Help with Eclipse encounter

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Damn! These guys are friggin' impossible! I was up for hours last night trying again and again to beat them.

I need help.

Here's my party:
Keldorn
Minsc
Berserker/Cleric
Solaufein
Aerie
Imoen

I read the Eclipse FAQ that Weimer bundled with the download, and although some of those helped me get a little farther, I still get completely lambasted every time I try.

I've found that Planetar's, Holy Smite, and Teleport Field work pretty good. Comet and Dragon's Breath seem to work also.

I've found that Time Stop, Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting and everything else works horrible.

I put three Remove Magic's in a Sequencer, but they never seem to work. I used Imoen as the caster and she's at high level.

The best I've done is killed the Druid, the Kensai and the Anti-Paladin. I was about to use Sola's Moonray when a Total Eclipse went off and the last fighter killing my PC.

 

The readme has lots of tips and tricks I can't be bothered to write down. Turning the game difficulty down to the easiest makes them come without so-called "buffs" which makes them easier. If you have the +5 Axe of Unyielding, put it on Sola. He vorpalled three of the enemies with it when I fought them.

 

Should I give Keldorn the Silver Sword? Minsc has the Ravager +6 and I do have the Axe of the Unyielding but Sola has no Prof. in Axe.

So far I havn't got lucky with Vorpal hits. They apparantly go through Stoneskins, so they're good for mages.

If I can get all the fighters to Near Death, then I can hit them with a Holy Smite. Then I can work of the mage, cleric, and druid. Or should I go for the spellcasters first?

 

You dont want to cheese im assuming. Time stop, improved altric, wish. Keep trying till you get double lenght time stop. Now breach anyone whos buffed and use dispel magic once. (Aim it well). Khelbens the mage and cleric. Next summon planetar. Then summon as many skeletons warriors and mordains as you can. Once you pop outta time stop wait for the mage and clerics protections to drop and power word blind them both. You can blind the druid as well. After that its fairly simple.

 

Yes, silver sword on Keldorn could work. But I mostly depended on Sola since the others get timestopped. I recall most of the vorpal weaps having 10%, no save, so you SHOULD nail one with each whirlwind. Also, you get timestopped less and get unbuffed enemies in you turn game difficulty to easy.

 

Strifestrike...

What the hell are you talking about? Khelben? He's a Chosen of the Mystra!

I'm talking about Weimer's Solaufein mod. The Eclipse encounter in ToB.


Anyway... I finally beat them today. I used a little cheese to do it though, which is OK because I left the difficulty on Hard. I summoned all my allies before the dialogue initiated, so I got in some free summons.

I used Maze from Aerie and Immy to trap the Anti-Paladin and the Kensai, then I was able to waste the spellcasters for the most part before they got back up.

When the fighters got out of the Maze, I hit each one with a GWW attack from 3 guys.

All in all I came out with half my guys dead. They were completely run out.

Damn good fight Weimer!

 

I think he is referring to a spell called something like Khelbens *something* whip. It removes magic protections. Haven't played Bg2 for some years, so can't quite remember...

 

Oops. Sorry Strifestrike. But still, a) Khelben's would be a waste because any spells you get off should be on the fighters as they will make you mincemeat. b) They start with a spell shield I think.

Also, the members of Eclipse are immune to Timestop, so casting it would basically put the nail in the coffin.

They're immune to Blind spells too.

 

Hmm, well im pretty sure they not immune to blindness. Ill load up the game tonight and figure that one out on my own. As for the time stop thing, ure right about that unfortunately, im sorry i must have mixed up the fights. Let me load it tonight and check out how i beat it. I assume your playing on isane difficulty.

 

Their weapons make them immune to Blindness.

[ December 07, 2003, 08:01: Message edited by: Mystra's Chosen ]

 

Sola can get a weapon that gives out lot's of great bonuses and resistances including Immunity to blindness among lot's of other great thing but you can't have that and moon ray and I've only ever tried Moon ray and it's my first time around playing Sola, but I'd say Moonray would be better if I had to hazard a guess otherwise I have no idea.

 

Wow, ok im really sorry bout that. I fought them today, they were a lot harder than i remembered. I fought them at standard 4 mil exp. I had sola using the axe of unyielding, edwin, me (a Archer), Keldorn with the vorpal sword, Anomen with crom and flail of ages, and Imoen.

Heres how it happened.
The party came out in full buff regalia. I started casting all the low casting time buffs off anomen. Defensive harmony first.

I kept reloading till no one failed save on that annoying ass druid spell, that blinds you.

Next i mazed the druid with imoen, and also mazed with edwin the anti paladin while my archer used arrows of biting on the fighter. The fighter pounded into keldorn. He died in a few rounds but by that point i was able to pound him down with full buffed anomen GWW + sola full buffed GWW + Archer gww (who is just ****ing amazing, its like a machine gun). I used as many potions as I could on keldorn but that time stop eventually ended the poor paladins life.

Also during that time I leased two dragons breaths. Then i improved altric and began to summon ****, a plantar and 5 skelly warriors. I kept buffing and anomen was able to get chaotic commands on himself and sola with out dieng. Then i used solas ability to heal up my party. At this point the druid came back and really started to pound the **** out of my party. I mazed him again and began to deal with the anti paladin. He dispelled my **** unfortunately. But then he started fighting the skeletons who he killed quickly but it gave me time to gww and all my guys and pound into him as well. He died.

Next i focused onto the mage. I used arrows of dispel and just pounded my spells into him. I acually used the high level spells i had to get his spell trap down quickly. The time stops were still a pain in the ass but i had enough buffs to my saving throws to not be horribly effected by any spells thrown at me. All the while i was swigging potions and pounding the mage. It took a really long time in which the druid reappeared and killed anomen, but the mage died. Next i cast malison in a spell trigger on the cleric. I spooked him and he ran away. The druid died fast after that. Lastly I chased down the scared cleric and killed him.

Lessons learned, use gww often. Use maze and the excellent dragons breath. Coment didnt really help me this battle. Unfortunately that probably didnt help you much. My best advice for this battle is to just use spells that are hard to save against, since they have good saving throws and tons of immunities.

This was a really hard fight and I reloaded a ton of times on it. I dont think ive ever actually fought it before this time come to think of it. I had a lot of fun fighting them. Its too bad imprisonment doesnt work on them.

 

Maze is the godsend here. I did it on two of the fighters and then I could concentrate on the mages, which didn't have a chance over Keldorn and Carsomyr. I gave Minsc Axe of Unyielding +5 and Stormstar so he could get past the stoneskins and disrupt spells and/or kill them outright. Sola worked on the final remaining fighter because he had Stoneskin, Blur, Mirror Image, Fire Shield Blue/Red. Smite let him have it.

Once everyone was dead I though it was over. I completely forgot about the Anti-paladin and the Kensai in Mazes! Then they just popped out of nowhere and surprised the hell out of me. Sola did his Moonray thing to get my party back to health and I was able to land a bunch of Criticals on the Kensai. After that the Anti-Paladin just died quick. 4 fighters laying on her, 3 of them with GWW attacks.

BTW Strifestrike, Nature's Beauty is the spell that blinds, but there' sno saving throw for the Blindness, the saving throw is for the instant death, which is normal (no -4 or anything).

This was by far the hardest fight I've ever done, except maybe the Shadow Dragon with a pathetically low level party.

*Salutes Weimer for his badass battle*

 

My Blade was able to solo this. It took me 13 (or was it 15?) reloads to finally get it right.

Before the battle began, I summoned a Simulacrum out of the Helm of Vhailor. The Simulacrum had all my Protection from Magic Weapons Scrolls (and the like), and Stoneskin Scrolls (isn't cheese - I was reserving all these for this particular battle and never used them again later).
The Simulacrum had 6 AC - making him target #1.
Sola was all Spell Immunityivination and Invisibility spells (and kept discrete the whole battle throughout).
I had my buffs ready (Spell Protection buffs, in particular - Spell Immunities, but no Divination) and drank my potions. I already had contingency for my misleads.
Roleplay: Sola warns you about this, so you have to expect it whenever you go out at night.

When the battle began, I cast Control Undead on the shades and unleashed them on the Spellcasters (and killed the leftovers). The warriors fell upon a Simulacrum they couldn't kill. My PC concentrated on the spellcasters first - the sorcerer, in particular. I was in a magekiller-slayer-Blade build - which means I had extremetized my THAC0, AC, had my remove magics ready and had a stat-draining weapon in hand. My remove magic also had minimal (if not, no) effects, so I had to wait out on some protections, but the spellcasters fell.
All the while, I made sure my Simulacrum had his protections activated right before the timestops could commence.

When the mages had fallen, I killed the fighters at leisure.

 

"at leisure"? Bull****!

 

For three reasons:
1) They were going after the Simularcum after all, which just happened to be immune to their attacks and was running around like crazy. They were pouring everything they had on it, leaving no pressure on my PC.
2) My Blade had -24 THAC0.
3) It's just an expression, Mystra. Considering the reason I had to reload so many times was because of the those **** spellcasters who could kill me in an instant if I had had missed at least one or two protections, I'd rather take my chances with the fighters where at least I had *sure* defenses.

My real misery here where the mages, not the fighters, because the fighters could be drawn off and taken advantage of.

 

The biggest misery of that battle is those constant ****ing time stops. Jeezus, why is sola the only one immune to those things? Give some immunity to fricking keldorn at least, hes like the strongest paladin torm has seen in a while.

 

I think that's the reason why I never do this battle with a party.
I'd shudder to think what would happen to an NPC who can't grant himself immunity to magic or physical attacks during the timestop.
A way to get around this would be to turn on autopause so you can give yourself a round or two just before the timestop clicks in - and *invisibilize* everyone except your potential bait.

Anyways, let me re-instate what I posted. I find this battle very hard because of the spellcasters only. I had formulated the tactic above by reload two, and it took me another 10+ reloads to figure out everything from timing, etc.
When I did get through, it was because of a little luck, and I had killed all the spellcasters.
All through my reloads it was only the spellcasters which managed to upset my plan by killing me before I could blink or by killing my Simularcum which set the warriors on me.

If you think I make the whole battle sound easy, please remember that the most overpowered class is the Blade (legit, and also the "Lord of Cheese"). And yet his chances of succeeding (in full buffiness and cheesiness) in this battle still borders near 50-50.

[ December 08, 2003, 04:19: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]

 

Sorry if I sounded rude before... I was gonna put a at the end of "Bull****!" but for some reason it didn't work and I didn't review the post afterwards.

Anyway... why is a Blade more powerful than a Jester or Skald? (For this particular fight. I don't want to get into all the Blade vs. F/M stuff again.)

 

I share the same sentiments.
The Blade's better than his other Bardic brothers simply because he's a far better fighter than they are.
Enhanced Bard Song will also drastically change the other Bard kit's playability - the Jester becomes something of a vanilla Bard and the Skald, a part-time Blade.