de'Arnise treasure disappears after completing quest?

Taylan

I visited the iron golem room after gaining ownership of the keep, thinking maybe the golems won't attack me now, only to discover both the golems and the loot having disappeared. Is this normal? I have a save from before I finished the quest (and could use the console in worst case) so all is fine, but I wonder if it's a bug?

Related question: is it humanely possible to beat the iron golem at the stage of the game you'd normally do this quest? I can barely even touch the stone golems.

Slightly less related question: my character is a fighter/mage; am I going to miss a lot by choosing the keep over the astral sphere?

Lord_Tansheron

Taylan said:

Related question: is it humanely possible to beat the iron golem at the stage of the game you'd normally do this quest? I can barely even touch the stone golems.

Jokes about the humane killing of a golem aside, the Iron Golem can be a challenge to defeat for low-level parties. This is largely to its damage resistance and immunity to weapons of a low enchantment level. Make sure you are using weapons that can actually damage it. Golems also tend to hit like freight trains, so you may want to consider minimizing your exposure by e.g. running away with however the current target is.

Taylan said:

Slightly less related question: my character is a fighter/mage; am I going to miss a lot by choosing the keep over the astral sphere?

In my opinion, the Sphere has the best rewards out of all the strongholds. I find the Keep's quests a bit boring, but that is personal preference.

Taylan

I thought the sphere just gives you some odd potion once a week or so? Does one get particularly good potions? Or are the XP rewards good?

Kurona

Taylan said:

I thought the sphere just gives you some odd potion once a week or so? Does one get particularly good potions? Or are the XP rewards good?

The Sphere can give you a second Ring of Wizardry. If you have more than one mage in your party or if you don't do the Harper stronghold quest with Jaheira this is definitely worth it.

Borek

You get free potions every week from the Sphere, but that means you turn down several decent items that would blow up an Apprentice or 2, it's nice to have a choice though. Problem with the Fighter Stronghold is the quests are quite boring and a lot of them cost you gold and have zero actual reward in terms of items. Not that the mage ones are great either, but i quite like the Anti-Magic fanatics attacking with the retaliation of Imprisonment. Ultimately though the Sphere never costs you money and even if you never use the potions they can be sold, for the fighter one you hemorrhage cash until the quest chain finishes and by the time that happens you'll probably be moving to Irenicus so cannot even recoup the lost gold.

Of course saying that i play with Multiple Strongholds Mod and get them all just because i can

Grond0

Taylan said:

I visited the iron golem room after gaining ownership of the keep, thinking maybe the golems won't attack me now, only to discover both the golems and the loot having disappeared. Is this normal? I have a save from before I finished the quest (and could use the console in worst case) so all is fine, but I wonder if it's a bug?

It's not a bug as such, though it is an annoying bit of game design - the Hold is recreated when you accept it as a stronghold, so any items remaining in the old area are lost

Taylan

Hmm, maybe I'll also install the multiple strongholds mod. I would ditch the Keep but turning down Nalia is impossible for my soft-hearted main character. :P

So it's intentional game design that the items get lost? That's really annoying indeed, and doesn't make any sense to me. If I become the owner of the keep, I should get those items too! Also really strange how absurdly difficult it is to beat the golems; definitely more so than defeating the boss troll. I'll definitely have to rest first. 8 more hours gone! Poor Imoen has to suffer the whole time.

Taylan

Huh, beating the stone golems and even the iron golem wasn't nearly as challenging as I thought it would be. I didn't even need to rest before attempting. The stone golems were actually easy as pie with Minsc and Jaheira taking them out one by one. Minsc still had the effect of a frost giant strength potion from battling the troll boss so that helped a great deal.

As for the iron golem, Minsc still had frost giant strength (gotta love how long these potions last), and was able to use Arbane's Sword of Agility to cast a short haste (but keep using Lilarcor to hit), my fighter/mage main character with no points in war hammers and a puny strength of 12 was nevertheless able to support with the +5 to giants hammer and Draw Upon Holy Might to get around the strength issue, and Nalia turned into a jelly for a bit of crushing damage support. Aerie summoned some critters for diversion with Summon Monsters 1, and Jaheira blessed the party. (Jaheira couldn't do any damage even with the +3 staff spear. Too much piercing resistance on the golem I guess.) Yoshimo just stood aside being all bored.

Yay for (mostly) brute force! My bow-using main char has the amazing +4 THAC0 elven bow now. And as for the flail... I guess I'll stash it away somewhere since nobody can use it well at the moment. Or carry it around in case I face a creature with such immunities that I can't hurt it with much else.

Looking for a multiple strongholds mod now...

UnderstandMouseMagic

Glad you have managed to complete it.

Just a hint, you can take the flail on it's own and not activate any golems, get it fixed and then use it against them when getting the other items.

Another one a I read just recently after all these years having never thought of it, (OK so I'm a bit dumb sometimes...often) is to attack the golems individually in the room before touching anything except the flail, and the rest don't react.
So will definitely try that one in the future.

luskan

If you can't defeat the Iron Golem, no worries. It'll get stuck in the door while your thief runs away.

SomeSort

Taylan said:

Related question: is it humanely possible to beat the iron golem at the stage of the game you'd normally do this quest? I can barely even touch the stone golems.

Iron Golems are easy prey to the single most powerful force in all of Faerun: doors.

If you have haste or boots of speed, you can grab the bow to activate the golem and then book it back out of the room. He'll get stuck in the doorway, unable to follow. If you have any weapons with reach that are capable of damaging him, you can just stand outside of his range and plink him to death with impunity.

I believe if you get the positioning just right, it's possible to hit him with a 2-handed weapon from beyond his retaliation range. I'm not entirely positive, because I usually just use +3 throwing weapons: Crimson Dart and Dwarven Thrower will both do the trick. Barring that, Melf's Minute Meteors will bring him down from safety, too, though you might need to go through a few casts.

Azuredge might work, too, and is the easiest returning throwing weapon to get your hands on besides. I'm not sure what it hits as in BG2EE at the moment.

sarevok57

SomeSort said:

Taylan said:

Related question: is it humanely possible to beat the iron golem at the stage of the game you'd normally do this quest? I can barely even touch the stone golems.

Iron Golems are easy prey to the single most powerful force in all of Faerun: doors.

If you have haste or boots of speed, you can grab the bow to activate the golem and then book it back out of the room. He'll get stuck in the doorway, unable to follow. If you have any weapons with reach that are capable of damaging him, you can just stand outside of his range and plink him to death with impunity.

I believe if you get the positioning just right, it's possible to hit him with a 2-handed weapon from beyond his retaliation range. I'm not entirely positive, because I usually just use +3 throwing weapons: Crimson Dart and Dwarven Thrower will both do the trick. Barring that, Melf's Minute Meteors will bring him down from safety, too, though you might need to go through a few casts.

Azuredge might work, too, and is the easiest returning throwing weapon to get your hands on besides. I'm not sure what it hits as in BG2EE at the moment.

the newer patches of the game, have fixed reach weapons on golems so now iron/adamantine golems have the same reach as a two handedsword, I used to use this tactic in firkraag's dungeon, but getting the adamantine golem stuck in the secret crevice and then using a two handed sword on it and it wouldn't be able to attack, but now they can reach characters using reach weaposn, so stay frosty