Fastest way to kill monsters?

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OK, here is my strategy:Equip all of your party with ranged weapons, bows are better as they fire faster, avoid darts, they fire faster than bows but their range an damage ratio is abysmal. (so slings for mages)

Anyway, cast Emotion:Courage AND Hope on your party, then haste them. These basic spells give you massive bonuses, +3 to hit and +5 damage plus other neat things, and you are hasted. Even your feeble mage with sling will do impressive damage with these buffs on. (2d4+12 damage in a round if you have a normal sling and bullets.)

Go and kill things. Basically, once your party targets and enemy, that enemy is dead in a blink, unless it has 100+ HP or damage reduction. (like skeletons) All others fall so fast it is like a joke. Even those Borrow Wights in the Burial Isle, who are feared for their speed and number of vicious attacks, fall so fast they can not reach my party at all. Those dreadful Wailing Virgins are eliminated as soon as they are seen! The game turns in to a shoot em all type game, in which you kill so fast and advance. I cleared act 4-5-6 in only 2-3 hours, using this strategy. Burial Isle was so easy and fun. Poor things never stood a chance. I thought game was too easy, I never used another spell, or tactic, most of the time. (though there are few exceptions when the enemy is resistant or immune to your missiles, add a few offensive spells to balance things)

Further, if you can afford some good summons, like elementals (they are very useful allies, unlike in BG2) you can buff them with Emotion and haste too, and they will be excellent fodders.

For some more nastiness, cast Righteous Wrath of Faithful, if your party is consisted of people of same alignment this will add another bonus attack per round.

Try this strategy and see, it works wonders, my game has never been easier. And you do not need a pure mage for this strategy, a bard will be more than happy to cast these buffs, plus it suits bard concept very well.

I haven't tried this in HoF mode yet, though with cannon fodders it may be effective, only it may take a little longer, I think.

Do you have another strategy to kill hordes of bad guys faster? Share them!

 

I avoid casting haste because the party gets tired afterwards.
In 2E the haste spell also lets recipients age 1 year, a very expensive price to pay.
"Righteous Wrath of the Faithful" isn't cumulative with haste AFAIK.

 

I too hate the fatigue that follows Haste. Duration of Haste is also way too short.

The problem with ranged weapons is there are many enemies in the game who are immune to normal weapons and magic ammo is not easy to come by and expensive. The final boss fight requires +3 or better to hit and there is no +3 ranged ammo in the game (well, maybe in Heart of Winter but I just started that so not sure).

 

I agree haste is short, but incredibly useful, I usually clean half of a level with one haste. Even fatigued, you can haste again, and there will be little penalty, but if your party becomes fatigue again, I noticed they tend to roll 1s on everything.

In the game, only a few enemies require magical weapons to hit. Magical ammo is expensive, but can be found in Severed Hand merchant, an is wel-worth it.

My point was not killing boss creatures fast, rather, killing hordes of regular monsters with ease. This strategy worked wonders with that so far, and even, if you have the arrows+2 from Elite Yuanti archer, and Returning Axe+2 from somewhere in the Dragon's Eye, you can rip Yxunomei so fast it is funny.

Ofcourse, have a melee-oriented character for back-up, my paladin really enjoyed blasting all nasty undead with Three White Doves, hasted, specialised, with Emotion:Courage and Hope, she is scary. Though I think best weapon is Sword of Action+4, I daresay it is even better than Pale Justice as it adds extra attack, and other very sweet minor bonuses. And now I have 2 of them, they are soo cool! Perfect for melee-oriented thieves and/or bards too!

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one this happened to! My HoF party was relying on haste and summons to clear the Vale of Shadows and when my second haste ran out I noticed that practically nothing hit. I then found the 'random' numbers that the game rolled for my attacks were all coming out as ones. I was not chuffed at having to return to Kuldahar from the middle of a tomb. But, let's face it, fatigued and wounded low level characters against HoF undead? Not a chance.

The last two skeletons ended up playing 'catch the shapeshifted druid' while the party exhuasted their ammo praying for criticals.

 

I think there is a massive luck penalty for over-fatigued characters, which means they are more likely to roll 1s in everything.

 

I think that the penalty is something like the number of hours since you first fatigue minus your attack roll.

 

That sounds about right. With Haste causing an age of fatigue, it is small wonder they continually missed. Slackers.