Still don't know how to beat this game
Cvijeta
Member Posts: 417
What do you do when you can't hit a mage, and only have breach memorized? Which are most useful spells, I only ever use buffs to buff my party, but never seem to use any other spell type.
What do you do when half of your party gets panicked due to fear spell?
What do you do when half of your party gets panicked due to fear spell?
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Using magic resistant Summoned creatures such as Skeleton Warriors is also highly effective, just be warned they can be unsummoned with Death Spell/Deathfog so you may want to chuck up some weak summons to tease out those spells.
Lastly then non-Lich Mages are vulnerable to Poison, once protection from magic weapons runs out then dagger of venom, any weapon with elemental damage, assassin and blackguard poison weapon ability are all highly effective, including arrows of fire/cold/acid, arrows/bolts of Biting, bolts of lightning. Obviously Liches are immune to poison but the other elemental damages will work as long as Prot magic weapons is down (only lasts 4 rounds per casting).
Cast Remove/Resist Fear
Cast Death Ward (Liches and other high lvl mages)
Cast True Seeing
Cast Secret Word/Breach/Spell Strike/Whichever protection removal spell you've got
Kill it.
Edit:
Or.. Recruit Keldorn, set to auto attack, set script to use special abilities, equip carsomyr.
Have some coffee, relax.
Breach is pretty much the only debuffing spell you'll need. It brings down Stoneskins and Protection from Magic Weapons and lets your physical attackers interrupt the mage and prevent him from doing much else. You will probably need multiple breaches memorized per mage to deal with their contingencies, too.
Liches are immune to level 5 spells, which means they cannot be breached. They're susceptible to the Wand of Spell Striking, (available in Watchers' Keep), though.
The really nasty protections like Protection from Magic Weapons and Improved Mantle only last four rounds, so in a pinch you can always fall back out of sight and wait for them to wear off.
Weapons with elemental damage are nice because the elemental damage can pierce stoneskins to interrupt mages. Flail of Ages is a superlative mage-killer. The 33% chance to inflict them with slow is also super-nice.
If you find your party getting panicked, memorize "Resist Fear" and cast it preventatively.
As mentioned, Keldorn's dispels and Carsomyr can take a lot of the thought out of defense-stripping-- just point and click and they're gone. Gotta kill a dragon to get the sword, (bring along Resist Fear!), but Keldorn's easy as pie to get.
If you make your character a Dwarf/Halfling/Gnome with 18 constitution, they get a 5-point bonus to several of their saves, including their save vs. spells. This makes enemy spells much less likely to land.
So improved invisibility makes you untargetable by magic, which could potentially give you a huge edge against enemy mages. The problem is there's a whole host of spells that can get rid of it. But... all of those spells are from the divination school. So if you cast Improved Invisibility on your mage and then cast Spell Immunity: Divination, the enemy can't get rid of it.
This means unless the enemy mages can see through invisibility, (most liches can do this, for instance), they can't cast spells at you. Which makes mage battles substantially easier, as all they really can do is summon monsters, and summoned monsters can be slain instantly with Death Spell.
One of the things that can make SCS so difficult is that mages start using the Improved Invisibility / Spell Immunity: Divination combo against you.
For all their intricate magical defense and dispel/protect game of cat and mouse, the mages really have only two kinds of defense against physical attacks: stoneskins/mirror images and Absolute Immunity.
Absolute Immunity lasts 4 rounds, so you don't as much as run as just briskly walk away for a while and the problem has solved itself.
Stoneskins/mirror images protect only from an x number of attacks. A level 20 Mage will have 10 Stoneskins. That is really not a lot for a party of five/six, even a party at half the Mage's level.
And that is before you even consider that elemental damage goes through Stoneskin.
But I agree, if your characters are well protected against mind affecting spells, like fear, chaos, paralyzation (hold) etc, then you can just wait it out and then brute force the mage once its best protections wear of. A berzerker or F/C dwarf, for example, is nigh impossible to kill once you reach negative saving throws.
If you have a druid, try casting insect plagues on enemy mages. It's a level 5 spell that even Jaheira as a MC reaches very early in the game. It trivializes most mage fights in vanilla BG2. The constant biting of the flies interrupts the enemy mages spell casting, making them very easy to kill off.
Edit: Btw, I concur on that you need something memorized that can remove invisibility. Improved invisibility is a low level spell that a decent amount of mages use, often well before you have a mage or cleric of your own with true sight (that sees through that). The divine spell remove invisibilty is low level, but has a long cast time and only works once, meaning anyone that can become invisible again will need another casting from you.
Thieves have detect illusion that remove invisibilty, but you need to invest skill points in it. It's usually my first pick after I have 100/100 in traps/lockpicking for someone like Jan Jansen.
You can make yourself invisible to make your characters being unable to be attacked by the enemy mages. Many enemy mages have invis memorized but not always do they have true sight. Invisibility 10' radius works here, but make sure your NPC scripts don't make them break invis.
There's a certain usable item in the game that adds true sight. I won't spoil it for you, but if you feel like it, google where to get it. This means even fighters can see through improved invis.
And like someone else said above, area of effect spells can still hit invis creatures so retreat back and bombard the area from afar.
(Depending on how you do the quest and who you carry with you into ToB, it's actually possible to get a second copy of the True Sight gem, giving your party three True Sight items in one playthrough.)
No point running off a list of what you can do if you are too low level to do any of it. Just gets confusing.
What level are you at, which NPC are with you and which mage is giving you so much grief?
That way you will get a targeted answer which you can work through and learn how the spells work.
No offense meant to other posters, but eventhough I know how to deal with mages (OKish) the long list of tactics to deal with all possibilities make my eyes blur.
Stun is... pretty much impossible to become immune to outside of saving throws.
If you have enough warrior types, just have all of them auto-attack the mage: as long as Protection From Magic Weapons isn't up, even stoneskin and Mirror Image doesn't really help survive all the attacks a group of warriors can put out. If Protection from magic weapons was cast, either use normal weapons/arrows, or just wait four rounds for it to drop, or take it down with Breach.
If Globes of Invulnerability are in use, take them down with Spell Thrust (mage 3) for the Minor Globe, and Secret Word and higher for a regular Globe of Invulnerability: after these are down, you can disrupt spells with spells as well which help significantly.
2nd level party wide spell lasts an hour.
Take two along in case it's dispelled and you need to cast it again.
Stun.
I'll leave that to somebody else, it's my personal bete noir because I usually forget to do anything about it.
So thinking the ring, potions, spells?
Don't try to use mind altering or other crowd control spells on magic users as they typically have high saves, magic resistance, spell protections, or all three. If you can get off a poisoned throwing dagger or a melf's acid arrow before their protections go up, most fights will be over before they begin (except for liches, who are immune).
If you've found that you're still struggling to hit a mage even after their spell protections are down, look out for lower-level spells like stoneskin and mirror image. The former absorbs a number of physical attacks per every other mage level and the latter creates illusory images that have a 50% chance of absorbing each attack (each absorbed attack removes an image/destroys a skin). Together, they're great insurance against nonmagical direct damage - wear them down with magic missiles and hasted fighters if you find yourself out of divination spells.
Finally, don't underestimate the thief skill "detect illusion." A lot of people ignore this at level up, but it can be a great tool to make mages targetable and works like an ongoing True Sight if properly invested in (plus it ignores spell immunity: divination). Just turn off your thief's AI and have them detect traps throughout the battle - should stop any illusions from staying up for very long
It's particularly annoying when you encounter enemies that have stuns that are not cast, such as the guy wielding Celestial Fury, Monks, Mind Flayers etc, in most cases you cannot protect yourself except via either being immune to being hit so the effect does not trigger (protection from magic weapons) or pushing your saving throw bonuses to the max via buffs and hoping you don't roll a 1
Best way to protect against Horror? Low saving throws. Best way to protect against stuns? Low saving throws. Best way to protect against Hold, against Mummy disease, against massive damage dragon breath, against blind, against silence? Low saving throws.
Other than hit you with their weapons, almost anything any enemy is going to want to do to you can either be stopped or blunted by making your saving throw.
Dwarves and Halflings with 18 constitution get -5 to their saves vs. Spell, Wand, and Death. Gnomes with 18 constitution get -5 to their saves vs. Spell and Wand; Spell and Death, in particular, are probably the two most important saves. (I'd say Breath is third, then Wands, then Polymorph.)
I cannot stress enough how insanely good a -5 to save vs. Spells, (and Death, if Dwarf or Halfling), is. By early BG2, they'll cut the amount of saves you fail in half. By late BG2, they'll reduce it essentially down to zero. Your back-liners, (mages and thieves, mostly), can live without it. But for front-liners like Fighters and Clerics, saving throws are life.
(Remember that Korgan and Mazzy both get this "Shorty Saves" bonus, with Korgan getting -5 to his Spell/Death/Wand saves and Mazzy getting -4. Jan also gets -4, but it's less important on him since he's more of a back-liner.)
Because of the importance of saving throws, my fighters and clerics are pretty much always wearing nonmagical Full Plate Mail plus a ring/amulet/cloak of protection, even if I have some good magical Full Plate available. Gotta get that saving throw bonus.
Korgan in particular is a great NPC if you're struggling with enemy disabling spells, as his Berserk is pretty much a one-stop-shop for status effect immunities. Whatever's bugging you, Korgan can probably become immune at the drop of a hat.
7 Poison/Death, 9 for Wands, and 10 for Spell saves is really strong just at level 1. Petrification is his weak point sadly. by a long shot.
You can cure Stun by the Remove Paralysis spell. You can prevent Stun by Barbarian Rage, Chaotic Commands, Enrage, Magic Resistance, Spell Immunity (Evocation), Potion of Magic Blocking, Scroll of Protection from Magic.
Potion of Magic Blocking and Spell Immunity (Evocation) will only prevent the stun effect caused by Chromatic Orb.
A sufficiently high level Cleric can also insta-kill liches using their Turn Undead ability.
How's that a cheat? Since liches are undead, you know...
(Bone Golems, it should be noted, are not technically undead. They're golems that just happen to be made out of bones instead of clay or stone or iron or juggernauts.)
PfU scrolls can take literally all danger out of any undead encounter in the game. They're cheap, common, and ludicrously overpowered. A fresh character of any class with just 89,000 XP can use them to defeat Kangaax without any trouble whatsoever, provided they have a weapon capable of hitting him.