Thief Vs Mellisan

Remove all ads!

Well, I've got right to the end of TOB with my 40th level thief. I'm wielding all the decent items and wearing the best armour in the game for a thief (Aylesferund +5 chain) - and I'm *still* getting several kinds of crap beaten out of me my Melissan and her cronies (the vanilla cronies that you find in the normal game and not the Five thankfully).

Anyone got any tips on how I win this one?

Melissan seems to come with loads of protections already in place and no matter how many wands of spell striking I use I'm never able to land a blow on her. I wondered at first if this was because she kept putting up absolute immunity but even weapons like the Ravager +6 don't harm her.

I've tried running off and placing time traps, figuring I can trigger one of them and then pound her into the ground before the trap wears out but her cronies just follow me and disrupt my trap setting. Invisibility has no effect whatsoever.

Even transforming into the slayer doesn't make the blindest bit of difference. And even though I'm doing this fight with an AC of -20 I'm getting hit so many times it's just not funny.

Anyone ever done this with a 40th level thief and, if so, HOW?

 

Never tried it, unfortunately.
I suppose as a 40th level thief, you have Use Any Item. Perhaps that might help somehow. Flail of Ages may work well against her too.

 

Well, a tip on how to get rid of Mel each time around...your 40th lvl thief had better have tons of Spike Traps. Just use a scroll of Mordenkainen's Sword, or Summon Earth Elemental or some such high level summon to get rid of the Elementals each time she disappears into the green column. Then, plant two-three Spike Traps at her spawn.

I think you should do the planting before going off to kill the Elementals and Demons and stuff.

She should go down to that...if not, whip out Carsomyr +5, dispel her protections, use a Scroll of Summon Hakeashar or Summon Nishruu to get her spells off...well, basically use scrolls and traps to get rid of her, your toe-to-toe combat abilities will suck due to crappy thief THAC0.

If you could post your available options...like what scrolls you have, what items you have...etc etc, we could help you out with more specific tactics.

For eg: If you have Vhailor's Helm, you could summon a Simulacrum to effectively increase your number of Spike Traps to 160 % (100 % yours + 60% Simmy) which will come in VERY handy.

Let us know...and in the meanwhile, I hope this helped.

 

Yeah, but then the Simulacrum set traps abililty will only be 60% of his character, won't it?

 

Thanks for the advice.

The scrolls of summoning I'm not going to be able to get now - I went on a bit of a killing spree in TOB and butchered almost everyone I came across. Certainly anyone who might have been able to sell me a scroll is long dead. Guess that serves me right for being so vicious...

I don't have Carsoymr or the Flail of Ages either. I *did* have them at one point but I think I was running short of cash back in SOA so I sold them.

Spike traps? I've got precisely two. I messed up big time when I chose my traps earlier on, figuring out that greater evasion and its +5 AC bonus was really going to make a difference. In fact, against most of TOB's enemies it doesn't do squat.

Vhailor's Helm I *do* have but I've already used it and my simulacrum got killed in the first few seconds of combat with Melissan. I suppose I could go back to the last auto save and use it better this time but seeing as it's only going to give me an extra spike trap I don't see it making a whole lot of difference.

So the way things look like that, I'm pretty much screwed. Seeing as there's no resting in the final part of the game, even if I *do* manage to beat Melissan the second time (at the moment I've managed to beat her once and am just trying to get the better of the air elemental prince) I won't be able to rest and recuperate my snares. Which leaves me with either admitting defeat right at the end of the game or cheating and giving myself all the items I foolishly got rid of earlier that might make a difference.

Really irritating. I got through the entire series of games (BG, TOTSC, SOA and most of TOB) without cheating but it looks like I'm not going to get any further.

 

This fight is seriously nigh impossible to do solo with any class that can't cast spells.

I made a post about a month ago that has the exact stats, immunities, and resistances of Melissan. You could try finding that out and see if it helps you.

 

I guess I would say "don't give up!" because the first time I fought the Eclipse crew from the Solaufein mod, I got decimated 5 seconds from "go".

I have one thing to say though... do NOT try the same strategie over and over and over. I'd say do it maybe 3 or 4 times, then try something else. The thing I always have trouble with is doing that and getting frustrated. Use your head. Try to think of any strategy you can!

 

I've tried several different tactics, all to no avail. The one that had the most success so far was the "run for it" strategy whereby I just run round and round and quaff healing potions and wait for Melissan's protections to wear off. I figure if I can keep this up for 3-4 hours she should be so worn out from casting spells that she'll be a pushover.

 

I know a lot of people have soloed her with an assassin and swashbuckler. I'm assuming you're a straight thief.

I think that traps, scrolls, and the UAI ability are the keys. You've said you killed everyone in the game so you can't go and buy scrolls. What would be helpful though is if you could give some idea on what you have available to you. For example, a character with UAI can become largely magic immune if s/he has the items. What items/scrolls do you have available?

 

I've got a couple of Time Stops, a Meteor Swarm, Protection from Electricity as well as quite a few low level spells.

I have a fairly decent supply of items - short sword of Mask +5, Ravager +6, Ixil's Spear +6, Aylesferund Chain +5, Shurrupak's Plate (though I don't use it as I need my thieving abilities), a few rings of protections and several dozen other miscellaneous items scattered through my backpack. I picked up a couple wands of spell striking in Watcher's Keep but these don't seem to do anything to Melissan's protections, or they do but she's able to put them back up too quickly for me to take advantage of.

On top of that, 7 potions of superior healing (I had about 50 but used most in the fights with Draconis and Abazigal) and 140 potions of extra healing. I've got potions of frost giant strength but as I've already got a strength of 24 these don't do a lot.

That's about it.

 

When you say you've some low level spells... any misleads? (Edit- I meant project image not miselad) Remember when you use the helm to have your time stop scrolls etc. in place as this should replicate them as well on the simulacrum iirc. You could use simulacrum and then use mislead on each guy and end up with 4 of you I think I've heard. This would, of course, help out your time stops as well. And get you more traps.

Do you have human flesh armor? The purifier?

Edit - how about Tenser's and protection spells? A group of you with protections and Tensers...

[ February 01, 2004, 22:26: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

Isn't Melissan immune to Time Stop? It's been awhile since I beat her with my thief-mage (leading a full party, I'm not crazy enough to try it solo), and if I recall Time Stop just led to a swifter slaughter, since she then zeroed in on my weakling wizard.

Oh, wait - no, you're right. If you're playing solo, then a Time Stop would be good because it freezes all the underlings. She's already focused on you anyway.

 

Yeah, that was my thought. And, if he has any spell immunity scrolls, maybe he can equip his 3 other mini-me replicas and be immune to the time stop so all 4 of them can gang up on her while freezing her minions. Maybe not, just a quick thought.

 

I don't have any Misleads or Project Images. You're right about Time Stop - it doesn't affect Melissan. Still worth using it though because it freezes her allies.

I think I might have to admit defeat on this one. I can beat her the first time but there's no way I can last long enough to kill her.

It's particularly annoying because I've never had that many problems with the end fight before - except when I had Ascension installed and had to take on the Five but that's another story. The basic game ending has never caused me trouble before although admittedly this is the first time I've tried it as a solo character.

 

Don't give up yet mate, you still have CTRL+Y and CTRL+R !!

Kidding, well, seeing the items and scrolls you said you have, I really can't think of anyway to legally beat her...maybe if you gave yourself the items which you sold and deducting that much gold from your inventory or something...because you NEED those items!

Without them, your thief is nothing against Melissan, because he has no fighting capabilities!

 

Actually my thief has proved surprisingly successful in melee combat so far. I took Draconis down and Abazigal and single-handedly killed Gromnir and his allies.

But here the poor sod seems to have met his match. Ah well. I'll know for next time.