Best ways to kill Drizzt?

Lammas

In the original BG my go to choise was feeding Garrick (or someone else I wasn't planning on using) to the grinder: other party members go the small isle, Garrick aggroes Drizzt and leads him to the south end of the pond where he gets stuck after making mincemeat out of the unfortunate bard. However in EE he didn't get stuck and instead wandered off (but never made an appearance on the island either). I ended up defeating him by distracting him with about 20 charges from the wand of monster summoning and that wasn't too bad but it left me wondering if there are any other cheesy ways of tackling him, preferably as early as possible?

I think one of the old methods was to block the way to the isle with 2 party members and kicking them out of the party so Drizzt gets stuck on small path to the isle but I'm not sure if that works now either (didn't try) and I was wondering what are all the cheesy methods around for kicking him to the curb.

GrimjackMV

Going in with full plate and packing steel has always worked well for me.

Lammas

On a low level character?

Balrog99

If you don't mind not getting the xp you can just wander around him revealing the area without letting him actually see you. Most of the gnolls you reveal will immediately move to attack Drizzt still obscured in the fog of war. Drizzt will not return fire and will succumb eventually (good time to make a cup of tea or take a bathroom break). The other advantage of this method is no reputation hit!

Lammas

LOL that works? That's awesome!
EDIT: Can I just walk into the area invisible while revealing him or is keeping him inside the fog of war a requirement for him not attacking the gnolls back?

Balrog99

I wouldn't risk it. You can always save 1st and see though. Let me know if that works...

Lammas

Well, I made a "new" character and rushed there to try it out and he talks to you through invisibility after which he defends himself against the gnolls. Tried 2 times so that's a no. I did manage to trigger the gnolls to him without him defending himself with the fog of war so that definitely does work. Thank you very much for this new method!

EDIT: This only seems to work if you run in so that drizzt is shown on the screen but doesn't have the time to trigger talking to you. The gnolls are passive if you haven't seen drizzt. So I guess the best method here is to lock him in place with talk canceling while triggering the gnolls. Giving in a couple more tries now.
EDIT2: Ehhh, no. He talks to you even if you try that. The only way to get the gnolls to him is to flash him on your screen without his talk triggering. Unfortunately this method does not seem that reliable at all.

Balrog99

It's touchy. Most of the time it works for me that the gnolls will attack him in the fog, but sometimes he fights back and kills them and sometimes he kills just a few of them but doesn't kill all of them (it takes forever for one or two gnolls to kill him but they will). Try it a few times and I bet it works eventually.

Edit: I've noticed that if you hear Drizzt talking he will slaughter the gnomes so that's a clue.

Chronicler

Kick him in the head 'til he's dead!

Sikorsky

I can take Drizzt with both my arms tied behind my back!

Grond0

You don't need to get in sight of Drizzt to trigger the gnolls to attack him, but you do need to get a tiny bit closer than when you first see the gnolls. I tend to do that by inching up until I first see a gnoll - they will then move to attack me. Quickly inching forward a little more - not enough to get into sight range of Drizzt - will cause the gnoll(s) to turn to attack Drizzt (you need to do this quite quickly before they get out of sight of Drizzt. Also, if you keep on circling round to activate all the gnolls, my experience is that Drizzt will usually activate even without you coming into his sight. However, if you only activate a few to the east of him he never activates.

Up until v2.5 the gnolls regularly broke their weapons, so you could kill the ones you activated with the exception of one with a broken weapon - that would then knock Drizzt unconscious and you could finish him off for the XP without any need to run him round (you can do that though even without an oil of speed, but it's easier with one - though he will try and dispel that). That's still possible, but in v2.5 the chance of those gnolls breaking a weapon has been radically reduced (it's still the same for other gnolls, the change is only to these ones). Now it's relatively unusual for a gnoll to break their weapon before Drizzt is dead - though the odds of that are still pretty good if you're playing LoB.

Lammas

Grond0 said:

though the odds of that are still pretty good if you're playing LoB.

Nah, I did that piece of junk once and I'm not touching it again unless I decide to do a SOD or BG2 LOB run at some point.

I'll give the gnolls another go when I next make another character. Is it possible to get him stuck on the small path to the island using kicked NPC's still or does he wander off? I wouldn't say no to a faster kill and the EXP he gives if that works.

Grond0

I don't think he would wander off if he can still see an enemy. However, if you're happy to use kicked NPCs then you can just surround him where he is and then kill him with missiles or a 2-handed weapon (though you do need some method to protect against his charm person spells).

Aaezil

If you are going to exploit to kill him why not just ctrl+y make it quicker

Fiddler

Because it's fun to try. ctrl-y takes the fun out of it.

Skatan

With just a little bit of cheese: save scum and make sure you plant the max amount of traps, load up on bows with arrow of piercing and whatever wands you have, prefferably wands of summoning to keep him occupied while you pew-pew-pew at him and hope for crits or decent rolls. After 6 traps he usually only take a couple of hits. Or trap a place around where he wanders, then do the old "surround and kick out NPC" and then the number of hits from you is greatly reduced if the traps trigger when you make him hostile.

Traps is the easiest cheese in BG1 to kill off high-level targets, like Elminster etc.

Lammas

Aaezil said:

If you are going to exploit to kill him why not just ctrl+y make it quicker

Cheesing and outright cheating are pretty different things, you know.

Lammas

Skatan said:

With just a little bit of cheese: save scum and make sure you plant the max amount of traps, load up on bows with arrow of piercing and whatever wands you have, prefferably wands of summoning to keep him occupied while you pew-pew-pew at him and hope for crits or decent rolls. After 6 traps he usually only take a couple of hits. Or trap a place around where he wanders, then do the old "surround and kick out NPC" and then the number of hits from you is greatly reduced if the traps trigger when you make him hostile.

Traps is the easiest cheese in BG1 to kill off high-level targets, like Elminster etc.

Traps sound good. I've honestly not even once used any in BG1 now that it's an option in EE. Didn't even think of those.
I've never tried completely surrounding him with kicked NPC's either. I might look into that too.

Grond0

Traps can certainly provide a nice boost. A cool 26k XP for Elminster can give everyone in a starting party an immediate level (and he reappears several times ...).

Lammas

Killing Elminster would be something I've never ever done either but I think I'll keep it that way. I have plenty of ways to get some good early exp and hit the cap with a 6 member party before the end easily. Killing a recurring story NPC goes a bit beyond my What-I'm-willing-to-cheese-o'meter anyway (unless you tell me he has some sweet, sweet loot on him).

Grond0

Afraid not. It's not something I do much (I normally play solo, so have even less need than you for XP), but it's nice to shut him up occasionally .

Lammas

Yeah, it's pretty easy to hit 161k with six so I'm not too conserned about missing out on some exp here and there. I usually run between 3-6 members in BG1 with all of my EE runs so far having had 6 except the one time I decided to do my first solo run and find out what LOB is at the same time (good thing I'm fluent in cheese when needed...).

Aaezil

If your cheese involves glitching out los or targetting then yes, those are both exploits

Lammas

Dude, I don't care. I don't have cheats active and I'm not going to activate them for this. I want options that work in game.

SirBatince

melee : needs to be crushing + storm potion + drawupon + potion of power + maxed level and haste = youll semi reliably hit him

ranged : haste + kite forever until you land enough crits. use potions of focus and best gear + scroll of strength of one

spells : cast fireshield blue and red, make him mad and then cast otiluke on yourself. reload and try again if blue shield gibs him

Grond0

SirBatince said:

melee : needs to be crushing + storm potion + drawupon + potion of power + maxed level and haste = youll semi reliably hit him

ranged : haste + kite forever until you land enough crits. use potions of focus and best gear + scroll of strength of one

spells : cast fireshield blue and red, make him mad and then cast otiluke on yourself. reload and try again if blue shield gibs him

For ranged attacks don't forget the option of using Arrows of Piercing. With those you can actually hit him more easily than in melee with strength 25.

Lammas

SirBatince said:

spells : cast fireshield blue and red, make him mad and then cast otiluke on yourself. reload and try again if blue shield gibs him

Wow, this is great. Now I'll just have to remind myself of where to pick up those scrolls. If all of those can be picked up before sorcerous sundries then this seems like a perfect thing for this.

SirBatince

Lammas said:

SirBatince said:

spells : cast fireshield blue and red, make him mad and then cast otiluke on yourself. reload and try again if blue shield gibs him

Wow, this is great. Now I'll just have to remind myself of where to pick up those scrolls. If all of those can be picked up before sorcerous sundries then this seems like a perfect thing for this.

actually blue shield is in the Shadow Thief guild on the hulalala wizard.

KvotheRM8

Pretty sure traps still work, just place 7 of them and lead him into them thats usually enough to kill him or Elminster. Lol one time I killed all three appearances of elminster

Lammas

KvotheRM8 said:

Pretty sure traps still work, just place 7 of them and lead him into them thats usually enough to kill him or Elminster. Lol one time I killed all three appearances of elminster

Just thought I'd mention in case you didn't know but there's 4 of them. Area east of ambush at chapter 1, Beregost at chapter 3, Friendly Arm Inn at chapter 4 and BG east at chapter 5. The FAI one is pretty easy to miss since there's not much of a reason to go to where he is standing at that point.

Chronicler

The friendly arm inn one is the one where Elminster tells you how to get to the cloakwood mines, right? How do you get there without him?