Knowing When You're Outgunned (Out-Magicked?)

Remove all ads!

So now I understand why I was able to walk away from Firkraag and still rescue fair damsel. I'm simply outgunned here, and the designers provided an easy way out.

This is one tough hombre!

What I learned from this:
1. It's not necessary to kill everything on the map . . . today.
2. (the Ninth Deadly Sin) Know thy strengths and weaknesses.
3. (with respect to #2 above) I have a lousy party; too much emphasis on healing, only so-so defense, no where near enough offense!

BG I was relatively straight-forward: web, hold, sleep, grease, fireball, animal/undead summoning, lots of ranged weapons, my main character was the tank (with Spider's Bane he could dance thru the webs), heal, rest/memorize, repeat; basically a hack and slash approach aided by magic use. I think it may be time to sit down and learn to plan for, and execute, a magical battle (to be aided by melee).

It may also be time to reconsider my party members. I currently have my PC Paladin, Minsc, Anomen, Aerie, Dynahier, and Yoshimo. Seems to me that Aerie's intelligence is her weakness, but maybe this can be addressed. Yoshimo would be superflouous if I had Imoen back, and after he backstabs I have to get him out of the fray anyway because of his poor AC - more protective magic might help him, but .... Apart from his Bless spells, Anomen is more a liability than an asset. Dynahier is fine (good spells, good melee). Minsc is my bud - even if he wasn't great already, he stays.

What to do, what to do . . .

 

Dynahier?

 

He probably means Nalia.

 

PC Paladin(Cavalier) (Carsomyr rocks)
Minsc (good tank)
Jaheira (fighting and healing)
Viconia (healing and fighting-use holy power a lot)
Aerie (great spell selection)
Imoen/Nalia (all the thieving you need)

Backstabbing has had a miserable success rate for me, I just use thieves for finding traps and disarming them.

This party has worked very well for me, especially with the concurrent romances mod.

 

I hate spoiling people who don't know, but considering your protagonist, you'll thank me later if you don't go after Firkraag just yet.

PS: I'm surprised you're sticking with your 'buddy' Minsc, but not Jaheira. Did you not like her in BGI?

 

I think he means Jaheira and not Dynahier, becuase Jaheira has good Melee and good Casting.

 

People who use thief only to find and disarm traps and unlock doors and chests miss very usefull and funny part of the game.
Traps are very powerfull and funny to use, so is backstabing. You can kill mages or clerics with one single blow.
If u want really do all this things you simply have to create your own charakter. I recommend fighter/thief multiclass.

 

Assassin is especially fun if you want to backstab.. x7.. mmm..

 

And *7 backstab with a Staff of Striking... YES !
(AND Traps). I think SOA allows an Asassin character develop all necessary skills.

 

Well you do have a lot of magic in your party of which one-and-a-half are cleric and a part mage. Have Aerie cast lower resistance on Firkaag when you start fighting so that spells have a chance to effect him, but take your time to buff up. A magic resistance cast on him will grant him that resistance, but it will be lower then that what he has from himself and has the added advantage that its a benifficial spell and doesn't turn him hostile!

Remove fear works for an hour and should be long enough to finish the fight, later on. Protection from evil and protection from fire (which stacks so you could use more upon one person, granting him/her 127% fire resistance (the maximum allowed in the game), which probably be lowered by Frikaag to about 80%) are a must in this type of game.

He only has one death spell so a summon a s a sacrifice will keep the other summons alive for the rest of the fight, when they die. He uses wing-buff early in any fight so I suggest you sent in a first summon for the death spell, and the other summons later on. Keep your tanks back untill after the wingbuff throws your summons accross the room.

After lowering his resistance (by casting lower resistance or magic resistance). I usually send in my summons that survived the death spell to go hand-to-claw with him, while my mage cast greater mallison and other spellcasters doom. Doom stacks and I once had a party who could all cast it which gave him a -12 penalty to savingthrows, afterwhich a chromatic orb killed him! This doesn't always work, but it a good starter for the battle. If they can't cast doom or other offensive/defensive spells have them shoot arrows/bolts/whatevers until the summons get wingbuffed away.

After this keep on hacking away and cast party friendly spell like chainlightning and magic missiles. I found that electricity works very well on dragons throughout the game, and often finish them of with a zapp from the wand of lightning.

There are a lot of topics regarding dragon slaying on this forum, so if this is not enough you could try searching for Firkaag, and I sure you will find the tips you need.

 

If you are about 1.000.000XP,Firkraag battle is cool.I fight with him when I'm about that XP.
Don't buff before battle.Don't summon anything.Kill Firkraag before rescueing that girl,so you can kill him and his companion mage at once.It takes some time(because Firkraag kills that mage with Dragon's Breath nearly in all battles.But I want to kill him myself!).It is my favourite battle
I start buffing at the same time with Firkraag.While my berserker fights with Firkraag,others take care of that mage.After the mage is dead,Breach,Lower Resistance and a chest to chest fight with tanks.
Butt kicking,for goodness!..

 

With a PC Paladin, Minsc, and Anomen, that should be PLENTY of offense. I'm confused here as to why you are having problems.

 

Sorry, Sorry, I didn't mean Dynaheir, I actually meant Jaheira.

My attempts to battle Firkraag are bizarre. Even after casting Breach (Aerie doesn't have Lower Resistance yet - probably a good enough reason to postpone this battle for a while), I don't seem to be able to do much damage to him - single digit damage from a Lightning Wand, single digit damage from my Paladin (w/ 19 strength, + Fire Giant Potion, + Harbinger!!!???), and single digit damage from Minsc (Flail of Ages and a +3 axe - don't recall its name).

I'm actually wondering if there's some odd bug involved here.

As for Anomen; He never seems to do much damage, but the real problem is that he seems to get injured VERY quickly and easily. He needs better armour, but that will also have to wait til I find something better than his current +1 Plate (don't seem to have much luck finding really good armour in this game yet).

Another question, are Dragons immune to Hold Monster and/or Web spells?

 

Seb, don't kill the dragon!!!!! (yet)

 

@Seb:

he casts Stoneskin again and again - use Breach, Breach, Breach or Arrows of Dispelling from the Promenade shop.

 

If you have Harbinbger, that means you have already gone through the underdark. You should be strong enough to take him down.

 

Don't forget casting haste on your tanks!

 

@ Klorox

Advice taken. I had decided to give up on him anyway, until I improve my party quite a bit (with regard to exp., arms, armour, and magic - yeah, yeah, that pretty much sums it up - I need to improve everything!). Thanks.

@ Kulyok:

With everything that I had been throwing at him, I was amazed that he could cast ANYTHING , but then again, after reviewing battle stats, it seems I wasn't actually hitting him much. I still don't understand why my Paladin would do such low damage on a successful hit. Arrows of dispelling are a great idea (I've used them before; why didn't I think of that?!?)

@AzathothXy

Ummm, errrrr, actually, no . . ., I haven't been through the Underdark (not even sure what it is yet). I used a mod to import my BG1 character with all his carried items. This included a +3 2-handed sword from TotSC that wasn't called Harbinger in that game, but was unexpectedly called Harbinger in SoA. I guess that means that there will be 2 Harbingers in the game.


I'm not sure why you folks seem to like Anomen. Playing a Paladin (PC), I find his attitude out of sorts with the party. If I weren't such a goody-two-shoes, I kick his @** myself! I miss Ajantis from BG1.