Improved Ilyich on insane hints

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For all of you out there who have problems with this tactics component here are some general hints that i use to make my life easyer trough the first dungeon:

This hints consider a new party of 5 but some of them are valid even when soloing.

Difficulty slider on insane.

In order to defeat Ilyich and his gang you must murst be able to reach them. The dungon is populated with anoying duegars and the worse part is that each time you rest more druegars appear right after you awake. If you use rest until healed you will be ready to kill the ones spawned as penalty for sleeping and still keep enough resources to kill some of the ones blocking progress towards Ilych.
In order to do that you will need to be able to cast the fallowing spells:

Animate Deadpriest lvl3) - any sort of druid/priest should be able to cast it. The skeletons have a lot of immunities, hit with magical blunt weapons - will do most of the dirty work for you.

Haste: (mage lvl 3) - you need somesort of mage/sorccerer to cast this.

5 hasted skeletons - you are begining to see the picture here.

Also helpfull: dispell/remove magic - to cast on the Mage duegars - however the efectivines of those spells will be low - better to have an inquisitor to dispell for sure the protections of the casters.

Tactic for the ones spawned after you sleep.

Have game autopause when enemy spotted. It will imediatly autopause after you rest. See where the duegar mage(party member) is spawned regarding to your party position. Select all your party members and have them run out of the mage's line of sight. He will lose a few seconds activating his defences. After that if doesn't see a target he will just stand waiting there. The two fighters(proletariats) will waste no time and target one of your party members. Read carefully the feedback and see who are they going after. They WILL NOT SWITCH TARGET so have the targeted ones just run in circles with the duegar fighters on their tails while the rest of your party attacks them at leisure, preferably with ranged weapons. This is where my startegy is limping - if you only have one character (use Imoen as bait )...
After the two fighters have been disposed of summon 3 to 5 skeletons. Cast all your bufs + haste - skeletons must also get hasted.

Send the hasted skeletons after the Mage - they are immune to his confusion will mostly save againts his slow, and quicky eat trough his stoneskins if the other protecions are allowed to expire/are dispelled first. You can help the stoneskin eat through process with a magic missle or two. Then send in a skeleton to lure in more duegar fighters. After you finish them send the skeletons after the Mages. When out of spells/too badly hurt rest and repeat. Slowly you will make progress without much risks.

The part about dealing with Ilyich and his friends comming up later this week...


<EDIT - add>

The protections the Mages use are -
Protection from normal missles - takes my archer out of the game
Protection from normal weapons -lvl 2 Priest spell SPITUAL HAMMER will strike as a +1 weapon and hit them. At caster lvl 7 should strike as +2 and help solve the Galbrezu situation.
Any +1 weapon can hurt the mages - only problem is their stoneskin - but the stoneskin will not stop the cumulative spell failure my Wizard Slayer inflicts(he uses the +1 staff). Right now i dispose of the proletariats - summon one skeleton to waste the confusion and then is the WS job to defuse the bomb . Many people disregard the WS because they say when you can hit your target you don't need the WS anyway - but there are times when you can't really hit the target but still manage to inflict the cumulative failure (causing tiny or no damage - using elemental damage,fire seeds or whatever)and thus disabling the mage.


-to be continued hopefully
First to go was the Galbrezu. Used my multi Ranger/Cleric ability to hide in shadows to lure him away - from the rest(he can see invisible the ohters can't). I used Melf's Minute Meteors, acid arrows and a few magic missles from my multi cleric/mage while the Galbrezu was entertaining himself with some animated undead. The SPITUAL HAMMER did indeed strike as a +2 weapon(the R/C did lvl up in the mean time to lvl 7 cleric) so this helped finish the beast. After a while the rest of the evil bunch arrived to slay my skeletons. My party already taken a strategical retreat. Zivago summons Deva first chance he gets, and Deva in turn lets it rip with a Firestorm on top of her companions. None of them died this time but the gulped a lot of potions .

Now is time for the next in line....
The monk -Rasputin lured and killed before his friends could come to his help. And then Iliych himself. Unlike the regular fighter duegars Ilyich and Rasputin did change target each chance they got allowing me to rotate my fighters and wear them down. Time for some well deserved rest then is on to zivago(priest),karamazov(archer) and the golem.

[ October 30, 2006, 19:53: Message edited by: el M ]

 

Except for the part about difficulty slider on Insane, how does the difficulty of this mod compare to Improved Anvil? I'd spend ages trying to get this to work if I hadn't read it here :s I'm scared of IA now. I'd like to at least finish Irenicus' Dungeon before losing the game

 

I haven't tried IA yet

 

IA does not enhance Irenicus Dungeon AFAIK. And do not flinch from Improved Ilych. I know it sounds a little bit too much, but I am quite used to it. I beat Ilych and his gang on my first try in my current game! (on core difficulty though ) So go try it! We are here to help, if you need spesific hints!

 

But the battles IA does make harder, will they be similar to this? This is a lot more advanced than pure BG2, and though I find that a little easy, this seems a little bit too hard. At least the initial change will be hard

 

Well, ofcourse IA battles are hard. But I do not find them as hard as Improved Ilych. Do not worry, you will not face clerics summoning Fallen Devas at you every turn. Improved Ilych is more like a parody, only for very experienced players IMHO. But it is quite the fun when you get the hang of it!

Yes, initial change will be hard and painful, but you will have an all new game at your hands to master! And it is quite doable, not impossible! I bet you can find your own strategies and tactics in a short time! Go for it!....or continue collecting composite long bows from goblin corpses in Irenicus Dungeon, whichever you prefer.

 

Or use Slightly Improved Ilyich mod

 

^Ah yes, apologies, I forgot about that mod, I have never tried it but I heard it is a lot of fun. Hard, yes, but not as insane as Improved Ilcyh. Go get it and see if you can defeat the 'Slightly' Improved Ilych and his co.