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Next, go into a fight prepared. Cast your protections before entering a fight. Breach shouldnt be affected by MR. It just doesnt remove all protections. Cast your insect plague on a warrior instead of a mage. The swarms will spread to the mages. I think u can even cast it on one of your own pary members and it still hits enemies. Use the silence spell.
Dont use your aoe spells for suprise attacks. I know it seems like a great idea, but it also get all the aggro on your mages. If anything, use crowd control for your suprise attacks. or summon monsters and send them in. Their mages will use up some of their best magics on the summoned monsters and not you.
Draw have special +5 equipment and weapons.
Im not going to make this huge post, because it could be, you just need to use real strategy and pause alot. The fights are not meant to be a breeze.
I have all my scripts set to "none"...they still charge in and act stupid.
the devs were bragging about how well they designed their "custom scripts" in the black pits...
yeah, i guess they turned the tables. in mose games the player exploits the computer a.i. in this, the computer exploits the weaknesses of the player a.i.
and in the black pits, you can't cast your protections before the fight starts, there is an anti magic field in the area outside the arena.
so you have to enter the arena with no protections and then somehow frantically cast them during the fight and theres only time to cast 1 spell before the enemies close in.
and i don't have to do anything for my mages to "draw the aggro". the enemies are programmed to ignore everyone and go for the mages.
and yet, they are not ignoring everyone, they seem to be attacking everyone all at once and killing them all.
in one fight, i actually took control of my mage and ran around the entire perimeter trying to get away from a minotaur while my 3 fighters were dogging its heels it completely ignored them trying to get at my mage, it took 10 minutes for my warriors to take him down.
none of my crowd control spells are orking, the enemies resist it every time.
I use level 6 chaos sphere, they just charge through it.
confusion, chaos? saving throw, saving throw...
hold monsters? saving throw.
horrid wilting works for 1 shot, and then my mages get killed.
if I cast the insect plague on a warrior, it spread to everyone except the mage.
sometimes, i have even see the enemy mage evade my insects, the insects will move slowly toward their mage and the mage will run away kiting the insects until they disappear, and still somehow fire spells off while its doing it.
I don't know what to do here.
this goes beyond "the fights are supposed to be challenging they aren't meant to be a breeze" this is downright "the computer is a cheating bastard" territory.
this is rage quit territory.
meanwhile i read online people bragging they solo it with a party of 1, with the difficulty slider all the way up and mods to "improve the computer a.i."
I don't get it.
unless, maybe I was supposed to import a character that beat throne of baal?
i mean, i seen a video of one guy doing it with a level 7beserker/lvl29 mage using the staff of magi to go invisible then casting time stop and then hitting himself with improved haste and going in there and slaughtering everyone.
but I shouldn't have to do that...
I was trying to do it with freshly made characters from the character screen.
it seems to imply you should be able to use freshly made characters for this campaign.
and i'm stuk here with +1 weapons, and non magical armors. against enemies with +5 gear?
I guess one mistake was making a kensai to bring in there...but that's the one that has -9 Ac when i put ghost armor on her, but the ac is meaningless anyway
I guess i'll just head back to the main campaign then.
p.s.
also, its the ios version, maybe something is broken in the ai scripts, i dunno. the inteface, while playable can sometimes be clunky, and difficult to tap on the thing you want to tap on, and when all the enemies and your pcs are crowded together its very difficult to see whats going on
so, i'm supposed to do "APASS"? i mean, there's only 2 scripts...
and if I do this, my guys aren't gonna rush into the ice storm my mages just cast to try and get at the enmeies and stuff? (that was fun, i see the enemies rushing at me and i cast an ice storm and the enemies stop short just outside the ice storm while my warriors rush into it and they take all the damage from my own ice storm while the enemies laugh at me while 2 guys sneak around and backstab my mages...)
well, BP2 IS a whole other AI and scripts from SOA and TOB. on the baldurs gate forums the dev claims they created custom ai scripts for the battles.
and yeah, i've leanred not to use any aoe damage spells in this game, the friendly fire is brutal, i do more damage to my own party than the enemies. maybe they did that because in tabletop D&D everyone inevitably always chooses the fireball spell and cone of cold and ice storm.
horrid wilting is the only Aoe damage spell that doesn't have friendly fire.
like I said earlier, the battles in black pits don't give you enough time to set up your spells.
as soon as the battle starts, the enemies are charging at you.
i've tried a strategy where i have my cleric and both of my mages summon a skeleton at the same time my druid summons animals, and i send all the summoned creatures to kill the enemies and the enmeies run right past them, my summoned creatures stand around like idots while the enemies slaughter my party.
there's obviously some game mechanic that i am unaware of.
when a game seems impossible there is usually something you are doing wrong. some move you can do that you did not know about.
I remember playing certain games on n64 or nes and failing because i was thrown into a part and i didn't know my character had the ability to block an incoming attack and I was supposed to do that but I didn't know i was supposed to do it or even that i could do it because it was some counterntiutive button combination on the controller like "up+R" or "select+down" or some ♥♥♥♥ like that.
or a game where you were supposed to jump over an obstacle but it doesnt look like you can jump over it or even that you can jum at all and you rage quit and then you look it up and your like "i was supposed to JUMP there?!", and back in the days of snes and n64, we didn't have gamefaqs.
i realize that they meant for the high level content to be all about the mage spells and the defenses and stuff and having counter spells to bring down their defenses.
I noticed every mage, the first thing they always do is stoneskin, many of them will then shadow walk or drink a potion or some other tactic to go invisible which is why the guides tell you to use true sight and breach.
the only reliable way to disrupt an enemy spellcaster is to use insect plague.
but truth be told, it's not really the mage that's giving me trouble in this drow battle, it's the 2 warriors and the archers. there's also a priest there thats somehow able to spam healing quicker than i can deal the damage, and they hit so hard with their attacks.
even that would not be so bad if my characters would listen to me. i tell them to attack the priest and they won't. or the one time i do get someone to go for the priest, he runs away and kites me while the archers pelt me with arrows o bolts or whatever. i'm wondering if its something with the pathfinding. like i tell all my guys to surround a guy but they cant figure out how to get there.
in many spots even in the Shadows of Amn, my party seems to get confused in tight passages and they get bottlenecked and then 2 of my guys will try to find another way around and split off from the rest of the group and run all the way around the opposide side of the map.
usually spamming the command a few times brings them all back together but..wow it's annoying.
and yet, other people seem to be able to play the game just fine, in fact i see people complaining it's not hard enough...
Even in Tabletop DnD, direct damage spells are usually worthless. the single targets usually don't do enough damage, and the aoes are all friendly fire and usually the corridors are too tight to really benefit, so summons, buffs/debuffs, CC, or instant kills are the order of the day.
Try exploring your lower level spells (a lot of people tend to focus too much on higher level spells when lower level could do the job just as well or even better). Command (1st level) on a cleric is one of the most brutal spells in the game if used at the right time, since a prone enemy is auto-hit by all attack (since they're most likely over 8 HD, they'll get a save (7 and under HD get no save), but it's a normal save, so still works pretty often). And blindness effects renders a ranged/magic using enemy helpless.
Anyway.....Umber hulks are 6 (maybe 7) HD. A single Death Spell instantly kills hostile creatures with 8 or fewer HD with no save in a good sized AoE. Glitterdust is also party friendly and blinds the enemies in a group for several rounds. Spook gets a stacking save penalty (max -6 at level 12+) and forces the enemy to run in fear for 4 rounds. For summons try Wyvern's Call, (if the enemy ignore the summons then the primary disadvantage of the wyverns...their squishiness, is averted and their ridiculously high damage melee and poison attacks can do their job without the micro normally required when enemies will attack the closest target).
-------------------------------------------
If you're having trouble reacting fast enough, just pause liberally. It's what you're supposed to be doing anyway. DnD is MADE for turn-based combat, not real-time, so you're gimping yourself a lot by not using it.
Though when you get more experienced wtih the game and it's hot-keys you start needing it less and less.
Basically, in tough battles, you can take your time and go at a slow, methodical pace, while in easy battles you can blow through them.
there is no "slow methodical pace" to these battles whether i pause or not, the enemies still get there in the same amound of battle rounds, they still get the same amount of attacks per round, pausing the game does not make my mages cast their spells any faster, it does not make the enemy mage cast spells any slower, it only lets me temporarily stop the game to assess the incoming doom.
it's very unforgiving, i'm losing for some reason and I don't know why.
most times, half my party is dead and i look and EVERY enemy says "uninjured"
I do see your advice and i value it.
the umber hulk battle was actually the easiest one because they don't use any cheesy tactics they just charge at you and throw confusion orbs, i have a cleric and a druid both with chaotic commands and i can cast it on my warriors and then the arriors distract them long enough for my mage to get a horrid wilting off.
i've been grinding the umber hulk battle trying to get more gold to buy a better equipment, but its slow going at 1000 gold per win and i need 19k for some of the items..
as for crowd control, i've been trying to use chaos sphere...chaos sphere sounds like an awesome spell on paper, but i dunno why it is so ineffective. it's an AoE field that only affacts the enemy and every round its suppoed to have crazy effects like paralyzing them and possibly killing them but it never seems to do anything..
i have death spell but it says it only works on HD8 or less, i suspect all these monsters are in the 12-20 range, seeing as my pure classes are level 18 and the multiclasses are average 13 just from the xp it gave me.
Like i often say, levels above 10 are actually pretty empty, with only casters really having incentive to keep leveling until after the 3 mil xp mark. So 8-12 HD creatures can very WELL be a credible threat to a 20+ character since those levels are mostly empty (and the 3 mill mark only matters because the High level abilities Bioware added are completely broken, and ridiculously overpowered (most of the time) compared what what they should've been).
Not to mention, Monsters work on a different scale then player races do, and while player levels are also HD, NPC HD vary widly in power level beyond the number. Illithid and Beholders are some of the most dangerous enemies in the game, but are only 8 HD, or 12 at maximum for Mother Orbs. (Ultrathid's are 10). Vampire's being mostly 8 to 10, though named ones can be as high as 14 (excluding Bodhi, who is MUCH higher then that). All Liches except Kangaxx are 11 HD (a 22+ cleric can kill them instantly with turn undead). Kangy is 14 and 20 respectively.
Try lower level spells. the cast time of a spell is roughly based on it's spell level (though you can see it's exact speed in the description). (most spells have a default cast speed of 1 per spell level...so first level spells take 1 time-part, and 8th level spells take 8 time parts. there are some exceptions of course.... Stoneskin is a 1 speed despite being 4th level, where as Ironskins is a 1 round cast (speed 10). Haste for instance, is only a 3 time-part and after being hasted you can kite the enemies till you find an opening (and gives all characters a +1 apr). The 5th lvl, Lower resistance can lower a targets spell resistance, and Pierce magic (8th) does the same thing, but also removes a spell protection. Magic missile, while not one of my favorites does hit multiple times and can usually hit 2-3 out of it's 5 bolts vs a drow without lower resistance. Melf's Minute Meteors completely ignores spell resistance and gives you quite a bit of damage you can throw at the enemy.
Also...it might not be flashy, but don't discount the humble Skull Trap. It's 3rd level (aka, fast casting) but is actually comparable to Horrid Wilting in damage, just in a smaller radius (and can be set up and lure enemies into it). Skull trap deals 1d6 per level (and unlike a lot of other spells, isn't soft-capped, so it really benefits from your levels all the way up to the hard-cap) while HW deals 1d8 per level....so depending on how things roll, ST can potentially do as much or more then HW, just overtime HW will tend to deal slightly more overall due to a higher potential maximum. (and unlike vanilla BG1/BG2, EE's Skull Trap has the same range as Fireball and triggers more quickly then it used to, making it much easier to use. Before EE, Skull Trap's range was actually lower then it's explosion radius, so you had to cast it and run to avoid setting it off and blowing yourself up.)
the spell Slow is also a 3 cast speed and has a -4 save penalty, making it stick really well if it gets past their magic resistance, which reduces speed by half, -4 thac0/AC penalty, reduces apr to 1, and sets their weapon speed to 10.
A round, 6 seconds, is split into 10 time-parts with regard to weapon or spell speed (a weapons speed determines when in the round it's attacks begin, and a spell's cast speed determines how long within 6 seconds it takes to cast successfully).
(this is a hold over from an earlier edition when rounds were 10 seconds, instead of 6).
and the next battle is vampires.
as soon as the battle stats, they charge at me.
theres only time to cast 1 spell, and they hit eveyone with dire charms and domination.
then 2 seconds later, they start doing some kind of time stop "shadow walk" one after another and while time is frozen and all i can do is sit and watch helpless as they back stb my mages to death., then theres a lead vampire that does time stop and then runs up and does finger of death at everyone one by one while i can only sit and watch helpless.
plus, the backstabbing shadowwalkers have "non detection" and they go invisible and i can't see them even with true sight, and they hit once then go invisible again, backstab, invis, backstab, invis,backstab,invis
i just barely did it on the easiest diffculty.
and it still took 3 tries.
you guys keep saying "cast spells, use trap, use skull traps, use breach, use crowd control, use the pause button"
the pause button does not speed casting time.
the pause button does not slow the enemies down.
they still reach you before you can get more than one spell off.
crowd control never works, the monsters ALWAYS succeed their saving throws, and I ALWAYS fail my saving throws.
my characters miss our attacks even with -8 thaco, and the enemies NEVER miss my characters even with -10 AC
the next battle looks like a gang of warriors led by an "anti-paladin" whatever that is.
this is too much.
rage quit...
yeah i watched some guy fight the drow and the way he breezed through it. i tried to do it exactly the same way. i dunno how he did it so easy, he's like calmly reacting to differing things, and using magic missiles and killing the drow easily and he's getting hit but taking very little damage and has more than enough time to cast a healing spell, and yet when i did it, they dealt 180 damage to my best fighter in 3 seconds flat.
maybe he had the difficulty turned all the way down, i dunno.
i did noticed that the mage casts mordenkainens sword and i had not realized how OP that thing was, as it's immune to all weapons and only magic missile works on it.
- Use a few web spells between the enemy and you.
- Use Dispel Magic/remove Magic (An Inquisitor is a Godsend) to stop enemies ignoring Web.
- Use pre-prepared spells like Sequencer/Contingency (you can cast spells in the sleeping area) to get more spells off before the enemy attacks. Example are 2x web+greater malison, 2x spider summon + haste, 3x animate death and so on (there are a lots of good guides regarding combinations). Mage/Cleric have some great combinations (protection from evil 10r + chant + xxx).
- Greater Malison helps a lot in combination with Web/Slow/Glitterdust/and so on.
- Use Summons a lot! And do it in the beginning of the battle.
- If You have a Thief, make a trap in your own area at the start of the battle and try to make some at the end of the battle before it is over...traps stay in the area for the next battle in that area type.
By comparision, the final boss fight is extremely easy (none of the enemies are nearly as nasty, you get a very powerful scroll and you'll finally have the robes of cheese).