battle script. You'd be amazed how the laws of chance are suddenly repealed in a "Boss Fight". There is no way random chance can account for the abysmal rolling of your characters. I had one character with a THAC0 of 3, one with a 4, and one with a 5. All 3 had 2 attack rolls per round. They were going several rounds in a row with NONE of the 3 hitting.

There are greater wolfweres in Baldur's Gate 2. They are much easier to hit than the one on the Werewolf Island. I believe any +3 weapon or better will hit them.

[Whirl]

Not only do fire spells still work, Magic Missiles are great if you've got multiples and scrolls.

There's another of those swords in the box behind him. During the battle, have your thief sneak around and bust it out.

[danconnors]

To be fair, it's easier and quicker than Durlag's Tower. I've never finished that one. Got worn out by too many booby traps and puzzles, especially puzzles.

[DnD Detective]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Have your game list to hit rolls with the battle script. You'd be amazed how the laws of chance are suddenly repealed in a "Boss Fight". There is no way random chance can account for the abysmal rolling of your characters. I had one character with a THAC0 of 3, one with a 4, and one with a 5. All 3 had 2 attack rolls per round. They were going several rounds in a row with NONE of the 3 hitting.

There are greater wolfweres in Baldur's Gate 2. They are much easier to hit than the one on the Werewolf Island. I believe any +3 weapon or better will hit them.

The rules aren't suddenly repealed. There is no mechanism in the game that makes something a boss fight or not. Its just fighting a creature file, just happens to be a particularly powerful one in this case. I believe due to his dexterity bonus he's got an effective AC of -2.

The BG2 Greater Wolfwere's are slightly easier to hit (they have an effective AC of 0) and you only need to have +1 weapons to hit them (there is no other weapon requirement). However, they also have 50% magic resistance (the one you encounter on the ship doesn't have any). So there is a tradeoff.

[danconnors]

Statistically, each of my 3 top fighters had less than a 10% chance of missing both attacks in a round against the beast. The odds of all 3 missing both attacks in a round were around one in a thousand. The odds of all 3 going two rounds without a hit were about one in a million.

Like I said, the laws of chance are repealed for these fights. It's as though these lousy rolls are scripted into the game, to make the creature appear that much more formidable, maybe.

[DnD Detective]

If you were experiencing problems with the accuracy of your characters then it would be occurring at any encounter in the game. Like I said there isn't any boss scripting that repeals how Thac0 or AC works. The only scripting that greater wolfwere has once he's transformed is a generic (frequently used) WTASIGHT.BCS file. Which consists of the following

(This one just covers what happens if he is in panic)
IF
StateCheck(Myself,STATE_PANIC)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
RandomWalkContinuous()
END


(this covers what he does if he hears something near him. Its not applicable here).
IF
Heard([ANYONE],111)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
MoveToObject(NearestEnemyOf(Myself))
END


(this one isn't applicable since he starts out as an enemy of yours)
IF
AttackedBy([GOODCUTOFF],DEFAULT)
!Allegiance(Myself,ENEMY)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
Enemy()
END


(these last three just let him re-evaluate targets and move within range to his closest enemy)
IF
See(NearestEnemyOf(Myself))
InWeaponRange(LastSeenBy(Myself))
THEN
RESPONSE #100
AttackReevaluate(NearestEnemyOf(Myself),30)
END


IF
AttackedBy([ANYONE],DEFAULT)
InWeaponRange(LastAttackerOf(Myself))
THEN
RESPONSE #100
Attack(LastAttackerOf(Myself))
END

IF
See(NearestEnemyOf(Myself))
THEN
RESPONSE #100
MoveToObject(LastSeenBy(Myself))
END

That is it. After that he is just a creature file with some items that give him regeneration and make him immune to most weapons.

The other thing is of course that the game uses fake animation attacks. You can turn them off in BG2EE and IWDEE, but I believe that feature hasn't yet made it to BGEE. Basically you'll swing but a hit won't register. It won't actually say the word "miss" in the UI either. It just visually makes it look like you are missing. The consequence of this feature (its been present since way back in BG1) is that you may end up looking like you are swinging 3-4 times in a 6 second period but only two of those (if you have 2APR) actually count for anything.

[Larry]

Yeah, the counter is essentially Baldur's Gate 2 strategy: Specific weapons.

You get a pretty nice +1 Bastard Sword that deals +2 or +3 to lycanthropes. You get it before the actual boss and then you have the silver dagger too and I think you can get silver arrows... not too sure on that however.

It was pretty obvious I though when I did it...

[danconnors]

Read your attack rolls as the fight takes place. I've done this on numerous boss fights in this series, and it's consistant. Your best fighters roll a series of attack numbers that are impossibly low (by the laws of chance). The boss creature is missed consistently by fighters that SHOULD NOT be missing.

This happens in virtually EVERY boss fight. It cannot be happening by chance, because it happens far too often to be explained as coincidence. The parameters used to determine the "random" dice rolls may, in fact, not lead to random numbers at all. They almost certainly don't. I have rolled so called, random numbers, on many computer programs, and have discovered that the generator will roll the exact same "random number" time after time.

Something like that is going on here. I have checked the attack rolls on chance encounters and on major encounters. There is a different set of numbers generated for each type of encounter. Normal attack rolls occur for normal fights, abnormally low numbers occur for major encounters.

[mike_hanna211]

I agree with danconnors... so I don't rely too heavily on my fighters in this battle. At least, not until they are buffed.

Typically, I will have these spells cast:
Jaheira
- Bless
- Barkskin (on the main tank, usually CHARNAME or Khalid)
- Defensive Harmony
- Strength of One (on herself)

Dynaheir
- Glitterdust
- Slow
- Haste
- Magic Missile and other direct damage spells, no AoE; Flame Arrow, Melf's Acid Arrow, etc.

Khalid, Minsc, and CHARNAME
- drink potions of giant strength and Potions of Defense on all but the person who got Barkskin.

Usually works, but sometimes you get really bad rolls and a person goes down before all the spells get thrown out.