Black Pits II questions

Pteran

I had a blast running a custom party through Black Pits in BG1. Call it chessy if you want, but I found it incredibly useful to precast Bless and Chant on my party before entering the pits. I carried over my entire party from the first BP, and it's working pretty well so far. I just have a few questions:

Is there any way to prebuff before entering a fight in Black Pits 2?

Additionally, my Assassin is using her Poison Weapon combined with the Crossbow of Speed to wreck everything in sight. Is there any way for me to lay traps with her though? Unless the coding was changed for BP, you're not able to lay traps when enemies are visible.

lunar

Contingencies and chain contingencies, also spell triggers can be cast near the beds. You can put a stoneskin+mirror image+haste to a sequencer and use it instantly at the start of the fight on yourself, this will give you good pyshical protection and a party haste buff instantly. Chain contingency is very useful, as well. You may experiment with them. Be sure to sleep after preparing sequencers and contingencies, and memorise different spells instead of sequencers/contingencies. A wild mage can cast sequencer/chain contingency with NRD with %100 success, however his next spells (the number is exactly how many nrds he casted for casting sequencers and contingencies) will be wild surges with %100 chance as well. So I cast my contingencies and sequencers via nrd, then use stoneskin/mirror image or other spells on self to trigger surges, then rest. Ofcourse you can get a petrification surge which will be disastrous, but oh well...

You can set traps at the start of the fight, before the enemies reach you. You can even set 2-3 traps if the enemies are slow. Some fights are just untrappable, like the mad halfling wizard with his elemental army, as they start next to you. Your assasin may sneak to the far end of the arena and try to set traps there, this may work.

Also, if you power word:blind your assasin he can set traps all the time. This is an exploit as the game checks if your character sees enemies for setting traps. If he is blind, he can set traps unless the enemies are literally in his face. This was a favourite tactic of @semiticgod in one of his modded runs, I am not sure if it is doable in bp2, too. Note that it may come cheap or cheesy, and may make most battles far too easy.

Another trick is, when you win a combat, the crowd will cheer and all summons/situationary spell effects and traps you have set will dissapear. Baeloth will announce the party victorious, after that you have 2-3 seconds time before the screen fades. You CAN set a trap in that time, and it stays till the arena is re-used. If you fight the same battle the trap will be there and explode on enemies. The arenas are recycled through different fights, so in a future fight the trap you set will be there to spring on unexpecting enemies, as well.