How to beat Sherincal the easy way

Remove all ads!

Several threads indicate that some members find Sherical a challenge outside the Ice Fortress. Rather than going off on a tangent in those threads, and in at least once case necroing them, I'll just start a new thread.

Here's how to kill Sherical.

Before you even start the battle, you need to prepare.

First, outside the fortress you collect a lot of magical missiles Also before this in the Horde Fortress. Don't waste them on the cannon fodder. Use normal, cheap unenchanted missiles on the mooks. Save the +3 and +2, plus the Keen missiles for Sherical and the remorhaz queen (if you don't lead one of the male remorhazes to her instead and avoid that fight). With the ammo belts mod, you can save them up, and the orcs in the Shangarn area tend to drop LOTS of normal arrows for you to use, as well as the various archers you encountered in other areas. Bullets, darts, and crossbows are a bit rarer, but you can buy them for 1gp. Also there is that "target arrow" that gives you unlimited arrows, and the "returning frost dart" that gives you unlimited darts. Exploit them. Just remember to switch to magical arrows when you get ready to face something with damage resistance.

Next, before approaching the area where Sherical can be found, clear out all the other baddies. Sherical can call for help and all the other baddies in the area can swarm you. So take care of them first when you fight them a few groups at a time instead of all at once.

Ok, lets assume everywhere but where Sherical is is clear.
Remember how I mentioned hording those missiles weapons? Equip every one of your characters with a ranged weapon with magical ammunition. You don't have to equip the magical ammo right away (and probably shouldn't if you don't have too much of a given missile).
Don't forget to cast a remove fear spell on your party before approaching Sherical in addition to other buffs. Save the Prayer and Recitation and chant if you use it until Sherical herself is also in range.

When you approach Sherical, you'll notice that there are two switches on either side of those ramps. Sherical starts up on that platform above the ramps. She doesn't have any real ranged attacks, only that big sword that hits hard.
Those ramps act like conveyer belts, and you can use the switches to change which one goes up and which goes down by shooting them with arrows (just use a normal arrow).
Kill the people manning the swiches using missile weapons or spells. You can use normal missiles or mere +1 missiles for Sherical's bodyguards. Also kill any mooks that show up on the ground using whatever means you deem necessary. Try to save at least one debuff spell that hurts AC for when you attack Sherical, but do go ahead and cast Prayer and Recitation such that they hit both you and Sherical.
Whenever Sherical approaches one of the ramps, hit the appropriate switch to reverse the ramps and keep her up there using a ranged attack.

Once you've cleared her bodyguards, switch to those expensive and highly enchanted missiles and open fire on her with the entire party. Cursing her with Doom and Curse, along with Chant, Prayer and Recitation can help lower her AC so your party can turn her into a pincushion.

Again, whenever she approaches a ramp, shoot a switch to keep her up on the ledge while you are safe on the ground.

IIRC, Sherical has some spell resistance, so spells have limited effectiveness. So have your mages open fire with crossbows if nothing else. That's what you saved the +3 bolts for after all. Let your clerics use crossbows or slings. Of course, your mages and clerics are free to unload their memorized spells on the bodyguards. Cleric's hold person is still quite effective even if the mage's sleep is not, and web is also a great disabler.
Have the mages shoot the held enemies, even with their low BAB they'll have a 19/20 chance of hitting (fail on a natural 1, automatic hit on anything else for a enemy held by Web or Hold Person). Held enemies in melee range can be attacked by the mages with their melee weapons while the fighters keep shooting the enemies on the ledge.


The key is to keep Sherical trapped on the ledge and turn her into a pincushion. Easy as pie.

 

(sic) the cheesy way.

 

Here's an alternative way to fight Sherincal if you don't have enchanted missiles


-- 01

Isolate Sherincal with Otiluke's Resilient Sphere

PS : Distract her attetion from your main group --- her Dragon Breath can pose a great threat to arcane casters




-- 02

Most of the enemies are warrior type or divine casters , their Reflex Saves are quite lousy which make them very vulnerable to spell Chromatic Orb





-- 03

Enhance your party with spells like Bless , Recitation , Magic Circle Against Evil and Good Hope

( Unlike PnP , the morale bonus can stack in IWD2 )



-- 04

THE MOST IMPORTANT SPELL

Cast Freedom of Movement on melee characters




-- 05

Flame Blade/Ice Blade/MoonBlade can bypass the Damage Reduction ( also , caster can make melee touch attacks which make it easy to hit your enemy)

PS : IMO Ice Blade is the best choice , because :

a.) Target falls a Reflex Save will be slowed for 3 rounds

b.) Both druid and cleric can cast this spell





-- 06

Remove Fear is in order



-- 07

Cast Web and Entangle to hold Sherincal in place ( you might add a Grease spell as spice if you have spell slots to spare )

PS: An entangled creature takes -2 penalty to Attack Roll and -4 penalty to Dexterity which affect her Range Attack , Reflex Save and Armor Class




-- 08

Blindness x3




-- 09

Slow




-- 10

Contagion




-- 11

Sherincal has fallen



-- 12

After Sherincal's defeat ,the necromancers will join the battle , disable them with Stinking Cloud , Web and Entangle




-- 13

The Golem doesn't pose a threat as long as you have blunt weapons

As for the necromancers , blast them with spells or just shoot them with missile weapons

 

Yummy. These screenshots tempt me to abandon my BG2 megamod in favour of replaying IWD2 again.

Problem is, I've been having trouble installing the Icewind Gate conversion on my old Windows Vista. Now I installed W7, it could install... sort of. But I can't initiate the dialogue to transfer to Chateau Irenicus - CTD crash.

OK, I'll see if I can cheat-jump to the dungeon, and sort out the issues later!


EDIT:
I couldn't jump to BG2 areas - they're not there.
I must have tried and retried installation over 10 times. Nothing wrong with how I followed the steps. Beta and Delta both fail to install. At least the Delta has a DEBUG file:

Installing [IWG2 Patch]
Copying and patching 1 file ...

ERROR locating resource for 'COPY'
Resource [AR0001.ARE] not found in KEY file:
[./chitin.key]
Stopping installation because of error.

ERROR Installing [IWG2 Patch], rolling back to previous state
[iwg2\IWG2-PATCH\Backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found
Will uninstall 0 files for [SETUP-IWG2PATCH.TP2] component 0.
Uninstalled 0 files for [SETUP-IWG2PATCH.TP2] component 0.


and further down:
ERROR: Failure("resource [AR0001.ARE] not found for 'COPY'")
PLEASE email the file SETUP-IWG2PATCH.DEBUG to
Automatically Skipping [IWG2 Patch] because of error.
Using Language [Chinese]
[Chinese] has 1 top-level TRA files
[iwg2/IWG2-PATCH/TRA/Setup.tra] parsed
[iwg2/IWG2-PATCH/TRA/Setup.tra] has 35 translation strings

 

I could never get IWDGate to work.... He never finished it.

 

coineineagh, I don't really see how either strategy is cheesy. Aside from the fact that you don't seem to need to make a really good attack roll to hit the switches, I thought it was all legitimate tactics. Besides, it was intended for people having trouble with Sherical, this shows an easy way to beat her.
Divide and conquer. Isolate Sherical, keep her away from the party by manipulating the ramps that were put in there for that purpose, take out her bodyguards, then kill her as she stands alone.

About the only cheese is that after the second time you switch the ramp on her, she should have taken flight to swoop down and make a DFA attack on the party below, if she doesn't strafe them with her breath weapon. However, flight mechanics aren't implemented in the IE games.

 

Who cares if it is cheesy?

 

Cheesy was just meant as a witticism, no offense intended. What I objected to more, was the Sun Tzu quote. Living in China, I can see how rigid-thinking 'philosophers' like Sun Tzu and Confucius have ruined rational thought. According to your quote, more calculations equals a better general.

Here's another one for you: All the 'best' countries produce lots of steel. So, if we make the most steel, that makes us the best country. Enter the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, farmers get dragged from their land to produce steel in the village, given poor materials and instructions. A surplus of pig iron is produced, but precious little steel. Death toll estimates range from 40-78 million, largely due to food shortages and starvation. Thank you Sun Tzu. Mao Zedong learned from a grandmaster!

... and in the present, children all over China are forced to attend long hours in school. Doing math calculations in their 'temple'. The teaching is learn-by-rote only, and all the kids really learn is to conform, cheat and do the minimum to meet expectations and keep people happy. They lose all curiosity, which is the driving force of science and creativity. And as soon as parents are out of the picture (life on university campus), they try desperately to catch up with lost childhood, but it's too late: They'll be staring into car catalogues at their job, dreaming of buying a car/toy, making 'calculations'.

Sorry for the off-topic rant.

 

In all honesty, I was trying to find a quote that I remembered from some old WWII movie about "battles/wars are won before the first shot is fired due to planning and preparation", but I couldn't find the quote. I thought it was by Rommel, but he might have been paraphrasing Sun Tzu.
If I could have found the quote, I'd have used that instead. All I found in 10 minutes of searching was the Sun Tzu quote.

Something makes me want to say it was from "Five Graves to Cairo", but my father made me watch so many WWII movies growing up I have no idea for sure (we only had one TV until I was eleven, and he was a WWII buff. Do the math. No video games when he's watching a WWII movie and I didn't get a computer until I was almost ten). It might have been artistic license or propaganda which is why I can't find the quote.

 

Here is one from that Battletech cartoon series:
Information is Ammunition

 

Turns out my BG2 install was faulty for some reason. Once I reinstalled BG2 from scratch, Baldurdashed it, the Icewind Gate 2 conversion became viable again.
I started up a new ID2 game. Knowing I can progress to IG2 later makes all the difference for my enjoyment.

 

Although isn't ammunition useless for a 'mech armed with lasers and PPCs?
The character fond of saying that used an Awesome, which was armed with 3 PPCs and a small laser.

 

I think you mean "pose", not "post".

"Doesn't pose a threat"

 

Thanks Nnimrod . Sorry for the mistake , I'm not a native speaker . I'll do my best to improve my english ( May Oghma guide me in this endeavour )

 

Perhaps you are thinking of Eisenhower? "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable" is the most common form.

The longer form is, "I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of 'emergency' is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning." Of course, in IWD2 this isn't true, because there are no surprise emergencies except the first time you play through the game.

 

I don't think that is it. It wasn't in "Five Graves to Cairo" although that too was close. I found the script here:
http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=five-graves-to-cairo