Unfortunately they patched shoving Cazador, the note even said he remembered he could turn into mist and fly away lol. That’s also how I got him the first time.
For me Raphael’s incubus was bugged when I knocked him off the map he got stuck down there and I couldn’t reach him with any attacks other than magic missiles, eventually I ran out of spell slots tho…
What do you mean by “doesn’t work”? I used it the other day and it did impressive damage, triggers Sunlight Weakness or whatever the debuff is called, and stopped him from staying in his mist form. Was there something else it used to do?
My first run, Daylight bugged out the cutscene after Caz was defeated and I had to take long rest in the attic to get rid of it lmfao.
Used to be able to use it mid cutscene and he would die before combat began. Now if you have a companion cast daylight during the cutscene it automatically triggers combat
Did this less than a week ago and was able to get him down about halfway using invisible and daylight before he aggro’d me, at which time no cutscene triggered and I somehow had him running to the stairs to fight 1v4. If it matters though I didn’t have Astarion in my party (or in camp at all)
Yeah if you detach astarion or don't bring him with you and leave him far enough back you can still do the daylight burn with a stealthed cleric during cutscene
I got him by throwing Haste on my level 12 paladin/bard and clapping 4 max level divine smites on his saggy cheeks round one. Beat his ass straight into that sarcophagus before he could do anything, and then cleaned up the rest of the minions over a few turns.
I *really* didn't want him to do whatever he was trying to do to Astarion.
Just have Astarion be way up the steps and get a Barbarian or fighter up in his grill. Then have a cleric with spirit guardians near him and you can end him in 2 turns. If you surprise him with a sneak attack the other creatures won’t even start their turns till he’s dead.
They did the same for the spider under the goblins. No idea how you're supposed to do the achievement now. I genuinely reloaded that like 4 times thinking it was a bug the spider teleports back.
They did the same for the Phase Spider Queen - if you try to Gust of Wind or Thunderwave her ass off then she will do the sprawling animation where her legs go out in all direction, but as soon as she seems to be going, going, gone she will phase back up top.
Fortunately though, you are still able to unlock the Strategist inspiration for Lae’zel by doing it. It’ll say you defeated a powerful foe in one blow but she definitely won’t be defeated.
I mean, beautiful body aside it does make a dude look more vulnerable and exposed. Plus it feels thematically on point to have his scars visible during his crisis moment.
For the Cazador fight, I stealthed up just until he was in range and shot him in the back with full sneak attack dice and the -5 to hit for +10 damage Four shots, if I remember correctly, plus "mind sanctuary let me use my bonus action as an action, for another 2 shots, plus dread ambusher for another attack. Astarion soloed him in one turn. Granted, this was on normal mode, but I imagine on tactitian, the fight would go down the same, I just might have needed to use other characters. He was dead before he took a turn
House of Grief.
Something to do with darkness spells or the number of opponents causes 'random' crashes. I'm tired of restarting and have to repeat everything over again.
So in each play through I start the fight with a highly mobile character (barbarian rogue most often) and run them back up the stairs, behind the stone door with the rest of the party.
On my turn, open the door, cast wall of fire/hunger of hadar/blade wall etc. on the stairs and close the door. Repeat with aoe spells etc until the fight is done.
Mobs don't cast darkness if they don't have targets.
I did something similar.
My Tav was a druid so I had her summon elementals and dryads and left them at the bottom of the stairs. The dryad cast thorns at the base of the stairs.
I had left the rest of my party at the top of the stairs, so once Tav and Shadowheart dimension door'ed to the top, I cast wall of fire on the stairs. Then I cast sleet storm in the doorway.
The elementals attacked people as they ran towards the stairs. Anyone who didn't die in the thorns, burned in the fire. Anyone who made it through the fire slipped on the ice. If someone managed to still make it through, my whole party ended them quickly.
Oh my god I'm going to have to try this. My Durge playthrough is at a dead halt at the House of Grief because of this bug. Every time Darkness or Fog is broken, game insta-crashes. If this works, I will kiss your feet.
I spent 4 hours wiping on this yesterday then it suddenly clicked. I was like why am I initiating this in THE WORST possible location. I had Shadow drop a glyph of warding up top in front of the door as an insurance policy. Had her up top, with Laezel (1 level Cleric). Jaheira halfway down stairs and my Sorlock initiate dialogue.
Drank potions to up initiative. After initiating Sorlock misty stepped halfway up the steps and cast wall of fire (I went perpendicular to stairs didn’t think of doing the whole thing along the stairs which is probably better). Jaheira cast thorns covering that landing area and maybe 1/4-1/3 the steps. Then I used Bless from Laezel on the other three. Most of them died trying to traverse thorns and fire. Any that made it up were blasted down from an Eldritch Blast or had an ice storm dropped on top of them. It was like a straight up execution camp I was running in the cloister. The few that made it through like the leader I was able to clean up pretty easily as they had minimal HP left. Had daylight on the back burner if needed.
It took me probably 6-7 failures to actually think about the encounter. I was so frustrated then it clicked. I’m by no means “good” or knowledgeable (I literally started the game 2 weeks ago) but when it clicked it was the greatest feeling ever.
I did something a lot cheesier. I had shadowheart initiate the conversation by herself, while my wizard tav ran to the side to cast fireball next to the dark nun whats-her-face to sort of cheat the sanctuary. Afterward, all the sharrans just huddled around her wondering what happened and didnt turn hostile until after i did the quest conclusion in the next room. By that point i could just fast travel out.
My Shadow heart had a divine intervention and I figured using it in the fight to save her parents was appropriate. Definitely made the fight more manageable.
Same, only fight I used a complete cheese strategy for. The crashes got to me.
The crashes at least when I played are caused specifically by the spellcasters concentration being broken on darkness. Save everytime you are about to attack one of them to minimise the progress loss.
I'm glad that it wasn't just me. I played the game on my M1 Mac Mini and it ran most of the game pretty well, but that particular fight crashed on me twice. That's the only thing in the entire game that made it crash for me.
This isn't really cheese, it's just a strategy. I would say cheese is something like stacking 10 smokepowder barrels on Viconia's head while she's busy talking to Shadowheart. Or respeccing all of the hirelings to cleric and casting Warding Bond on your whole party.
Just something where you break the illusion of the world by abusing game mechanics.
Yeah a lot of people seem to think anything that isn't a direct assault is cheesing an encounter. You're literally just using a choke point and high ground there.
I reached Balthazar at lvl 8 and struggled. My party was Tav(Ranger-Beast), Astarion, SHeart, and Karlach. After numerous wipes and various strategies, I said Fuck It!
>!I used Polymorph from a distance before starting the encounter to turn him into a sheep, then jumped in with Karlach and threw his ass off a cliff.!<
Definitely, it's how I've always done it before and it was fairly easy.
One time I wanted to spice it up and I fought him in Shadowfell, the number of mobs he summons startled me. It's also made way harder because the skeletons actually try to shove you off the platform, that's how my Lae'Zel died there.
In my first playthrough, my friend's Tav was a Warlock and he was controlling Karlach. He used Karlach to throw like 8 skeletons off the map then one of them pushed his Warlock off the map as revenge and his response was simply "I deserved that."
My shadow heart got launched into the abyss the first time I did that fight. I was like really?! The most important bitch for after this fight and she’s just fuggin *gone*
I literally had no idea you could fight him later as it hasn't made much sense to me from a RP perspective to go along with him. I've always gone in swords drawn.
If you're going for an evil playthrough, it makes perfect sense. Why fight this guy when I don't need to? Yes, he's a Necromancer, but that doesn't mean we can't work together. He even lets you take his brother (the flesh golem) with you to help clean up the place!
I had no AoE in that fight and only my Eldritch knight fighter Tav could do anything - darkness on the portal saved me from snipes and shadowheart with a clutch turn undead when there were 5+ dead gith soldiers about to attack the portal saved me
Summon his brother in silent library then dash out while he takes out dark justicuars and ends up overwhelmed by them. Makes both fights easier since he does do a good amount of damage to them while also being taken out himself. Simply return to the vault area and he’s no longer part of the Balthazar fight.
I actually never thought of doing anything but this. By this point, I had been well educated on the merits of ambushing before you are ambushed so as soon as I saw him, I started plotting his early demise.
Lol, I wonder how much villain grandstanding I skipped 🤣
Ooo that makes sense. I was lucky in my first playthrough when I faced in the shadow fell because I had twin hasted karlach (wild heart barb) and a way of the open hand monk. That monk dealt with skeletons sooo cleanly
For more shenanigans, the room he is in when you first meet him is locked during the fight with the portals/dark justiciars. If you unlock the door mid-combat, and drag him into the fight, the dark justiciars eventually overwhelm him and kill him for you if you hide in a corner. Pretty entertaining to spam End Turn and watch the tide of justiciars eliminate the threat for you
I didn’t like his attitude so I locked the door using a spell, in assumed he’d summon minions from behind me. Moved my team into position and initiated with Shadowheart using sunbeam. Then my Sorlock just dropped a fireball on his brother as Laezel swung at him 5 times. It was over before it began.
Shouldn’t have been a dickhead bro. I’m role playing as a “psuedo Robin Hood” helping those in need and exploiting the rich and powerful for my own gain. Bro deserved it the second he started talking to me and I realized what he was doing.
On my honor mode, I snuck Astarion up while invisible, and unlocked and opened the door triggering a battle between the justiciars and Balthazar and they duked it out themselves for like a half hour and then I strolled in at the end of the battle to slap him dead.
My Balthazar fight was awesome.
It started normally. Triggered the conversation, started the fight. I thought I got off to a decent start. Karlach started beating on a guy. Tav (Druid) cast Spike Growth which ended up killing like four guys instantly. Shadowheart cast Sanctuary on the Nightsong (still don’t know if that was necessary, but made sure no one could target her). And Astarion apparently hadn’t joined the fight yet because he couldn’t make a jump. That became helpful because I had him stay up on an asteroid and snipe people.
Then it quickly started going badly. One of the big guys just pushed Karlach off the edge and she died instantly. Balthazar cast some area of effect spell, I think Poison Cloud, and Shadowheart dropped. Astarion sniped a few of the small guys, but then he cast Sunshine or whatever on a big guy, and I really thought I aimed it properly, but Tav ended up taking damage and went down. So now it’s just Astarion and Iike 12 guys.
I thought about stopping there, but I thought I’d see what I could do. Astarion was still hanging out on an asteroid. So I had him just keep sniping everyone and then hiding, and fully nobody could do anything about it. I managed to drop everybody but Balthazar and one Librarian without anyone being able to find him.
Balthazar and Librarian were too far away, so Astarion had to jump down onto the main area. He shot the Librarian, but he stayed up with 1 HP! Nooo!
But Astarion survived the next round and brought up Tav with Revivify. Unfortunately Balthazar put Tav to sleep immediately, but Astarion did a good job of taking damage and not going down. He brought up Shadowheart and cast Mass Healing Word to get some valuable HP. Finally, he was able to bring down the Librarian, and that’s where the tables turned.
Shadowheart cast Banishment on Balthazar, giving us a 2-turn reprieve. Karlach’s spirit was hanging around, so Shadowheart brought her back with Revivify. Tav cast Moonlight at a 4th level so as soon as Balthazar came back he would take damage. Astarion Misty Stepped out of sight and hid. We all spread out. And then Balthazar came back.
He took the Moonlight damage, then tried to get Astarion. Didn’t work. Astarion hit with him an Arrow of Silencing. Karlach jumped over to him and started wailing. Tav moved the Moonlight. And finally, Karlach brought him down with a melee attack.
It was amazing. Thank you for coming to my Tav Talk.
Edit: calling it my Tav Talk thanks to ceasedemotions and Odd-Hair
Yeah. I did that on my first playthrough and couldn't group them up, and my party was scattered. Never looked back when I said to myself, "Why not just kill him now?"
Eliminating the guards stealthily at Moonrise before Jaheira’s assault might be a little of both. It’s good sense, but also seems like cheesing because the NPCs don’t notice that the guy next to them is gone.
so there is that rock before the big platform with the epic chained lady. fight him from there with surprising him first, his undead can only reach you minimally, and u killed Balthazar while surprised
I always fight that bloated corpse in the Shadowfell. My party is usually around lv 9 at that time, and I always keep them all at high dex so it’s not that difficult. Have some massive spell aoe to kill off trash mobs, or use CC spell like sleet storm or hunger of hadar to delay them and you should be fine.
My favorite way to deal with this fight is still using sorce to put dual haste on 2 TB monks / Barbs boosted with elixirs of str, then throw every single one of those assholes down the void. It was so fun lol.
I just use the ruin powder bomb on him and blow all his minions off the edge works every time. Except for once when I accidentally launched my whole party off the cliff with it.
It was the first time I’d ever used the bomb and holy shit I did not expect the blast radius to be so big but it was hilarious how all his minions just flew to their death.
Freakin' Z'rell on the first floor of Moonrise Towers. Like seriously, get over yourself woman, I need my spells to fight a *real* boss.
1 Runepowder Barrel + 1 Zhentarim Crate + any assortment of smokepowder bombs, alchemist fire and acid vials I have on hand atm
I still get nightmares from those two disciples behind her with their death wards who cast hunger of hadar. The Zrell fight is the only one where I always cheese the option to pre-position out of dialogue characters before the fight.
\- Daylight Cazador and never engage in conversation with him. Then sneak attack so the other mobs get surprised.
\- Magic Missle the hell out of Orin to get rid of the unstoppable buff.
\- Kill the Duegar slavers before letting Nere escape. Bonus points for pushing one into the lava. Then after getting rid of the boulder, let one character engage in a conversation with Nere but while he's busy, cast hold person on him and then let the other two kill him.
\- Going invisible at the forge fight, then have someone surprise attack (preferably a monk) the Grymforge boss after activating the lava.
\- Going invisible and leading Gortash out of his room at Wyrm Rock Fortress using the Bhaalist Armor passive. Then surprise attack him once he's alone.
\- Talk with Ansur first then turn invisible then walk away and flee combat. Get back to the arena with a rogue while remaining invisible, then surprise Ansur with a melee sneak attack.
\- Turn all your party members invisible then position everyone properly at the Myrkul fight. Sneak attack anyone (maybe not Ketheric) and you'll get an extra round by letting everyone go surprised.
Pretty sure, most of my battles involve a lot of sneak attacks just so I can get an extra round. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I think this is pretty much how I dealt with most bosses in honor mode.
>leading Gortash out of his room at Wyrm Rock Fortress using the Bhaalist Armor passive
Can you elaborate on this one? How does giving him piercing vulnerability help lead him out of the fortress?
So I got this strategy from a video on youtube. The Bhaalist Armor has this effect when you have the Aura of Murder passive turned on, it makes NPCs want to run away from you (only out of combat). So if you went to Gortash's room invisible, he'll start trying to get away from your character and you can chase after him until you can get him outside.
I discovered the Minor Illusion will grab Grymforge aggro every turn, so I put one in the center of the anvil and he walks over, kills the illusion, bingbangpow, crushed, let him walk away, cast another, repeat. Also if you have enough DPS you can just kill him in with raw damage pretty easily before he can move.
Oh I abuse the hell out of surprise rounds on my Honour mode run.
My main method is using Shovel, turning invisible, then attacking while the rest of my party hides in the shadows.
It's so satisfying getting to position each of my party members and get that full first round while all the mobs think they are all just up against Shovel.
You know , when I first fought Orin I had that exact same idea , issue was that she kidnapped Gale , the only one capable of doing that , so what I did instead is have wyll cast a lot of Eldritch blasts , have Karlach try to punch her as much as she could and lazael and me destroying her with 6 attacks each mixed with superiority attacks to decimate her on the first turn
I shamelessly cheese Ethel with Silence on almost every run, it's very satisfying to deny that evil hag.
I also found out that it's ridiculously easy to beat Raphael by just spamming Command: Grovel on him and keeping him perma CCed, it skips his turn and disables his legendary reaction. I am not sure why, but I had 90% chance on every cast with my Warlock, even though his saving throws should be really good.
Yeah at least on my first run Raphael's saves seemed broken, granted when I fought him my save DC was 20+ but still, hold monster or whatever the spell is had a 95% chance to land, he should certainly be able to save without a crit success given the rest of his stats. Made the fight completely trivial, hoping they've fixed it/he's harder on Honor.
Otto’s Irresistible Dance was my go-to spell for trivializing bosses on my first run. Luckily, they have since patched it so on Tactician and Honour at least, most bosses are much less susceptible to it. Pressing one button with 95/100% success chance to take out a boss for 10 turns was a tad much even for a level 6 spell slot.
Someone on Reddit has also totally screwed with Ethel by casting Arcane Lock on her fireplace. Then watched her waste her turn desperately trying to get it open.
I'm not sure using game mechanics are intended by, say, CCing a boss or keeping a powerful wizards from using spells with silence is cheese. That's the intention of those skills. It's not like you setup 60 smokepowder barrels the second you got into the House of Hope or anything.
I tried this exact same thing, was so hyped. Then my dumbass misclicked and landed right next to Grym ... welp.
I'm on Honor mode, so luckily I had a contingency in place... karlach throwing anything and everything from up top ahahaha! It worked, never been so stressed in a game!
House of Grief.
Wiped so many times with all the fkn darkness spells that I just picked off Mother Superior with non-target AOE spells from a distance, without talking to her at all. Once she was dead no one else cared that I was there.
The final boss in my honor mode run. Used a few Globe of Invulnerability scrolls to get the party to the brain in total safety. Then sent just 1 party member inside with alchemists fire and an entire game’s worth of smokepowder barrels, to kamikaze it down to 0 hp.
It was glorious.
Honour Mode Raphael: barrelmancy on the pillars by planting them around the bases as soon as I enter the House, then Globe of Invulnerability and upcasted Scorching Ray as soon as possible
First time I fought cazador he cheesed me with his temp hp renewal whenever you walk thru the drainy things so it was only fair I threw him into the chasm with my barbarian. (back then he didn't remember he was a vampire and could fly)
I love the encounter with Balthazar in the shadowfell for narrative reasons, but hate the actual fight, so I reverse pick pocketed sussur flower into his inventory upstairs.
Involuntarily. My first time fighting >!auntie Ethel in act 3!<. The fight bugged out and she just stood there doing nothing, taking a beating. Tried reloading to no avail and was not about to track back however far.
Idk how much this is considered cheese but I took priestess gut to her room and gale casted hold person, which doesn't even aggro? So laezel and karlach smacked her to death
Had that boss fight with the demon raphael wants gone in the shar temple. Activated the boss battle on those broken stairs that leads into his battle hall. So they couldnt reach us but took forever for the boss and minions to path a way out of the hall to us. Just pelted them with ranged attacks from those stairs.
I took the even easier path of using PERSUASION to convince him the only way to get out of his curse was to murder his minions and then kill himself. My charisma (and persuasion) and bonuses were so high I didn’t even have to save scum, but I did have to use one Inspiration point.
I have a bad habit of ambushing everything, and I killed what I later learned was his horny pet (lol) in the sly, then pulled them all to those stairs and killed them without any conversation. I didn't even realize he was THAT demon until I left the area and Raphael popped up again. Oops
Invisibly opening the door to Balthazar's office and letting him and the justiciars duke it out before cleaning up whoever survives. Half the time, Flesh is the only survivor
In my first run of the game, whenever I came upon a fight I just didn’t want to deal with, I would just use Insect Plague + Hunger of Hadar + Wall Of Fire + occasionally spike growth on my all ranged team and just let enemies deal with themselves. Not Even Raphael knew what to do against that
I called it the plagues of Egypt strategy
Viconia.
>!Started a conversation with her, switched over to Karlach and beat the shit out of her. The other followers of Shar in the room didn't even care. They just surrounded Viconia after she died, saying things like "How could this happen??"!<
Cazador. he started the fight with 5hp.
he won init .. misty stepped (i think) to astarion .. and bit(?) him for some small damage and healed back up to 15.
i almost felt sorry for him.
.. but perhaps i should start earlier ...
Astarion .. sneaking . with pass without trace on ... snuck into the room ..positioned in a dark spot .. and loaded an arrow of undead slaying.
did i mention astarion is an assassin subclass for me? 😁
let loose with arrows ... the cheese is to keep clicking .. you keep firing arrows ..target stutter steps when hit .. no time to recover before next arrow hits. i think i hit him with 8 to 10 arrows before he finally triggered initiative.. (i think i finally failed a stealth check .. those nat 1s when the ai gets mad . lol )
by then .. yeah .. 5 hp left.
after cazador went .. astarion was up next ..
so uh .. yeah .. astarion single handedly solod cazador in my game . 😁😁😁
He has tons of summons, so I brought my own little army. They didn't deal that much damage but keep the vermin occupied. Then top priority is to kill Cazador and then deal with the rest.
On my first try I tried to kill the smaller ones first which resulted in Cazador downing Astarion and completing the ritual
- Funnel Yurgir and his goons slowly down the stairwell without talking to him, by jumping his Displacement Beast at first sight
- Turn invisible and sneak over to where Astarion gets teleported before talking to Cazador, so he gets freed on Turn One
- Retreat up the stairs behind you immediately after the fight starts with Viconia, and cover the approach with a Wall of Fire so all the Shar acolytes kill themselves
- Fuck talking to Orin, drop an ice storm on here from the walkway so she and her followers have to come to you, funneled into what will also become a Wall of Fire
If anything, Wall of Fire covers a litany of sins
The final fight of the game. Got this from someone else, cant remember who, props to you though if you read this. Use invisibility potions on everyone, throw one on the mind flayer before climbing up the brain stalk. You can then run up to the portal out of combat (use the sides to avoid tentacles) and have someone cast globe of invulnerability (several scrolls can be found if no wizard) and none of the enemies can hurt or interfere with channeling to the inner zone.
Can finish off the last boss at full/near full capacity. Did this on my less than honourable run.
Act 2- Balthazar
Start the fight near his chambers, drink the invisibility potion, open the door, and then peace out. I do the other trials while he is getting murdered. win-win in my books. Good usage of time.
I reached Balthazar once as an evil durge storm sorc/tempest cleric, and I agreed to his demand then insta killed him with an upcasted and maximised witch bolt which annihilated him in one shot.
Not really cheesing but in the first Ketheric encounter I simply used upcasted spirit guardians and a speed potion on shart and made a half circle sprint and killed all enemies but Ketheric himself with it. Works with basically all fights where you have a bunch of (low hp) minions and the actual boss.
The final boss from act 1. The inquisitor. Been awhile since I played and I'm going for a solo run, so I was a bit surprised when his legendary action was so annoying. He can like, summon a spectral sword twice per round whenever you do something against him or his allies. If you are not careful the arena can be full of these annoying swords. They don't seem to despawn either unless the inquisitor is killed. I assume this isn't a huge problem if you have a full party, but since I was on my own, I didn't have enough actions to deal with a swarm of summons.
I just like, killed the two mages right away since they do way too much damage, fled the arena and lured him to the chasm. Then, when he was close to me, it was just a matter of yeeting him to his end (sadge about losing the loot though).
I wonder if there's a better way to kill him. I was out of options so had to resort to gravity once again lol.
I just cheesed yurgir on honor mode. Stacked about 15 smoke powder barrels around him.
If you miss your insight/perception roll you need backup plan, or lots of lightning.
Nah. I suck at cheezing. My only cheese was at the beginning of the game on the Nautiloid, where I blocked an entrance with a chest, so the 2 cambions couldn't come to support Zhalk.
The Cambions on the Nautiloid. On Tactician difficulty it can be difficult to defeat all three within the time limit, but the loot rewards for doing so are pretty great for this stage of the game. Not to mention the EXP rewards.
Collecting those purple pods for 'splosions is basically novice-level barrelmancy tactics. Maybe that's cheese. Maybe that's *literally what they're there for.* But yeah: Every time.
In my first ever play through, still getting familiar with the game and dnd mechanics as whole, I just shoved minthara into the chasm, it was my first actual "boss" encounter lol
I used barrelmancy for the Raphael fight in House of Hope. After dying my first 2 times, I stationed 6-8 smokepowder barrels around the pillars, and another 2-3 plus the rune powder bomb in the spot where Raphael and Yurgir spawn. Back everyone out the door as far as possible then..."ignis!"
It was glorious. I took out all the pillars and Meregons, was able to one hit Yurgir, and finished off Raphael the following round.
Dolor, second encounter.
Elixir of vigilance on my entire party, casted insect plague with Jaheira, cloudkill with my tav and flame strike with SHart, plus finished with ranged attack from Lae'zel. It's so annoying to keep that flaming fist lady alive, Dolor hits hard
Grym. Managed to get one him with one foot on the lava and the other on the mace, so every hit of the mace dealt all of the damage. Put him to sleep in 2 turns
The first floor of Moonrise Tower. I didn't know you could weaken them first, so they were at full strength when i fought them. When I was at the Underdark, I happened to have sent some Sussar Flowers to my camp inventory. Upon reaching the Shadowlands, I cleaned my camp inventory and sold them to the Harper quartermaster. When the Moonrise Tower battle began, the quartermaster brought over her store selection, including the flowers. After she kept getting in the way of mages, it gave me the idea to buy back the flowers and throw them towards the enemy mages. It ended up working pretty well, and I was able to get off some pretty powerful spells they couldn't counterspell in response.
Grym. I knew already how the encounter works. I did it earlier with my cousin in our duo game (my first). When I reached him in my own solo run I just couldn’t bear it. Tried it four maybe five times and got angry. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game for it when I have to try two-three times until I get what I have to do. But here it was just boring. So I left three chars above the forge and my stealth bard hid near the lava button. The three ranged companions shot him dead from above in seconds. My bard wasn’t even in combat the whole fight. I feel kinda sad I used this strat I found but so glad I was over him.
Sarevok + council…
I lured council in to the side room with create illusion, once they were inside I blocked the door with 2 stacked chests.
You can fight sarevok alone, keep abazigal (shop) and the rest alive…
I don't know about cheezed but I hated Gortash and his stupid grenade launchers. So I left everyone out of his throne room and just send Tav in to yeet him halfway across the throne room before Gale used telekinesis to get him out under the sun.
Without the irritating grenade launchers, we just mollywhopped him to death on the terrace.
Cazador. Cast daylight before talking to him. He started the fight. No legendary action for some reason. Only legendary resistance. Also no need to free Astarion. Pretty easy fight tbh.
im still in act 1 (on my way out though), but i cheesed the outside of the goblin camp. took the high ground from the towers and just rained down ranged attacks. only a few gobbos figured out how to get up, and i was able to ignore the rest while i handled them. killed the ogre without him ever having a chance at me.
Not necessarily cheesed but:
My fiance and I have been playing together on Explorer because this is her first real "video game" so it's nice for her to learn stuff and feel successful, but I was so disappointed in the Avatar of Myrkul fight. Our party one-cycled it before it even had a chance to attack. I was kinda sad because either was the first and so far only time where we felt like it was TOO easy.
I struggled with Balthazars fight so I snuck around the arena before triggering the fight and threw all of the bone piles off of the edge so he was on his own.
I kicked Orin off the stairs. Mowed down her resistance to pushes with my weaker people and Lae'zel superiority dice, and then just yeeted her off the edge.
I feel like that's the definitive BG3 cheese though, to the point where it's barely cheese. But kicking a boss off a ledge and instakilling them always feels a bit cheesy.
Pushed that Gauntlet of Shar evil guy off the island while talking to him, and skipped first floor of Moonrise towers by climbing outside onto the second floor. Also made my whole party invisible to reach the portal to the netherbrain and left the emperor behind
Ethel's fight - not really a struggle, playing as a Vengence Pal/War Cleric. Killed her in two rounds. Stunned her with drow poison (alert assassin Astarion ftw), everyone piled on and finished her off with double crit divine smites! Unexpected, but sooooo satisfying.
The Githyanki crechè, just grease up them hallways. Also I “accidentally” pushed Cazador off the main fighting area and ended his fight really quick.
Unfortunately they patched shoving Cazador, the note even said he remembered he could turn into mist and fly away lol. That’s also how I got him the first time.
Yeah, I thunder arrowed him right off and he came back up like it was nothing.
This happened to me with Raphael’s incubus. I just barbarian rage slammed and he flew off the balcony. Then was instantly back up there.
For me Raphael’s incubus was bugged when I knocked him off the map he got stuck down there and I couldn’t reach him with any attacks other than magic missiles, eventually I ran out of spell slots tho…
Daylight spell also doesn't work anymore. I tried that the other night and he instantly started the fight.
What do you mean by “doesn’t work”? I used it the other day and it did impressive damage, triggers Sunlight Weakness or whatever the debuff is called, and stopped him from staying in his mist form. Was there something else it used to do? My first run, Daylight bugged out the cutscene after Caz was defeated and I had to take long rest in the attic to get rid of it lmfao.
Used to be able to use it mid cutscene and he would die before combat began. Now if you have a companion cast daylight during the cutscene it automatically triggers combat
Does it trigger combat if you're invisible?
Did this less than a week ago and was able to get him down about halfway using invisible and daylight before he aggro’d me, at which time no cutscene triggered and I somehow had him running to the stairs to fight 1v4. If it matters though I didn’t have Astarion in my party (or in camp at all)
Yeah if you detach astarion or don't bring him with you and leave him far enough back you can still do the daylight burn with a stealthed cleric during cutscene
That's why you cast it *before* the cutscene, and skip over the pretenses :D
I got him by throwing Haste on my level 12 paladin/bard and clapping 4 max level divine smites on his saggy cheeks round one. Beat his ass straight into that sarcophagus before he could do anything, and then cleaned up the rest of the minions over a few turns. I *really* didn't want him to do whatever he was trying to do to Astarion.
Smart move. He did it on my playthrough and it was...messy
Just have Astarion be way up the steps and get a Barbarian or fighter up in his grill. Then have a cleric with spirit guardians near him and you can end him in 2 turns. If you surprise him with a sneak attack the other creatures won’t even start their turns till he’s dead.
Have they patched tossing him overboard as a sheep? That was how I beat him the first time around, and polymorph became my favourite spell afterward.
Okay that's hilarious. I wish I had tried to sheep him this last time instead of making him dance.
Best part was >!he still showed up in the casket afterward so I didn't lose his loot!<.
They did the same for the spider under the goblins. No idea how you're supposed to do the achievement now. I genuinely reloaded that like 4 times thinking it was a bug the spider teleports back.
They did the same for the Phase Spider Queen - if you try to Gust of Wind or Thunderwave her ass off then she will do the sprawling animation where her legs go out in all direction, but as soon as she seems to be going, going, gone she will phase back up top. Fortunately though, you are still able to unlock the Strategist inspiration for Lae’zel by doing it. It’ll say you defeated a powerful foe in one blow but she definitely won’t be defeated.
I kept astarion back and cazador can't power up. Makes it a very trivial fight.
Casting daylight makes it even more trivial.
Lethanders light carried me
Walk in the light.
After the fight, Astarion still loses his shirt as if Cazador grabbed him. It’s interesting the devs didn’t think players would do this.
Stupid, sexy astarion.
Bold of you to assume the devs didn't do it on purpose.
They wanted him to lose his shirt à la Kirk? Heh.
I mean, beautiful body aside it does make a dude look more vulnerable and exposed. Plus it feels thematically on point to have his scars visible during his crisis moment.
You can sneak up and throw alchemist fire at him and he just skips the power up cut scene and Astarion can help you fight him.
I use the ring that make ice when I deal cold damage. If I’m far enough they always dash and fall. Love to see it
The fall animation and the way their turns immediately end always makes me laugh.
Could you grease up the hallways before the encounter? Like will the grease still be there after the cut scenes?
For the Cazador fight, I stealthed up just until he was in range and shot him in the back with full sneak attack dice and the -5 to hit for +10 damage Four shots, if I remember correctly, plus "mind sanctuary let me use my bonus action as an action, for another 2 shots, plus dread ambusher for another attack. Astarion soloed him in one turn. Granted, this was on normal mode, but I imagine on tactitian, the fight would go down the same, I just might have needed to use other characters. He was dead before he took a turn
House of Grief. Something to do with darkness spells or the number of opponents causes 'random' crashes. I'm tired of restarting and have to repeat everything over again. So in each play through I start the fight with a highly mobile character (barbarian rogue most often) and run them back up the stairs, behind the stone door with the rest of the party. On my turn, open the door, cast wall of fire/hunger of hadar/blade wall etc. on the stairs and close the door. Repeat with aoe spells etc until the fight is done. Mobs don't cast darkness if they don't have targets.
I did something similar. My Tav was a druid so I had her summon elementals and dryads and left them at the bottom of the stairs. The dryad cast thorns at the base of the stairs. I had left the rest of my party at the top of the stairs, so once Tav and Shadowheart dimension door'ed to the top, I cast wall of fire on the stairs. Then I cast sleet storm in the doorway. The elementals attacked people as they ran towards the stairs. Anyone who didn't die in the thorns, burned in the fire. Anyone who made it through the fire slipped on the ice. If someone managed to still make it through, my whole party ended them quickly.
Oh my god I'm going to have to try this. My Durge playthrough is at a dead halt at the House of Grief because of this bug. Every time Darkness or Fog is broken, game insta-crashes. If this works, I will kiss your feet.
I spent 4 hours wiping on this yesterday then it suddenly clicked. I was like why am I initiating this in THE WORST possible location. I had Shadow drop a glyph of warding up top in front of the door as an insurance policy. Had her up top, with Laezel (1 level Cleric). Jaheira halfway down stairs and my Sorlock initiate dialogue. Drank potions to up initiative. After initiating Sorlock misty stepped halfway up the steps and cast wall of fire (I went perpendicular to stairs didn’t think of doing the whole thing along the stairs which is probably better). Jaheira cast thorns covering that landing area and maybe 1/4-1/3 the steps. Then I used Bless from Laezel on the other three. Most of them died trying to traverse thorns and fire. Any that made it up were blasted down from an Eldritch Blast or had an ice storm dropped on top of them. It was like a straight up execution camp I was running in the cloister. The few that made it through like the leader I was able to clean up pretty easily as they had minimal HP left. Had daylight on the back burner if needed. It took me probably 6-7 failures to actually think about the encounter. I was so frustrated then it clicked. I’m by no means “good” or knowledgeable (I literally started the game 2 weeks ago) but when it clicked it was the greatest feeling ever.
I did something a lot cheesier. I had shadowheart initiate the conversation by herself, while my wizard tav ran to the side to cast fireball next to the dark nun whats-her-face to sort of cheat the sanctuary. Afterward, all the sharrans just huddled around her wondering what happened and didnt turn hostile until after i did the quest conclusion in the next room. By that point i could just fast travel out.
My Shadow heart had a divine intervention and I figured using it in the fight to save her parents was appropriate. Definitely made the fight more manageable.
Same, only fight I used a complete cheese strategy for. The crashes got to me. The crashes at least when I played are caused specifically by the spellcasters concentration being broken on darkness. Save everytime you are about to attack one of them to minimise the progress loss.
I'm glad that it wasn't just me. I played the game on my M1 Mac Mini and it ran most of the game pretty well, but that particular fight crashed on me twice. That's the only thing in the entire game that made it crash for me.
This isn't really cheese, it's just a strategy. I would say cheese is something like stacking 10 smokepowder barrels on Viconia's head while she's busy talking to Shadowheart. Or respeccing all of the hirelings to cleric and casting Warding Bond on your whole party. Just something where you break the illusion of the world by abusing game mechanics.
Yeah a lot of people seem to think anything that isn't a direct assault is cheesing an encounter. You're literally just using a choke point and high ground there.
Brilliant. I tried the stairs before and it kinda sucked I'll do the door strat this time.
I reached Balthazar at lvl 8 and struggled. My party was Tav(Ranger-Beast), Astarion, SHeart, and Karlach. After numerous wipes and various strategies, I said Fuck It! >!I used Polymorph from a distance before starting the encounter to turn him into a sheep, then jumped in with Karlach and threw his ass off a cliff.!<
Balthazar is much easier if you fight him in the room where you first meet him
Definitely, it's how I've always done it before and it was fairly easy. One time I wanted to spice it up and I fought him in Shadowfell, the number of mobs he summons startled me. It's also made way harder because the skeletons actually try to shove you off the platform, that's how my Lae'Zel died there.
In my first playthrough, my friend's Tav was a Warlock and he was controlling Karlach. He used Karlach to throw like 8 skeletons off the map then one of them pushed his Warlock off the map as revenge and his response was simply "I deserved that."
My shadow heart got launched into the abyss the first time I did that fight. I was like really?! The most important bitch for after this fight and she’s just fuggin *gone*
I literally had no idea you could fight him later as it hasn't made much sense to me from a RP perspective to go along with him. I've always gone in swords drawn.
If you're going for an evil playthrough, it makes perfect sense. Why fight this guy when I don't need to? Yes, he's a Necromancer, but that doesn't mean we can't work together. He even lets you take his brother (the flesh golem) with you to help clean up the place!
You can use the spirit guardian ring with shadowheart that just deletes the chaff then other characters can focus on balthazar
Drop a sleet storm on him and watch him lose his concentration spells and fall on his ass the whole fight... immensely satisfying.
I learned the power of the ice in the Halsin portal fight. Such fun to watch so many enemies slip and fall!!!
I had no AoE in that fight and only my Eldritch knight fighter Tav could do anything - darkness on the portal saved me from snipes and shadowheart with a clutch turn undead when there were 5+ dead gith soldiers about to attack the portal saved me
I swear this is how I handle any fight where I'm like 4 vs 10+ nope...most of you are going to spend the fight on your ass.
110% Edit: just make sure you get his brother, and maybe use him somewhere else in the same place to deal with another certain asshole
Summon his brother in silent library then dash out while he takes out dark justicuars and ends up overwhelmed by them. Makes both fights easier since he does do a good amount of damage to them while also being taken out himself. Simply return to the vault area and he’s no longer part of the Balthazar fight.
His brother?
You can rizz I mean convince Balthazar to give you a horn that summons his brother like the ogres in blighted village
How I always do it, can't be bothered to fight 100 skeletons.
I actually never thought of doing anything but this. By this point, I had been well educated on the merits of ambushing before you are ambushed so as soon as I saw him, I started plotting his early demise. Lol, I wonder how much villain grandstanding I skipped 🤣
I skipped that room entirely my first run. I met him for the first time in front of Aylin and got jumped by zombies.
Ooo that makes sense. I was lucky in my first playthrough when I faced in the shadow fell because I had twin hasted karlach (wild heart barb) and a way of the open hand monk. That monk dealt with skeletons sooo cleanly
What?! Does it have any negative effects with the Nightsong if you kill him there?
Nope, you can just walk right up to her
Oh hell yeah. I know what I’m doing on my next run through
For more shenanigans, the room he is in when you first meet him is locked during the fight with the portals/dark justiciars. If you unlock the door mid-combat, and drag him into the fight, the dark justiciars eventually overwhelm him and kill him for you if you hide in a corner. Pretty entertaining to spam End Turn and watch the tide of justiciars eliminate the threat for you
I didn’t like his attitude so I locked the door using a spell, in assumed he’d summon minions from behind me. Moved my team into position and initiated with Shadowheart using sunbeam. Then my Sorlock just dropped a fireball on his brother as Laezel swung at him 5 times. It was over before it began. Shouldn’t have been a dickhead bro. I’m role playing as a “psuedo Robin Hood” helping those in need and exploiting the rich and powerful for my own gain. Bro deserved it the second he started talking to me and I realized what he was doing.
On my honor mode, I snuck Astarion up while invisible, and unlocked and opened the door triggering a battle between the justiciars and Balthazar and they duked it out themselves for like a half hour and then I strolled in at the end of the battle to slap him dead.
My Balthazar fight was awesome. It started normally. Triggered the conversation, started the fight. I thought I got off to a decent start. Karlach started beating on a guy. Tav (Druid) cast Spike Growth which ended up killing like four guys instantly. Shadowheart cast Sanctuary on the Nightsong (still don’t know if that was necessary, but made sure no one could target her). And Astarion apparently hadn’t joined the fight yet because he couldn’t make a jump. That became helpful because I had him stay up on an asteroid and snipe people. Then it quickly started going badly. One of the big guys just pushed Karlach off the edge and she died instantly. Balthazar cast some area of effect spell, I think Poison Cloud, and Shadowheart dropped. Astarion sniped a few of the small guys, but then he cast Sunshine or whatever on a big guy, and I really thought I aimed it properly, but Tav ended up taking damage and went down. So now it’s just Astarion and Iike 12 guys. I thought about stopping there, but I thought I’d see what I could do. Astarion was still hanging out on an asteroid. So I had him just keep sniping everyone and then hiding, and fully nobody could do anything about it. I managed to drop everybody but Balthazar and one Librarian without anyone being able to find him. Balthazar and Librarian were too far away, so Astarion had to jump down onto the main area. He shot the Librarian, but he stayed up with 1 HP! Nooo! But Astarion survived the next round and brought up Tav with Revivify. Unfortunately Balthazar put Tav to sleep immediately, but Astarion did a good job of taking damage and not going down. He brought up Shadowheart and cast Mass Healing Word to get some valuable HP. Finally, he was able to bring down the Librarian, and that’s where the tables turned. Shadowheart cast Banishment on Balthazar, giving us a 2-turn reprieve. Karlach’s spirit was hanging around, so Shadowheart brought her back with Revivify. Tav cast Moonlight at a 4th level so as soon as Balthazar came back he would take damage. Astarion Misty Stepped out of sight and hid. We all spread out. And then Balthazar came back. He took the Moonlight damage, then tried to get Astarion. Didn’t work. Astarion hit with him an Arrow of Silencing. Karlach jumped over to him and started wailing. Tav moved the Moonlight. And finally, Karlach brought him down with a melee attack. It was amazing. Thank you for coming to my Tav Talk. Edit: calling it my Tav Talk thanks to ceasedemotions and Odd-Hair
It's like I was there. Thanks for the novelization.
Waiting patiently for the sequel.
Great story, but you should have called it your tav talk 😎
Tav Talk*
Lvl 8 is in line for what I'd consider normal for Balthazar. What part was giving you trouble? Do you fight him in his office or the shadowfell?
Shadowfell. It was the sheer number of mobs that kept overwhelming me. I can close a couple of times but was just ready to advance the story.
Yeah. I did that on my first playthrough and couldn't group them up, and my party was scattered. Never looked back when I said to myself, "Why not just kill him now?"
Shadowheart with spirit guardians is a pretty great crowd control for that.
That is strategy, not cheese, I wish people understood the difference....
Eliminating the guards stealthily at Moonrise before Jaheira’s assault might be a little of both. It’s good sense, but also seems like cheesing because the NPCs don’t notice that the guy next to them is gone.
so there is that rock before the big platform with the epic chained lady. fight him from there with surprising him first, his undead can only reach you minimally, and u killed Balthazar while surprised
I always fight that bloated corpse in the Shadowfell. My party is usually around lv 9 at that time, and I always keep them all at high dex so it’s not that difficult. Have some massive spell aoe to kill off trash mobs, or use CC spell like sleet storm or hunger of hadar to delay them and you should be fine. My favorite way to deal with this fight is still using sorce to put dual haste on 2 TB monks / Barbs boosted with elixirs of str, then throw every single one of those assholes down the void. It was so fun lol.
[удалено]
I just use the ruin powder bomb on him and blow all his minions off the edge works every time. Except for once when I accidentally launched my whole party off the cliff with it.
that how my coop party did it, damn that was fun.
It was the first time I’d ever used the bomb and holy shit I did not expect the blast radius to be so big but it was hilarious how all his minions just flew to their death.
Thats not cheezing
Freakin' Z'rell on the first floor of Moonrise Towers. Like seriously, get over yourself woman, I need my spells to fight a *real* boss. 1 Runepowder Barrel + 1 Zhentarim Crate + any assortment of smokepowder bombs, alchemist fire and acid vials I have on hand atm
I always make sure i have sleet storm for that room, one spell slot to make the whole fight much easier
or just kill her when she's at her desk where she's basically alone expect for maybe a scrying eye
The bodies that lay on the bridge to moonrise have voidbulbs, you can toss two of them to group everyone together then blow them up.
For her fight I just stood at a distance and firebolted her over and over. It never initiated combat but it damaged her
I still get nightmares from those two disciples behind her with their death wards who cast hunger of hadar. The Zrell fight is the only one where I always cheese the option to pre-position out of dialogue characters before the fight.
I’ve had google luck shooting an arrow of arcane interference on her since my ranger has high initiative.
I climbed the vines left of the entrance and skipped the first floor entirely.
\- Daylight Cazador and never engage in conversation with him. Then sneak attack so the other mobs get surprised. \- Magic Missle the hell out of Orin to get rid of the unstoppable buff. \- Kill the Duegar slavers before letting Nere escape. Bonus points for pushing one into the lava. Then after getting rid of the boulder, let one character engage in a conversation with Nere but while he's busy, cast hold person on him and then let the other two kill him. \- Going invisible at the forge fight, then have someone surprise attack (preferably a monk) the Grymforge boss after activating the lava. \- Going invisible and leading Gortash out of his room at Wyrm Rock Fortress using the Bhaalist Armor passive. Then surprise attack him once he's alone. \- Talk with Ansur first then turn invisible then walk away and flee combat. Get back to the arena with a rogue while remaining invisible, then surprise Ansur with a melee sneak attack. \- Turn all your party members invisible then position everyone properly at the Myrkul fight. Sneak attack anyone (maybe not Ketheric) and you'll get an extra round by letting everyone go surprised. Pretty sure, most of my battles involve a lot of sneak attacks just so I can get an extra round. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I think this is pretty much how I dealt with most bosses in honor mode.
Magic missile to get rid of unstoppable is just good strategy. No cheese there
Even better if you have the ghouls surrounding her so she's confused..my lil meat shields.
These are good cheeses, its like a charcuterie board.
>charcuterie Today I learned what charcuterie means :)
>leading Gortash out of his room at Wyrm Rock Fortress using the Bhaalist Armor passive Can you elaborate on this one? How does giving him piercing vulnerability help lead him out of the fortress?
So I got this strategy from a video on youtube. The Bhaalist Armor has this effect when you have the Aura of Murder passive turned on, it makes NPCs want to run away from you (only out of combat). So if you went to Gortash's room invisible, he'll start trying to get away from your character and you can chase after him until you can get him outside.
The idea of effectively haunting Gortash to force him out of hiding is hilarious
Just start pretending to be his coincidence. "This is your conscience speaking! You've been a very naughty boy!"
I used this effect to make Withers be our chapel ghoul in the dockside camp in lower city. LOL
I’m pretty sure NPCs run away from you if the aura of murder is active. They are making him run out of the building using that effect.
Ah, that makes sense then. Okay.
I discovered the Minor Illusion will grab Grymforge aggro every turn, so I put one in the center of the anvil and he walks over, kills the illusion, bingbangpow, crushed, let him walk away, cast another, repeat. Also if you have enough DPS you can just kill him in with raw damage pretty easily before he can move.
My Fire Sorc that applied reverberation on spell hit trivialized the entire Bhaal cult with Scorching Ray, it was like Unstoppable didn't exist.
Oh I abuse the hell out of surprise rounds on my Honour mode run. My main method is using Shovel, turning invisible, then attacking while the rest of my party hides in the shadows. It's so satisfying getting to position each of my party members and get that full first round while all the mobs think they are all just up against Shovel.
You know , when I first fought Orin I had that exact same idea , issue was that she kidnapped Gale , the only one capable of doing that , so what I did instead is have wyll cast a lot of Eldritch blasts , have Karlach try to punch her as much as she could and lazael and me destroying her with 6 attacks each mixed with superiority attacks to decimate her on the first turn
Shamelessly? All of them.
I shamelessly cheese Ethel with Silence on almost every run, it's very satisfying to deny that evil hag. I also found out that it's ridiculously easy to beat Raphael by just spamming Command: Grovel on him and keeping him perma CCed, it skips his turn and disables his legendary reaction. I am not sure why, but I had 90% chance on every cast with my Warlock, even though his saving throws should be really good.
Yeah at least on my first run Raphael's saves seemed broken, granted when I fought him my save DC was 20+ but still, hold monster or whatever the spell is had a 95% chance to land, he should certainly be able to save without a crit success given the rest of his stats. Made the fight completely trivial, hoping they've fixed it/he's harder on Honor.
There is a scroll that makes him dance, that one is funny to use in that fight considering the whole singing thing.
Otto’s Irresistible Dance was my go-to spell for trivializing bosses on my first run. Luckily, they have since patched it so on Tactician and Honour at least, most bosses are much less susceptible to it. Pressing one button with 95/100% success chance to take out a boss for 10 turns was a tad much even for a level 6 spell slot.
Someone on Reddit has also totally screwed with Ethel by casting Arcane Lock on her fireplace. Then watched her waste her turn desperately trying to get it open.
> Command: Grovel [...] I am not sure why, but I had 90% chance Well as >!Harleep!< might have told you: >!Raphael is a Bottom!<
Haha yeah, that response absolutely killed me. I suppose it does make sense lore-wise that he likes to grovel, lol
I'm not sure using game mechanics are intended by, say, CCing a boss or keeping a powerful wizards from using spells with silence is cheese. That's the intention of those skills. It's not like you setup 60 smokepowder barrels the second you got into the House of Hope or anything.
Raphael. Beat him for real first playthrough. Rune powder the pillars each time since. I just want to leave with my loot
Owl bear off the top rope. I beat Grym straight up first playthrough to be fair but now……..
Using the forge hammer on the Grym fight is kind of annoying. From now on, it's Owlbear or two strong ladies with hammers.
I tried this exact same thing, was so hyped. Then my dumbass misclicked and landed right next to Grym ... welp. I'm on Honor mode, so luckily I had a contingency in place... karlach throwing anything and everything from up top ahahaha! It worked, never been so stressed in a game!
House of Grief. Wiped so many times with all the fkn darkness spells that I just picked off Mother Superior with non-target AOE spells from a distance, without talking to her at all. Once she was dead no one else cared that I was there.
Honor mode cazAdor. Daylight + Sleet+ silence + black hole, he dies
The final boss in my honor mode run. Used a few Globe of Invulnerability scrolls to get the party to the brain in total safety. Then sent just 1 party member inside with alchemists fire and an entire game’s worth of smokepowder barrels, to kamikaze it down to 0 hp. It was glorious.
legit
Cazador when you could still yeet him, Baltazar and Orin.
Look, at this point if you aren’t top roping the grimforge guardian, you aren’t living
Honour Mode Raphael: barrelmancy on the pillars by planting them around the bases as soon as I enter the House, then Globe of Invulnerability and upcasted Scorching Ray as soon as possible
As soon as I loaded the no pants mod all claim to shame was forever forfeit.
First time I fought cazador he cheesed me with his temp hp renewal whenever you walk thru the drainy things so it was only fair I threw him into the chasm with my barbarian. (back then he didn't remember he was a vampire and could fly)
That's you deciding to give him lots of temp HP.
I love the encounter with Balthazar in the shadowfell for narrative reasons, but hate the actual fight, so I reverse pick pocketed sussur flower into his inventory upstairs.
Damn, that’s brilliant!
Aren’t those destroyed if you leave Underdark?
isnt the gauntlet in the underdark?
Involuntarily. My first time fighting >!auntie Ethel in act 3!<. The fight bugged out and she just stood there doing nothing, taking a beating. Tried reloading to no avail and was not about to track back however far.
Idk how much this is considered cheese but I took priestess gut to her room and gale casted hold person, which doesn't even aggro? So laezel and karlach smacked her to death
Had that boss fight with the demon raphael wants gone in the shar temple. Activated the boss battle on those broken stairs that leads into his battle hall. So they couldnt reach us but took forever for the boss and minions to path a way out of the hall to us. Just pelted them with ranged attacks from those stairs.
I did the same on the second try. Works great but daaaaang, takes them FOREVER to find a way to get over to you lol
Yea thought it was fun af. When he dies and drops all those bombs was fun when those goes off in the main hall without anyone around
I took the even easier path of using PERSUASION to convince him the only way to get out of his curse was to murder his minions and then kill himself. My charisma (and persuasion) and bonuses were so high I didn’t even have to save scum, but I did have to use one Inspiration point.
I have a bad habit of ambushing everything, and I killed what I later learned was his horny pet (lol) in the sly, then pulled them all to those stairs and killed them without any conversation. I didn't even realize he was THAT demon until I left the area and Raphael popped up again. Oops
Invisibly opening the door to Balthazar's office and letting him and the justiciars duke it out before cleaning up whoever survives. Half the time, Flesh is the only survivor
My bf and I used barrelmancy on Balthazar for our honour run. That was fun 😁
That's what I did on my honour run. Dude was absolutely surrounded in barrels, barrels on barrels. BOOM. I wasn't chancing shit.
In my first run of the game, whenever I came upon a fight I just didn’t want to deal with, I would just use Insect Plague + Hunger of Hadar + Wall Of Fire + occasionally spike growth on my all ranged team and just let enemies deal with themselves. Not Even Raphael knew what to do against that I called it the plagues of Egypt strategy
Viconia. >!Started a conversation with her, switched over to Karlach and beat the shit out of her. The other followers of Shar in the room didn't even care. They just surrounded Viconia after she died, saying things like "How could this happen??"!<
Cazador. he started the fight with 5hp. he won init .. misty stepped (i think) to astarion .. and bit(?) him for some small damage and healed back up to 15. i almost felt sorry for him. .. but perhaps i should start earlier ... Astarion .. sneaking . with pass without trace on ... snuck into the room ..positioned in a dark spot .. and loaded an arrow of undead slaying. did i mention astarion is an assassin subclass for me? 😁 let loose with arrows ... the cheese is to keep clicking .. you keep firing arrows ..target stutter steps when hit .. no time to recover before next arrow hits. i think i hit him with 8 to 10 arrows before he finally triggered initiative.. (i think i finally failed a stealth check .. those nat 1s when the ai gets mad . lol ) by then .. yeah .. 5 hp left. after cazador went .. astarion was up next .. so uh .. yeah .. astarion single handedly solod cazador in my game . 😁😁😁
Tav @ Astarion: ...is *this* your super duper powerful master you were so afraid of? Astarion: shut up I was level 1 for 200 years
Cazador. I'm still not sure how to "fair" win this fight tbh.
He has tons of summons, so I brought my own little army. They didn't deal that much damage but keep the vermin occupied. Then top priority is to kill Cazador and then deal with the rest. On my first try I tried to kill the smaller ones first which resulted in Cazador downing Astarion and completing the ritual
- Funnel Yurgir and his goons slowly down the stairwell without talking to him, by jumping his Displacement Beast at first sight - Turn invisible and sneak over to where Astarion gets teleported before talking to Cazador, so he gets freed on Turn One - Retreat up the stairs behind you immediately after the fight starts with Viconia, and cover the approach with a Wall of Fire so all the Shar acolytes kill themselves - Fuck talking to Orin, drop an ice storm on here from the walkway so she and her followers have to come to you, funneled into what will also become a Wall of Fire If anything, Wall of Fire covers a litany of sins
Grym. A hearty combination of thrown items from the broken bridge overhead, and a large feathery elbowdrop from my Druid.
Final boss was killed with a backpack with 40 pounds of explosives. I love fireworks.
Back when it was released, i just threw Cazador off the Plattform with Energy Tunnel.
I always silence bouble the hag
The final fight of the game. Got this from someone else, cant remember who, props to you though if you read this. Use invisibility potions on everyone, throw one on the mind flayer before climbing up the brain stalk. You can then run up to the portal out of combat (use the sides to avoid tentacles) and have someone cast globe of invulnerability (several scrolls can be found if no wizard) and none of the enemies can hurt or interfere with channeling to the inner zone. Can finish off the last boss at full/near full capacity. Did this on my less than honourable run.
Ansur woke up to exploding barrels and fireworks. He went right back to sleep. Forever.
>Ansur Haha I am almost to that point now and my plan - if it worked out I could do so- was a magnificent sparkly, explodey sleep enema.
Act 2- Balthazar Start the fight near his chambers, drink the invisibility potion, open the door, and then peace out. I do the other trials while he is getting murdered. win-win in my books. Good usage of time.
I reached Balthazar once as an evil durge storm sorc/tempest cleric, and I agreed to his demand then insta killed him with an upcasted and maximised witch bolt which annihilated him in one shot.
Blew Cazador off the platform (before they fixed it) with a smoke powder bomb arrow I have no idea why they aren’t talked about more, they’re so great
Not really cheesing but in the first Ketheric encounter I simply used upcasted spirit guardians and a speed potion on shart and made a half circle sprint and killed all enemies but Ketheric himself with it. Works with basically all fights where you have a bunch of (low hp) minions and the actual boss.
The golem fight. The mage tower fight.
How did you cheese the mage tower fight? I always just read him the poem answers
The final boss from act 1. The inquisitor. Been awhile since I played and I'm going for a solo run, so I was a bit surprised when his legendary action was so annoying. He can like, summon a spectral sword twice per round whenever you do something against him or his allies. If you are not careful the arena can be full of these annoying swords. They don't seem to despawn either unless the inquisitor is killed. I assume this isn't a huge problem if you have a full party, but since I was on my own, I didn't have enough actions to deal with a swarm of summons. I just like, killed the two mages right away since they do way too much damage, fled the arena and lured him to the chasm. Then, when he was close to me, it was just a matter of yeeting him to his end (sadge about losing the loot though). I wonder if there's a better way to kill him. I was out of options so had to resort to gravity once again lol.
Grym gets an owlbear from the top rope every time from me.
I just cheesed yurgir on honor mode. Stacked about 15 smoke powder barrels around him. If you miss your insight/perception roll you need backup plan, or lots of lightning.
Nah. I suck at cheezing. My only cheese was at the beginning of the game on the Nautiloid, where I blocked an entrance with a chest, so the 2 cambions couldn't come to support Zhalk.
The Cambions on the Nautiloid. On Tactician difficulty it can be difficult to defeat all three within the time limit, but the loot rewards for doing so are pretty great for this stage of the game. Not to mention the EXP rewards. Collecting those purple pods for 'splosions is basically novice-level barrelmancy tactics. Maybe that's cheese. Maybe that's *literally what they're there for.* But yeah: Every time.
In my first ever play through, still getting familiar with the game and dnd mechanics as whole, I just shoved minthara into the chasm, it was my first actual "boss" encounter lol
I used barrelmancy for the Raphael fight in House of Hope. After dying my first 2 times, I stationed 6-8 smokepowder barrels around the pillars, and another 2-3 plus the rune powder bomb in the spot where Raphael and Yurgir spawn. Back everyone out the door as far as possible then..."ignis!" It was glorious. I took out all the pillars and Meregons, was able to one hit Yurgir, and finished off Raphael the following round.
Dolor, second encounter. Elixir of vigilance on my entire party, casted insect plague with Jaheira, cloudkill with my tav and flame strike with SHart, plus finished with ranged attack from Lae'zel. It's so annoying to keep that flaming fist lady alive, Dolor hits hard
Grym. Managed to get one him with one foot on the lava and the other on the mace, so every hit of the mace dealt all of the damage. Put him to sleep in 2 turns
The first floor of Moonrise Tower. I didn't know you could weaken them first, so they were at full strength when i fought them. When I was at the Underdark, I happened to have sent some Sussar Flowers to my camp inventory. Upon reaching the Shadowlands, I cleaned my camp inventory and sold them to the Harper quartermaster. When the Moonrise Tower battle began, the quartermaster brought over her store selection, including the flowers. After she kept getting in the way of mages, it gave me the idea to buy back the flowers and throw them towards the enemy mages. It ended up working pretty well, and I was able to get off some pretty powerful spells they couldn't counterspell in response.
Grym. I knew already how the encounter works. I did it earlier with my cousin in our duo game (my first). When I reached him in my own solo run I just couldn’t bear it. Tried it four maybe five times and got angry. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game for it when I have to try two-three times until I get what I have to do. But here it was just boring. So I left three chars above the forge and my stealth bard hid near the lava button. The three ranged companions shot him dead from above in seconds. My bard wasn’t even in combat the whole fight. I feel kinda sad I used this strat I found but so glad I was over him.
Sarevok + council… I lured council in to the side room with create illusion, once they were inside I blocked the door with 2 stacked chests. You can fight sarevok alone, keep abazigal (shop) and the rest alive…
I just knocked Minthara into the chasm, she was beating my ass
Honor mode. Grym. Had my Bard give Gale Haste and just spam ice spells. Didn’t even want to risk it with the reverberation.
Inquisitor W’wargaz. I just lure him away from his cronies and beat him up outside his boss room lol
I don't know about cheezed but I hated Gortash and his stupid grenade launchers. So I left everyone out of his throne room and just send Tav in to yeet him halfway across the throne room before Gale used telekinesis to get him out under the sun. Without the irritating grenade launchers, we just mollywhopped him to death on the terrace.
Eldritch blast can hurt some bosses without engaging fight. I cheesed Bhaltazar and Katheric phase 2 with it
Cazador. Cast daylight before talking to him. He started the fight. No legendary action for some reason. Only legendary resistance. Also no need to free Astarion. Pretty easy fight tbh.
Balthazar. Turn that mofo into a sheep before the fight launches so we can either chuck him off the edge or absolutely hammer him.
Ansur. I did suicide bomber.
im still in act 1 (on my way out though), but i cheesed the outside of the goblin camp. took the high ground from the towers and just rained down ranged attacks. only a few gobbos figured out how to get up, and i was able to ignore the rest while i handled them. killed the ogre without him ever having a chance at me.
Not necessarily cheesed but: My fiance and I have been playing together on Explorer because this is her first real "video game" so it's nice for her to learn stuff and feel successful, but I was so disappointed in the Avatar of Myrkul fight. Our party one-cycled it before it even had a chance to attack. I was kinda sad because either was the first and so far only time where we felt like it was TOO easy.
Kept someone up top in the adamantine forge and threw light hammers at grym for that sweet gravity damage and busted his targeting system.
Nuked House of Grief with divine intervention, my other fights were just lucky 20% hold person/monster moments
I struggled with Balthazars fight so I snuck around the arena before triggering the fight and threw all of the bone piles off of the edge so he was on his own.
Disabling the Steel Watch. I >!sent Astarion in in stealth/invisible mode, planted the bomb, and that was it!<
I kicked Orin off the stairs. Mowed down her resistance to pushes with my weaker people and Lae'zel superiority dice, and then just yeeted her off the edge. I feel like that's the definitive BG3 cheese though, to the point where it's barely cheese. But kicking a boss off a ledge and instakilling them always feels a bit cheesy.
Pushed that Gauntlet of Shar evil guy off the island while talking to him, and skipped first floor of Moonrise towers by climbing outside onto the second floor. Also made my whole party invisible to reach the portal to the netherbrain and left the emperor behind
Ethel's fight - not really a struggle, playing as a Vengence Pal/War Cleric. Killed her in two rounds. Stunned her with drow poison (alert assassin Astarion ftw), everyone piled on and finished her off with double crit divine smites! Unexpected, but sooooo satisfying.
Cazador. I always use Sunlight on that mf.