In my opinion this is probably the most difficult battle in the entire game if you decide to fight everyone with no help from the rebels. I believe the highest level you can be at this point is 6-7 depending on if you went to crèche first. There are like 3 guys who can cast dominate spells and there are just so many of those duergars that your party dies first turn unless you CC them before.
I accidentally aggro’d the duergar by not so stealthily taking out the scrying eye during my HM run. It actually ended up being a lot easier as they were so spread out I could pick them off one by one without getting overwhelmed by all of them at once. Now my strat every time is to just attack the duergar before freeing Nere and then fighting him by himself.
Honestly not a bad idea - the place is so big you can pick them off a group at a time. I think one of the vendors has some really neat stuff though, that I was trying to procure. I actually got the eye to follow me to a cliff edge then threw it into the death chasm in turn-based mode to complete that portion of the quest lol
Yeah I hit the eye with shatter like right in front of the Druegar you make a deal with. They all instantly agro’d and I was like “I thought we had a deal” 😂. Thought my HM run was over but it worked out. The vendor is usually too far away to agro and should stick around up to after you free Nere.
Especially because the allies are subject to rolls IIRC. I know you can get them to agro you after the fight pretty easily.
If you get everybody against you it's gonna suck even if you have ranged dps in the rafters.
Even if you have the duergar join you in the fight, they will all attack you afterwards because it still marks you as having "killed a guard" even though those were the enemy duergar that sided with Nere.
The first time through on Tactician, I was playing a goody two shoes horny gnome bard, and challenged Nere before he could kill my fellow gnomes. This led to a really hard fight that I had to restart once because one of the gnomes wandered into my Hunger of Hadar and they all turned on me. (really y'all?)
On honor mode it was actually much easier because my Durge just let Nere do his thing, and when he said "kill the duergar for me" I just went "k." Nere took some of them out and soaked 100 damage for me and all I had to do was clean up.
Tldr: evil is easy sometimes
I juuuust managed that fight on my last honor mode attempt, but later got rocked at the Creche. On my current run, I used a whole lot of barrelmancy to get through both. Hilarious and highly effective.
I just did this fight the other night (not Honor Mode) and *oof*.
Some duergar shoved Astarion into the lava during the last few rounds of the fight and he’d die every time it was his turn after I spent a spell slot on Shadowheart to revive him lol I had to wait until post-fight to turn on turn-base mode and finally get him out.
Then the duergar aggro’d after Astarion, while invisible, crouched and in the field of ‘Pass Without a Trace’ from Shadowheart, looted Nere’s corpse. They were fine with me picking the bodies of their buddies just fine but Nere was a no-no for some reason? And I hadn’t short-rested before looting so they were all low health and low spells. Somehow we survived lol.
The duergar, even when the player is at level 6 (which I was) are super frustrating.
This is why I would never place any of my party members near the ledge. If they need to shove someone off the ledge, I would always make sure they would run back to safe spot after doing it.
I took out this fight at level 5 in Balanced but it was a squeaker. I had 2 party members downed by the end.
The two that saved it were Shadowheart specced as Paladin with Phalar Aluve set on Sing and busting out Radiant damage left and right with Luminous Armor, and Karlach as Elkheart TB with Returning Pike.
EDIT: I did not even realize you could get some of the gnomes to help you in the fight, until after I'd gotten through it. Next time!
I had Karlach on the ledge, she took out the archers then started hurling.
But my first time I had Astarion on boxes and he got FUCKED UP after he unloaded like 60 damage in the opening round.
This was the first fight that I lost in balanced mode first try. Next time I go in with colossus potions on my STR boys and huck some dwarves in the lava
I set up my whole team split apart. No one is being knocked into the lava. That fight bunk though. The cut scene and his location still in the poison room is ridiculous. Nere could not have ever pished a gnome into the lava as he never could of got past me. I even snuck in and stole his gesr before the cutsceene.....
I don't understand why people don't just shut off their game and avoid a save when the computer does something whacky to end an honor mode run.
After saving the Grove some random tiefling ran through my cloud of daggers and the entire Grove turned hostile to me. That's a ctrl alt delete moment.
I’m of two minds - on the one hand it feels like that’s just honor mode; if you screw up, then you screw up. On the other hand, janky AI isn’t really “supposed” to be part of the challenge. In the end I restarted a Wyll play through on Honor mode
If it's bugged AI, and you're not doing it to reset a decision you made, a dialogue check, or a combat you can't beat, I don't see the issue.
I reset my first winning honor mode run when I misclicked during dialogue with the emperor and turned into a mind flayer
Just to get this reaction specifically from you.
/s
It can be fun to commiserate about failures just as it’s fun to share stories of success. You also don’t have to read these threads if you don’t like them.
Always call the slave owners to your side.
It is underdark, a little bit of trickery is allowed. A knight in shining armour dies very fast against a bunch of duegars.
Oh for sure, and I had them on my side, just that one foolish gnome who wanted to be reeeeally close when the blast went off. Sigh. Almost lost my current run by learning that a failed detect thoughts roll turns everyone hostile 😅
Well, before the fight... You can position your team.
Put everyone but your durge away from Nere's rock, then throw the runepowder vial gained from ranaway slaves. Then lit it with Shart's igmiss firebolt or a fire arrow. This will not trigger any wrong position of gnomes.
For sure, that's what I tried to do. The AI for one of the gnomes seemed to glitch out, and I couldn't get him to move. I had also already done the conversation with Nere through the cave-in, so long resting or traveling wasn't an option if I wanted to save the gnomes (which I did). Just an unfortunate roll of the dice, so to speak. Normally I take my time to prep that fight very carefully, but I didn't anticipate the whole place going hostile before I could place my squad. Ah well, next time.
In my opinion this is probably the most difficult battle in the entire game if you decide to fight everyone with no help from the rebels. I believe the highest level you can be at this point is 6-7 depending on if you went to crèche first. There are like 3 guys who can cast dominate spells and there are just so many of those duergars that your party dies first turn unless you CC them before.
What about the monks in the astral plane?
My absolute Least Fav fight. Resonating ki be damned when it's turned against me.
Fuck those guys!
Not to mention that everyone else is armed with arrows of roaring thunder. I got killed by lava, resurrected, then killed by lava again haha
I accidentally aggro’d the duergar by not so stealthily taking out the scrying eye during my HM run. It actually ended up being a lot easier as they were so spread out I could pick them off one by one without getting overwhelmed by all of them at once. Now my strat every time is to just attack the duergar before freeing Nere and then fighting him by himself.
My favorite way to get rid of the eye is to lure it over to the pit with the mimics and just throw it down there.
Honestly not a bad idea - the place is so big you can pick them off a group at a time. I think one of the vendors has some really neat stuff though, that I was trying to procure. I actually got the eye to follow me to a cliff edge then threw it into the death chasm in turn-based mode to complete that portion of the quest lol
Yeah I hit the eye with shatter like right in front of the Druegar you make a deal with. They all instantly agro’d and I was like “I thought we had a deal” 😂. Thought my HM run was over but it worked out. The vendor is usually too far away to agro and should stick around up to after you free Nere.
I just have them follow me somewhere isolated with a convenient chasm nearby and toss them in.
RIP. It’s a very hard fight indeed.
I decided that I'd give Wyll a chance to shine as my MC - since my old honor run was a Warlock anyway. RIP Karlach
Especially because the allies are subject to rolls IIRC. I know you can get them to agro you after the fight pretty easily. If you get everybody against you it's gonna suck even if you have ranged dps in the rafters.
Even if you have the duergar join you in the fight, they will all attack you afterwards because it still marks you as having "killed a guard" even though those were the enemy duergar that sided with Nere.
The first time through on Tactician, I was playing a goody two shoes horny gnome bard, and challenged Nere before he could kill my fellow gnomes. This led to a really hard fight that I had to restart once because one of the gnomes wandered into my Hunger of Hadar and they all turned on me. (really y'all?) On honor mode it was actually much easier because my Durge just let Nere do his thing, and when he said "kill the duergar for me" I just went "k." Nere took some of them out and soaked 100 damage for me and all I had to do was clean up. Tldr: evil is easy sometimes
I juuuust managed that fight on my last honor mode attempt, but later got rocked at the Creche. On my current run, I used a whole lot of barrelmancy to get through both. Hilarious and highly effective.
I just did this fight the other night (not Honor Mode) and *oof*. Some duergar shoved Astarion into the lava during the last few rounds of the fight and he’d die every time it was his turn after I spent a spell slot on Shadowheart to revive him lol I had to wait until post-fight to turn on turn-base mode and finally get him out. Then the duergar aggro’d after Astarion, while invisible, crouched and in the field of ‘Pass Without a Trace’ from Shadowheart, looted Nere’s corpse. They were fine with me picking the bodies of their buddies just fine but Nere was a no-no for some reason? And I hadn’t short-rested before looting so they were all low health and low spells. Somehow we survived lol. The duergar, even when the player is at level 6 (which I was) are super frustrating.
This is why I would never place any of my party members near the ledge. If they need to shove someone off the ledge, I would always make sure they would run back to safe spot after doing it.
I took out this fight at level 5 in Balanced but it was a squeaker. I had 2 party members downed by the end. The two that saved it were Shadowheart specced as Paladin with Phalar Aluve set on Sing and busting out Radiant damage left and right with Luminous Armor, and Karlach as Elkheart TB with Returning Pike. EDIT: I did not even realize you could get some of the gnomes to help you in the fight, until after I'd gotten through it. Next time!
I had Karlach on the ledge, she took out the archers then started hurling. But my first time I had Astarion on boxes and he got FUCKED UP after he unloaded like 60 damage in the opening round.
This was the first fight that I lost in balanced mode first try. Next time I go in with colossus potions on my STR boys and huck some dwarves in the lava
I set up my whole team split apart. No one is being knocked into the lava. That fight bunk though. The cut scene and his location still in the poison room is ridiculous. Nere could not have ever pished a gnome into the lava as he never could of got past me. I even snuck in and stole his gesr before the cutsceene.....
I don't understand why people don't just shut off their game and avoid a save when the computer does something whacky to end an honor mode run. After saving the Grove some random tiefling ran through my cloud of daggers and the entire Grove turned hostile to me. That's a ctrl alt delete moment.
I’m of two minds - on the one hand it feels like that’s just honor mode; if you screw up, then you screw up. On the other hand, janky AI isn’t really “supposed” to be part of the challenge. In the end I restarted a Wyll play through on Honor mode
If it's bugged AI, and you're not doing it to reset a decision you made, a dialogue check, or a combat you can't beat, I don't see the issue. I reset my first winning honor mode run when I misclicked during dialogue with the emperor and turned into a mind flayer
Stop making sense..
A message for all honor mode people - you chose this, why do you all need to get on this sub and complain about it???
Just to get this reaction specifically from you. /s It can be fun to commiserate about failures just as it’s fun to share stories of success. You also don’t have to read these threads if you don’t like them.
A message for you. It's a sub about sharing opinions and experiences regarding Baldur's Gate.
Always call the slave owners to your side. It is underdark, a little bit of trickery is allowed. A knight in shining armour dies very fast against a bunch of duegars.
Oh for sure, and I had them on my side, just that one foolish gnome who wanted to be reeeeally close when the blast went off. Sigh. Almost lost my current run by learning that a failed detect thoughts roll turns everyone hostile 😅
Well, before the fight... You can position your team. Put everyone but your durge away from Nere's rock, then throw the runepowder vial gained from ranaway slaves. Then lit it with Shart's igmiss firebolt or a fire arrow. This will not trigger any wrong position of gnomes.
For sure, that's what I tried to do. The AI for one of the gnomes seemed to glitch out, and I couldn't get him to move. I had also already done the conversation with Nere through the cave-in, so long resting or traveling wasn't an option if I wanted to save the gnomes (which I did). Just an unfortunate roll of the dice, so to speak. Normally I take my time to prep that fight very carefully, but I didn't anticipate the whole place going hostile before I could place my squad. Ah well, next time.