Cult of the unseeing eye
Aewyrven
Member Posts: 228
No mods installed.
Running a swash dualed to a mage. (12/22?) Solo.
Cannot use shield of balduran. DO NOT WANT TO USE PLANETAR TO WIPE THE MAP.
Have not as of yet acquired mordy swords or Adhw. (Havent had the spells drop yet)
Not wanting to trap rope a dope the map either.
Still in chapter 2 (completionisting it)
Hla is planetar 6 7 8 alacricity. 3 lvl 9 slots avail. 2x planetar 1x alacricity mem. Only L9 spells I have atm.
Yes I can use spell immunity if needed.
Gimmie some fun zany ways to beat the beholders plx.
Yes I could just invis past em but why give up that juicy xp? Besides... beholder eyestalks saute in some butter with garlic dont hold a candle to french frog legs.
-A
Running a swash dualed to a mage. (12/22?) Solo.
Cannot use shield of balduran. DO NOT WANT TO USE PLANETAR TO WIPE THE MAP.
Have not as of yet acquired mordy swords or Adhw. (Havent had the spells drop yet)
Not wanting to trap rope a dope the map either.
Still in chapter 2 (completionisting it)
Hla is planetar 6 7 8 alacricity. 3 lvl 9 slots avail. 2x planetar 1x alacricity mem. Only L9 spells I have atm.
Yes I can use spell immunity if needed.
Gimmie some fun zany ways to beat the beholders plx.
Yes I could just invis past em but why give up that juicy xp? Besides... beholder eyestalks saute in some butter with garlic dont hold a candle to french frog legs.
-A
0
Comments
Defensively, jelly form is 100% resistant to magic and therefore immune to all beholder rays. It's also 100% resistant to piercing damage, making it immune to beholder melee attacks. All those beholders and gauths can't do a thing to you.
Since that isn't going to be enough damage to kill them all, let's add some spells. You can't cast spells in jelly form, but you can use sequencers and wands. Beholders and gauths have no magic or elemental resistance but are immune to many disabling effects, so damage spells are the way to go. Get out your wands of fire and ice and lightning and Cloudkill, and go to town.
While the Cloak of the Sewers also allows transformation into jelly form, using a spell is far superior here. The cloak gives you two turns as an ooze, less than even the minimum-level version of Polymorph Self.
I'm gonna save before I go in and try this.... any other zany ideas?
Also, got the mordy sword drop finally but I wanna do it without em (beholders kinda death spell em anyways)
Would protection from abjuration screw with em as well? They seem to like casting dispel magic and warding whip and the wiki is showing their anti magic ray is a breach which is abjuration.... I'm not above using that since it it is a spell I have and well, what 10 mages vs 1 so to speak with all their eyes?
The mustard jelly form from the cloak only has 10% MR, so won't help against beholders.
If you have the Staff of the Magi you can do whatever you want to them before instantly going invisible (they have a nasty habit though of still targeting invisible characters, so don't do this unless your saving throws are good).
You can cast at them from out of range - things like cloudkill and incendiary cloud - before running back and going invisible, then returning to view progress. If you're feeling a bit more chaotic then try out a sphere of chaos.
High level skeleton warriors will make mincemeat of beholders - just send one of them in alone first to soak up the death spell.
As per my initial post I'm 12 swash, so even if I had staff magi I couldn't use it.
Gonna try spell shield but that's charged and they run in packs, it should (will test shortly) last all of 6 or less seconds before its depleted. Not much help there.
Edit: spell shield will be dispelled by khelbans warding whip and breach, both of which the beholders spam, so itd last uhh, less than a second against a pack, of which there are 2 in the quest.
Aoe out of range yeah could abuse it, skulltraps and incindery or ice storms I guess.
Skeleton warriors meet the same fate as mordy swords after a few seconds. Death spelled off the field.
So weve got the trap rope a dope, long range aoe rope a dope (skull traps fireballs incindery ice storm ect).... or the mustard jelly wielding wands and sequencers....
I asked for crazy weird ways, seeing only 1, the jelly. Any other ideas? (Yes I can beat em without it)
Thanks for the info re sewer cloak. Checking the list of EE program changes, I see that historic difference in the mustard jelly form was apparently deemed a bug and fixed in the EE in v2.0+.
Presumably you're running with mods as in the unmodded game beholders don't use warding whip or breach and don't have unlimited uses of death spell (they do have a death gaze, but's that's not the same thing).
The Cloak of Mirroring in the unmodded game will protect you against all their damaging spells, while saving throws can protect you against everything else - so you can then just beat them up however you like. Mods may well affect the way the cloak works though.
Mods may also affect their behavior if you send in a nishruu or hakeashar (which could just trigger death spells in your installation anyway I guess). In the unmodded game the summons would get most of the targeting (though beholders would always send a few bolts your way), but if you're playing with SCS they would almost certainly switch entirely to you, with probable sad consequences ...
I can't remember how the latest SCS changes the iron golem you get through shapechange, but if that still has MR of 100% that may offer an alternative (I'm not sure though how the anti-magic ray would affect the change).
Cloak of mirroring will deflect their attacks. It does not however deflect their charm dominate or hold spells. As well, seeing original post, chapter 2, dont have it that's chapter 3.5ish sauhaugin city.
Hashekar and nishru are interesting ideas, I will check that next, though I seem to remember ages ago the beholders bite melee targets so they can take damage, nishru might fail, I'll check if i have the spells for both, a hashekar should live since it can only be hit by +1+
In which case beholders don't have unlimited death spells (just a few of them have a single death spell). I've not got recent experience of the persistence of spell shield, so that may be something else that's been changed in the EE. However, I have regularly and recently used skeleton warriors against beholders and a single group of those can easily clear the whole of the Unseeing Eye area.
You have to send in a EDIT: Single summon (end edit) to absorb it. It's like walking into a room of yaun ti or mages while invisible, they do their congingency/spell tattoos then because you're invisible they cast true seeing instead of their first attack. The mob launches their first few major assaults (and because beholder spell casting is like what? 6apr? They unload it then they all cast death spell to wipe the grid then go back to eye blasting.
Since you're walking in with that the summons dissolve and you're stuck facing the brunt.
I have noticed however if you send a summon in, it wont die and the game will record damage but not actually kill the mob or summon when u are off screen (ie behind a wall hiding while ur summon fights and cant see the actual fight) then when u go in everything's as if it was the initial contact and ofc cuz u sat there the summons timer has been ticking and it despawns. (Mordys devas planetars love doing this)
Edit 2: still doesnt help on my original q of some outlandish ways to wreck the quest. Only had the slime way offered.
I can use any summon ofc but I want some more neat stuff to kill it.
See if you can stun them with the Horn of Blasting (as an alternative to the safer use of symbol: stun from afar).
Run round them using the ring of energy.
Combine free action (or spider form) with web.
Try inflicting the ultimate indignity by blinding them (or use the safer glitterdust from range).
Make them turn on each other with chaos.
Cheese them with mislead.
What else ya got?
In case of solo kite in boots of speed, summon monsters from wand of summoning, and use lightning wand on them to avoid coming to beholder ray range.
I
did however just end up saying screw it and let the fallen planetar clear most of to let me progress, but I did save the original start for future fun.
Seriously, have some fun with teleport field and chaos sphere, it's a riot. Some seriously weird shit happens.
Anyway it is dirt simple. Level 2 invisibility spell, walk in the middle of them and Sunfire. You may have to rest to get more more Sunfire spells. For a Druid or Shaman, Invisibility then walk in the middle, Nature’s Beauty then walk back to a safe distance and pelt them with your preferred missile.
It is interesting idea, I just tested it a bit (without glitch which multiplies by 6), simply casting from wand between character protected by cloak of lightning reflection and character protected by Spell Turning.
If used in open field with big distance to possible obstacles, it will plainly get 10 (*6) reflections, like it should be.
If there was reflection wall just behind the character with turning, reflections could be entirely consumed, so it seems like there is minimal distance at which lightning projectile should be before reflect happens. If this minimal distance provided, then lightning start multiplying by itself (i.e. reflections of reflections) and I got up to 25 reflections before Turning expired.
Well, now it comes the broken part - like always Simulacrum comes to help, and even SCS clone limitations won't stop it
So just give cloak of lightning reflection to your mage with Simulacrum/Vhailor's (hey, Aerie!)... cast simulacrum, then use lightning wand on simulacrum = perpetuum mobile (until Simulacrum expires). I tried multiplying it even more, but results are inconsistent. If same mage casts another lightning wand charge, it will add up to loop (I tested up to 5 lightnings in one loop, so 5*6 hits per reflection cycle, which happens roughly once in 1.2-1.5 seconds in dependence of distance between simulacrum and caster. If they stand too close, loop just cancels). If another mage cast lightning in a loop it is high probability loop will end.
In terms of healing it provides "interesting opportunities", technically placing your fighter/tank between this lightning loop will grant him 1d9 (because always save vs. wands) *6 (0.27) healing per 1-1.5 seconds (loop speed) = 25 hp per round (assuming 4 loops in 6 seconds) per number of lightnings in a loop. Not game breaking but nice and of course it is aoe healing.
SCS adds immunity to spells that lower magic resistance and to webbing; otherwise, they're the same.
All shapeshifted forms and their weapons are undispellable, as are the underlying Polymorph Self and Shapechange spells. Antimagic rays won't cause any problems, except for disabling item activations for their duration. No wands for you while under the influence of a ray.
I went looking through the massive SCS beholder scripts, and I've come to a conclusion: it's a lot easier to cheese beholders as a pure warrior than as a spellcaster. You see, as long as you avoid a few things like haste in your buffing, they won't hit you with an anti-magic ray. A demonstration:
Test character: A level 7 fighter, with equipment from the first room in Irenicus' dungeon plus two potions of magic protection, against two beholders (BEHOLD01) at insane difficulty (no damage increase): The result? An easy win for the fighter. An anti-magic ray would have broken his defenses, but they never tried it.
For a spellcaster like the character in the OP? Nope. You need undispellable protection, because beholders will throw anti-magic rays at you just to stop you from casting anything.
Thanks to a suggestion in this thread, I used Mislead by Haer'Dalis (who has recently reached the 6th level of spells). One spell was enough to reliably kill all these critters without any risk. I'm really impressed. Thanks to the community here for your constant advice!
well played anyway, every tactic is legittimate against those ugly creatures...