How to kill Arkanis Gath?

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My brother is playing BG2 now and he has a problem killing Arkanis Gath. He says the guy gets down to almost dead and stops there, refusing to die. What's the deal? Does he require something special to kill?

 

You mean the guy appear when you hit the shadow thief after you have your stronghold?

Can you even touch him? Because he kills every party member in one hit no matter what, so I don't think you are even able to kill him.

 

Death Ward protects from the instakill he has with his backstabbing sword. But he takes 8000 damage after dropping to almost dead and nothing... he refuses to die. What's the deal? I just know some creatures that aren't supposed to die, like quest-important characters, are protected this way, e.g. Draconis in his human form, but is Arkanis so? I mean, he isn't anything like a quest character and his job is protecting the thieves. People have reported killing him and grabbing the sword but my brother can't get it done for the aforementioned reasons. Any idea?

 

Do a search on this forum for "Arkanis". Most say he cannot be killed but some claim they did. Your brother probably is trying to kill the shadow thieves after agreeing to side with them.

Oops. ;( We posted at the same time. So you already know the problem.

 

There are two Arkanis Gath creature files in BG2. One is used if you side with Shadow Thieves, while the other one if you are with Bodhi.
Chas is right: your brother attacked him after siding with the Thieves, because you mention the deadly backstabbing sword: only one of the Arkanis files has this, the one which is used if you SIDE with shadow thieves AND attack him or Aran Linvail.

The explanation of the 8000HP-loss:
Arkanis Gath has a so-called invisible non-droppable MINHP1 amulet, which is a powerful thing having 45 effects on it (protecting against all forms of death and panic etc.). Players who reported killing him either used cheat or I don't know what. This is why your brother cannot kill him.

 

The only way I know of is to shapechange into a mindflayer and beat on him till his intelligence drains to zero. That'll do it.

 

Aahz is correct. If you are death warded and avoid his killer sword, then you can kill him through INT drain. The thing about shapeshift: mindflayer is that the spell isn't usually available until chapter 6. However, Lady Yuth in the Adventurer's Mart sells a scroll of limited wish, and you can ask the dao to be "anything you desire" which will allow you to shapeshift for 1 turn. So use this, change to a mindflayer and INT drain him.

Of course, this is purely an exercise in semantics since your game is screwed anyway.

 

You can also use Kachiko's Wakizashi and Chaos, among other weapons. Arkanis, and just about anyone else, can be killed by stat-drain.
Of interest, it seems Arkanis can also be killed by raw damage alone. My guess is that the helm which grants him invincibility only in fact boosts his hp by a ridiculous amount. (20k+?)
But against the right character...

 

He definitely cannot be killed by raw damage, unless the game is buggy. He hasn't got any helm, as I've written in my previous post, he has an invisible undroppable MINHP1 amulet. It is called MINHP1 because it also contains Effect 208 (Stat: Minimum HP Limit). His HP will never go under 1 (unless there is a bug in the game), so no 20k boost or such.

 

Maybe I'll find some time test whether there's a bug with the undroppable helm with no animation later. There have been enough reports about supposedly unkillable NPC's getting killed by raw damage, and the prospect of doing the same is tempting.

[ June 22, 2005, 06:04: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]

 

Amulet, not helm. LOL. Nevermind.

There may be a bug, yeah. But I wouldn't use it: these things are so forced, so artificial (and serious players shouldn't exploit such things).