No, found them now. Playing for years and never noticed that there's a second trader in the shop at the upper wall and not just the guy opposite the entrance, only ever went to the weapons merchant and not the fletcher.
liches seem overpowered and ridiculous. Seventy million instant protections as soon as they appear, WIsh > double length time stop > improved alacrity > complete overkill of dragons breath, wilting, comet, summon dark planetar, then casts ANOTHER time stop before the wish one is finished and overkills more.
what the hell are you meant to do against that before you have HLAs and level 9 spells yourself? nothing seems to damage them, what are their immunities?
incendiary cloud, adhw and fire storm are supposed to do damage without a save, but they do nothing. i assume liches are immune to elements racially then? and magic damage? i wish there was somewhere that actually told you what resistances creatures have and what can actually hurt them
Liches are immune to all spells level 5 and below. Breach should affect them in SCS but has a bug so they are immune to that. The immunity against the spells you list should come from protections they cast like prot from the elements etc. So it can be duspelled and again we're back to square one: do you need two arcane casters?
It's the combo of protection from magical energy and spell trap that makes them avoid spell damage. I've found the trick to be invis and haste on the whole party and spread out. Then have a skele warrior etc take that ridiculous combo because if you do what I said the first spell they cast is truesight.
Just have a melee capable of killing a planetar or put fiend and keep a stream of skele warriors and mordy swords going at them til the major spells are gone then rip down protections or melee them with weapons that do elemental damage to interrupt them through stone skin. Pfmw should be long gone. Arrows of dispelling etc after they are out of spell immunity.
Daystar helps a lot as the magical damage goes through stone skin I think. Also for the ones that spawn on a click etc I use traps and the spellhold one I use invis with double Sunray from Viconia and daystar while it's casting truesight.
For the daystar lich I get viconia's mr as high as possible and just send her in with sanctuary alone with mace of disruption. If he summons a skele you hit it with mod if he summons a pitfiend just try to run around but probably just die and have someone res her outside the room with a rod of resurrection then go make a sandwich for it to despawn and the lich's protections to fade. Should only need to res her a few times for the lich to waste all of his good spells and for you to be able to go in with real fighters. You might have to use Viccy to hit him a couple of times to waste pfmw contingencies, but not a huge deal.
Well I got Deirex eventually, improved invis on the whole party and ran away to the other room. It just feels cheesy sending in a bunch of skellys and summons, i want to be able to go toe to toe! haha
The thing is I checked all the pre-cast stuff and contingencies/chain contingencies and I couldn't see anything about prot from elements of magical energy. So I dunno, maybe he gets so many spells up at the start that they aren't all listed.
Breach works if you ctrl r to remove all of his buffs before SCS prebuffs kicks in. EE gave liches a new innate buff on spawn for spell immunity that SCS doesn't remove but ctrl r does.
So basically at lower levels you kinda have to cheese a little bit if you want to kill liches then I guess.
BTW, Adalon wasn't too difficult. She doesn't seem to cast as many spells as Firkraag, just a remove magic at the start plus stoneskin and a couple of other things. Her breath weapon is pretty nasty, does cold damage and can freeze your characters (Permadeath). I didn't use a spellcaster at all since Edwin hadn't bothered to learn how to cast lower resistance, all he did was cast improved haste on my fighters. She does have a TON of hit points though. Once I got her down to near death I ran away to the 5 traps Hexxat had set during the battle to finish her off.
Well, surprisingly my evil party made it through the twisted runies at first attempt, without any HLAs yet.
I forgot the sequence, so I set a bunch of traps up front and cast fire storm and ADHW offscreen. Of course the spells did nothing since they hadn't appeared yet.. Viconia with 105% MR went in first, Shangalar teleported and insta-died to Hexxat's traps, then it was on. Viconia didn't last long before something killed her. I used the staff of command to dominate the fighter, who distracted the big eyeball for a bit. The fighter and vampire were easy to take down, so soon it was just the beholder and Layenne. Layenne got off a double time stop and annihilated Korgan while my PC and Dorn ran away. When the time stop finished, Edwin managed to get through the eyeballs defenses so my fighters could make short work of it.
Scary moment when edwin was down to about 2 hp with 2 mordy swords after him, managed to just get PFMW in time then death spell them. By then Layenne had used most of her nasty spells and once her defenses came down a bit Dorn's poison weapon made short work of her.
Also, still trying to work out the deal with Kangaxx. I thought demi-liches were immune to spell levels 1-8, but ruby ray and warding whip seemed to work. So did breach, eventually. Fighters with decent saves chugged pots of invulnerability will make their save every time against everything he's got. It's still a better fight than just immunity to imprisonment = instant win though
I'm on Gromnir in TOB now and it's a little silly. Gromnir is an absolute wimp, but Karun the black and the other il-kahn mage are immune to everything. Really wish I didn't install the prebuffing crap. No spells or weapons can damage them, so I just have to sit there and watch my party die until their protections wear off.
Battle goes something like this: Edwin casts time stop, kills everything except the 2 mages which I can't damage because they have prot magic energy, all the elements, pfmw, etc etc. Also they go invisible or spam contingencies which makes their invisibility undispellable. I can do whatever I want here and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
Karun the black casts wish - double length time stop seems to have improved alacrity sphere of chaos remove magic greater malison comet dragons breath adhw time stop another comet a bunch of other crap the instant the second time stop wears off, the other mages time stop starts. time unfreezes, entire party dead.
that isn't fun, its stupid.
i also hate battles where there's a length cutscene and your party dumbly just waltzes up to the enemy. i can't get weaker party members out of the way, i can't set traps, etc etc.
this is why prebuffing is a load of crap. if i cast a buffing spell it actually takes a round, by the time these idiots had finished their 900 buffs half of them would have worn off.
@vangoat Ouch, that reminds me of my first battle against Sass Tzann in Neera's quest when I has no clue who he is... Not there yet, still in chapter 6.
@vangoat Hah, got there today and made it in the first try - I had the party spread out and cast prot from magic energy / spell immunity abjuration on my primary casters (charname sorcerer, Imoen, Aerie) so I actually survived that time stop barrage (some also unloaded at summons).
Charname was knocked out for a while from the comet I guess but shortly afterwards Imoen's Chain Contingency at 50% HP triggered: 2x Horrid Wilting and a Chain Lightning took out Karun!
Imoen died in between but was raised by my Planetar and then got off a timestop which finished off Gromnir who had taken a beating by Jaheira, Keldorn and Mazzy with Arrows of Biting. Don't know what the killing blow was, either magic missiles or the finger of death. Rest was mop-up, though the Fallen Planetar caused me some headaches with his instant cast heals. Thankfully his vorpal attack didn't proc.
In between I had 2 wish-rests from Charname (18 wis)... Fight took almost an hour!
I managed to get them eventually by going in under mass invisibility. One of the mages cast true seeing pretty quick, but it least gave me a chance to reposition my party to where I wasn't in such an awkward location. I got a bit lucky in that Karun used a lot of time stop attacks on summons.
For some reason ADHW never seems to do anything to the nasty mages for me. I assume it's because they have protection from magic energy up under pre-buffing. Once Edwin gets Dragon's breath things should get a lot easier.
I took my good party through that fight a couple of days later. Had a few reloads due to Imoen frequently getting chunked or vorpalled by planetars. Ended up using my second (and last) mind flayer control circlet on Gromnir to soak up some damage from the mages. Something weird happened though when Gromnir died, I didn't get any death notification or XP, and he didn't drop any loot either, but his corpse was still visible. Couldn't raise him either, so I had to spawn him again with the console after I'd killed everyone else.
Comments
what the hell are you meant to do against that before you have HLAs and level 9 spells yourself? nothing seems to damage them, what are their immunities?
incendiary cloud, adhw and fire storm are supposed to do damage without a save, but they do nothing. i assume liches are immune to elements racially then? and magic damage? i wish there was somewhere that actually told you what resistances creatures have and what can actually hurt them
Just have a melee capable of killing a planetar or put fiend and keep a stream of skele warriors and mordy swords going at them til the major spells are gone then rip down protections or melee them with weapons that do elemental damage to interrupt them through stone skin. Pfmw should be long gone. Arrows of dispelling etc after they are out of spell immunity.
Daystar helps a lot as the magical damage goes through stone skin I think. Also for the ones that spawn on a click etc I use traps and the spellhold one I use invis with double Sunray from Viconia and daystar while it's casting truesight.
For the daystar lich I get viconia's mr as high as possible and just send her in with sanctuary alone with mace of disruption. If he summons a skele you hit it with mod if he summons a pitfiend just try to run around but probably just die and have someone res her outside the room with a rod of resurrection then go make a sandwich for it to despawn and the lich's protections to fade. Should only need to res her a few times for the lich to waste all of his good spells and for you to be able to go in with real fighters. You might have to use Viccy to hit him a couple of times to waste pfmw contingencies, but not a huge deal.
The thing is I checked all the pre-cast stuff and contingencies/chain contingencies and I couldn't see anything about prot from elements of magical energy. So I dunno, maybe he gets so many spells up at the start that they aren't all listed.
That sucks about breach not working.
BTW, Adalon wasn't too difficult. She doesn't seem to cast as many spells as Firkraag, just a remove magic at the start plus stoneskin and a couple of other things. Her breath weapon is pretty nasty, does cold damage and can freeze your characters (Permadeath). I didn't use a spellcaster at all since Edwin hadn't bothered to learn how to cast lower resistance, all he did was cast improved haste on my fighters. She does have a TON of hit points though. Once I got her down to near death I ran away to the 5 traps Hexxat had set during the battle to finish her off.
I forgot the sequence, so I set a bunch of traps up front and cast fire storm and ADHW offscreen. Of course the spells did nothing since they hadn't appeared yet..
Viconia with 105% MR went in first, Shangalar teleported and insta-died to Hexxat's traps, then it was on. Viconia didn't last long before something killed her. I used the staff of command to dominate the fighter, who distracted the big eyeball for a bit. The fighter and vampire were easy to take down, so soon it was just the beholder and Layenne. Layenne got off a double time stop and annihilated Korgan while my PC and Dorn ran away. When the time stop finished, Edwin managed to get through the eyeballs defenses so my fighters could make short work of it.
Scary moment when edwin was down to about 2 hp with 2 mordy swords after him, managed to just get PFMW in time then death spell them. By then Layenne had used most of her nasty spells and once her defenses came down a bit Dorn's poison weapon made short work of her.
Also, still trying to work out the deal with Kangaxx. I thought demi-liches were immune to spell levels 1-8, but ruby ray and warding whip seemed to work. So did breach, eventually. Fighters with decent saves chugged pots of invulnerability will make their save every time against everything he's got. It's still a better fight than just immunity to imprisonment = instant win though
Battle goes something like this:
Edwin casts time stop, kills everything except the 2 mages which I can't damage because they have prot magic energy, all the elements, pfmw, etc etc. Also they go invisible or spam contingencies which makes their invisibility undispellable. I can do whatever I want here and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
Karun the black casts wish - double length time stop
seems to have improved alacrity
sphere of chaos
remove magic
greater malison
comet
dragons breath
adhw
time stop
another comet
a bunch of other crap
the instant the second time stop wears off, the other mages time stop starts.
time unfreezes, entire party dead.
that isn't fun, its stupid.
i also hate battles where there's a length cutscene and your party dumbly just waltzes up to the enemy. i can't get weaker party members out of the way, i can't set traps, etc etc.
this is why prebuffing is a load of crap. if i cast a buffing spell it actually takes a round, by the time these idiots had finished their 900 buffs half of them would have worn off.
Charname was knocked out for a while from the comet I guess but shortly afterwards Imoen's Chain Contingency at 50% HP triggered: 2x Horrid Wilting and a Chain Lightning took out Karun!
Imoen died in between but was raised by my Planetar and then got off a timestop which finished off Gromnir who had taken a beating by Jaheira, Keldorn and Mazzy with Arrows of Biting. Don't know what the killing blow was, either magic missiles or the finger of death. Rest was mop-up, though the Fallen Planetar caused me some headaches with his instant cast heals. Thankfully his vorpal attack didn't proc.
In between I had 2 wish-rests from Charname (18 wis)... Fight took almost an hour!
For some reason ADHW never seems to do anything to the nasty mages for me. I assume it's because they have protection from magic energy up under pre-buffing. Once Edwin gets Dragon's breath things should get a lot easier.
I took my good party through that fight a couple of days later. Had a few reloads due to Imoen frequently getting chunked or vorpalled by planetars. Ended up using my second (and last) mind flayer control circlet on Gromnir to soak up some damage from the mages. Something weird happened though when Gromnir died, I didn't get any death notification or XP, and he didn't drop any loot either, but his corpse was still visible. Couldn't raise him either, so I had to spawn him again with the console after I'd killed everyone else.