"Weapon Ineffective" - What Now?
Vonliege
Member Posts: 7
I read a number of posts on this, but nothing satisfied my question - how do I figure out for myself what weapon will hit what critter? In this case, my level 1 party encountered a pack of vampiric wolves. I was able to hit them, but all hits returned "weapon ineffective." I presume that since it was a "vampiric" wolf, I need a garlic coated ash stake to hurt it? Where the heck do I find garlic? At least it wasn't a "vampiric WEREwolf". Then it would have to be a silver inlaid, garlic coated ash stake.
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As people familar with the DnD rules know, certain enemies need magic weapons to hit. The vampiric wolves just need +1. The spells Shillalgh and Spiritual Hammer can be used if no +1 weapon is available, otherwise, run away.
I expect you're talking about the wolfpack out back of the Temple at Beregost, since that's the first place you're likely to meet vamp wolves. Yes, they're a very tough enemy at that stage of the game ... very well-placed, in my opinion, as an early warning that the game is going to throw some dangerous surprises at the unwary. Some areas are designed for higher-level parties than others, and you often find out the hard way. The badlands behind the Temple is (usually) the first area you find which calls for more than a starting-level party with starter equipment. Leave it until you've found some magical weapons, then you can go back and clean out the vamp wolves. There's a *really good* mace you can find in Beregost (so good that you'll quite possibly still be using it in the final fight at the end of the game) which will kill vamp wolves. (Actually you might by this time have found a wand of lightning ... that'll kill vamp wolves if you manage to get them before they get you, but it comes with only a few charges so you can't afford wasted shots.)
In general, when you meet a critter with resistances, the idea is to use a bit of trial-and-error to discover what affects them. That experimentation and discovery is meant to be part of the fun of the game, but perhaps that particular aspect doesn't appeal to your tastes.
In BG:EE, however, it's quite easy. In most cases, weapon ineffective just means you have to use a +1 item (or better), with very few exceptions needing +2 (or better, though I can't even think of any, off the top of my head, in BG1), and
Note that in the case of ranged weapons, this means the ammunition has to be magical (+1 or better), not the bow/crossbow itself.
I'm pretty sure I was able to hit the GWW with them (it was a long time ago, so I might be mistaken).
I remain of the view that there ought to be at least one cold iron blunt weapon somewhere in the game, so that a player who likes blunt weapons has a chance of beating the GWw without cheesy metagaming. I suggest Aule's Staff could be cold iron.
There are only three kind of weapons:
1) non magical
2) magical
3) cold iron
all the +something weapons are magical, however there is no difference between a +1 or +5 weapon in terms of ability to hit a foe immune to non magical weapons (unlike BG2 or BP).
The greater wolfwere is immune to #1 and #2 and can only be hit by cold iron weapons (all cold iron weapons in BGEE are also flagged like silver weapon, but the actual immunity is to non_cold_iron weapons).
Edit: Actually according to NI the Greater Wolfwere is immune to non_silver, whether the Greater Werewolves are immune to non_cold_iron, but doesn't really matter as all silver weapons are cold iron and vice versa.
The GWW has 0% magic resistance and 50% elemental resistance, so he is vulnerable to spells, especially the ones that do magic damage like Magic Missile, Skull Trap, etc.
With the right combination of silver/cold iron weapons and spells it is very easy to defeat in both BG1 and BGEE.