How to kill Arkanis Gath...?
Here is what happened. I wanted to get the nice speed boots Renal Bloodscalp was wearing. I attacked him at his base and this guy called Arkanis Gath appeared out of nowhere and 1-shot all my party members.
AFAIK he could not be killed in BG2:EE so I tried to kill Renal and run the hell out of the place so many times. It was very difficult because Arkanis Gath kept switching targets to my MC or party members unprotected by death ward and he has a short sword with a range longer than bows. He automatically detects invisibility even if you are wearing cloak of concealment. I even used enfeeblement(lvl 5) spell successuly but he kept attacking(!!) despite being enfeebled.
After many tries, I finally managed to escape him and left him on the first floor of the Thieves Guild using one of party members as a sacrifice, because otherwise he would chase me all the way outside the building. Unsuspecting, I saved my game and continued doing quests. (I only use 1 save slot to prevent save scumming)
Then Bodhi told me to kill the shadow master... except Arkanis Gath is standing right there on the first floor near the entrance. Ever since I've been trying to kill Arkanis Gath using all kinds of methods to no avail. His hp never drops below 1, and at hp 1 he is immune to stat/level draining, poison, and all elemental/magic/weapon damage types. Magical status does not affect him, and even when surrounded by summons, he somehow teleports to next area if you wait 1~2 seconds. (I had to use haste + speed boots to run away) Even ctrl+y cheat can't kill him. I'm stuck on my quest.
Is there anyway to kill him in game? If not possible, is it possible to unsummon him or delete him from my save using the keeper? I usually sublate from cheese tactics but as long as this guy is standing at the entrance not even a trio of Mellisan + Demogorgon + Irenicus can infiltrate the thieves guild; more likely they will all get 1-shot to death in one sec. Bodhi is asking for the impossible and my save seems ruined.
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Comments
The real reason for his invincibility/vorpal sword is to prevent you from breaking the game by going to war with the Shadow Thieves before you've made a deal with Bodhi. Otherwise it would be easy to strand yourselves from being able to get to Spellhold.
I'd say, reload your save, don't attack Renal, and be patient. You can get boots of speed for your entire party, eventually.
Try out the following: Enter the Thieves HQ and pause the game as soon as you see Arkanis Gath. Open the game console with Ctrl-Space and enter the following command while your mouse cursor is placed over Arkanis Gath:
C:Eval("DestroySelf()")The character should be removed from the map as soon as you hit Enter. Not sure though if you can still finish this quest successfully.
You have 3 speed boots in SOA including Renal's and 3 in TOB. 2 from BGEE don't import. I figured I have to kill Renal to get 6 speed boots.
I only have on 1 save file, btw...
I don't know the cheat does but he disappeared from the game. I hope it doesn't cause problems further down the road, but for now I can proceed with the main quest!
If stat drain won't work in EE, you should still be able to weather his attacks with Death Ward. In vanilla at least, his short sword (which should have a range of 15, like a dagger, not as long as a shortbow) kills with opcode 55, same as Finger of Death. So you can still trigger his appearance and not die, even if you can't quite kill him in EE.
He doesn't get distracted. He will never change target once his health is at 1. Even if you surround him with summons, he will ignore summons and teleport after you when you move to next area. (ex. interior to exterior) He also doesn't need sight. even if you are standing at the end of the map, if he is on the same map, he targets the MC and comes straight for him.
I think 'blocking exploit' went too far with Arkanis Gath. Bullshitting is strong with this one.
Can you still block his instant death attack with Death Ward?
@wraith5641: Extra mobility is extremely useful. It lets you manage a lot of problems much more effectively, and not just for fleeing--you can dodge an area effect spell, get 6 seconds of freedom from melee to drink another potion, move in place to cast a quick spell against a runaway target, get to a caster before their first spell gets off, overcome an SCS2 Teleport Field... lots of little benefits all over most any battle. Sometimes the intangibles make the difference in a battle, not APR or damage per hit or saves or any other countable variable.
"This isn't your path, godchild."
"I choose my path."
"Wait, wh.....listen, kid. I've got better things to do. If you even so much as *blink* at Renal again, I'll make cornflakes out of your ashes. Got it?"
It doesn't work in EE.
@Beamdog Gimme back my flesh golem cave
As for ways to get rid of him peacefully, it should also be possible to make him join your party using the console and then dump him someplace else.
Bioware's idea was "an unstoppable assassin will immediately kill the party, forcing the player to reload and not do the forbidden action". This isn't inherently too bad a way of enforcing necessary restrictions to keep the plot on track; I reckon it's less immersion-breaking than (for example) arbitrarily going straight to the "Game Over" screen with a footnote saying "(You shouldn't have done that.)".
Unfortunately, the implementation of Arkanis Gath as the unstoppable assassin was flawed in two respects:-
1) The minor flaw was that he wasn't as completely unstoppable as Bioware intended, if players were willing to be cheesy enough to dodge the bullet. Beamdog have partially fixed this by blocking the stat-drain exploit, but the posts above show that it's still possible to evade Arkanis Gath, which isn't the design intention. The whole point of the mechanism is that if you do something which causes him to appear, then it's meant to be game over, no way out.
2) The major flaw was (and is) that the conditions for his appearance aren't scripted in sufficient detail, so sometimes he'll appear (and kill you) even when what you've just done isn't irretrievably plot-wrecking. For example, if the option of allying with Bodhi is still available, then it wrecks the main plot only if you kill Aran Linvail before Bodhi tells you to do so, not if you kill Renal Bloodscalp (or other Shadow Thieves), but Arkanis Gath doesn't take account of that distinction. If Arkanis Gath could be re-scripted to appear only when there's definitely no way for the story to continue, then that'd be a clear enhancement.
then leave him somewhere in a random house
Monk: "The Bhaalspawn approaches! In the name of all that is holy, k-...hey, where'd they go?"
In IWD2, if you kill Suoma, the game just ends and says it can't be completed without her. Well, now you know why it happened, and it's not just an inexplicable death from out of nowhere.