SCS beholders - HELP!

vangoat

I'm trying to do the unseeing eye quest, and I'm a pretty low level (Most characters around level 9).

Just across the riddle bridge there's a pack with a bunch of shadow fiends, 2 gauth and a beholder. I tried sneaking past with my thief but I must gather my party before venturing forth in order to get in the temple. I could memorize some invisibility spells, then rest and get past them, but i'd like to kill them.

My skellies were useless, I can't get the shield because SCS removes it. My arcane spellcasters are CHARNAME (f/m/c) and aerie. I could try bombing them with cloudkill/fireball from offscreen but I don't think that's gonna do enough before they come towards me and annihilate me with their 500 spells per round.

I buffed the hell out of korgan and sent him in alone, berzerked but he went down in seconds.

They're immune to backstab. How the hell are you meant to kill these guys?

vangoat

Isn't the cloak of the sewers meant to make you have 100% MR?

I get stunned/paralyzed/deathrayed instantly while in mustard jelly form. These guys are pure cheese.

Ok i just checked and for some reason the jelly form is only giving 10% MR. Even if i give it to viccy it doesn't stack and actually reduces her to 10% MR. Don't remember reading anything about this in SCS components?

Just hit one of the Gauth with a hold monster, it failed its save, then just carried on spamming spells at me anyway despite being "held".

Edit: Ok, the polymorph self spell lets you turn into a jelly with 100%. Just got to the eye himself, and now he summons 2 death tyrants?? I had to laugh at that... as I hopelessly tried to jelly them all before my polymorph spell ran out and i insta-died

DavidW

I'm 95% sure I don't touch the jelly form. (I'm 100% sure I don't intentionally touch it.)

velehal

You don´t have to kill death tyrants. Just kill Eye, drink potions of invisibility (with SCS you should have a plenty of them) and run. I think that they can´t see through the invisibility.
Another tactics, that works generally against beholders (and not only against them), is classic Spell Trigger + 2x web. If you have more mages than better. Webs (and Greater Malinson) stop them. Then cloudkills will finish the job.

Skaffen

Cloak doesn't give 100% in unmodded either. It's only with the poly self spell that you get it.

vangoat

Yep, I had to use that spell a LOT to kill the beholders/unseeing eye. Kinda cheesy, but whatever.

I feel like the game pushes you to do your stronghold quest as early as possible (Plus RP reasons), so I don't feel too bad about fighting cheese with cheese.

I bumped into the guy that stole Cernd's kid, had to laugh when he cast TIME STOP (wtf??), can't remember if he did that in vanilla. Just seems kinda funny that some random noble happens to be an extraordinarily high level mage.

vangoat

Heh, just playing through with another party now in the Unseeing Eye's lair. I killed the first gauth, then scouted out with Anomen under sanctuary. Unfortunately this had the unintended side effect of basically aggroing everything - all the priests, and a whole bunch of gauth and beholders.

Luckily, you get the wand of cloudkill from Mekrath before this quest. So my tactic was to bravely run away back towards the entrance, spamming cloudkills, chaos, slow and holy smite (Nalia and Aerie). A couple of gauth managed to make it through the gas so i could put them down with my crossbow. Good fun!

Poor Mazzy perished in the process, but she'll be raised soon.

Lareit

Do you have someone who can stealth without it breaking for an extended period of time? Because then you can create an invisible barrier on the steps too wide for the beholder to get around. Then you just throw a cloudkill spell on the general area(but staying out of range of sight of the beholder) and let it die a slow death.

Make sure you give your invisible guy potions to outlast the beholder, it will take 2 or 3 castings.

It even stops gauth the same way, but they're smaller so you have to find the perfect spot on the stairs to stand to block them as well.

kryptix

velehal said:

You don´t have to kill death tyrants. Just kill Eye, drink potions of invisibility (with SCS you should have a plenty of them) and run. I think that they can´t see through the invisibility.
Another tactics, that works generally against beholders (and not only against them), is classic Spell Trigger + 2x web. If you have more mages than better. Webs (and Greater Malinson) stop them. Then cloudkills will finish the job.

I thought SCS changes it so that Web doesn't work on Beholders... I'm pretty sure thats the case.

That said you can always just spam cloudkill from off the screen, my tactic in the beholder lair in the Underdark was basically cloudkill/incendiary cloud my way out of the area letting them run a gauntlet of poison gas after which I focus fire them down at the end of the gauntlet when they are at low health...

For the Unseeing eye I think I used a combination of traps and cloudkill.

Jarleale

Without cheese, this can be solved by drinking ptn of invulnerability on your fighters, use shield of balduran. Improved haste/haste and turn invisible by using potions or spells. Focus your attacks on one beholder at a time. The beholders will dispel your buffs, but probably not fast enough to do any real damage. Deal with the Gauths secondly, and chunk ptn of (superior) healing as needed. Strength potions and Dorn's poison ability could be useful as well.

EDIT: Use Rasaad if applicable. His magic resistance is quite helpful (and devastating on higher levels) against beholders.

bob_veng

you'll waste a lot of time unnecessarily attempting this quest at such low a level, wait till' your mage and cleric are 15 (skeleton warriors vs beholders, good fun), which you can (just) become before chapter 4.
it has always been the most difficult class quest.

a lower level (9 is too low) is manageable, but it will be less fun imho.
chaos works just fine against beholders, use it liberally.