Invisibility: What is it Good For?

booinyoureyes

Hi guys, so everyone always recommends invisibility when it comes to picks for mage spells. However, I rarely find reason to cast it.

How do you guys use invisibility, and when is it particularly helpful? Other than setting up your characters to ambush an enemy, what other tactical advantages does it give you?

Raduziel

1) Turn Undead and Disarm Traps securely.

2) Gaining advantage in a combat by positioning your character freely.

3) Land more than one backstab in a fight.

4) Disrupt enemies' casting by breaking their line of sight

5) A safe way out of a lost battle.

6) Sparing resources by avoiding entire fights.

7) Safely disappear after luring an enemy into a bunch of traps.

8) IIRC you can cast buff spells without breaking invisibility, so it is very useful for priests too.

All packed in a level 2 spell.

semiticgoddess

9) Avoiding area transition ambushes

10) Bailing out a vulnerable or disabled character and forcing the enemy to switch targets, like keeping the doppelgangers from killing Liia Jannath at the Ducal Palace

11) Waiting out an enemy mage's defenses so you can strike when their best buffs are down

12) Disrupting an enemy mage's single-target spell by making their target vanish

13) Scouting

14) Avoiding certain dialogues, like Taso Kala's in Ust Natha

Zaghoul

I use it for resting safely when on solo. Same goes for sanctuary and HiS. Enemies will appear if interrupting sleep but one can just move out of sight and try sleeping again.

booinyoureyes

Thanks @Raduziel @semiticgod and @Zaghoul !

I'm going to start using it, especially with a mage/thief.

Raduziel

semiticgod said:

9) Avoiding area transition ambushes

10) Bailing out a vulnerable or disabled character and forcing the enemy to switch targets, like keeping the doppelgangers from killing Liia Jannath at the Ducal Palace

Now I'm feeling stupid because I never thought about this solution.

semiticgoddess

@Raduziel: Neither did I, until someone pointed it out to me after I lost a no-reload run because I didn't know that you had to keep either Belt or Liia Jannath alive to complete BG1.

Grond0

If you want to be particularly mean you can use invisible blockers to prevent enemies with no distance attacks from protecting themselves. There are also quite a few characters with scripted conversations that won't defend themselves if they can't get in speech range of an attacker.

Remember that attacking from invisibility gives you a +4 bonus to THAC0, so is a way to hit well-protected enemies.

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DrakeICN

Cant believe you forgot from this list, escaping the city guards if someone spots you rummaging through their belongings. You only get a reputation damage, if they initiate dialogue!

Nimran

Shandaxx said:

You can cast invisibility, then go straight up before someone and surprise them by shouting in their face:
"BOO in your eyes!"

“Oh gods, my eyes!!”

dunbar

I find it especially useful for soloing (when XP doesn't matter so much) as it can be used to avoid conflict altogether in many cases.
What I didn't fully appreciate for a long time (because I only really used it for backstabbing) was just how long invisibility lasts. The Cloakwood literally becomes a walk in the park when you're invisible.

Abi_Dalzim

Waltz right through Korlasz's tomb at the start of SOD. If you can talk to Porios and then moderately damage Korlasz quickly, then you don't need to do any other fighting, and you still get full XP for every enemy in the tomb.

OlvynChuru

I like to use invisibility in order to position my characters right outside the vision range of enemies in an encounter. One person goes invisible and can tell how far they can go before an enemy sees them. Then the rest of the party stands just outside the vision range and throws their Webs, Fireballs, etc. Although this is a cheesy strategy, I can do it without metagaming and in a no-reload playthrough thanks to invisibility.

jsaving

15) Put 0 points in hide and move silently, freeing you up for locks/traps/pickpocket in the early game.

Balrog99

Disarming traps has already been mentioned but I'm not sure it was emphasized sufficiently. One casting of invisibility can ensure the disarming of EVERY trap in a dungeon before they ever pose a risk to your party. If you're ok with leaving your thief out of fights (except for backstabs they're really not that useful), he/she can be invisible virtually forever!

Edit: In IWDEE, even a rabbit familiar with invisibility can disarm most traps. For the tough ones cast Luck on it, or use the free Luck spell from the Lucky Scimitar. I find that I don't even need a thief and can use a Skald or Bard instead if I start them as True Neutral.

ThacoBell

Not being seen :P

gorgonzola

OlvynChuru said:

I like to use invisibility in order to position my characters right outside the vision range of enemies in an encounter. One person goes invisible and can tell how far they can go before an enemy sees them. Then the rest of the party stands just outside the vision range and throws their Webs, Fireballs, etc. Although this is a cheesy strategy, I can do it without metagaming and in a no-reload playthrough thanks to invisibility.

not cheesy at all imho. while i consider really lame to do it only relying on metagame knowledge, a party that is able to get valuable recon while not detected by the enemy earns the right of a first devastating bombing strike, this is true in rl and why should it not be so in the game. the point imo is to keep it under correct proportions, a first strike is good, continuing to bomb the enemy with a single wand of fireballs round after round exploiting the fact that the enemy is scripted to not react and act as sitting ducks ruins all the enjoyment of playing.

15) buffing.
16) choosing how to use the battle area and where to place your toons.

i played bg2 over and over and i almost know where every enemy or trap is placed, but i like to play like if i had not that metagame knowledge, so i don't buff for a fight if i am not able to spot the enemy before he does spot me, for me to have a thief, ranger or mage able to do the recon work is the prerequisite to use any not long lasting buff like stoneskin, in the situations where i am ambushed myself (the enemies spawns from nothing when i walk on a trigger point, i rp it as an enemy able to outsmart me in the recon and fight not buffed, or better start to buff only after they spawn.

17) waste the buffs of the enemy mages. is the same concept of 11) and 12) but at the next level.
you intentionally make yourself visible to trigger the buffing sequence of a powerful mage and then disappear and wait for them to expire. jan is perfect for that as he can spot invisible (thief part) the mage, become visible triggering the self buff and disappear again (spell). then he can hide in shadows again with the non detection cloak and monitor the mages buffs while immune to true sight.

DreadKhan

I agree, Jan is really overpowered.

Michelle

I mostly solo and use invisible potions and rings all of the time. 
Just a few things because I meta a ton in the beginning to set myself up to play.
Get rid of the acorns without killing the knights and getting chased all over the city.
Get Belm or just finish the entire Druid Grove with no fighting. 
The two, “Oh hell no.” Ambushes in the beginning of SoA. Ambush, go invisible and get far enough away to plan their         demise.
Invisibility and Sunfire, portable bad guy barbecue.
invisibility to scout and place summons before a battle, especially when they start out with blue circles.
Killing the genies in Trademeet. Kill the outside one to get the bottle, run in and get a hit on the main one, wait until they enter their animation then go invisible. Now you can kill them. Ring of Ram or Ring or The Victor really help here.
I use Invisibility + Ring of the Ram + HLA traps to start many battles in ToB. Place traps just beyond their vision, Invisibility, run in and RotR a mage or whichever target you prefer into the traps. Usually the mage dies and whatever you hit during the time stoppage. 
When I have no level drain protection but have to get past those roving vampires. Grr! They are annoying!
I use it to get in and out of a lot of places if I want something from there reall bad but am not able to kill my way there yet. Like Kensai getting the Shield Amulet early. Meta I know and even though I only do it at the beginning of a play through, I still feel guilty about it.

I use Invisibility a lot. Three of the most important items I want are the two Sandthief rings and Ring of Air Control. I will always buy every potion that I can get also.There are things that border on exploits that I will not talk about because I don’t want it removed in the next update.

semiticgoddess

Whenever I play BG1, I use Invisibility to skip dangerous ambushes and a lot of optional fights, to the extent that I basically never fight anything in either the Nashkel or Cloakwood mines aside from the end bosses, and regularly sneak past all kinds of enemies throughout the game. I even use it as a key strategy against SCS Davaeorn, since it lets me bait out his damage spells and wait out his MGOI.

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semiticgoddess

@subtledoctor: Without SR, Invisibility lasts 24 hours instead of 8. Three castings of Invisibility can cover a party for a few hours, if you cover half the party, rest, and cover the other half. That requires a safe resting space to avoid an ambush, but if you have more castings of Invisibility, you can maintain party-wide invisibility as long as you don't break it when you don't have a spare casting on hand.

I usually have two mages in the party to make sure everyone can travel under Invisibility at all times.

Michelle

Chaotic Good familiar Fairy Dragon has Invisibility 10’ Radius. 

semiticgoddess

Yeah, but only in BG2. In BG1 and SoD, it just has Mirror Image.

Michelle

Sorry, it has been a very long time since I have played bg1 and I have never played SOD. 
New plan, ignore the Fairy Dragon coment . 

Grond0

If you're playing vanilla you do get the 10' radius invisibility, which makes that a pretty attractive familiar to have.  It's only in the EE games that the familiars' abilities have been nerfed at BG1 stage.

semiticgoddess

@Grond0: You mean BGTutu? I remember being able to cast Invisibility 10' Radius at level 1 in Tutu; everything worked on BG2 rules in Tutu.

Grond0

Yes, I suppose I was being misleading there.  In order to get the find familiar spell in the first place in vanilla you needed to mod the game using Tutu or BGT, which made use of the BG2 engine.  Although BGEE is also based on the BG2 engine, there were quite a few tweaks to nerf things or restore specific BG1 behavior - find familiar was one of the former.