Insect Plague(Already answered)

[Hjelpmooglene]

Do I ever have to worry about spellcasters resisting it or will it prevent them from spellcasting even with protective magic in place?

[Trent Steel]

Spellcasters can avoid it if they cast Spell Immunity: Conjuration or Spell Turning (if you target them directly). Also 100% magic resistance will stop it.

[Hjelpmooglene]

Great, just when I thought I might have found a way to counter pesky mages. They can counter it with another spell. :\

[Soft Lockpick]

Just get used to keeping remove magic on hand.

[Hjelpmooglene]

I want to keep at least 3 level 3 spell slots open for DPS spells for Aerie. So it might be awhile before I can use remove magic.

[Soft Lockpick]

DPS does you little good if your opponent has immunity to the damage.

Aerie is a split caster, and should be used for support really. Buffs are more her thing than anything else. And spells that have impact regardless of caster level/reach maximum impact earlier.

Really, the truth of the matter is you'll always be better off if you keep strong dispel options on hand. That IS how you counter mages. A weapon with dispel on hit with one of your fighter types, and lots of remove magics on your mages. That's if you don't go full on cheese and project image into infinite power anyway.

[Improper Use]

Project image, infinite power. How's this work?

[Hjelpmooglene]

So far it's been working fine the way I've been going. However I will use pierce magic whenever Aerie reaches that level.

[Improper Use]

Sounds like a political metaphor and not a gameplay dynamic.

Is it a gameplay method? How does it work?

[Soft Lockpick]

Just a couple of basic explanations found with the power of google:

Summoning
- Cast Chain Contingency, fill it with three Project Images, set it to fire "When Helpless." Then cast a Project Image, which causes your caster to be come immobilised, which fires the contingency, giving you three more Projected Images, for a total of our. Now you have four copies of yourself, each with its own copy of all your spells. And each Projected Image ignores the limit on summoned creature, so each one can cast up to six Planetars, for a total of 24 Planetars if you use all your Projected Images. Almost nothing in the game has a snowball's chance in hell of dealing with that.

Magic version of trapping the boss
- After failing to defeat the final guardians on the fifth level of Watcher's Keep, I decided to come up with the ultimate cheese tactic: Skull Traps. Loads and loads of Skull Traps. I had Edwin memorise four Project Images and six Skull Traps, so I was able to lay down thirty Skull Traps before having to rest. I laid down around 60 Skull Traps where each of the guardians spawns, so by the time I was done there were literally hundreds of Skull Traps floating about. So I opened the final seal, watched as the final guardians spawned, and then laughed as they immediately fell to all the exploding skulls. The last one to fall was the drow, since he had something like 98% magic resistance, but even that wasn't enough to save him. Then I had to summon up a golem to clear the remaining Skull Traps.

[danconnors]

Funny, I once killed that demon without summoning anything.

[Soft Lockpick]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Funny, I once killed that demon without summoning anything.

Irrelevant "you suck" attempt (that was a copy and paste from google) and a bad brag at the same time. This isn't a conversation about what someone had to do to get something done. He asked what some cheesy uses for project image were. Go back under your bridge dan.

[Improper Use]

Now that was something I did not know. I think I'll give it a go. Cheers.

[Tanaka Taikikku]

Worth noting regarding, in the vanilla version of BG2 images and simulacra could use quick item slots without expending them.

Save a scroll of time stop and have your image cast it from the quickbar effectivly gave you a infinite cast potential from a single scroll, so think twice before scribing your powerful scrolls. Same goes with wands. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in EE however.

Also regarding insects (I assume we're discussing the lvl 5 druid spell). They are incredibly powerful for dealing with mages throughout the game, since the potential counter to it is something very few if any mages have in their AI script.

A druid with lvl 5 spells make spellcasters really easy for this particular reason. Personally I don't memorize it since I feel it is overpowered, but feel free to if it fits your style.

[Tanaka Taikikku]

Regarding simulacra, if you are a rogue/mage with UAI or a fighter/mage there is a helmet from a vendor in adventures mart that gives you one simulacra per day.... cheese away.

[Hjelpmooglene]

Originally posted by AIREN 愛人 （*＾ω＾*）:

Also regarding insects (I assume we're discussing the lvl 5 druid spell). They are incredibly powerful for dealing with mages throughout the game, since the potential counter to it is something very few if any mages have in their AI script.

A druid with lvl 5 spells make spellcasters really easy for this particular reason. Personally I don't memorize it since I feel it is overpowered, but feel free to if it fits your style.

Thanks for the answer.

Regarding strategies, I'd rather figure things out on my own. A friend of mine has mentioned using wands with clones of your character. I'm not sure I want to do something like that for this playthrough. Also, the enhanced edition has made quite a few changes so I'm unsure what will work and what will not work.