Tips for SCS Rakshasa/Ruhk (especially in Spellhold)?
Taylan
Member Posts: 76
I managed to beat the Rakshasa in Windspear Hills (I don't remember how, but I also don't remember it being all that ridiculous or having to cheese the fight), but the three guys near the Druid Grove were ridiculously OP together and I only managed to get them by cheesing. (Continuously enter and exit building to make them waste spells.) I am curious how a "pro" BG2 player would have fought them fairly, although that's not my main issue right now...
Currently I'm at the first level of the Spellhold maze, and there's a Ruhk near the demon portal, and after trying a few things I checked the wiki only to be reminded that these guys have natural protection against weapons lower than +2, and immunity to all spells below level 8.
Well, SCS makes it so that you lose all equipment upon entering the maze, and you don't exactly get an abundance of +2 or higher weapons. (There's a +3 spear, but that's all.)
And obviously I have no level 8 spells at this stage. That's after doing pretty much everything there is to do in Athkatla.
So how the heck am I supposed to beat this guy? There's not even a cheesing opportunity like there was with the guys near the Druid Grove.
Currently I'm at the first level of the Spellhold maze, and there's a Ruhk near the demon portal, and after trying a few things I checked the wiki only to be reminded that these guys have natural protection against weapons lower than +2, and immunity to all spells below level 8.
Well, SCS makes it so that you lose all equipment upon entering the maze, and you don't exactly get an abundance of +2 or higher weapons. (There's a +3 spear, but that's all.)
And obviously I have no level 8 spells at this stage. That's after doing pretty much everything there is to do in Athkatla.
So how the heck am I supposed to beat this guy? There's not even a cheesing opportunity like there was with the guys near the Druid Grove.
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If you have the enchanted weapon spell then that would help perhaps? What’s the composition/ levels of your party?
My party: F/M main char (11F/12M), Minsc (14), Valygar (14), Jaheira (11F/13D), Imoen (13M/7T), and Aerie (12M/12C).
I guess I can do it if I swap to the right spells and rest. Unfortunately only my main char has Enchant Weapon.
There's also a Clay Golem near some really delicious loot and I don't have a single enchanted blunt weapon so I guess there's literally no way to kill it without swapping spells and resting.
I find it a bit annoying because I like to constrain myself into not abusing the rest feature. E.g. I won't rest until I've cleared a level of a dungeon, for RP and self-challenge reasons. But having pretty much all difficulty increasing options of SCS enabled makes that additional constraint completely overkill in this scenario I guess.
Wait, can +2 bullets hit clay golems? xD
What I needed was Enchanted Weapon, Blur, repeated casting of Mirror Image + Stoneskin, plus lots of running around to avoid getting hit while waiting for his PfMW to run out. I think he cast three or four in total.
Once he was finally out of PfMW, I started hitting him fairly well. I got Valygar with the Spear +3 to support me, though I could have even done it alone if I didn't have a no-healing curse on me from the clay golem I fought before. (Can't even drink healing potions while on that curse.)
I'm still very curious how other people deal with the three Rakshasa near the Druid's Grove without cheesing though. Well, maybe you just go there after Spellhold, not before like I did?
Edit: oh and the Lich, how to deal with him without cheesing?
Still, you could hurt it without Enchant Weapon. Polymorphing into a mustard jelly would do the trick. Of course, you probably don't have that spell memorized either, because you didn't prepare for the specific challenges of this dungeon.
On the general strategy of Spellhold without items ... that's one SCS component I've never installed, and probably never will. My current party would have absolutely crushed it, though. Dragon Disciple protagonist throwing around incendiary clouds and wishes, Cernd and Jaheira hitting 3 million XP for their fire elemental tokens while in the first area of the dungeon.
As for the lich ... you're playing at Insane difficulty (or that lich wouldn't be there). You asked for it.
They're quite vulnerable to dispels; all three of them have lower levels than their mage ability. If your spellcasters aren't all multiclasses, you can easily take their defenses down.
That just leaves their ridiculously good AC. It's fairly luck-based once the combat defenses come down. If you get a few lucky crits, you'll tear through them in no time. If not, the fight will drag on and they'll fill the area with nasty area-denial spells. Retreating to clear the air before it can get too bad is recommended.
...
Wait, OK, I have something to say about the lich. If it happens to have Spell Trap (50% chance), there's basically nothing you can do except cheesy tricks. You can't dispel it, you can't breach it while the Spell Trap is up, and you can't take the Spell Trap down. After all, you don't have access to any level 7 spells.
I just cheesed the Lich. Can't be bothered honestly. I wonder why liches barely seem to move around by the way. He did start walking around a little bit towards the end but wasted like 90% of his spells to my cheesy tactic of walking into his FoV and walking back out...
Why would these defense-breakers fail? A few reasons.
- Dispel Magic and Remove Magic can be blocked with either a level advantage or an Immunity:Abjuration. The latter is quite popular among liches, and random liches are level 25.
- Breach runs into anything in the Spell Deflection/Spell Turning/Spell Trap family and fails. High-level mages always put at least one of these up, which you'll have to take down before you can Breach them.
- While protection removers like Spell Thrust, Secret Word, Pierce Magic, or Ruby Ray of Reversal are the way to take down the protections mentioned above, high-level SCS mages are also very fond of Spell Shield. That will eat the first such spell you try, so you'll need multiple shots. And at least in my install, Spell Shield tends not to show up in the combat log, so I never know it's actually there until I see the "Spell Ineffective" message ...
Liches also put up enough combat defenses that anything other than a purely physical assault absolutely requires you to dispel or breach them somehow. Innate immunity to cold, lightning, and poison, turn/level buffs for fire, acid, and magic damage. Physical damage is the only way to even hurt them until you take those buffs down.
As for lich AI, or mage AI in general ... they'll walk toward you if they need to, but once they commit to casting a spell they'll stay in place until it's done. And if you're out of sight range when that spell finishes, they won't know where you are to come after you.