I found an awesome trick: Gather in the doorway (buffed of course), wait until she casts Cloudkill, run back into the hall, cast Web on top of the Cloudkill, and watch everyone except the teleported mages get stuck in her own trap. Yx herself isn't affected by the Cloudkill, but that's what Skull Trap and Fireball are for. Works like a charm. Next time I'm going to try it with summoned creatures in the doorway instead of the party.
Fill the area with traps and skull traps and only Y will survive. I did it in my first try yesterday, my thief scout and notice problems, everybody retreat to the room at the side and my sorcerer and my thief(bountyhunter) prepare everything (fill traps in the principal area and the next room if anyone survive), my thief talk with her, use invisibility potion and retreat while everybody die, only Y attacked my party and she die quickly
I use a variation on one of the popular suggestions here, which is to fill the doorway with AoE spells after talking to Yxunomei and falling back. This works better when you have multiple casters, although my general suspicion from having been on these forums a while is that most people only run with 1 Arcane and 1 Divine (I tend to do 2 and 1), so you might have to be selective about the spells you're laying down. Web is solid; Grease is fantastic as a way of supplementing a cluster of AoE spells, and if you've already got 2 down, throwing Grease in as well ought to incapacitate the army.
I use summoning spells to keep Yxunomei's archers entertained. They can still be vicious in the midst of your AoE if their saves succeed. Then, I focus the rest of the party on Yxunomei, alternating front line warriors as necessary to keep them all alive while Arrows +2, Magic Missile and my best weapons sink into her.
Yxunomei is, as I recall, the toughest (or at least one of the toughest) fights in Icewind Dale, so don't despair about having trouble with it. It's a big kick-'em-when-they're-down moment for the original game developers after you've spent a tedious amount of time trudging through Dragon's Eye...
Yeah the real question is, "how the heck do you defeat Yxunomei and the rest of that level, without resting?
I keep trying, and keep failing. It's real tough.
Well, I kind of did that. The only rest I took was in the monastery where the other party of adventurer keep an eye on things for you.
The secret is to hoard all the healing potions you can and avoid as much damage as possible. Summons will help a lot to soak damage but equipping the whole party with missile weapons was the solution for me.
In all Dragon's Eye the only place when my party took a significant amount of damage was the altar with the trolls and the room where you get the Messenger of Seth.
@subtledoctor: I came pretty close to that in a HoF run with a party of level 11 gnomish cleric/illusionists with copies of the Helm of the Trusted Defender who stacked Righteous Wrath of the Faithful with Haste (this was before EE) for 10 attacks per round per character. Summons and Fireball cleared up many of the early fights, while RWotF killed the later groups, including Yxunomei. I rested once, but it wasn't actually necessary in retrospect.
A Shaman, Jester, and Shadowdancer, with their non-rest-dependent abilities, might make a restless run of Yxunomei's lair possible.
The battle was hard but here's what I remember doing.
Place a character near each of the 3 spots where the priests get summoned, so they can quickly attack them (use your Fighters & whatever damage dealers you have in those spots.) Send one character in to trigger the fight and then run out of the room. Also, summon everything you got, and when the summons start dwindling, summon more. Gotta keep on top of that. And I can't remember exactly but I think I cast a Web in there to slow them from coming after us. And always focus your archers with +2 arrows to attack Yxunomei at all times, and whatever other ranged attacks you have. Avoid melee with her because she is wicked with her melee and will kill you quickly. Hopefully the archers will also interrupt her casting while doing damage too. And make sure you kill the priests ASAP. Maintain your summons and you should be good. And of course drink whatever potions/etc. you can.
I just recently defeated her and thought I'd add my tactics. Party is the NPC mod party with shaman pc. Approached with my thief/mage, who laid her two traps behind her, dialogue, then hurled a fireball in. Turned around and cast last fireball in the room behind where mages spawn. Shaman summons attack mages while the party backs up into the little room north-west. When yuanti arrive, I bottle neck them in the doorway, shaman summons first, then paladin behind with 2 handed magic sword (he can swing over spirit animals, without getting hit himself), mage/thief and bard help kill yuanti with chromatic orb and magic missile. Ranger summons animals behind enemy lines. He found 21 +2 arrows on this level, but unfortunately already used them, so with Seth's bane, he helps take down yuanti. Mrs Y appears at back and once yuanti are dead, she comes and kills any summons hella quick. Paladin goes toe to toe with her and gets her to slightly injured before a tactical retreat around the table. A game of cat and mouse around the table , while bard uses magical throwing axe to bring her up to injured. Paladin gets caught and butchered. The party escape the room to the area entrance where the mages spawned. Without paladin, I use my thief/mage to attempt meelee with two magical katanas. Shaman switches to spells... Offensive spells are useless, so he heals the thief alongside my fighter/druid. Thief gets low on health so tries to give her the run around, but eventually gets caught and killed.then I send in my fight/druid..she doesn't have a good magic weapon, so she summons her metal cudgel. This weapon seems to be incredibly effective, bringing her to near death after a few solid hits. She got in one hit while Y was attacking my mage/thief, then another in combat. Before the third she got low on health so my ranger stepped in to distract her, while the shaman healed my fighter/druid...fully healed, she joined combat again for third successful hit. Shaman casts summons again and fighter/druid starts taking damage. Just when I think I can't get off *nearly dead*, my bard (who the whole time has been standing in the doorway with his magical throwing axe) finally lands a hit...Mrs Y falls. With thief dead, bard opens loot crates with knock, but shaman and fighter have to take.turns absorbing the traps.
The strategy I used against Yxunomei was to have my Mage summon some cannon fodder (mostly using Monster Summoning II plus an Invisible Stalker from The Summoner's Staff that the High Summoner so thoughtfully dropped for me a level above), then buff my party and the monsters with the usual fare of Haste, Bless, Protection from Evil 10' etc. I had my Berserker drink a Potion of Free Action, left the Invisible Stalker at the rear to keep the Yuan-Ti Mage that spawns behind you busy, then ran my Berserker into the room to trigger Yxunomei's dialogue.
Once she's finished chatting, I have my Berserker HULK UP (i.e. Enrage, making him immune to just about every CC effect out there, while the Free Action handles any Hold/Web/Paralyze effects). There was a reason I sent him in first), then rush all the summoned monsters in to swarm the Yuan-Ti mooks, along with my Cavalier and my stealthed Shadowdancer. My Archer didn't have any +2 arrows at that point, so I left her to focus on the Yuan-Ti Priests up the back (she deals INCREDIBLE damage at range, anyway, usually taking out spellcasters within 3 or 4 shots), while my Mage contributed a few Fireballs and Magic Missiles.
Meanwhile, with Yxunomei focused on my Berserker as her first visible target, him, my Cavalier and the Shadowdancer surround her and just do their best to hack her to bits, with my Shadowdancer drinking Potions of Invisibility where needed to refresh her backstabs. Perhaps I got lucky with their attacks interrupting her spells, but she barely got to do anything before she went down under a flurry of blades.
As an aside, I was SORELY disappointed that your summoned Bombardier Beetles allies apparently do not have that unblockable PBAoE acid burst. :P
Im making this post because I did not see a single player mention a party WITHOUT mages/wizard/spell AoE cannons. I started a party without a mage and thus this fight was pretty hardcore without it. To clarify, here's my current set-up:
The absolute key to this fight is positioning before you open the door, and prioritizing targets. Your first prio must be to interrupt her buff spells and, if you can, her summon spells. Equip piercing arrows or +1 arrows on your archer(s) and make them open the door with your cleric in front. Get through the dialogue and immediately cast a dmg spell with your cleric to interrupt her first cast.
After these 5 seconds, you will have to start to kite them back into to smaller room, where the 3 mages are spawned. Nuke these down with your melee's. If you have 2 archers, in my case, let 1 stay halfway in the room so he can focus fire everything that comes through Xy's door, and the other one finishes off the mages. When done right, the 3 spawned mages will be dead before Xy' comes through the door.
When you made it this far, it is time to get yourself some extra meatshield. You don't want to get into melee with Xy. She will wreck your tank. Instead, let your cleric cast 3x raise dead (or animate dead) right in front of the door. The spawned monsters will clutter and stop the advance of the mass there. Now its time for your archer to hail down death to all the casters, focus Xy first. She will be dead in 6 seconds if your archers are lvled up/geared correctly.
After this, you are basically 80% there, since all you have to do is keep interrupting casts with your archers and finishing up everything else with the rest of your party.
Easy peasy...use Haste, have someone run around in front of her and have your axeman slap her continually with the Axe of Returning (and some might say Yxunomei slaying) +2 from the torturer’s room. Oh and throw things like entangle and cloudkill in the room to finish off her troops and disrupt her spells.
It’s like soooo cheesy but it’s done it every time for me since the year 2000. For all her talk she’s just a big headed wuss.
Step 1 - you will notice that the spawn timer on the sorcerors in the main hallway is different. Keep restarting the fight until the sorceror's spawn INSTANTLY after talking to the boss. Failure to do so will result in the boss and her minions entering the main hallway before you kill the 3 sorcerors. You will be participating in this fight in the main hallway. YOu will not enter the boss room except to trigger the initial conversation.
step 2 - turn off auto and get those sorceror's down asap. They need to be dead in 5 seconds or less. You accomplish this by using animate dead and getting all your rangers to target one each.
Step 3 - once they are dead, you will aim your two casters (lluana and felicia) to spam Skull trap on the door. The boss will be coming through that door with her minions.
Step 4 - use your rangers to take down any sorcerors and archers while you work on step 3
Step 5 - the boss will die to skull trap (takes about 3 of them)
whole fight lasts less than 1 minute if done right..+5 hours figuring it out lol.
This is really the only way I could think of to beat this boss using the basic starting party and not having expensive gear. If you are underleveld and do not have all +2 or +3 gear, even if you kill all the trash, the boss herself will oneshot your party.
Comments
I use summoning spells to keep Yxunomei's archers entertained. They can still be vicious in the midst of your AoE if their saves succeed. Then, I focus the rest of the party on Yxunomei, alternating front line warriors as necessary to keep them all alive while Arrows +2, Magic Missile and my best weapons sink into her.
Yxunomei is, as I recall, the toughest (or at least one of the toughest) fights in Icewind Dale, so don't despair about having trouble with it. It's a big kick-'em-when-they're-down moment for the original game developers after you've spent a tedious amount of time trudging through Dragon's Eye...
The secret is to hoard all the healing potions you can and avoid as much damage as possible. Summons will help a lot to soak damage but equipping the whole party with missile weapons was the solution for me.
In all Dragon's Eye the only place when my party took a significant amount of damage was the altar with the trolls and the room where you get the Messenger of Seth.
A Shaman, Jester, and Shadowdancer, with their non-rest-dependent abilities, might make a restless run of Yxunomei's lair possible.
Place a character near each of the 3 spots where the priests get summoned, so they can quickly attack them (use your Fighters & whatever damage dealers you have in those spots.) Send one character in to trigger the fight and then run out of the room. Also, summon everything you got, and when the summons start dwindling, summon more. Gotta keep on top of that. And I can't remember exactly but I think I cast a Web in there to slow them from coming after us. And always focus your archers with +2 arrows to attack Yxunomei at all times, and whatever other ranged attacks you have. Avoid melee with her because she is wicked with her melee and will kill you quickly. Hopefully the archers will also interrupt her casting while doing damage too. And make sure you kill the priests ASAP. Maintain your summons and you should be good. And of course drink whatever potions/etc. you can.
I forget the rest of the particulars.
Approached with my thief/mage, who laid her two traps behind her, dialogue, then hurled a fireball in. Turned around and cast last fireball in the room behind where mages spawn.
Shaman summons attack mages while the party backs up into the little room north-west.
When yuanti arrive, I bottle neck them in the doorway, shaman summons first, then paladin behind with 2 handed magic sword (he can swing over spirit animals, without getting hit himself), mage/thief and bard help kill yuanti with chromatic orb and magic missile. Ranger summons animals behind enemy lines. He found 21 +2 arrows on this level, but unfortunately already used them, so with Seth's bane, he helps take down yuanti.
Mrs Y appears at back and once yuanti are dead, she comes and kills any summons hella quick. Paladin goes toe to toe with her and gets her to slightly injured before a tactical retreat around the table. A game of cat and mouse around the table , while bard uses magical throwing axe to bring her up to injured.
Paladin gets caught and butchered. The party escape the room to the area entrance where the mages spawned. Without paladin, I use my thief/mage to attempt meelee with two magical katanas. Shaman switches to spells... Offensive spells are useless, so he heals the thief alongside my fighter/druid.
Thief gets low on health so tries to give her the run around, but eventually gets caught and killed.then I send in my fight/druid..she doesn't have a good magic weapon, so she summons her metal cudgel. This weapon seems to be incredibly effective, bringing her to near death after a few solid hits. She got in one hit while Y was attacking my mage/thief, then another in combat. Before the third she got low on health so my ranger stepped in to distract her, while the shaman healed my fighter/druid...fully healed, she joined combat again for third successful hit.
Shaman casts summons again and fighter/druid starts taking damage. Just when I think I can't get off *nearly dead*, my bard (who the whole time has been standing in the doorway with his magical throwing axe) finally lands a hit...Mrs Y falls.
With thief dead, bard opens loot crates with knock, but shaman and fighter have to take.turns absorbing the traps.
+2 weapons and ammunition also work, but you don't wanna go toe to toe with that higher demoness on Insane or HOF
- 1 Cavalier (Human)
- 1 Berserker (Dwarf)
- 1 Mage (Human)
- 1 Priest of Lathander (Human)
- 1 Archer (Elf)
- 1 Shadowdancer (Halfling)
The strategy I used against Yxunomei was to have my Mage summon some cannon fodder (mostly using Monster Summoning II plus an Invisible Stalker from The Summoner's Staff that the High Summoner so thoughtfully dropped for me a level above), then buff my party and the monsters with the usual fare of Haste, Bless, Protection from Evil 10' etc. I had my Berserker drink a Potion of Free Action, left the Invisible Stalker at the rear to keep the Yuan-Ti Mage that spawns behind you busy, then ran my Berserker into the room to trigger Yxunomei's dialogue.
Once she's finished chatting, I have my Berserker HULK UP (i.e. Enrage, making him immune to just about every CC effect out there, while the Free Action handles any Hold/Web/Paralyze effects). There was a reason I sent him in first), then rush all the summoned monsters in to swarm the Yuan-Ti mooks, along with my Cavalier and my stealthed Shadowdancer. My Archer didn't have any +2 arrows at that point, so I left her to focus on the Yuan-Ti Priests up the back (she deals INCREDIBLE damage at range, anyway, usually taking out spellcasters within 3 or 4 shots), while my Mage contributed a few Fireballs and Magic Missiles.
Meanwhile, with Yxunomei focused on my Berserker as her first visible target, him, my Cavalier and the Shadowdancer surround her and just do their best to hack her to bits, with my Shadowdancer drinking Potions of Invisibility where needed to refresh her backstabs. Perhaps I got lucky with their attacks interrupting her spells, but she barely got to do anything before she went down under a flurry of blades.
As an aside, I was SORELY disappointed that your summoned Bombardier Beetles allies apparently do not have that unblockable PBAoE acid burst. :P
Im making this post because I did not see a single player mention a party WITHOUT mages/wizard/spell AoE cannons. I started a party without a mage and thus this fight was pretty hardcore without it. To clarify, here's my current set-up:
Dwarven Defender {Dwarf}
Paladin {Human}
Cleric {Human}
Archer {Elf}
Archer {Elf}
Assassin {Halfling}
The absolute key to this fight is positioning before you open the door, and prioritizing targets. Your first prio must be to interrupt her buff spells and, if you can, her summon spells. Equip piercing arrows or +1 arrows on your archer(s) and make them open the door with your cleric in front. Get through the dialogue and immediately cast a dmg spell with your cleric to interrupt her first cast.
After these 5 seconds, you will have to start to kite them back into to smaller room, where the 3 mages are spawned. Nuke these down with your melee's. If you have 2 archers, in my case, let 1 stay halfway in the room so he can focus fire everything that comes through Xy's door, and the other one finishes off the mages. When done right, the 3 spawned mages will be dead before Xy' comes through the door.
When you made it this far, it is time to get yourself some extra meatshield. You don't want to get into melee with Xy. She will wreck your tank. Instead, let your cleric cast 3x raise dead (or animate dead) right in front of the door. The spawned monsters will clutter and stop the advance of the mass there. Now its time for your archer to hail down death to all the casters, focus Xy first. She will be dead in 6 seconds if your archers are lvled up/geared correctly.
After this, you are basically 80% there, since all you have to do is keep interrupting casts with your archers and finishing up everything else with the rest of your party.
Good luck!
It’s like soooo cheesy but it’s done it every time for me since the year 2000. For all her talk she’s just a big headed wuss.
This thread should help you with your problems with Y Lady.
step 2 - turn off auto and get those sorceror's down asap. They need to be dead in 5 seconds or less. You accomplish this by using animate dead and getting all your rangers to target one each.
Step 3 - once they are dead, you will aim your two casters (lluana and felicia) to spam Skull trap on the door. The boss will be coming through that door with her minions.
Step 4 - use your rangers to take down any sorcerors and archers while you work on step 3
Step 5 - the boss will die to skull trap (takes about 3 of them)
whole fight lasts less than 1 minute if done right..+5 hours figuring it out lol.
This is really the only way I could think of to beat this boss using the basic starting party and not having expensive gear. If you are underleveld and do not have all +2 or +3 gear, even if you kill all the trash, the boss herself will oneshot your party.