Demi-Lich
Zarams_Mom
Member Posts: 6
I need some advice on fighting one for a quest. I get it to barely injured and it gets casting imprisionment or some sort of instant death spell 
Any help would be great
Any help would be great
0
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You need at least +4 weapons or very high level spells, dragon breath is the demi lich killer, but probably you don't have it if wea are talking of the SoA one. Hint: in vanilla the melf minute meteors have enough enchantment as does not matter the spell level, but the enchantment level of each meteor, you can use also the staff of Ryn that is +4 and available from Ribald's regular shop, the staff of the magi that hits as a +5 weapon even if does not give the +5 weapon thac0 bonus and few other weapons.
The vanilla demi lichs cast imprisonment, a special ranged form of it, and are not particularly intelligent doing it, usually they cast it at the nearest enemy. There are ways to protect the party, one of them is using spell immunity abjuration, only your arcane casters can do it, you can also use the green scrolls, the one that protects vs undeads make him ignore the protected character (but he has to see at least one party member so don't protect all the party with it, the one that protect from magic makes the protected character impervious to imprisonment.
So have few party members protected at the moment the lich becomes a demilich, in the case of the SoA one, or as you enter the demilich room in WK, you can drop the other party members before the fight or position them far from the demilich so are not targeted, then with the hasted party bash him down with every +4 or more weapon you have and/or MMM from your casters, he will go down while he tries to cast imprisonment on you. If some not protected characters get imprisoned you can free them after the battle with a freedom scroll, a single one will free all the imprisoned people in the area. Imprisonment breaks romances so if you have a love affair avoid your beloved one is imprisoned, the other characters are no more in the party as you free them, but you can recruit them again.
For the SoA demilich is even possible to pick pocket from him the ring, you need a thief near him when he changes form an good timing, it is only possible the split second he appears in demi lich form and is still blue as you can not pickpocket from enemies. In the original game this gave you 2 rings, the one you pickpocket and an other looting his body, in EE if you pickpocket him the second ring does not appear, but it can still be useful to try it as he will fight without the ring, so with worst AC, more chance that the MMM from your mages will hit, and without regeneration, that can be a problem if the party can not do damage fast enough to overcome it.
If you have only a single mage in the party it is possible to drop temporarily some party member and take more mages and Haer Dalis so you can have more people protected by spell immunity and using MMM or the SotM, with 3 arcane casters and a fighter with the staff of Ryn, all improved hasted to double the APR, he will go down very fast, actually the vanilla demi liches are a joke as seem to be almost impossible to kill, but once you know how to do are among the easiest enemies, with my small all arcane casters parties I usually take him down early in the game without even using the scrolls, that are very rare in the game.
There are also some tricks that make the battle even easier, I am not sure if they work in EE as I never use them. One is using the helm that gives you a simulacrum clone, with the clone you can protect the party with the scrolls from the quick slots without wasting the scrolls. An other is to cast the scroll that protects from magic at the demilich, this protects him from your spells that anyway will not hit him unless you have very high level mages, but as a person protected from that scroll is prevented from casting he will only have mlee attacks. The last trick was to set some traps with your thief and then use the ring of the ram to kick him into the traps. Maybe those tricks still work in EE and if you want to have fun with them feel free to try them, but you can fight without them easily once you know how to protect the party from imprisonment and how to hit him.
I hope it helps.
All of that song's guide information is up to date for the current EE.
There are two main difficulties you have to work around:
- Demiliches are immune to all weapons of +3 or lower enchantment and to all spells of level 1-9, plus they're 90% resistant to physical damage. You need +4 weapons to hit them, most such weapons deal very little damage, and attack spells are almost entirely ineffective.
- Demiliches spam a version of Imprisonment, about twice per round. Instant death, with no save, ignoring MR. You need something special to defend against that.
But Demi-Lichs do stand out. Nearly invincible, until you know the trick.
In comparison Beholders are much easier even without the right protection, at that time I had not the shield as I used an old SoA only version of the game without the special merchants and I had not enough knowledge of the magic system to protect myself in other ways, but I managed to kill them all the play troughs with way less reloads using a combo of poisoned bolts, traps, fireballs and other tactics trying when possible to pick them one by one or to do the maximum possible damage nuking them fast and then retreating when they was in groups of more then 1.
Also the Flayers can be beaten with similar tactics, even the Tactics Mod ones that see naturally trough the invisibility and teleport near your weaker party members, even if you hide them in an other room.
Kangaxx is on an other level, way more difficult without the tricks and way easier once you know how to do.
Demi-lichs are more rare, so it took me longer to figure it out.
Anyway, Mom I hope this information is helpful. (She's played the game before but it's been a while and all of the modded content gives her more to do. Gotta give parents with an empty nest some hobbies after all)
Basilisks used to be a nightmare to me but I figured out what to do pretty quickly. Now they are nothing more than XP fodder (unless a mod comes along that leaves me unprepared. Those Whin Hill Basilisks as well as the Sewer Basilisk in one of the extra Thief Quest Mods gave me PTSD I'm not gonna lie)
@Zarams_Mom keep playing, you are great (from a grandpa player that even if is not playing much these days is having fun with those games since +20 years).
I’m not familiar with that mod. But yeah, basically Basilisks are brutal if you don’t know where they are!