Mind Flayers

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How do I stop or prevent them from draining my intelligence? I can't defeat such creatures.

 

You cant. There is some potions available in their hive in the underdark that makes you immune to psionics, but that is all.

 

Potions of Genius and mind focus gives you extra INT points so that you can survive a few extra attacks. Also the priest spell Chaotic Commands grants immunity to psionic blast, as does the greenstone amulet (which you have to activate). Mind flayers have magic resistance so I usually melee them or sent skeletons to hold them up and use missile weapons.

When in melee get your AC as low as possible and maybe use mirror images to lessen the chance of being hit. Try to lure them out one at a time or backstab them with a thief with potions of invisibility and good saving throws against their psionic blasts.

A cheesy method is using the wand of cloudkill and closing the door, leaving them trapped in the room. Cloudkill from the wand hurts just about anything not immune to acid and goes through magic resistance, making it even effective against golems.

Mind flayers are a pain during your first few runs through the game, but as you learn more about the game you develop tactics against every opponent which makes the fights less and less dificult each time. Good luck!

 

I found Mordenkainen's swords and lots of summons(preferably undead) to work quite nicely as a diversion while your chaotic commanded tanks cut them up badly.

 

Death Spell, Mass Invisibility and Chaotic Commands (backed up by several Wondrous Recall) are prime spells to use when fighting Mind Flayers.

The HLA's Deathblow and Greater Deathblow are also very useful, but having those abilities means your character(s) are of such a high level that Mind Flayers should no longer be a problem.

 

Just send a few summons before going in yourself and cast chaotix beforehand (it should last quite a while). Then just hack'n'slash, easy.

 

I also like the use of Mord's Swords. The seem to be immune to intelligence drain. I have tried the cloudkill tactic as well, but from my experience, it's not worth using. Mind flayers seem to have a really high magic resistance, so most rounds they take no damage at all. There are potions, (and in ToB) a few items that provide complete protection from psionics.

 

Aldeth, I think they were talking about the Wand of Cloudkill, which IIRC ignores MR.

 

Depends on what options you have to play around with. If you have a Fighter/Mage or even better, Thief/Mage, you could just cast Mislead, send only them and get them to beat the crap out of the Mindflayers, all the while laughing at how stupid they are .

If not...get a mage or a cleric who is past lvl 15 to cast Animate Dead. Those Skeleton Warriors don't get affected by the psionics...so you can dispose of them very easily, only this way, it takes longer.

Also, you could similarly, summon a couple of Mordenkainen's Swords. They don't get affected by that ruddy mind blast attack either.

If you feel that you can't do all of these, because you are playing a solo Beastmaster , then I'm afraid you have to resort to all those tedious methods already suggested...get brine potions, cheesy upgrade items, not-found-till-near-the-end-of-the-game greenstone amulets etc etc.

Hope you get rid of 'em!

PS: If you are really high level and are feeling particularly nasty , cast Shapechange : Illithid and suck THEIR brains out!

 

Blades wipe the floor with them. Give Haer'Dalis or a PC Blade a Ring Of Free Action, cast Chaotic Commands on them, and abuse Defensive Spin. My sympathies, though - they drove me crazy until I figured that out. Lone Illithids go splat pretty easy - a high-level backstab should send squid-chunks everywhere. It's a shame you don't generally get Deathblow by this point in the game, since that makes whacking the squiddies a lot easier.

Anyone with INT 6+ and an AC of -10 or better should be okay to fight them. If you get hit, pull back and shut a door until the drain wears off (about a minute at the most). Mordekainen's Sword is the ultimate Illithid-killer. Also, although this doesn't normally work since their magic resist is about 95%, when you encounter the teleporting Illithid and their Umber Hulk minions, a single Death Spell will kill all of them. A couple of Skeleton Warriors with Haste and maybe Improved Invisibility will make short work of them too, although the Umber Hulks will smash them fairly quickly. Use a Death Spell/Cloudkill to knock them out and let your bony minions finish the Mind Flayers.

Hey, I actually sound like I know what I'm talking about!

 

Mordenkainen's Sword is the ultimate anti-everything, you know. Even dragons could spend days whacking them without causing a scratch

 

I know. That's why I love it when my sorcerers hit level 14.

The only things that I can think of that smack Mordekainen's Sword around are Draconis with his "death field" on shapechange, and any demi-lich (for obvious reasons). Oh, and Melissan (with Ascension installed)

 

"How do I stop or prevent them from draining my intelligence? I can't defeat such creatures."

one reason why i always take atleast 11 int with atleast one of my chars (unless in soloing of course)

 

IIRC, Ithlids cannot see invisible characters, so the ring of air control works here.