What's your cheapest/cheesiest tactic?
moody_mage
Member Posts: 2,054
Having played BG through again and wiping the chessboard in Durlag's Tower out with a few well placed fireballs, it made me wonder what cheesy tactics I don't know about.
Also those horrible Greater Wyverns are susceptible to trying to chase the first character they see through a closed door and will ignore other characters pelting them with ranged weapons...
Also those horrible Greater Wyverns are susceptible to trying to chase the first character they see through a closed door and will ignore other characters pelting them with ranged weapons...
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/38135/killing-kangaxx-with-flasher-master-bruiser-mates#latest
And there's the blind thief trick, in which blinding a thief allows him or her to hide in plain sight or set traps in the middle of combat...
And there's @Arunsun's ingenious Slayer trick, in which you use Mirror Image to prolong the Slayer change...
And in vanilla, pre-EE IWD, there's Righteous Wrath of the Faithful+Haste stacking that can make a party of gnomish Cleric/Illusionists attack at 10 APR each, dealing dozens of damage per hit, with no fatigue penalty...
And there's song stacking, which can let a high-level Skald or epic-level bard increase the entire party's THAC0, AC, and damage by double digits, allowing the party thief to chunk Fire Giants with nonmagical darts...
And there's the Wand of Lightning trick, in which quick items and on-self spells can sometimes be duplicated using the Wand of Lightning by targeting the caster with all 6 bolts before switching to the item or spell to be duplicated, allowing you to fire off 6 Cloudkill spells at once or make an Archer/Mage (the Generic Archer kit comes from the Tactics mod) drain 6 STR per hit with Minute Meteors or any other ranged weapon...
But I think the one thing that struck me the most was the scorcher loop, detailed here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/42982/agannazars-scorcher#latest
In IWD:EE, a single scorcher loop can kill anything in the game besides Belhifet, even in Heart of Fury mode, because you can lower enemy fire resistance using a Protection from Fire spell (the priest version). And in BG2, if you combine the Wand of Lightning trick with the scorcher loop...
...you can produce an extra-powerful version of the scorcher loop called the Death Ray Zorcher, which deals tens of thousands of damage over the course of several rounds, and can instantly kill any enemy who is not immune to Agannazar's Scorcher. It's the single most powerful attack in any of the Infinity Engine games.
I've had to do this just to move equipment off party members, dumping it into inventory, so it's not lost in Siege of Dragonspear due to the character not being made available. This way, their gear appears in the chest next to the bed.
Then I enter the temple and the cutscene fires, creating a final save to import into Siege of Dragonspear.
As for stuff I do use, I'm partial to Mislead abuse. Keep the Mislead clone with the party, and your real caster can wreak havoc while most enemies are all but powerless to retaliate.
1. Cast animate dead while off screen.
2. Send skeleton over to enemy, and wait for it to die.
3. Repeat steps 1-2 until all mages and clerics in party are out of animate dead spells.
4. Walk basically any character over to kill the now spell-less mage. Weapons/armour optional.
You can then pop that character in a corner and aoe bomb the enemies with your party from out of line of sight while completely safe from counterattack.
The thing with AI is that sometimes the cheesier the AI is (that follow script makes more reasonable invisibility strategies useless), the easier it is to cheese it right back.
@Sylvus_Moonbow, I wish I'd understood exactly how the item transfer worked and exactly which characters would come across. I lost a lot of useful equipment as I thought/hoped all the equipment people had equipped would somehow be available after the initial chapter.
In the ORIGINAL game, and i see no reason why it wouldn't still work...
wands can target containers. use a lightning wand to shoot through walls.
defend button can shoot through walls. using Keldorn with a bow, use farsight to "defend" your summon and watch Keldorn shoot through walls.
cast melf minute meteors with weapon in your off hand...about once every fourth attack, you will damage with your off hand weapon AT RANGE...
The ferret familiar can smuggle the rift device and drow gear past checkpoints.
using the limited wish "I wish to be protected from the undead right now" have Minsc talk to the djinn (wisdom below 10) spawns vampires...use evil cleric to enslave them...
bunny nuke: Use limited wish "i wish to summon a horde to attack my enemies" then use wish spell and try to get "cast abu dahzim on everyone in map" EACH bunny is abu dahzimmed...overlapping area effect abu dahzim...thousands of points of damage, potentially WAY more than scorcher trick (which i had no idea existed until yesterday) protect your party with protection from magic energy.
After the first part of BG2, though, it becomes a lot more legitimate since it's an actual retreat from hostiles-regroup-set the battlefield the way you want it kind of deal.
Other than that I'm not sure if any of the other stunts I pull count as cheap or just clever. I'm not very knowledgeable of game exploits so I can't use most of them.
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Stuff/Cheese.htm
There has been a lot of progress since then, however. Besides the stuff mentioned in this thread and in your guide...
You can apply Wizard Slayer spell failure (as well as other on-hit effects like Called Shot, Power Attack, and Poison Weapon) to area-effect weapons such as Fire Seeds, Arrows of Detonation, Jan's flashers, and the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades. This allows a Wizard Slayer/Druid to impose spell failure even on SCS liches who have PFMW active. Normally shutting down an SCS lich's spellcasting takes multiple rounds and lots of levels. You can also combine the Wand of Lightning trick with the Tactics mod's Generic Archer kit to make a dual-classed Archer/Mage drain 6 Strength per hit with Fire Seeds as an area effect.
Project Image could also be used to bypass the summoning and trap limits (they might have changed that in the most recent version).
Another forumite whose name I don't remember also pointed out that the blind thief trick could be combined with Improved Alacrity to fire off a bunch of Spike Traps at once using a Mage/Thief.
@Grum invented a way to let a Shadowdancer stay invisible indefinitely. You use Detect Traps to re-start the stealth timer, wait until you can use Hide in Shadows again, and then backstab. You will then be able to hide immediately after backstabbing. This works with the blind thief trick, but requires you to step away from your target first.
@Arunsun's Slayer trick unfortunately no longer works in the most recent version of EE. They changed the Slayer change spell so that it sets your magic damage resistance to 0 immediately before slamming you with the full 1500 damage. Only immunity to the damage opcode, immunity to the magic damage opcode (imposed after casting Protection from Magic Energy), or a minimum HP effect, could let you survive it.
as long as the visible clone is OUTSIDE of enemy range, enemy true sight does squat.
My kensai sorceror assassin archer wizardslayer deathbringer was doing insane damage the last playthrough (some years ago, i'm afraid)
(yes, this is possible, but I'd have to buy the EE version, (something i'm still debating, but probably will soon), and very, very complicated)
I am very tempted by the sorc kit...kensai dragon-diciple assassin archer wizard slayer deathbringer?
overpowered beyond all sanity...
ring of ram works on all liches. using bag of holding to recharge immediately (almost all once per day items recharges in a bag of holding)
but yes, fireseeds is more convenient...
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for Tactics, I've used spawn control and improved azuredge to nuke the lich before it has a chance to cast protection from magic weapons...and if that failed, my sorc had to have breach, dispell, ruby ray or khelbens... (ruby ray to punch through absolute immunity...breach/dispell to drop all other protections)
I'm afraid my cheese is not of such a ripe vintage as some of the other on display here.
use breach on living mages, dispell or remove magic on liches. AFTER removing spell immunity (ruby ray, pierce shield, spell strike)
and i've been reading up on tactics, smarter liches and mages cast spell protection from SCROLLS. no interruption allowed while they're buffing.
this is why my sorc has BOTH ruby ray and khelbens.