I had to play that battle probably 15 times. Managed to cheese it by spamming AOE wands. The problem in that battle is that you’re attacked by 2 fireballs right away. But this last battle is crazy. I defused all the random traps that web you, and you still have Sarevok, another huge fighter, and 2 super wizards with a whole bunch of defense spells.
You guys really need to hear about this one weird trick
Murderspawn hate it!
Just fired up my save. Here’s Khalid, everyone else is buffed about the same.
And about 5s into the combat.
The fight is tough but doable, but it is not the hardest fight in the game. That honor goes to that demon summoning fight at the end of the Tales of the Sword Coast quest line.
I actually like this fight.
If you have 2 mages like you should, I would have them spam fireball under haste into Sarevok and his troupe. Use wands too. They’re are a ton in the game. Web spell is good. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice some of your party to lock down some of the melee so your mages can really light up the room. Target the enemy mages first as Sarevok and that Hobgoblin can be given the run-around.
I always avoid walking over the Baldur’s Gate skull icon on the floor because I never bother to disarm the traps.
I cheesed the Sarevok fight by pulling him outside of the building. I think I was able to take care of his group one person at a time this way. Hey, I tried playing it fair several times before resorting to this tactic!
One of my issues is that my dominant strategy so far, which has been web/grease/fireball wand, doesn’t really work here. Sarevok and his gang seems to have high fire resistance and freedom – all 3 spells have minimal effect on them. One of his wizards also has explosive arrows that are essentially endless fireballs, so even if you mess up his spells, he can dish out serious damage.
So far the only strategy that worked for me given what I have is to wand-of-holding Sarevok until it sticks (takes many attempts), then placing a bruiser on each of the mages. I got mutual destruction as the mages died, but so did my guys. Eventually only Sarevok was left, still being held. After dispatching all the other goons, the spell expired though, and Sarevok proceeded to destroy Khalid and then me (Minsc was busy confusedly cleaning the cobwebs on a distant wall). Sarevok himself is brutal – both permanently hasted and with the strongest attack in the game so far. Oh yeah – his THAC0 must be pretty good too, since he can hit my -6 AC fighters without a problem.
I think I might try going back to town before the fight and stocking up on monster wands/potions/protection spells. There hasn’t been a fight in the game that’s nearly this hard before, so I didn’t really feel a need to sort through my consumables, and I have 60,000 gold sitting in my inventory.
Well now you guys are making me want to go back and take that fight on again. I just replayed it fairly recently (though by BG2 playthrough has stalled, I should get back to that) and I got frustrated after multiple failures against Sarevok and just moved on. I played the game back in the day, so I didn’t really need the ending cinematics.
I don’t know if I played through the Tales of the Sword Coast stuff, though. Hmmm.
Ok I reloaded an old save and beat him after a few tries. Super sloppy since I haven’t been playing the game. My wild mage had two bad surges at the end.
Turn off AI so they don’t run into traps. Start by casting cloudkill and/or fireballs blind into the shroud to force aggro and kickoff some damage.
Kill the archer that uses fireball arrows and the mage first. If you have an archer with magic arrows (+2 ideal, or poison). Target them.
I used my melee party (basically worthless) + wand of summoning repeatedly to keep everyone busy while my mages nuked everything dead including the rest of my party. The spells I mainly used were cloudkill, skull trap, fireball, minute meteors, and magic missiles to take down everyone.
Between wands and mage spells you should be able to do the job. And while I don’t remember the exact fight (I should having finished the game at least three times) you may need to recast dispelling spells. Also it is always best if possible to concentrate fire on just 1-2 enemies, and in this case the enemy mages.
There should be (unless I have confused BG2 wands with BG1 wands) wands that anyone can use to cast fireballs, monster summoning, resurrection, even dispelling I think. Wands by the way can be sold and repurchased to recharge them, IIRC.
Most wands can only be used by wizards.
Did not know that!
You may test it first, or wait for someone to verify it, but I do remember being able to do that in one of the BG games. You had to sell it with at least one charge left on it, then you could buy it back fully recharged. But it has been years since I played them. As for who can use them, you may be right. I solo’d the game with a mage/thief and he could use wands, so maybe that is what I am thinking of. That character was uber powerful by the end of the game.
I think thieves with Use Magic Item can also use them? But yes I think that’s mostly just wizards.
I’mma check on that recharge trick.
Well some quick googling indicates that selling and rebuying a wand from a merchant in BG2 will recharge it.
There is also mentions of a shop in BG1 that sells unlimited wands, don’t remember that. The trick is in BG1 there is no indication of how many charges remain while in BG2 there is. Also I guess BGEE adds items that are then handled differently by the game. I haven’t played the EE versions yet.
BG1 EE uses the BG2 engine enhancements, classes, etc including all the spell changes. So Monster summoning and Animate Dead are heavily nurfed (among other things): You summon like 1 or 2 things, and you are capped at 5 summons. In OG BG you would summon an entire team of skeletons and/or low level monsters and there is no summon cap. You could summon 50 things before starting the fight. It is as ridiculous as it sounds.
However…Wand of Summoning, unlike the Monster Summoning spell, can still summon all 5 monsters all at once with zero incantation time. Very useful to delay the enemy team while your mages blast everything in the back line.
Well, this has got me playing again. I have made it Beregost. I had forgotten how little health some characters start the game with.
Question. The difference between “Dual Class” and “Multi-Class” is what again? If I remember with one you lose the ability to level up one class, while the other will let you do both?
Basically dual class sucks and multi rules.
Thanks, I can never remember which is which.
So what is with not being able to access Neera’s inventory? She is a new character so maybe that has something to do with it?
And I had also forgotten how annoying Khalid was. :)
Multi-class is for non-humans, and you share experience between all the classes picked at birth. Dual class is human only, where you choose a second class that you fill some requirements for when leveling up and level that only, losing all abilities (but not stats) of the first class until it catches up.
I haven’t played the mechanics enough to say for myself, but, per discussions online, it’s not that simple that one is better. Cannonically, Imoen duals as a wizard, which is seen as a good idea. Dual Kensai/Mage is ridiculously overpowered.
either way, caster/caster is not great.
I don’t see any benefit to dual classing over multi-classing. See here. There’s some simulation in dual classing of real learning experience: once you switch class, you can never advance in that old class again (ok, this part really sucks); if you use your old skills before you’ve gotten good enough with your new class, you get no experience (slipping back into old ways kinda thing). You’re focusing entirely on the new learning experience. It’s an ok system, except for the part where you can never advance in your old class, so if you were a 2nd level warrior before you dualed, you’ll be that forever. And then you have this amazing multiclass power that’s generally far better since you’re advancing on all fronts. It’s like it’s from a different game.
I guess dual-class is a decent (read: the only) way to bypass the mage/thief armor restrictions from multi-class. Cleric doesn’t give you enough limitations to be worth bypassing. Still sucks to be stuck at a certain level, unless you’re willing to climb all the way up to whatever endgame level is in one class and then switch to another.
Let me know if I’m missing something.
OK here’s a source that’s simliar to what you said. So basically, it mostly has to do with XP gain. Fighter->mage makes sense at higher levels, since you catch up fairly quickly, and multi-classing’s XP split slows you down (though just by a factor of 0.5). But you’re very vulnerable while you’re catching up.