I dont think shadowdancer can solo bg2ee
SirBaldur
Member Posts: 80
but i hope i'm wrong, maybe i'm just not clever enough!
i'm in the underdark and need to kill the balor to get into the drow city. my shadowdancer is level 19, but is basically helpless to do anything against the balor. balor sees through my stealth even with cloak of non-detect, so no backstab, no sneak bonuses. 3 hits from balor - which takes only 1 or 2 rounds - wipes out most of my hp.
the only way i found to defeat it is that the balor can't go past the dwarf compound gates, so i could sit and shoot gesen bow all day after luring it to the gates. (He rips apart the dwarf guards, sorry guys.) Literally 9/10 shots were misses though, and it took about 25 hits due to gesen's weak damage, so this little non-thematic limitation was essential. (plus, there aren't a lot of +3 range weapons - drow parties didn't drop a crossbow - so you could easily be stuck here with no way to continue. slings useless since max is +2 bullet. and it's pretty clear that melee would never succeed with so many hits needed. arrows of biting no effect. shadowdancer no traps.)
i even lured the earth and air elementals to the balor, but the balor would shred them in 2 hits. After all that, the portals aren't producing any more elementals - and combined they got 1 hit on the balor!
Needless to say the gesen bow solution utilizing the invisible svirfneblen barrier is pretty unsatisfying.
anything that i'm missing?
also thinking that this problem will get worse - iirc, more enemies in tob see through stealth, even with cloak of non-detection, and are immune to backstab, so i feel like this might be a fool's quest.
i'm in the underdark and need to kill the balor to get into the drow city. my shadowdancer is level 19, but is basically helpless to do anything against the balor. balor sees through my stealth even with cloak of non-detect, so no backstab, no sneak bonuses. 3 hits from balor - which takes only 1 or 2 rounds - wipes out most of my hp.
the only way i found to defeat it is that the balor can't go past the dwarf compound gates, so i could sit and shoot gesen bow all day after luring it to the gates. (He rips apart the dwarf guards, sorry guys.) Literally 9/10 shots were misses though, and it took about 25 hits due to gesen's weak damage, so this little non-thematic limitation was essential. (plus, there aren't a lot of +3 range weapons - drow parties didn't drop a crossbow - so you could easily be stuck here with no way to continue. slings useless since max is +2 bullet. and it's pretty clear that melee would never succeed with so many hits needed. arrows of biting no effect. shadowdancer no traps.)
i even lured the earth and air elementals to the balor, but the balor would shred them in 2 hits. After all that, the portals aren't producing any more elementals - and combined they got 1 hit on the balor!
Needless to say the gesen bow solution utilizing the invisible svirfneblen barrier is pretty unsatisfying.
anything that i'm missing?
also thinking that this problem will get worse - iirc, more enemies in tob see through stealth, even with cloak of non-detection, and are immune to backstab, so i feel like this might be a fool's quest.
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Comments
Oh, and drow crossbows wouldn't help you. It's the ammo's enchantment that matters. There are only four sources of infinite +3 attacks avaialable at that point - a bow, a crossbow, a sling, and a returning dart. Plus you can find +3 ammo in Watcher's Keep, and a scroll of Enchant Weapon would let you hit for as long as it lasted (if you were epic with UAI).
There is a dastardly way past that encounter without killing the demon - you can just steal the light gem. Doing that dooms all those friendly gnomes to a horrible death, though.
This actually feels more narratively-compelling than the way i took
The number of summons available to shadowdancer before uai is pretty limited and those would get chewed up almost instantaneously i think - at least not much help for getting enough hits in given 1/10 hit rate.
You can get 30 elementals from the Staff of Fire. You can also rest in the area to recharge once a day items without the balor healing. If you wait until higher levels, you can also use the Shadow Twin HLA to get extra support.
Your chance of hitting should also be far greater than 10%. Here's a screenshot of a quickly created shadowdancer attacking that balor and hitting with a 2.
The only buff here on top of using Daystar is DUHM to get strength to 24 - you should be able to match this THAC0 (even without potions) as you can get strength to 25 (assuming you know DUHM), although at L19 your base THAC0 is one worse than this test character.
Note that, even though the balor can see you, you still get the bonuses to hit from being in the shadows - which is why hitting is as easy as this.
The Balor in question has a base AC of -6 and 19 Dex. So, that's an effective AC of -10 if you're not hidden and -2 if you are; melee stealth attacks for thieves ignore Dex modifiers to AC in addition to granting +4 to attack. It's a huge difference.
It's puzzling that you seem to dislike core features of shadowdancer play while nevertheless saying the class matches your playstyle, but to each their own I guess. Unless you mean you like the general theme of a thief who uses mage spells to improve stealth and mobility? If so, then you might consider switching to a stronger option that also has those abilities, like FMT or MT.
2. You can also consider playing a Shadowdancer dualed to a Fighter. The build would basically be to dump points in Stealth and then use HIPS during combat situation. Always low HP though, but eventually you'll be able to grandmaster in a weapon, get your APR up and THAC0 down.
It's an unorthodox direction to dual. Obviously there's a fairly large tradeoff (Shadowdancer HLAs) which might be a dealbreaker, but it's a Shadowdancer-specific build, and if you like the shadowdancer anyway during BG2EE without HLAs you might consider it an option.
My strength is pretty low (18) bec halfing and also i forgot to buy the hill giant belt. seems like another big problem is i have almost no potions, bec i haven't bought any except invisibility; historically i've never needed them, prob bec i've gone through bg1 a lot more than bg2.
actually i don't mind plodding from encounters... i've occasionally sat in shadows for long times for other enemies to be off screen to backstab more safely. attacking from stealth / avoiding unnecessary battles i think are the primary shadowdancer features, and they're not very useful in this scenario.
i think this was the first time i ran into something very strong, i couldn't hit easily, and also sees through non-detect stealth. the kua toa parties on this level are also really owning my butt for exactly the same reason.
if surviving in the rest of soa and tob means using lots of scrolls, that actually doesn't sound like fun to me, which is exactly why i'm not mt/fmt. my fear is, no traps means lots of scrolls is the only long term solution.
1. sounds not bad to be honest, if i had that (and could land a hit)
2. i might try that next time! (i almost always play halflings or gnomes for the saves - very important solo! - so eww humans; and for some reason using eekeeper to make my chars into setups that break the original rules is mentally off limits to me!)