Is there no end to the trolls & spiders?

Steellord

I'm running a party through Dragons Eye right now and just entered the second level. Holy trolls and spiders! I found one troll with my thief and lured him back to the group and as we were fighting the one, we were swarmed by trolls and wraith spiders galore. What is the best way to deal with mass attacks like this?

bob_veng

As always, glitterdust

mf2112

Steellord said:

I'm running a party through Dragons Eye right now and just entered the second level. Holy trolls and spiders! I found one troll with my thief and lured him back to the group and as we were fighting the one, we were swarmed by trolls and wraith spiders galore. What is the best way to deal with mass attacks like this?

Lots and lots of fire helps. If you can lure one back then throw some fireballs in the direction it came from. While fighting them use Fire Shields, Flame Arrow, Melf's meteors. I like to use Aganazzar's scorcher, sometimes you can hit multiple enemies by targeting one further away. If the mage moves around the side of the line below and targets Troll2 with a scorcher, Troll1 gets hit as well.

------- Fighter Fighter
Mage -> Troll1 -> Troll2

BelgarathMTH

Avoid them as much as possible by moving through fog slowly; that is, move forward an inch or two, and then stand still for at least two seconds to see if anything moves or appears suddenly. Explore in a neat pattern of rows or columns, that is, avoid cutting large swaths through the fog with unexplored areas to either side of you, which increases your risk of attack on two or more fronts. Most mass attack situations arise through careless, hurried blundering around. Have somebody in stealth or invisibility to scout ahead.

If you do mess up and get attacked by multiple mobs, concentrate your attacks on one target at a time, because your priority is to reduce their numbers as quickly as possible. This situation is why you need crowd control spells, also. Confusion, chaos, webs, and stinking clouds are your friends. Practice placing webs, clouds, and spikes to where the edge of the effect is just in front of your front line fighters, such that the enemies are being hurt but not your fighters.

Concentrate all ranged fire and spells on any casters, then together with your fighters on the front line. If you have more than one front line going on, you're probably doomed. Try to run away if you can't draw them into a more favorable tactical position on a single front line. Retreat is your friend.

Try to fall back to some kind of narrow choke point. If you're being attacked from the east and west, look for a choke point to the north or south, so that the two mobs get pulled together and stuck two or three at a time at the choke point. The rest will mob up behind the others and make easy targets for fireballs and such.

mf2112

I definitely agree on scouting invisibly and trying to find choke points like tunnels or doors where they just can't swarm you. IWD also has some great druid spells for this like thorn spray, spike growth, spike stones and smashing wave. I love wall of moonlight, wish my BG druids could cast it. I know there are mods, just need to wait for 2.x to be fully stable and then mods to catch up, IF they don't go ahead and add the IWD spells into BG natively.

mashedtaters

I like ranged weapons in this game. Have a few tanks keep them at bay in a choke hold and range the casters to death.
Bullets and arrows!! MuahahahHah!
Fireball is my favorite spell for trolls.
Actually, I think it's my favorite spell for everything.

lolien

moody_mage

All of the above. Always have a fallback plan as well in case you get swarmed.

ineth

@lolien Priceless You should post it in the meme thread, as well!

SharGuidesMyHand

Scouting/stealthing ahead makes a HUGE difference in IWD.

ifupauline

This is a difficult fight because at this stage of the game your party isn't high level enough to cast interesting spells such as chaos, cloudkill and deal significant amount of damage. So it will be most likely your fighter and range weapon user that will do the job.

You need to find a nice spot like a bridge to take them down one by one.
If we knew about your party composition, we could help you more.

OlvynChuru

Usually I'm unable to beat all the trolls in a single battle. Instead, I try to kill as many as possible, then I run away and go back to the previous area, where I rest. After that, I go back in and try to kill some more of them.

Nimran

Welcome to Dragon's Eye! Here's your troll!

mf2112

It is against the site rules, but I might be able to get away with it in this thread.

I kid! I kid!

Madae

Heh, this is kind of an old thread, but... This is where I think it's advantageous to have less than 6 party members. More exp for the people you have, but obviously less to work with can be a problem later. I didn't have too much trouble in the second level with my party of 4. My Fighter (Berserker) was able to take the hits while my Cleric kept her alive. My mage had very little to work with, spell wise, as some people suggested in this thread, but Color Spray is a fantastic level 1 spell. I usually send my Fighter into berserk and just throw down spray after spray to take larger groups. As others mentioned, you may want to find favorable ground, somewhere where the enemies are funneled to you. Isn't always an option, so having a healthy, beefy character to take the hits is always a boon. Icewind Dale was made to be a more combat centric game than Baldur's Gate, so it's important to have a well-rounded party with good rolls and the right stats.