How to guarded compound: scs version

borntodie

I just beat the Guarded Compound in SCS for the first time, but it was very nearly a total party kill. Looking for tips, I must be doing this wrong.

My party: full six, all of them around level 12. They finished up nearly everything you can do before spellhold, except for the liches. F/T main, Aerie [changed into sorcerer], Valygar [changed into wizard slayer], Mazzy [changed into inquisitor], Jaheira [unchanged] and Anomen [unchanged].

The wizard (Sion) instantly conjures PFMW, Spell Deflection and more.

I opened up with: Jaheira casting insect plague, Aerie casting slow, Mazzy casting True Sight and Dispell on Sion, Anomen casting greater command, main staying invisible + undetectable and searching the traps.

Koshi runs into Anomen. Anomen gets the first strike with FoA and wounds him. Koshi strikes back, stunning Anomen. I am one down. Meanwhile the brunts get into a bloody fight with Valygar.

Slow and greater command have no effect whatsoever, they all saved. Jaheira succesfully finishes casting Insect Plague, but it turns out Sion is immune to it, for reasons I don't understand. I did not install "fire shield destroys insects".

My main still cannot find the traps. Yikes, this is urgent and taking far too long.

Sion casts time stop, mordenkainen's sword x 2 and some sort of stun spell. Valygar and Aerie are both stunned. I am three down. Whelp. I have no way to kill the swords, either.

My main finally finds and disarms the traps. She then rushes over to Stalman the cleric and kills him with a backstab. Not a moment too early.

Jaheira and Mazzy desperately try to hold the line against all the melee tanks and the swords beating down. Jaheira does an amazing job, killing both Koshi and another thief. Thank god for iron skins. Mazzy defends Valygar, but both swords keep slashing her in the back. Potions can't heal her fast enough. She dies. I am four down.

I look again at Sion, who is still untouched. I have no way to dispell his defenses any more. But looking again, I realize he is only protected from magical weapons. My main draws her Tuigan and starts shooting him with fire arrows (they don't count as magical in SCS). And.. it actually hurts him, wow.

Jaheira manages to take out the remaining brunts, while my main shoots down Sion. Sion wanted to teach me a lesson.. "don't forget protection from normal missiles"? I can do nothing against the two magical swords, though. My main and Jaheira end up running in circles to avoid them, until they disappear.

Anomen wakes up first from his stun. He resurrects Mazzy with his rod. As soon as she is back to life, she tells Valygar (who is still stunned and at 10 hp): "You are terribly wounded, squire, we need to heal you!". I laughed hard.

All in all, it was a mess. What are some better strategies?

Maurvir

My party went in with full invisibility, and thankfully, no one checked. Once safely squirreled away in one of the rooms, I sent in summons to soak up the abuse. Once it seemed like the mages were down to firing magic missile, the party went in and cleaned up.

The summons didn't really do much damage, but then, that wasn't the point.

jmerry

They're a well-equipped high-level party. Of course they're a challenge when you take them on at a relatively low level like you did. (My last party ... protagonist had a HLA before entering Spellhold, with the other five on the brink. That was with some major quests left for later. And I hadn't gone after the guarded compound yet.)

Some specific notes:
- If you want to spot the traps, try the level 2 priest spell "Find Traps". They can't disarm them, but that's another once-per-round detection, which will go off at a different time from the thief's.
- Insect Plague has several nerfs in SCS in addition to the fireshield thing you didn't install; it hits as a non-magic weapon, it doesn't hit undead, the spell failure effect has a save, and the secondary effects don't kick in until it starts doing real damage. For a mage with PFMW up, that means immunity as long as his stoneskins last (almost two rounds for the level 22 Sion). Incidentally, using insects on someone with a fireshield up still isn't a good idea - the fireshield retaliates for each tick.
- The spell that got you was Symbol : Stun. Save at -4 or be stunned for a long time, in an area. To protect against that, it's either save-boosting potions or Chaotic Commands.
- Sion likely did cast PFNM ... once, as a precast. You dispelled it, and he didn't have another memorized.
- Koshi is a cheater. Compared to a player kensai, he gets a helmet, better AC (base 2 instead of 10), and an extra APR. Four CF attacks per round.
- Their saves ... well, they're high-level characters. Still, you should have gotten some of them. Maybe the warriors buffed with potions?

borntodie

Thanks, very helpful. That´s weird about the xp. I just checked, and all of my characters are just below 1.5 million xp. If you had a HLA, you have gained twice as much.. were you playing at a higher difficulty level with more xp to be gained? I'm playing on "tactical".

So, next time I guess I should:
- go in with whole party invisible; even if it only buys me one round that's still good.
- use the Detect Traps spell
- Buff up with pots of invulnerability and chaotic commands. IIRC I had Commands up on Jaheira and Anomen, but Anomen should get high saves instead, as it also protects from Celestial Fury stun.
- Insect Plague might still be worth it to eat away some stone skins.
- Someone should at least carry a scroll of Death Spell to get rid of those swords.

jmerry

Chaotic Commands protects from stun in general, including that from Celestial Fury. Whichever way you do it, it'll work... unless they get hit with a dispel or a Breach. Sion is extremely likely to have one or more Remove Magic spells prepared, and most of the buffs you can put up will convince the AI to use one.

I was running on insane difficulty, but it's more about knowing how to game the system than anything else. Run a party of one or two until 1.25 million to maximize the joining triggers, shoplift scrolls for scribing XP. Jan is the perfect partner in this endeavor.
(That party later nearly reached the 8 million cap in chapter 6. I chose to stop short and stash the other 800 scrolls of Freedom, but I could have gone all the way if I really wanted to. And that doesn't include any of Watcher's Keep past the first level.)

borntodie

Well, I tried again to see how much better I could do. Going in all invisible worked great, it allowed me to disarm the traps and reposition before the fight. Spreading out meant that Sion couldn't dispell more than maybe two characters at once, and in fact he only dispelled Anomen, which turned out okay. Bringing a Death Spell scroll to kill the swords was also a game changer. I won without any casualties this time.

Thanks again. I am curious how you got 800 scrolls of freedom, is that from pickpocketing guards? Isn't there a small chance they notice and attack, even at maxed skill?

jmerry

2000 scrolls, actually. And I got them by buying them - Ribald's special stock has an infinite supply. Since they're far cheaper than other 9th level scrolls, it's a very efficient way of converting gold into experience.

Nice to hear you made it work.

DavidW

Fire Shield retaliating against insect plague is not intentional, incidentally. I'll log that as a bug and see if it's fixable.

Djasko_Amsterdam

You could try a cheese strat like using your F/T with SI: divination and valygar with cloak of nondetection, stealthed or invis and ai turned off to block the entrance of one of the rooms. Then use your ranged chars to pick them off.