Tactics mod - Underdark Beholder help

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First the background: I am by no means an expert player / strategist. I had tried a few mods before some years back, but I found most of them to be ridiculously unbalanced. I'm very picky, i.e. I hated Weimar's item improvement mod because it made things too easy, and I didn't like the Soulafein much either.

Anyway this time around I tried a few mods to hopefully make the battles more difficult:

- all the player bugfixes
- Ease of use (I hate inventory management)
- Tweaks (mainly no level cap and every romance at the same time, also 'no high level abilities until later')
- Tactics (all of it, hoo boy)
- Spell 50
- Ascension

Much as I love BG2, I would call myself a 'casual player.' The Tactics mod is pretty much wiping the floor with my ass. I'm now at the Underdark (don't ask me how, I am still wondering how I made it past that Illyich guy...) and I'm very stuck.

For the life of me I cannot come up with a good tactic to kill the Hive Mother in the Beholder tunnels without permanently losing at least one party member every single time. This is driving me crazy, but I refuse to give up! Can anyone help me with a strategy here?

This is my current party:

CHARNAME (fighter/mage/thief multiclass)
Imoen
Edwin
Anomen
Jaheria
Viconia

Both Anomen and Viconia can cast level 7 cleric spells. Not that it helps much. I usually come closest to success when I try casting a web / entangle, and then every single thief trap / spell trap / cloudkill / fire rain / ice storm type spell I can within the 8-beholder-area. But that stupid Hive Mother always manages to come through and kill *somebody* no matter what, and with the anti-magic ray / poison attack it does, somebody always dies permanently.

So yeah. I've tried looking for strategy guides online and when it comes to the Tactics mod, I gots nothin'. Please help!

 

Use stealth rather than brute force:

Option 1. Turn the party invisible, or at least keep them at the entrance. Use your FMT with boots of speed, potion of speed or haste, in combination with stealth, blanket the entire area several times with a wand of cloudkill. If you haven't got one of those, other area of effect wands will have to do.

Option 2. Cast animate dead as many times as you can with a mage or cleric that is at least 15th level, then haste the skeleton warriors (magic resistance, immune to poison) and direct them while hiding in the shadows. If you can kill most of the minor beholders before trying this, you can reserve the skeleton warriors for the hive mother. If you have a few breach spells on hand, it will help take down her stoneskins and give your muscle a better shot at her, but watch out that you cast and run so she can't target you with her own spells.

 

Hmm, actually I tried the skeleton warrior thing already and the Hive Mother somehow always manages to turn them. (How beholders can turn / dominate the undead... gurk.)

If it was the hive mother alone, I think I might be able to have a chance at her. The problem with my area attack strategy is that somehow, she always comes out to see what's going on before the other beholders are nicely dead. And with the anti-magic ray, my FMT can't tank the Hive Mother, Elder Orb + extra beholders alone. However when she goes up with skele warriors as backup, the Hive Mother invariably turns or death-spells them.

I will try the stealth strategy though. Statistically speaking one of these attempts has to be fruitful at some point...

Thanks for the advice!

Edit #2: askjgasjgls, the Hive Mother and Elder Orb can see "through" stealth and still target you.

[ October 09, 2007, 17:19: Message edited by: Enkida ]

 

Hmm, I've never had that kind of problem, even with tactics on insane. Usually the wand of cloudkill does the trick. I do recall having to run around to miss the hive mother, but she always managed to float through the cloud enough to weaken her substantially, or even kill her. The rest of the beholders couldn't see me died off without a fight, so even when I had to engage the hive mother it was relatively easy. Have you tried spell immunity: divination?

 

I did Tactics' Beholders just 2 weeks ago and it went like this:
I first prepared the 2 hallways that lead to the central area with traps/ skull traps, then rushed the Beholder + 2 Gauths in the central area , gated in a Pit Fiend and quickly withdrew the rest of the party back to the entrance area. Pit Fiends have high MR and are quite tough and the one I had gated in must have killed the Elder Orb and at least one Beholder. Only 2 Gauths and Big Mama made it through.
For the Hive Mother I used Skelleton Warriors, too. I do not exactly know how the mechanics work but it seems that her eye stalks are depleted after a while and take some time to recharge. She killed the first wave of skellies with a Death Spell but there was nothing she could do against the second and third wave. So make sure you send them in waves . The other party members then just dashed in, cast a quick Breach or did whatever they could contribute and then quickly run away.Not very heroic but it got the job done.

 

Jeebus, I must have some kind of mutant version of Tactics because I put it on Easy and I'm still getting pwned by the Hive Mother. The worst I got her down to from the Cloudkill was barely injured, and I think she can heal herself. Also, her anti-magic ray destroys all my spells, including spell immunity: divination and spell immunity: abjuration. Maybe she smells you or something.

I also tried a pit fiend before, and that also got pwned by the Hive Mother and Elder Orb. Of course I think I had the game set to hard then, so maybe with more luck and an easier level this time... or just the law of averages...

Thanks senex, I will try this strategy next. ;__;

 

Use the 5th level mage spell, "Spell Shield" to block her anti magic ray.

There is also a sort of bug in the vanilla game which allows 'spell shield' to remain active even after blocking the ray. Improved Anvil has fixed the bug, but I don't think that Tactics fixes it.

 

Dear Sikret: You are my new hero. Thank you so much, that Spell Shield did the trick, after getting it up to block the anti-magic ray of doom, the rest of the battle was actually quite easy.

And thanks to everyone for the great strategies also. So relieved, I can go back to actually playing the rest of the game now! ^__^V