Need help

MrSexton

Hi,
I'm playing a six man party (Defender, Paladin, Cleric, Swashbuckler, Mage, Sorcerer) on Insane but the last fight in Easthaven Cave is impossible. No matter what I do I get completely cut down by the orc archers and if I attack them the four ogres smash me from behind. There must be at least four ogres, 4-5 archers and 4-5 fighters. How the flying fuck are you supposed to defeat them???
/J

ineth

On Normal difficulty, that fight has 1 Ogre and 0 Orc Elites (only some noob orcs).

On "Insane", it has 4 Ogres and 2 Orc Elites.
But what did you expect from a difficulty level named like that?

The fight is still beatable even on Insane, but it requires some careful setup (and some luck).

The best tool here is IMO the mage spell "Sleep".

If you manage to catch all or most of the ogres and orgs with that spell, then you can pick them off one-by-one.
Remember, when you attack a sleeping creature, it will wake up - but it's friends won't.
And when all six party members are unloading on a single ogre with no other enemies interfering, then with some luck that ogre won't get in a good hit.

The biggest challenge is catching them all with one casting of the 18-foot radius Sleep spell.
One solution is to position your party at the entrance to the narrow tunnel leading to the ogre room, and then send in one party member to aggro them all, and run back so they all follow into the narrow corridor. But while the stragglers arrive, there will be a short time where your front-line warriors will take a beating. Be ready to quickly move hurt party members out of the way.

Also, you have to carefully position the spell so that your party members are not affected as well.

And remember to only attack one sleeping enemy at a time - turning off party AI and controlling the party manually with lots of pausing is a must here.

Another problem is that the Sleep spell runs out after a while, almost certainly before you finished off all enemies. If you can spare a spell slot for a second casting, great. Otherwise, you'll have to improvise.

Of course, there are many things that can go wrong in the heat of battle, so this is not a fool-proof strategy - some reloads and retries may be required.
But I've managed to pull it off before.

----

PS: You can find a spell scroll for the Sleep spell on a shelf on the upper floor of Pomab's Emporium.

Dan_P

I'm sure you're past this fight already, but I'll just add that in addition to Sleep, the Grease spell is also really useful here. The ogres are really susceptible to Grease. Entangle (if you had a druid) is also great for holding off the smaller guys for a while. Use the whole area as well, keep back up and attacking from range, make sure your super tank, high AC character is nearest the archers at all times. The ogres can one-shot you so it's best to avoid melee, if possible.

Another (cheesy) thing you can do is after aggroing the enemies, go all the way back to the entrance and leave the cave completely. Some enemies will follow you out, but they're not that fast doing so, and some of the AI will lose track of you.

MrSexton

Thanks but I gave up and gave my tank 200 hp and managed to get past the spot. He took 160 hp of damage even though I followed Ineth's advice. The problem isn't being able to fight, it's having too low hp from the start.
/J

sarevok57

MrSexton wrote: »

Hi,
I'm playing a six man party (Defender, Paladin, Cleric, Swashbuckler, Mage, Sorcerer) on Insane but the last fight in Easthaven Cave is impossible. No matter what I do I get completely cut down by the orc archers and if I attack them the four ogres smash me from behind. There must be at least four ogres, 4-5 archers and 4-5 fighters. How the flying fuck are you supposed to defeat them???
/J

people have beat this cave starting the game at level 1 on HoF mode

so it is doable

usually having splint mail if you can for your main guy going in with a large shield, helps against the arrows and crushing weapons

also if you have an arcane caster, sleep is basically a must here, fighting half the group at a time is much easier than fighting everyone at once ( also clerics can cast command which has no saving throw vs any enemy here, so its good to use on the ogres )

also, having a pre-emptive bless helps, it gives an extra +1 to hit/damage, which can go a long way

plus defender has defensive stance, and your paladin has a protection from evil that lasts a long time ( giving evil enemies -2 to hit ) so those can also help your front line survive longer

another thing to is your familiar for one of your arcane classes, familiars at level 1 are actually really strong, although perhaps not strong enough to take the front line, but if the enemies are distracted by your dwarf or pally then your familiar can come up in the rear and actually help out quite a bit

also, this isn't even near hard compared to what comes in the future on insane difficulty

just to give you a heads up on level 2 of dragon's eye, the AIDS is going to be for real if you keep it on insane difficulty, make sure to have plenty of fire and/or acid...