Killing trolls in Dragon's Eye
LrdJierdanFirecracka
Member Posts: 12
When you're in the Dragon's Eye dungeon, there are many trolls to be killed. I'm wondering: are there any fiery/acidy devices available to be used for this purpose at this stage of the game *other than* those oil bottles that can be found in various places in the dungeon (which I have already mostly used up for other purposes). None of the merchants in Kuldahar sell arrows of fire or acid. They also don't sell Flame Arrow/Melf's Acid Arrow scrolls (assuming those BG spells even exist in IWD).
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So yeah, pad that out with your mage (I usually have one of them can cast Acid Arrow) and the flaming oil bottles.
You do need to manage your resources for this!
I don't recall coming across any such arrows, and I think I have been pretty thorough in going through containers. But maybe I haven't...
Bingo!
Update: Damnit! I just had to use a priest of Tempus who does not have that spell! 😡
I’ve probably played this 30 times or more, some of the finds may be random. But I pretty much always have *just enough*.
But as Trouveur mentioned, if nothing else you should have “Flame Blade” (lvl 2 Priest spell). You can load up so your cleric has multiple castings of it. And just know you need to break off and rest when you run out. The second floor of Dragon Eye is swarming with trolls!
Afraid not.
Afraid not.
OK I Guess I do have such a mod then. To be perfectly frank, I am utterly clueless as to what mod I'm using.
As others have said, if you're extremely efficient with the gear, you should have just enough to make it through. The problem is trolls can respawn if you leave and come back, i.e. if you lose a companion. They can also spawn if you rest, iirc, so don't rest on that floor!
Keep in mind that the bottles are area effect. With some planning you can get multiple kills. I also found the vitriolic sphere spell useful here -- level four. Conlan sells a trollkiller bastard sword in Kuldahar, but it's not cheap. That is also highly effective.
But yeah, ultimately just another reason why the sorcerer is your OP caster for IWD.
2. Dagger of Fire random drop
3. Short Sword of Flame random drop
4. Druid Entangle+Spike Stones + Wizard Stinking Cloud +Fire Ball when enough down helps.
5. DE on Insane spawns more enemies, ouch.
And again, as the OP complains, it requires that you have meta-game knowledge of the specific enemies you are about to fight. Did you use those fire jars to kill lizardmen on the first floor? Tough luck loser. You should have somehow magically known ahead of time what was coming.
Speaking as someone playing for the first time, I would say it was both thrilling and infuriating to sweep through this dungeon.
I think it’s actually excellent design, it keeps you on your toes. If you judge correctly you feel like you’ve actually outsmarted the game. If you judge wrong, you’ll be scrambling to come up with a Plan B.
That all may be part of why Dragon’s Eye was always my favorite, I felt like I’d conquered something the first time.
I’d also add, it’s all my favorite levels from PnP play. 6th - 8th level is when AD&D is at its best, I think. And of course you hit Dragon’s Eye in exactly that level range. It hits the sweet spot exactly right.
So either you're reloading back in town and then repacking, or you're going back to town, likely after having cleared the first floor, to retool yourself. Based on something that's not so much a dangerous, party killing challenge, but simply getting the last hit on dozens of monsters with a specific damage type.
The troll mechanic in the IE games was never great. It was a passable solution for its time. But it's not something you should be asking the player to do twenty times on the same floor. And that's why BG2 had the wisdom to not go overboard even on the subquest where trolls are the chief antagonist.
I do agree that it's a good level range for the ruleset, and the lowest levels of the dungeon are fine. Nothing special but nothing bad either.
If it weren’t for a mod, players should normally have access to Flame Blade which is long lasting fire. And there’s a dozen or so fiery oils available between this level and the one above. No one should ever have to return to town for supplies for this fight, I never have.
It is possible to mess things up. That is the nature of AD&D. It doesn’t hold your hand, you CAN totally screw up.
But again, the OP figured it out. He DID have the resources he needed.
He didn't figure it out on his own. He had to leave the game and search for help completely outside the game world. Clearly he came here after feeling he had exhausted what he could do on his own.
Moreover, what he learned didn't help him master the combat system at all. He's not become a more sophisticated player of the game. As he said, he literally ended up spamming one spell. And he's spamming it against "near death" trolls that just sit there. Not exactly a tactic he's going to use again, is he?
Contrast it with the valley of shadows. Sure, a party with a single class cleric and/or a paladin will do better here. But it won't feel required. And a party without these classes, or without specific anti-undead spells can still clear it. There's a wide set of solutions.
As far as asking the forum goes, well it is one tool available to the modern gamer. We used to have guides or “hint books”. Such things for IWD are now long out of print. The modern alternative is either a Walkthrough or questions on a forum or Reddit or something.
From beginning to end, IWD is a tactical exercise. Different battles will require different tactics. Especially for anyone familiar with AD&D, none of this is surprising or difficult to deal with. I get where it may be complicated for newer players as the D&D rule set has changed. But none of the equates to poor game design.
But no, I’ve not seen that as a particular problem anyway.
The main thing I do is kill the party on level 4 as one of them has a Flaming long sword
Basically, there are lots of ways to deal with the trolls and that sometimes means popping out of the cave to rest and redo spells -welcome to D&D........
Again, it was a serviceable implementation of the rules in the late 90s, but the idea that it's some standard for the D&D or FR is just mistaken. It's also not the case that it's teaching you to use certain damage types against certain enemies, as you might with blunt weapons versus skeletons or even fire against mummies. It's merely a very, very specific requirement that no other monster really requires. It's telling that later video game implementations do not use this somewhat tedious solution.
And again, BG2 had the good sense to not just spam several dozen trolls at the player, even in the quest where they are the chief antagonist.
No doubt the implementation of trolls in the IE is a little clunky. I would say in any game I run, that the fire/acid damage is never regenerated by the troll. So it’s always preferable to use such when fighting them. And I do agree that trolls are generally one of my least favorite opponents in the IE games because of how this was done. Although it may beat the old Gold Box games, where you had to have someone stand on the troll’s location until the battle was over to keep them from popping back up!
They did do something similar though in the last two “official” DLCs; TotLM had “revenants” (or something similar?) that needed fire to kill and in SoD there were Vampiric Wolves that needed that treatment.
But all that said, I think it’s a reasonable implementation from the ‘90s. No doubt a newer game should handle it better. But I’m fine with an older game just being exactly what it is.
One other element I left out is that due to the lack of good feedback in the chatlog from these games, it's not easy to grasp the hyper specific tactic required to efficiently down trolls, especially masses of trolls. I think veterans of these games, pretty much everyone who comments here, can easily forget how much knowledge they've accumulated about these games and how that shapes their view of these things. Even if you were to read the manual or an in-game book about how fire and acid are their vulnerability, as I said, that can mislead you into unloading such items/spells at the start of a combat. Exactly the opposite of what you want to do, given the scarce resources many parties will end up having.