@lroumen: Medical allowances should be perfectly fine. Sufficiently major distractions IRL, like children who require attention (or who accidentally end a run by pressing a button!), should also apply for the same reasons: it wouldn't be fair to players whose RL limitations impose extra burdens on them. Childless players with no health issues like me shouldn't have an advantage.
SCS vampires with their CON drain and SCS illithids that teleport at will, can see through invisibility, and go invisible at will come to mind. Any character that can't cast PfMW has no way of protecting themselves.
As long as we're on the subject, there are some means of preventing this. Vampires, as always, can be thwarted with Protection from Undead scrolls and kited safely, since they have no teleportation (though their high movement rates can make kiting difficult, as I found in my Shadowdancer run). The scrolls are only ineffectual in the fight at the Throne of Bhaal in Ascension, and proper positioning (away from Tanova or the Guard) can prevent you from getting dispelled anywhere except for the first Pocket Plane fight in Ascension. However, there's virtually no chance of getting boxed in during either of those fights; you can always run, and Bodhi does not have an extremely high movement rate.
There's an option to prevent illithids from seeing through invisibility, but even if they can see through invisibility in your install, you can block their INT drain using Potions of Genius and Potions of Mind Focusing. Plus, if you do get hit, you can run around for 5-10 rounds until the INT drain wears off. A Potion of Genius lasts 150 rounds and a Potion of Mind Focusing lasts 600 rounds, so you can safely spend a lot of time running away, and as long as you avoid the narrow corridors in which you can easily get boxed in, the mind flayers will get very few chances to actually land a hit before the previous INT drain wears off. In my unkitted fighter run, I had about 70 Potions of Genius and roughly the same number of Potions of Mind Focusing despite drinking 21 of them to deal with the Alhoon, which granted me 84 extra INT (the game will only display 25 INT at most, but the actual number can temporarily be higher than that). Most temples appear to sell 13 Potions of Genius in BG2, and BG2 has a lot of temples in Athkatla.
This doesn't hold for Watcher's Keep necessarily, since at least one of the fights involves a Dispel Magic and/or Breach effect. That one could get sticky. But the other optional mind flayer fights, and the mandatory one in ToB, can be dealt with strictly by using Potion of Genius and/or Potions of Mind Focusing. The Alhoon has spectacular THAC0 and has access to Remove Magic, but can be thwarted using a Protection from Undead scroll.
Plus, mind flayers have small circles, so they can't box you in as easily as a Balor, Nabassu, or Glabrezu with a double-sized circle.
Plus, warriors can take Greater Deathblow as an HLA, which is enough to instantly kill regular mind flayers, if not Ulitharids.
Also, a sufficiently high movement rate can let you jump over at least one of the spawn triggers in the mind flayer city, sparing you the trouble of fighting one of the bigger groups, if not all of them.
Combined with a sufficiently low AC value and enough damage output to kill the mind flayers in a reasonable time frame, it's possible to reduce the chance of death to nearly zero, just like with any other fight, even for classes with no access to PFMW.
@Harpagornis@histamiini: Previously, I've suggested that, as of v2.5, only characters with fighter and mage levels would be able to solo the tetralogy with SCS and Ascension on LoB mode without reloading and without leveling past the normal XP cap, since the latest patch adds -11 AC to non-player characters in LoB mode, and that would crowd out most classes from tackling certain bottlenecks like Belhifet. But I've noticed that Champion's Strength scrolls are available in my SoD install, and the THAC0 bonuses from Champion's Strength stack. This means a ranger, paladin, or a character with cleric levels would still have a shot at dealing with Belhifet, since you could cast multiple Champion's Strength spells on yourself to dramatically improve your THAC0. If you used 3 such scrolls, you'd have +9 to THAC0 for nearly 30 rounds at the cost of disabling spellcasting and setting STR to 18/100, even if it's normally higher.
The Harm spell would still be a bit of a crapshoot given Belhifet's MR, but stacking enough Champion's Strength spells would make the AC problem a non-issue, since Champion's Strength scrolls are plentiful. Cranking one's hit chance up to 95% would do a lot to make Belhifet more viable.
How does that work with harm though? Champions strength disables spell casting so a second or third from scroll might work but I have never seen harm from scroll.
@lroumen: Good point about Harm. There is no Harm scroll and the Harm spell only lasts 15 seconds, so you could only cast a single Champion's Strength scroll, or maybe two, before losing your chance to land a hit with Harm. Only in BG2, when you can cast extra Champion's Strength spells via sequencer/trigger/contingency or a clone, could you get more than that. But in BG2, you'd already have access to other methods of (nearly) guaranteeing a successful hit with Harm, such as Implosion, Critical Strike, Time Stop, the Answerer, and higher-level castings of Holy Power and Tenser's Transformation.
Cavalier can absolutely blast Belhifet to smithereens after Champion's Strength stacking. There's 2 scrolls in BG1 and 10 in Dragonspear, and with just four of them Cavalier can get -23 Thac0, which gives all hits except 1 against Bel's -24 AC (with Improved Invisibility). This means that even 2.5 LoB Bel is down in 13.1 rounds on average.
Clerics won't have enough power; they just don't have the numbers to make it happen. @histamiini, what do you think about Fighter/Clerics? Wouldn't you need a lucky Dispel Magic to slow down Sarevok enough to kite him effectively? Could you handle the Coalition Camp invasion in SoD without access to mage spells, mage wands, or arrows?
@semiticgod I wouldn't rule clerics out vs. Belhifet, items, violet potion, power potions and six champion's strength they can still get -22 Thac0 for 20 rounds, which may be enough. But I don't see how cleric can pass coalition battle, even when wasting resources needed vs. Bel. F/C should be able to clear coalition battle with hp buffing from Heroism Potions.
In my installs I've never got Sarevok dispelled, because he has a haste ring I think. F/C should be passable also against Sarevok though, as there's five One Gift Lost fireball necklaces. Four easy ones, which will get Sarevok to about half health, and then you could tank him. Cleric will have harder time, can't really say if 5 skelis and tanking would be enough to finish Sarevok, skelis are pretty weak on 2.5 LoB.
I'm compiling a list of completed solo no-reload runs, just to see which classes still haven't been done. Currently we have solo no-reload runs for the following:
But I'm pretty sure @Alesia_BH also completed solo runs with a sorcerer and a Blade, though I don't have links to be sure those were solo runs and the entries in the Hall of Heroes don't always specify that they're solo runs (some runs are solo runs but don't have "Solo" in the entry). Can some of the veterans like @Grond0 confirm which of the following entries are solo runs? I was hoping to draw on the memories of those who came before me.
Character Name: Alia
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Blade
Notable Mods: SCS, IA 5.0 with Recommended Ease of Use Components
Difficulty: Insane
Entered by: Saros Shadow Follower
Character Name: Kalis
Race: Human
Class: Druid
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Enuhal
Character Name: Naji the Unspeakable
Race: Human
Class: Monk
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Enuhal
We still have no solo single-classed clerics or druids, and interestingly enough, the only solo mage run we've got is a Wild Mage, the least suited to no-reload gameplay.
Still can't believe @Grond0 did a solo Wizard Slayer run back in the day.
@semiticgod Well, I can at least tell you that none of my early runs were solo runs. I think neither was the one by @ussnorway .
I'm pretty certain, though I can't be 100% sure, that Saros' Alia run was solo - I was already active when that one happened, and I can't remember Saros ever playing with a party back then (he only played with a party a few times much later, after soloing was made basically impossible in IA). I also have some very vague memory of Frabjous playing a solo Cleric/Thief, achieving (at the time) unprecedented backstab damage, but that might not have been his no-reload character, it could've been an unrelated thing. I don't recall anything about the other runs, sorry. For some of them, it's been over 10 years, and I didn't even follow the no-reload thread during the time the first four entries occured.
Still can't believe @Grond0 did a solo Wizard Slayer run back in the day.
Believe it . For my play style that was actually a relatively easy class then. The combination of green scrolls in BG1, shorty saving throws and weapon based immunities in SoA and 100% MR in ToB allows you to safely manage magical threats - which is what I tend to die most against. Actual fighting is rarely a problem - the fact that I've avoided using any healing for so long now means I have to have strategies in place to compensate for combat weaknesses - such as poorer AC from not having magic equipment. Admittedly though that run WS run was pre-EE. I've tried a number of times to get through SoD as a wizard slayer and that's much harder - saving throws are still relatively poor and there's not as much access to item immunities as in BG2. I think it is doable with only a relatively small amount of luck though and I'll hope to prove that sometime in the not too distant future.
That's all by the by though - I'm afraid I can't add anything more to your list. @Corey_Russell has a much better memory than me, so might perhaps be able to help.
I think @Enuhal is right, @ussnorway pretty much always used parties - she liked the banter and romances I think. I found a post that Alesia_BH did Feb 28th, 2013 where she mentioned Alanis was solo. Alia had at least one party member, Asarta, so was NOT solo. No idea about Ogg, Urmgi or Hugh, and Numa, that was before the last BioWare forum and before my time. I only had joined for a relatively short while before that forum was created. @Alesia_BH would know the answers you seek, may have to wait until she logs on before you'll know.
I remember your wizard slayers @Grond0 - as I recall, their stone statues litter the landscape. I also remember quite a few dying due to the Duke Eltan quest-line. But then I explained to you that you don't even have to do that, just deal with Slythe and the Duchal Palace, and you then finally were getting out of BG 1 after that.
Clerics won't have enough power; they just don't have the numbers to make it happen.
While I'm not sure how practical it is, a level 9+ single-classed cleric could theoretically beat Belhifet faster than anyone else by hitting Belhifet with Slay Living. Belhifet in SOD is not immune to instant death, and Slay Living ignores magic resistance and hits as a +6 weapon. The problem is hitting him and getting him to fail a saving throw.
@OlvynChuru: Excellent insight. The practicality is actually dependent on the version.
Holy Power on a level 10 cleric makes 11 THAC0. With Chant, Aid, that blue amulet from SoD, the good luck belt, a Potion of Invisibility, the Helm of Balduran, and the right bracers, you should have -3 THAC0 with Slay Living (unlike Harm, Slay Living doesn't benefit from STR bonuses). Make it a Cleric of Lathander, and you could hit -4. With excellent timing, you could also add Bless for -5, which should be a 60% hit chance on Belhifet's base AC of -12. A cleric with 21 Wisdom from the tomes and 22 from the right amulet from SoD would have 4 castings of Slay Living.
However, Belhifet has a save vs. spell of 5, which means an 80% chance of resisting it. But in LoB mode, there's a +5 penalty to enemy saving throws, which amounts to a 55% chance of resisting it. Doable with 4 castings of Slay Living, but unreliable. You'd likely have to restart multiple times from Candlekeep to make it through.
However, in v2.5 in LoB mode, enemies get -11 AC, apparently to a maximum of -20, which reduces the chance of a hit to maybe 20%. That would render it far less reliable than it already is.
However, enemies aren't supposed to get a +5 penalty to saves in LoB mode; they're supposed to get a +5 bonus, which would make Belhifet's save vs. spell a 0, in which case the chance of success would be 0%, or 5% if you played a Necromancer dual-classed to cleric. The mage levels could also let you use a Lower Resistance scroll and attempt a Greater Malison, Doom, and/or Chant, but the odds of getting past his MR would make the impact negligible.
Long story short, it would be possible in the current version, but it's very dicey for no-reload purposes and would be virtually impossible if the saving throw bug were fixed.
@semiticgod for Slay Living I think you need something else in your buff list to get THAC0 down that low (are you assuming a potion of power or the use of Champion's Strength)? I can't remember if the bless effect from aid is cumulative with bless, though I think it may not work. I also thought strength bonuses didn't apply to harm - am I wrong there?
It's a bit harder in the current LoB version than that. Although there's a mistaken +5 penalty to saves in v2.5, there's also a +5 adjustment to the actual die rolled that cancels that out, i.e. there's effectively no adjustment to Belhifet's saving throws at the moment. As you say the saving throw should be improved by 5 though, in which case you would need to use something to nerf his save (in addition to spells an archer dualled to cleric could have a go at that, though with one fewer casting available of Slay Living). I agree the odds against success of that tactic for any solo class in LoB no-reload would be very challenging though .
@Grond0: Good point on the Champion's Strength scrolls, though you only get so many chances at landing it. The weapon from Slay Living only lasts 18 seconds, so you'd only be able to cast two such scrolls for an extra +6 to THAC0. Theoretically, you could do this for all 4 castings of Slay Living, but you'd have to either wait out the duration of the Champion's Strength scroll so you could cast spells again, which would take either 27 or 30 rounds (!), or else just drink a Potion of Magic Blocking to dispel the effect along with all your other buffs (!) and wait for the potion to wear off after just 5 rounds instead.
Looking it up, Harm does not grant STR bonuses to THAC0, but I distinctly recall checking it multiple times in the past and confirming that it did. Apparently an EE update finally removed that.
Good point on the Potion of Power as well; I hadn't considered that. I believe those potions generally lower THAC0 by 2 points?
Bless and Aid are indeed cumulative. They use different opcodes.
So, the chance of hitting Belhifet is better than I previously stated, but the chance of him failing a save is also worse than I previously stated in LoB mode. Sounds like a wash.
But this does seem like a nice tactic to try out in a non-LoB run! It might not be reliable enough to bet the fate of a run on, but since you don't need level 5 spell cleric slots for many other things in that fight (Raise Dead, Champion's Strength, and Chaotic Commands scrolls are plentiful in SoD), it's worth a shot. It might also be a good strat for a segmented speedrun.
But even in lob you should be able to whittle him down with weapons. The main worry is thac0 and survival I would say. Slay living is just a nice opener.
I've been thinking about an insane solo poverty run of the saga, but I'm not sure there are any viable classes without removing the XP cap, making it impossible to do no-reload on an unmodded game. Even a solo Seducer would struggle to deal with Belhifet, since almost none of the critters with +3 weapons or better can be charmed without either going past the typical XP cap (level 12 for thieves in SoD) or using the level drain trick to grab Morentherene with Recruit Follower. As for a modded game, I'd prefer to use an SCS install at least, if not Ascension, but that could impose additional difficulties.
Caelar on Normal mode should be able to do much of the damage against Belhifet, but the remainder could only be done by a Totemic Druid, sorcerer, or Cleric of Helm, none of which seem capable of handling the unmodded Sarevok in BG1 and his immunity to magic. Thoughts?
@semiticgod for a poverty run, not sure which classes would be well suited for that other than a sorcerer, or maybe shman or totemic druid (summons). I would also say a solo cleric could only really beat Sarevok by kiting him with a sling augmented by haste and haste boots, but obviously you can't do that in a poverty run...what about doing the run on core rather than insane? That would still be plenty hard enough...
@semiticgod that sounds really challenging to me if you're talking about true poverty, i.e. no items at all. I suppose it's possible enchanted weapon might work on fists, but I'm not sure it would and outpacing Belhifet's regeneration while kiting just with fists would be hard in any case.
A druid would have a slim chance of Harming Belhifet. However, there would be a lot of other very difficult encounters and the chance of a complete no-reload success seems vanishingly small to me (though I don't allow test encounters - I suppose if you're testing each combat along the way before designating a particular battle as 'the one' things would look somewhat more feasible).
In unmodded BGEE Sarevok has no magic immunity as such (though he is immune to some specific effects) - so a sorcerer for instance could do a significant amount of damage with magic missiles. Add in the use of invisibility, summons & skull traps and Sarevok himself would seem possible - by far the easiest way to kill him though would be to abuse the repeating lightning bolt trap (clerics and druids could also do that).
You referred to Caelar on Normal mode - I don't understand what that means in the context of an insane run?
For all you trivia fans, the hardest Sarevok to battle is...vanilla! That is, no TotSC just Baldur's Gate 1. He has 100% magic resistance. Only missiles/melee can defeat him. TotSC dropped his resistance to 70% - it was one of the reasons they wanted you to buy the expansion...
Comments
There's an option to prevent illithids from seeing through invisibility, but even if they can see through invisibility in your install, you can block their INT drain using Potions of Genius and Potions of Mind Focusing. Plus, if you do get hit, you can run around for 5-10 rounds until the INT drain wears off. A Potion of Genius lasts 150 rounds and a Potion of Mind Focusing lasts 600 rounds, so you can safely spend a lot of time running away, and as long as you avoid the narrow corridors in which you can easily get boxed in, the mind flayers will get very few chances to actually land a hit before the previous INT drain wears off. In my unkitted fighter run, I had about 70 Potions of Genius and roughly the same number of Potions of Mind Focusing despite drinking 21 of them to deal with the Alhoon, which granted me 84 extra INT (the game will only display 25 INT at most, but the actual number can temporarily be higher than that). Most temples appear to sell 13 Potions of Genius in BG2, and BG2 has a lot of temples in Athkatla.
This doesn't hold for Watcher's Keep necessarily, since at least one of the fights involves a Dispel Magic and/or Breach effect. That one could get sticky. But the other optional mind flayer fights, and the mandatory one in ToB, can be dealt with strictly by using Potion of Genius and/or Potions of Mind Focusing. The Alhoon has spectacular THAC0 and has access to Remove Magic, but can be thwarted using a Protection from Undead scroll.
Plus, mind flayers have small circles, so they can't box you in as easily as a Balor, Nabassu, or Glabrezu with a double-sized circle.
Plus, warriors can take Greater Deathblow as an HLA, which is enough to instantly kill regular mind flayers, if not Ulitharids.
Also, a sufficiently high movement rate can let you jump over at least one of the spawn triggers in the mind flayer city, sparing you the trouble of fighting one of the bigger groups, if not all of them.
Combined with a sufficiently low AC value and enough damage output to kill the mind flayers in a reasonable time frame, it's possible to reduce the chance of death to nearly zero, just like with any other fight, even for classes with no access to PFMW.
The Harm spell would still be a bit of a crapshoot given Belhifet's MR, but stacking enough Champion's Strength spells would make the AC problem a non-issue, since Champion's Strength scrolls are plentiful. Cranking one's hit chance up to 95% would do a lot to make Belhifet more viable.
In my installs I've never got Sarevok dispelled, because he has a haste ring I think. F/C should be passable also against Sarevok though, as there's five One Gift Lost fireball necklaces. Four easy ones, which will get Sarevok to about half health, and then you could tank him. Cleric will have harder time, can't really say if 5 skelis and tanking would be enough to finish Sarevok, skelis are pretty weak on 2.5 LoB.
One Gift Lost in BG1
Shop in Carnival
Shop in Elfsong Tavern
Delorna
Nadine
Durlag's Tower last level
The last one maybe too tough to get, never bothered with it.
Archer->Mage
Assassin
Barbarian
Cavalier
Chaos Sorcerer
Cleric/Mage
Druid/Mage
Dwarven Defender
Fighter/Mage
Fighter/Mage/Thief
Jester
Kensai
Mage/Thief
Sun Soul Monk
Swashbuckler
Wild Mage
Wizard Slayer
Wizard Slayer->Thief
But I'm pretty sure @Alesia_BH also completed solo runs with a sorcerer and a Blade, though I don't have links to be sure those were solo runs and the entries in the Hall of Heroes don't always specify that they're solo runs (some runs are solo runs but don't have "Solo" in the entry). Can some of the veterans like @Grond0 confirm which of the following entries are solo runs? I was hoping to draw on the memories of those who came before me.
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Fighter/Cleric
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Frabjous
Character Name: Alanis
Race: Elf
Class: Sorcerer
Notable Mods: Questpack, Tactics (Parts), Ascension
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Alesia_BH
Character Name: Hugh
Race: Human
Class: Inquisitor
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Wizworm
Character Name: Urmgi
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Cleric/Thief
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Frabjous
Character Name: Alia
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Blade
Notable Mods: SCS, IA 5.0 with Recommended Ease of Use Components
Difficulty: Insane
Entered by: Saros Shadow Follower
Character Name: Kalis
Race: Human
Class: Druid
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Enuhal
Character Name: Naji the Unspeakable
Race: Human
Class: Monk
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @Enuhal
Character Name: Numa Stoneguard
Race: Dwarf
Class: Cleric 23 – Illusionist 19
Notable Mods: Keto-SOAv3 + Sarahtob-beta2
Difficulty: Core
Entered by: @UssNorway
Still can't believe @Grond0 did a solo Wizard Slayer run back in the day.
I'm pretty certain, though I can't be 100% sure, that Saros' Alia run was solo - I was already active when that one happened, and I can't remember Saros ever playing with a party back then (he only played with a party a few times much later, after soloing was made basically impossible in IA). I also have some very vague memory of Frabjous playing a solo Cleric/Thief, achieving (at the time) unprecedented backstab damage, but that might not have been his no-reload character, it could've been an unrelated thing. I don't recall anything about the other runs, sorry. For some of them, it's been over 10 years, and I didn't even follow the no-reload thread during the time the first four entries occured.
Believe it
That's all by the by though - I'm afraid I can't add anything more to your list. @Corey_Russell has a much better memory than me, so might perhaps be able to help.
While I'm not sure how practical it is, a level 9+ single-classed cleric could theoretically beat Belhifet faster than anyone else by hitting Belhifet with Slay Living. Belhifet in SOD is not immune to instant death, and Slay Living ignores magic resistance and hits as a +6 weapon. The problem is hitting him and getting him to fail a saving throw.
Holy Power on a level 10 cleric makes 11 THAC0. With Chant, Aid, that blue amulet from SoD, the good luck belt, a Potion of Invisibility, the Helm of Balduran, and the right bracers, you should have -3 THAC0 with Slay Living (unlike Harm, Slay Living doesn't benefit from STR bonuses). Make it a Cleric of Lathander, and you could hit -4. With excellent timing, you could also add Bless for -5, which should be a 60% hit chance on Belhifet's base AC of -12. A cleric with 21 Wisdom from the tomes and 22 from the right amulet from SoD would have 4 castings of Slay Living.
However, Belhifet has a save vs. spell of 5, which means an 80% chance of resisting it. But in LoB mode, there's a +5 penalty to enemy saving throws, which amounts to a 55% chance of resisting it. Doable with 4 castings of Slay Living, but unreliable. You'd likely have to restart multiple times from Candlekeep to make it through.
However, in v2.5 in LoB mode, enemies get -11 AC, apparently to a maximum of -20, which reduces the chance of a hit to maybe 20%. That would render it far less reliable than it already is.
However, enemies aren't supposed to get a +5 penalty to saves in LoB mode; they're supposed to get a +5 bonus, which would make Belhifet's save vs. spell a 0, in which case the chance of success would be 0%, or 5% if you played a Necromancer dual-classed to cleric. The mage levels could also let you use a Lower Resistance scroll and attempt a Greater Malison, Doom, and/or Chant, but the odds of getting past his MR would make the impact negligible.
Long story short, it would be possible in the current version, but it's very dicey for no-reload purposes and would be virtually impossible if the saving throw bug were fixed.
It's a bit harder in the current LoB version than that. Although there's a mistaken +5 penalty to saves in v2.5, there's also a +5 adjustment to the actual die rolled that cancels that out, i.e. there's effectively no adjustment to Belhifet's saving throws at the moment. As you say the saving throw should be improved by 5 though, in which case you would need to use something to nerf his save (in addition to spells an archer dualled to cleric could have a go at that, though with one fewer casting available of Slay Living). I agree the odds against success of that tactic for any solo class in LoB no-reload would be very challenging though
Looking it up, Harm does not grant STR bonuses to THAC0, but I distinctly recall checking it multiple times in the past and confirming that it did. Apparently an EE update finally removed that.
Good point on the Potion of Power as well; I hadn't considered that. I believe those potions generally lower THAC0 by 2 points?
Bless and Aid are indeed cumulative. They use different opcodes.
So, the chance of hitting Belhifet is better than I previously stated, but the chance of him failing a save is also worse than I previously stated in LoB mode. Sounds like a wash.
But this does seem like a nice tactic to try out in a non-LoB run! It might not be reliable enough to bet the fate of a run on, but since you don't need level 5 spell cleric slots for many other things in that fight (Raise Dead, Champion's Strength, and Chaotic Commands scrolls are plentiful in SoD), it's worth a shot. It might also be a good strat for a segmented speedrun.
Caelar on Normal mode should be able to do much of the damage against Belhifet, but the remainder could only be done by a Totemic Druid, sorcerer, or Cleric of Helm, none of which seem capable of handling the unmodded Sarevok in BG1 and his immunity to magic. Thoughts?
A druid would have a slim chance of Harming Belhifet. However, there would be a lot of other very difficult encounters and the chance of a complete no-reload success seems vanishingly small to me (though I don't allow test encounters - I suppose if you're testing each combat along the way before designating a particular battle as 'the one' things would look somewhat more feasible).
In unmodded BGEE Sarevok has no magic immunity as such (though he is immune to some specific effects) - so a sorcerer for instance could do a significant amount of damage with magic missiles. Add in the use of invisibility, summons & skull traps and Sarevok himself would seem possible - by far the easiest way to kill him though would be to abuse the repeating lightning bolt trap (clerics and druids could also do that).
You referred to Caelar on Normal mode - I don't understand what that means in the context of an insane run?