SCS Mind Flayers ... oh boy
Amelian
Member Posts: 19
In the vanilla game Mind Flayers were annoying, but I never had serious problems with them. With SCS however, I've just run out of ideas already.
My party is around lvl 13 and I've entered the Mind Flayer Hide under the Temple District. The room before Alhoon is a death trap for me. I know that Chaotic Commands helps against the domination attacks, but I have only two slots for those, so I can't protect the whole party. And I have no way to defend against those Telepatic blasts or bombs, range attacks that just deal around 20-40 damage and seem to bypass anything. Went in with my buffed Ranger/Cleric, didn't last 2 rounds. Went in with a buffed mage, the same. Haer'Dalis survived the longest with Defensive Spin, but he killed only two Mind Flayers before going down. Spells seem to be useless because of their magic resistance.
Does anyone have any tips how to deal with those guys? Would really love to pick up the Hammer of Thunderbolts before setting sail for Spellhold.
My party is around lvl 13 and I've entered the Mind Flayer Hide under the Temple District. The room before Alhoon is a death trap for me. I know that Chaotic Commands helps against the domination attacks, but I have only two slots for those, so I can't protect the whole party. And I have no way to defend against those Telepatic blasts or bombs, range attacks that just deal around 20-40 damage and seem to bypass anything. Went in with my buffed Ranger/Cleric, didn't last 2 rounds. Went in with a buffed mage, the same. Haer'Dalis survived the longest with Defensive Spin, but he killed only two Mind Flayers before going down. Spells seem to be useless because of their magic resistance.
Does anyone have any tips how to deal with those guys? Would really love to pick up the Hammer of Thunderbolts before setting sail for Spellhold.
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Comments
in tactics no telepatic blast, but they naturally see trough invisibility, so you can not stab them, can not protect a toon with invisibility, you can not use spells like mass invisibility to approach them and hit them hard before they react.
they also can go invisible at will, and they do it on a regular basis, their tactic is to approach you invisible, hit and disappear. even with true sight active it is hard to really damage them in the very short time they are visible before they disappear again, there must be more TS stacked to reveal them effectively.
and you can not send a buffed RC or haer dalis as they will teleport right next to your less protected party members, no matter if you leave them in a very far room and are not spotted by the flyers, they "sense" them and teleport invisible near by.
still it is possible to beat them, i have done it with party and solo and so many other players have done it before me.
a couple of hints that i can give you, that probably work with scs, are to buff the int of your party, items and potions of genius, so they can resist to more int drains and to make all you can to avoid to be hit by physical attacks.
fighters with really good ac and mages protected by PFMW can not be hit by their physical attacks and no hit no lev drain.
also to focus the fire and take them one by one as fast as you can is helpful, a dead flier is an enemy less on the field draining int and casting the blast.
and keep moving, always move, a still target is a dead target, a target moving fast is hard to hit both by mlee attacks and aoe spells, if the blast is an aoe spell and not target a single toon.
anyway difficulty mods somehow change the order you do the quests, ie with scs the planar prison is so hard that most of the players avoid it in the early game even if there you can loot key items like the boots of speed.
it is possible that you are going to face the flyers too early for your mod setting.
i hope it helps.
If you do go on the defensive, not getting hit is usually the best play against mind flayers. If you can't manage that via buffs/AC, keep moving a lot. If you can bounce them around their targets while others keep wailing on them, you'll get ahead quickly. Don't be afraid to spread them out across the dungeon, too - fighting a bunch of mind flayers in tight spaces without room to maneuver is a recipe for disaster.
How do you boost saves? For warriors, monks, and anyone with Use Any Item, potions of invulnerability are the way to go; they improve your base AC to zero and boost all saves by 5. For everyone else, potions of stone form (base AC zero, Dex -3, saves +3) do the trick. If the stacking gets a character's Dex too low for comfort, add potions of mind focusing (Dex +3, Int +3) to counter that. Swap any enchanted armor (that doesn't boost saves) out for non-magic armor and protection items, and swap in any other save-boosting items (like archmage robes) you have. The level 4 mage spell Spirit Armor also boosts saves vs. spell by 3, and can be cast on any party member.
Invulnerability potions are fairly common drops in SCS; many enemy warriors get them, and they don't always get the chance to use them. Stone form potions are much rarer, and you'll likely have to visit shops to get enough.
The target to get your save vs spell to is -3 or better. Ulitharids cast Mind Blast with a -4 to save, so you save on a 1 - always. The potions and spells I mentioned all have a duration of one hour, so you'll need to move quickly once you buff. Oils of Speed are a good idea, as are other combat buffs. A side effect here is that all of those potions and spells also boost AC; since mind flayers have relatively poor THAC0, you're likely to AC tank them and only take melee hits on a natural 20. That keeps the Int damage manageable, which is nice since you don't have time to wait until it goes away. Still, keep an eye out and add potions if needed.
And once you've got the party buffed, send them all in. You'll want them all dealing damage and covering each other.
@gorgonzola : SCS mind flayers can see through invisibility as well, at least on higher difficulties. No backstabs. It's a pity; a good backstabber is a very fun way to take down unmodded illithids.
@jmerry
I admit I forget about Potions most of the time. My Potion Bag is stock full, but I rarely use them, either forgetting about it or always thinking "I need to save them for the right situation" and not realizing when those punch me in the face.
The room before Alhoon I managed to beat yesterday, thanks to your tip, @tedmann12. Three Skeletal Warriors and a Morderkaine's Sword did the trick - though my Cleric/Ranger standing around under Sanctuary to guide the summons was still hit several times, dunno why.
I even managed to beat the guys in Alhoon room, but left him there behind closed doors. Need to come back later for him.
@gorgonzola
The Planar Prison I didn't find that hard, tbh. I was around Level 12 and didn't have to reload once. Other fights were really way harder in comparison for my party, though the Warden really hit like a truck.
Depending on your SCS settings, the illithid can see through invisibility. For this purpose sanctuary is treated like invisibility, even though you might expect from the spell description that wouldn't be the case. Remember that Alhoon is actually classed as undead - he's therefore a sucker for Azuredge or other tactics aimed at undead,
Thanks for the information. I thought Sanctuary protected the caster from anything for the time being, but apparently that doesn't work with Illithids.
Alhoon is undead? Wow, that could make things a lot easier. I'm a big fan of abusing Greater Malison + Azuredge.
Invisibility is one of the more powerful effects mechanically, which is why so many enemies see through it in SCS. Otherwise there'd be problems regarding spell targeting, backstabs, and so on that would provide players with very easy ways to quickly gain the upper hand.
Personally, I find it a little annoying because every mage ever is full of Improved Invisibility contingencies to prevent you easily dispelling their protections. So some fights become a silly game of dispel invis - recast invis - dispel invis - spell trigger invis - dispel invis - contingency invis which gets a bit old for me
Mind flayers also like to annoy you with this as they constantly make themselves invisible or teleport around the field, but I guess they're supposed to be terrifying creatures and SCS does that job. Only beholders are worse.
I am still learning SCS and am not as enlightened as most of you (when I do win hard battles I’m often wondering how the hell I pulled it off), but I did want to mention how great improved haste is in conjunction with ranged attacks. This may be assumed to be included when mentioning ‘buffs,’ however.
Mind Flayers are an exercise in kiting and keeping up immunities or saving throws while focus-firing them down hard. For the room before the Alhoon, my suggestion would be to send in a lone summon to activate them, then turn the doorway into a killzone. Make sure you have True Seeing of some sort active to get rid of their Improved Invisibility, then attempt to murder them very, very quickly. Summons also help quite a bit in taking aggression, though Skeletons can be insta-killed by their Detonate attack. The Alhoon, on the other hand, is absolutely terrifying. Mind-flayer abilities on top of a Lich immunities (AKA Protect from Magic Weapons means this thing is actually immune to everything without spending like 4 rounds trying to strip his magical defenses without Spellstrike) and level 9 spells in a very enclosed area is a bad time. My only advice for it is to throw summons 1 by 1 into it, trying to get it to waste its defensive spells, and eventually attempt to Azuredge or MoD it to death.
Beholders are weird on the difficulty scale on SCS: they're either 100% unsafe to face or 100% safe to face with no in between. Shield of Balduran can be stolen, and buffs can be Anti-Magic Ray'd, though that fortunately gives a few seconds of immunity to other rays I believe. But without negative key saves, there's so many potential Death Rays or Petrification rays that it's pretty much impossible without burning through multiple Potions of Invulnerability in a fair fight. They have no immunities to magic though, outside of Death Tyrants, so... Nuke them from across the screen. It's the only way.
That being said, fiends/devils can definitely be scary, too. But they're scary in very cheese ways, at least in my setup. Balors spam dispels and randomly gib people with vorpal, which feels like a rather unfun binary to me; and some versions of the glabrezu (I think?) just do nothing but spam summonings until the entire floor is covered in enemies and no one can move. Equally unfun. So to me these are annoying more than dangerous. At least with mind flayers there's a fight.
My favorite anti-beholder cheese? A monk transformed into a greater werewolf using the "Improved Shapeshifting" component. 100% magic resistance means they can't hurt him, and he can solo everything but Hive Mothers (which have unlimited heals and stoneskins).
Oh, and beholder petrification rays are a save vs. spell (no penalty). Just in case you thought your petrification/polymorph save meant anything at all.
On a somewhat less cheesy note - beholders won't use their antimagic ray unless the target has enough buffs going. One or two magic resistance potions might be safe - and if they're not, you'll still have a round to escape when you get dispelled.
That's why I called it a bug. I've seen plenty of chunking, and I haven't seen saving throws made.