@@HouseRavensong hm. I'm not aware of any change. It seems to use the standard formula of enemies making a Dexterity save vs the caster's spell save DC. And as far as I know (other than karmic dice) the game doesn't manipulate the results of a d20 for different abilities
With save or suck spells you need to consider what type of enemy you are targeting. Sacred flame misses more often than not at the start of the game due to goblins (high dex) being the most common opponent. I have started running bg3 now with 5e spells mod so I get access to toll the dead which targets con saves. So with both sacred flame and toll the dead I can usually hav a decent chance on any opponent.
@@VikCachat that's certainly part of it, but another factor is that there are very few ways to boost your save DC compared to your attack accuracy. In this fight for example Zhalk's massive dexterity makes him hard to hit with either attacks OR sacred flame, but attacks still usually end up being more accurate because you can boost them with high ground, bless, faerie fire, daze, and so on. Pretty much the only way to improve Sacred Flame's accuracy is that it auto hits if Zhalk is stunned
The initiative order on the fight is incredible, a command character beating zhalk and then the rest of the party right after the mindflayer. I don't think you could ask for better init.
Yeah, though I just checked the math and the important parts are more probable than I thought. With 16 Dex on the main Command user, he has about 40% to beat Zhalk in initiative. Shadowheart has about a 6% chance. So between the two of them, you're actually near 50-50 that someone with Command goes before Zhalk. The odds that SOMEONE with shove goes after the mindflayer, either a mage hand or Lae'Zel, is almost 100%. And that's all we need for this shove strategy to be operational. Anyone with Shove can do it since shoving the mindflayer is guaranteed to work
@@Melth it's pretty much impossible if you dont get the opportunity attacks from the shove.. i've tried a few times now, when cambians spawn, Zhalk is still 100+ life
@@Styx1980 I wouldn't say it's impossible; I did it my first time without opportunity attacks before I thought of the whole Shove thing. It does probably require spending more resources and time on Zhalk rather than moving on early to the second wave of imps and whatnot of course. Regardless, it's really easy to get Shove to work since all you need is any party member or a mage hand to go either after the mindflayer or before Zhalk. It's almost certain that one of your people will be in one of those initiative positions since Shadowheart and Lae'Zel and Mage Hand all have trash initiative
I once ragequit a paladin run after missing pretty much every single smite attempt (while blessed) up until the grove. Really took the wind out of my sails. "Ohhhh this is going to be perfect - you're going to die you little bastard!" *miss*
The best result I got in that fight on honor mode was killing everything but the last cambion, who was still over half health, and I was on the last turn with no resources, Lae'zel was down, and us was nearly dead. Can't believe I didn't think to bless before the fight, but I'm not surprised that I didn't think to use mage hand because I always underestimate the usefulness of that spell.
I can't believe I never thought to use shove this way to get opportunity attacks on Zhalk, genius! In my latest honor mode run I had to cut and run while Zhalk was still alive, but this is a big game changer. Also didn't know about the caustic and void bulbs on the upper level when you first come in. Good stuff!
I don't imagine I'll ever try to do this on Honor Mode. I've done it multiple times on Tactician and I know full well how much your success is dependent on the dice rolls. So I save scum, and really it's just a matter of remembering the right steps and how patient you're willing to be with reloading when you get a bad roll. My strategy, to put it as simply as possible: 1. Move Shadowheart as far as possible, Command drop. Lae'zel jumps and dashes to pick up the Everburn Blade immediately. My character does damage to the hellboar and then moves as close to Zhalk as possible. Us finishes off the hellboar then jumps to the crossbow Imp. Mage Hand starts moving the barrels towards the hallway. 2. From here, it's just a matter of getting to Zhalk ASAP and doing as much damage to him as possible through the Mind Flayer and opportunity attacks. The Mage Hand keeps moving the barrels turn by turn into the room where the Cambions actually spawn and will have time to position itself behind the further one to shove it closer to the barrels. At this point I just Fly it back into the room and drop the barrel on a part of the floor that's on fire (btw, I don't think I've ever seen that explosion at 10:55, that part of the floor in the Cambion spawn room is never on fire for me which is actually helpful for positioning the barrels). 3. Hopefully I've got Zhalk very nearly dead before the Cambions are able to make it down the hallway and into the room. I've left one imp from the start alive, so that the Mind Flayer moves towards that one and, therefore, towards the Cambions. I start moving my party ahead, trigger the extra enemies, and fight from on top of the stairs to kill those and chip away at the Cambions as the Mind Flayer goes to work on them thanks to a Speed potion. I have to get big damage with Shadowheart's Guiding Bolt, but the 20+ damage there, the 20+ from a Mind Blast, 20+ from Tentacle Lash, and 20+ from the barrel explosions is going to make the Cambions not nearly as hard to take down as it would seem. It's mainly just a matter of praying the Mind Flayer actually uses Mind Blast and hits both of them, though. That's about it. I get that Honor Mode changes some things but I feel like I've got this down to a science and I'm actually pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to do it. There's probably a very small percentage of people who have actually done this on the highest difficulties. But I completely understand why 😅
Sounds like a solid approach there! And fairly similar except for using the mage hands to move the barrels to the cambions. That's effective, but it feels a bit too silly to me. After the initial Command: Drop there usually isn't all that much luck with my plan. I'd say after that point I'm at around 70% to win as a druid, and maybe 60% as a warlock. Of course it's frustrating needing to restart entirely on honour mode if Command: Drop fails, but it doesn't really take more than a few minutes anyway.
@@HouseRavensong ultimately the two cambions together are only worth 150 XP, with Zhalk and the Mindflayer bringing the total up to 300. That's nice, and will get you to level 3 super fast, but it's not a big deal beyond that. Most creatures other than goblins give enough XP that a lot of random battles will provide you more XP than the cambions. XP in BG3 is very much about quantity rather than quality of enemies. Huge bosses are often worth barely anything, while a tiny kobold can be worth 75 and come in packs
@@HouseRavensong Well, I actually think of it as the 2 Cambions and the Mind Flayer, since if you're only going as far as killing Zhalk, you'll leave the Mind Flayer alive too. So that's another 75 XP. You'll be level 2 before you even get off the ship, and you can hit level 3 as early as after killing Gimblebok's crew in the ruins. I also don't look at it as just the XP, but the loot too. Good chunk of gold and a decent chance at useful items.
@@darkphoenix2 I've been using the nautiloid tanks to kill Zalk and the Mind Flayer together, not worrying about the Cambions. I go to the Grove Battle before the Ruins so that I'm at least Lvl 3 before Gimblebok.
i am truly impressed with the level of creativity you presented here. Definitely gave me a few ideas for my next playthrough (8th that would be). Congratulations!
Fantastic video! It’s great to see you dabble in making guides that don’t use your specific ruleset. As much as I enjoy that run, I doubt it will be very relatable as a guide - so something like this is perfect!!
Great guide! I guess with the "surviving" imp, each class can do it on honour mode :) I also have two minor suggestions for optimization: - 2 rounds for preparations outside the helm door can be used even more efficiently, as US can use the pod in the first prep round after the buffs/hands. So everyone can use dash in the second prep round. You can also set your least important weapon (melee for shadowheart, bow on lae'zel) on fire in the first prep round und the more important one in the second prep round. Usually, I also switch Lae'zel to 2 scimitars. So you can do a fire offhand attack on Zhalk before equiping the Hellsword with the action and have higher chances to kill the hellboar with her. - You can prep the nautiloid tanks without the explosion to happen and can only trigger it after the cambions are there. This explosion does good damage on one of them too. I managed to get away with shadowheart afterwards too (hiding, jumping away and next round shooting the barrels). Please keep up your good stuff :)
Some interesting ideas! I don't think I'd like to do double scimitars on Lae'Zel for this fight though. Her ability to reroll both weapon damage and fire damage on her longsword if she 2 hands it+ her bonus action pommel attack that can daze Zhalk if you're lucky are more useful in my opinion. Especially since she can't add her strength to her offhand attack, so it's just 1d6+1d4 fire Good idea about triggering the hallway explosion when the cambions are actually in it. I would be comfortable trying that in runs where I have a druid or a bard, so that I can either guaranteed long jump to safety or can use the Bard's hand crossbow weapon action to shoot the barrels while dashing away
@@Alirion144-jx4uj yeah, a Shadowheart run might be the very worst for this. At least Lae'Zel gets a spare githyanki ally. It might still be possible with extreme luck, but it'd be rough
At last, succeeded with shadow heart… but I think it was at least the tenth try! :) What u most of all need: some misses from the cambions… you also have 2 heal potions less in comparison! Thx again for the great guide! Hard to wait for your next hell run vids…. looking forward to them :)
Cambions loot was nerfed in patch 6, can't provide link since yt is deleting my comment when I do that 🤣 Anyway in "Level Design" part there is a "Tweaked the loot dropped by the cambions who join in on the fight on the nautiloid." line if someone wants to check by themself. Anyway I have no clue why they did that since pre nerf loot (300+ gold per Cambion + some more or less useful mixtures) was super nice to have at the start of the game but still nothing too crazy or game breaking. And I like the idea of rewarding players greatly when they beat great challenges and that's how killing these 2 guys should be seen.
What an annoying and silly change! There certainly should be a decent reward for killing these guys, and it's not like getting 300 gold and a couple of random elixirs was OP. Especially given that most elixirs are trash and most of the good ones are either purchasable or stealable or both as soon as you get to the Emerald Grove
Never seen mage hand used so... Usefully. Lol Ill definitely keep its uses in mind now for sure, because the mage hands easily played a crucial role in the fight.
I don't know how you do it. I use the same strategies but my allies can't hit anything and my enemies can't miss. I use all of my health potions on the mind flatrr, but he still goes down with Zhalk still having a healthy chunk of HP. And Lae'zel misses literally all of her opportunity attacks. After so much frustration, it's really great to watch someone clear this room :)
It definitely takes a bit of luck, but if you're having trouble killing Zhalk before the mindflayer dies, something is wrong. Once you equip his sword, Zhalk should be the easy part. If you miss a few attacks, then spend more time attacking him before moving on to trigger the appearance of the next group of enemies.
@@MelthThanks, I'll try that. Maybe I'm triggering the ads too soon. A bigger problem is how do I keep the cambipns from one shotting my party. They seem to ignore the mind flayer
@@RPGFan253 the cambions will definitely try to ignore the mindflayer whenever possible, which makes them very dangerous. The best strategy, when possible, is to make sure the mindflayer is constantly in melee with both of them. You can use Void Bulbs to pull them together (I think I showed that pretty well in my other video of this battle). Or Shove or things like that. The cambions will not *usually* fly away from melee with the mindflayer because they don't want to give the mindflayer a free attack of opportunity against them. That's not to say they *never* choose to fly away from the mindflayer though, it does remain a danger.
This is a great video. You think very tactically and are great about exploiting every resource available to you. I subscribed and plan to watch more of your BG3 content!
You can also have all them dip their weapons and dash before entering the helm and they will have an action and bonus action restored while also still having the effects of dash.
I'm coming towards the end of my first playthrough now, new to DnD so finding it hard - currently on explorer. I learned so much from this video and looking forward to instantly starting again, upping the difficulty and trying to utilise some on the stuff shown here (hands, throw, shove and the environment) - awesome!
@@alanlinforth8418 good luck! This is one of the hardest things to do in the entire game though, so don't worry if you can't jump up from explorer to killing the cambions
Thanks - interesting insight on how to use Opportunity Attacks. Devils arrive in Round 10. I use the cartilaginous chests to block the tunnel - that leaves devils with fire damage, and takes them a few rounds before they figure out the fly over. I let Lae Zel die on the Nautiloid. I can then rez her on the beach which gets you quick Inspiration from Shadow Heart.
One can definitely have an easier battle by blocking the devils with a chest. For me though, that would diminish the fun of having one really big battle, and would make it feel more like 2 separate ones. (Not to mention it feels very silly in character to just watch the flying creatures get blocked by a waist-high fence)
@@Melth Not waist-high. There are three chests available. put two on the ground in the narrowest part of the tunnel, and then put the third on top of them. ;o) But I get your point. I wonder if Larian expected players to get through this encounter as fast as possible (timer). How the player community has approached this battle shows the great innovation and imagination of the player base.
Saw one guy stack the three chitinous chests on top one another before the sphincter before the fight. Causing the spawned in cambions to waste their turns trying to break the chests. Good thing those chests have the sturdy condition. Used that on my game and worked suprisingly well, giving me a chance to defeat Zhalk. Also, I don't know if I'm very lucky or it's deceptively programmed to fail because of player creativity on Command Drop. Cuz, I always succeed them.
There are several ways you can block the cambions or even kill them without a fight, like having one of your characters not enter the fight and be waiting in sneak mode in the shadowheart room. Then when the cambions spawn and get into turn mode, you can endlessly shoot them from long range while they're in turn based mode and you're not. But I wanted this to be a guide about how to battle them fair and square for a challenge. As for the command drop, you're getting lucky. I've certainly failed command drops against him quite often and had to restart as a result
@@mcmendez03 they're REALLY good in the early game in particular. In any fight that will take numerous rounds, they can contribute a lot by throwing javelins from high ledges, throwing bombs, pushing weak enemies off cliffs, etc.
My mind flayer sucked so badly, it missed a lot and never attempted mind blast, I had to settle with picking up Everburn blade and dealing finishing blow to mind flayer, and running away with my life, Zhalk I could barely scratch. (I'm on tactician if it matters, don't @ at me)
The Mindflayer randomly choosing whether to mind blast or attack, and whether it hits, is certainly a major luck factor in the fight. Sometimes you'll be really lucky and he'll intelligently blast both Cambions or something. Sometimes he forgets he even has the move and never uses it after the first turn (when I think he's scripted to)
On my last honor run, I got the last Cambian to 12hp and the Mindflayer to 3hp... It was the first time I was close to succeeding. I was pretty unlucky as well. Your video was helpful, and I learned some things that will be useful in the rest of the game.
It's a valuable trick with almost any potion in this game. You can use it to heal multiple people, haste multiple people, invisibility multiple people, and so on. One catch to watch out for: the AoE healing/speed/other effect works as a cloud. You'll never see the cloud if someone is in it to trigger it immediately, but you can see it if you throw a potion at an empty location to then walk through later or something. Anyway, the reason this matters is that the game only allows 1 cloud effect at a given location at a given time. So if there is, for example, a fog cloud in an area then throwing potions in that area will just waste the potion with no effect because the fog cloud will override the potion cloud. Likewise if there's Darkness in an area because that counts as a cloud, and so on.
@@Melth I come from the TTRPG where such does not work. And from real life reenactment fighting and military. I suspect that limits my fantasy somewhat. Does it work with Elixirs also?
tip, to block the doorway the one big chest beside the body holding the rune for Shart is more then enough and can't be destroyed by them, if you want more safety you can also put the small gold chest beside it
I started my first honor run today with a dragonblood fire sorcerer and I wish I've seen this video, all I managed to do was to get the sword but I guess it's something. When I fail, I'll know what to do at least. One thing I seem to have issues is to properly manage action economy, I always waste my bonus actions on the mage hands. Thanks for the imp/flayer tip, I always wondered why he never turns on other people and does on me when I kill the commander, I learned a lot!
Good luck with your run! Mastering action economy and getting good at finding a use for every action of every character every turn is certainly one of the most important steps of getting good at this game (or 5E in general)
I did Monk when I played honour mode. Just finished a draconic bloodline fire sorcerer playthrough (not honour) and found it to be a bit underwhelming due to the lack of single target spells and cool fire spells in general at higher levels, had to stick to hold person + scorching ray for most of the game. While it works pretty good it got a bit boring after a while
Awesome, I usually cheese this fight with a fighter and the archery bonus using out of combat shenanigans. Don't like to do it but too many things can go wrong in this fight
Yeah, there are some reliable but cheesy ways to beat these guys without a fight. But having tough battles is half the fun in this game I'd say, so I wouldn't want to skip one like this
I imagine when you don't have anything for the hands to do you could simple drop some daggers or axes for them to add more damage. But thanks for the tips, I never thought of using shove to separate them and get reaction attacks in, that's smart.
I used to drop throwing axes for the hands to use, but ultimately decided that's only worth it when fighting imps or hellboars. Against Zhalk or the Cambions, the mage hands have a tiny chance to hit, and their 1d6 damage is halved too, resulting in an average damage of less than 1 per throw. So throwing random axes at Zhalk/Cambions doesn't seem worth the time
Nice!! My personal best without guides was zhalk, a cambion, and the mind flayer. I love your use of mage hand! Also I didn't know you could throw imps haha.
That's a good start! I bet you'll be able to take out both Cambions now. Throwing enemies is sometimes useful in this game as a way to move them in places where you can't get a Shove angle lined up. It's a decent control option for very high strength characters or when fighting small foes like goblins!
Something to note, you might get more reliable damage from Shadowheart if you walk her up to the top of the stairs for that amazing +10% range attack high-ground bonus.
That brings her accuracy from a terrible 30% to a still bad 40%, dealing (1d8+1)/2 = 2.5 average damage on a hit. Regardless of high ground, with sacred flame she has a 40% chance to hit for 1d6 = 3.5 average damage So, unless I can do something to boost her weapon damage (dipping in fire only makes it a tie), it's better to just do sacred flame, and high ground doesn't matter for sacred flame
13:33 in the same way that they prefer to attack each other, I think they prefer to fight where they were originally standing, resulting in him taking this opportunity attack
Yes, that's part of it. But whereas fighting each other appears to be their top priority, moving to somewhere close to their original positions only sometimes happens. Not sure why, because they're sometimes content to battle quite far from their original area
I think a better use of shadow heart would be her crossbow over sacred flame. I think its a 65% chance to hit with the bow over the 45% with the cantrip and those odds + dipped weapon are better than a cambion with 18 dex doing a saving throw.
@@Minecraftxpo unfortunately, her hit chance isn't even close to 65% with the bow. Shadowheart starts with a godawful 13 dexterity, so she only has +3 to hit against his 18 AC. That's a 30% chance to hit. You can boost that with Bless or high ground, but blessing her means NOT blessing someone more valuable, so it's not worth it. High ground helps a bit toward the end of the battle but isn't really available at the beginning since she needs to stay near the entrance to set up barrels Plus of course Zhalk resists crossbow damage and fire damage but doesn't resist radiant damage
This is realy luck dependant, but the idea and performance is top notch, very educational. 1) Initiative order has to be perfect for attacks of opportunity 2) Zhalk sometimes prefer to attacks my party instead of chasing illythid who was pushed looks like bot Zhalk and illithid dont want to step in center of this "arena", so AI acts weird if Zhalk has to move to place it is not intented to be 3) I used bard, so fey + command + bard inspirations on illithid for dmg works fine
@@dmitriydevyatykh7246 initiative isn't really all that luck based as long as you summon at least one mage hand The mindflayer has better initiative than the mage hand, so the chance of it going before the hand is extremely high With 2 mage hands you're almost guaranteed to succeed on losing initiative And that's all you need. As long as 1 hand (or any party member) is after the mindflayer, you can guarantee shove the mindflayer and thereby get AoOs
btw, im pretty sure hex only applied to ability checks and not attack rolls / saving throws, which means it doesnt really matter whst version of hex you use
@@autumn50475 that's exactly why it DOES matter here! The only thing Hex affects is ability checks. And the only ability checks that come up in battle ever in this game are Strength (athletics) to shove/resist being shoved and Dexterity (Acrobatics) to resist being shoved. You want to hex whichever one of those stats they are better at, so as to make shoving them easier.
For me, it was very educational to understand how to use the mage hand and the healing thingies around the Nautiloid. I thought they were only for healing, never occured to me that they worked as long rests. :D Anyway, cool fight. :D
Yeah, I think I said that twice. If Zhalk resists all 3 Commands (highly unlikely but possible) you're usually out of luck. And it's possible to just endlessly miss the last cambion or something
I looked at a few of the comments and no one said it as far as I can tell, but you only need to pass that initial Dex check for Us. You don't have to do any of the second checks to get Us as a companion.
However, if you fail the Dex check you can't try anything else with that character. And Shadowheart and Lae'Zel both have trash dexterity so they're not good backups if your main character fails. On the other hand, there's no risk to trying to investigate. If you succeed you can do a medicine check with advantage. If you fail, you can still try the Dex check. So it's simply better to at least try and unlock the medicine check if you want to maximize your chances.
Two things: one, this is exactly the kind of content I’m looking for, I just beat my honor mode run and now I need to consume people playing it the hard way, and two are your fans called Melth addicts?
Nice one. I think that once the cambions engage with the mind flayer, you can safely remove the last imp - worked when I did a few months ago and was useful in terms of action economy with potions throwing as my damage was a bit worse than this.
In my experience, that is *usually* safe but not always. Once in a while the mindflayer may suddenly decide it wants to provoke attacks from both cambions to fly over and mind blast your whole team, for example.
@@RazielTheUnborn it's definitely possible to get it to work though if you use plenty of things like Void Bulbs to keep them together, and make sure not to make your party members be tempting targets. I made it work on my 9 Hells Run
When I saw that we are fighting Zhalk (which is IMO one of the best fights if not the best fight in the game) for a moment I was worried that something bad went to 9 hells run and we are starting again xD
It's certainly one of the best fights because of the difficulty! Though OTOH it's also one of the most frustrating, because there aren't many ways to make it less luck based.
Yeah, Druids and Light Clerics can do that too. I did it with a bard at the start of my challenge run But killing Zhalk is the easy part. The hard part is getting the 2 cambions. Faerie Fire is great for them too, but they have a decent chance to make their saving throws and resist it.
It's a great spell! I certainly get a lot of use out of it in major early game fights like battling the hag (having mage hands throw void bulbs in a great way to guaranteed kill 2-3 illusions) or throwing objects down at the ogres
If you like mage hands you can save some effort of drag and dropping with the arcane trickster permanent mage hand. You can pickpocket items into his inventory
Oooo, this looks exactly like something I want to try! (watches video) ok, well, in reality, I just spent my last 3 starts ignoring Shadowheart. Maybe it's too late for me
Doing this without Shadowheart would certainly be tougher. She's the last valuable team member here, but you do benefit a lot from Bless's +12.5% or so hit chance on the main attackers.
@@kittydaddy2023 ah, I see. I'm pretty burned out on the *beginning* of each act. It just feels tedious to make the rounds buttering up shopkeepers, unlocking Withers so I can have non-horrible stats, and so forth. After that things get fun again.
one pet pieve is that you didnt equip the warlock with a 2 scimitars or 1 shortsword 1 scimitar you would've gotten 2 times more attacks and procs of hex.
In this game, even for heavy armor users, Dexterity is tremendously important. Initiative in this game is a d4, not a d20. That means every single +1 to initiative from Dexterity makes a huge difference in whether you go first. And going first consistently is the biggest and most important advantage you can possibly have. If you go first consistently and have good tactics you can win almost every fight without the enemy even getting a chance to attack. And then of course Dexterity also does a lot of other very good but less important things. There are multiple medium armors in this game that outclass the best heavy armors by letting you add your full Dexterity to AC. And Dexterity is of course also good for ranged attacks, in a game where ranged combat is usually better than melee. And it's an important saving throw. And it boosts some of the most important skills.
Keeping the imp alive is a great tip. What about casting Protection G/E on the flayer to tank the cambiens? I would also hex whatever saving throw they make against mindblast.
So Protection from G/E OR Shield of Faith can both be decent buffs on the mindflayer and are roughly equal in this situation. The trouble though is that they require concentration, which would mean no Bless in this case. And that's definitely not worth it. Bless is really important so we actually hit Zhalk and the Cambions. If your main character is a cleric or something then you can certainly have him do Bless while Shadowheart does Protection from Good and Evil or something. As for Hex, that's a common misconception about how it works. Hex doesn't affect saving throws. It only affects skill checks basically. And no skill checks ever matter in combat except Athletics (STR) and Acrobatics (Dex) to resist shove. So basically the only thing you should ever is hex Str on high Strength enemies or Dex on high Dexterity enemies
Faerie Fire (and Bless) both help a lot with making the Mindflayer's tentacle attack hit! So I agree Faerie Fire is very good here. That's one reason I said Druid is a great class for this fight. However, neither of them help with Mind Blast. Mind Blast doesn't actually do an attack roll to hit. Instead the enemy makes an Intelligence saving throw to negate the damage.
@@Chonus sadly no, that's something people get confused about a lot. Hex does NOT give disadvantage on saving throws with the chosen ability. Hex gives disadvantage with CHECKS using the chosen ability. In 5E/BG3 'checks' basically means 'skill rolls'. So hexing someone's intelligence would make them bad at rolling Arcana... but that doesn't really matter in a fight. Pretty much the only skills that matter in fights in this game are Athletics and Acrobatics to shove or avoid getting shoved. So it's usually best to Hex Strength or Dexterity to target those.
Yeah, this strategy is lower luck than others, but at this point in the game you just don't have many options to fix repeated bad rolls. I've definitely had runs where I got down to the last cambion and then everyone missed 8 times in a row so we lost.
While these types of challenges are interesting and a key aspect to BG3, I can't take the game seriously enough to consider trying it myself or doing any honor mode runs. When such a large component of the gameplay is dependent on luck and dice rolls it begins to feel like an exercise in patience and inevitability. You pre-buff your party and do everything to gain an optimal advantage in combat only to miss all of the 50% chances to hit (Laezel) and even higher percentages that would otherwise force you to reattempt the scenario or move on. It might take someone two or three times and others four or more, which reenforces the idea of inevitability. Not to mention the chances of getting poor loot all around, it's a pretty badly-designed experience in my opinion. Just commands drop the sword, grab it, and move on. The game is mostly a puzzle in trial and error with the chance of failure in almost every action.
Early game D&D is trash as a strategy game because there's no way to mitigate luck, I agree. But by like level 5 in this game with good strategy and mechanics knowledge you can get to 95% or so hit chances and eliminate luck from most of the game. By the endgame dice are almost irrelevant and a well-built party can be a nearly flawless machine that succeeds at everything important 99% of the time and has backup plans for those double-1 fails.
@@Melth I agree about early game. It's very similar to the XCOM games since they both have a reverse-difficulty curve, meaning the game is simply the most challenging early-game and becomes drastically easy late-game. Not being able to find ways to 'confirm' damage has been a problem for me personally and I've simply been taking routes to do so early-game, such as using spells like circle of daggers or magic missile. Otherwise I'm finding ways to deal massive amounts of damage using barrels. Other cheesy methods include entering combat, fleeing from combat, and then going back to find the enemies frozen in place looking in one direction, allowing for easy explosive placement without even entering turn-based mode. Other spells that either reduce chances of certain things are simply not an option for me considering I may use an action to use said spell only for it to not be effective at all, resulting in the action being wasted, which could have otherwise been used to simply attack. In other words I've not been opposed to the idea of finding cheesy strategies because I simply do not wish to waste time with luck, so to speak. With little to no options early-game it's almost as if the game wasn't designed to have legitimately-fought battles, unless enemies were designed to be returned to until stronger, which is also fine. As I'm playing now, though, the game is getting easier and easier and I'm getting more and more options as I progress. I'm taking the ambush-style approach and don't much care to talk out of situations unless the plot calls for it, but it feels bad when you fail a roll despite having proficiencies in said skills.
Well yes, but you'll note for example that the imp continues to ignore the mage hand that it shoving and throwing it around. In most fights in this game, the AI will eagerly attack mage hands. This fight is a weird exception where enemies mostly ignore them for some reason
I found one more way to get more damage have the warlock dual wield (I think you can always loot a shortsword). For bonus action attack triggers hex and if stupid mode is toggled ON another attack of opportunity for more hex dmg.
@@SimonGrandell that kind of works, though a warlock isn't proficient with the short sword by default, so you'd end up with a quite inaccurate attack. I think to optimize it, one could play as a wood elf to get proficiency and a speed bonus.
@@Melth Yes wood elf is exactly what i played. With races that aren't proficent with short swords you put the shortsword in the main hand and the dagger in the off hand.
I did this once, during the beta of Act 1 years ago (not on the hardest difficulty). But I'm currently wondering, what the point is of killing everything besides the XP you get and the challenge it brings? For example, will it affect the story or some side stories later on? I recently bought the game and I'm currently almost done in Act 1, so would like to know for when I finish the game and start a new run.
@@BladieBlaat-j8g it's all about the glory and challenge for me. The XP reward may feel big at level 1 but it's the same as fighting a few kobolds by the time you get to the mountain pass. There used to be a decent gold reward, but for some reason they recently patched it so they drop only a small amount now
NGL, even with a “system” there’s a bit of luck involved. First time I actually succeeded I had to hit the switch with the last action of the last character in rotation during the final round. I even took a video because I’ve only done it once ☝️
True, but iirc they spatter caustic brine everywhere. And caustic brine can cause more problems for me than the enemy by blowing up and throwing cambions/the mindflayer into new positions
I never thought to use mage hand like that! I didn’t know they were that useful to be honest! I’m near finishing the game at this point too😂 but some friends and I are going to try and beat the game this summer on Honor mode. Do you think this combo would work with a tempest cleric and a war cleric (not including shadowheart or Lazael)?
I think those are two of the least good kinds of clerics for this fight. Light Cleric (Command, Bless, Faerie Fire) and Nature Cleric (Command, Bless, Shillelagh) are much better for this fight. If you're playing in multiplayer, it gets substantially easier though since you have more total damage and more actions per turn to handle things.
I wonder if you ever saw the same fight done by "Pete Complete" here on RU-vid. He used a Bard and did the fight in a similar fashion, but without shoving the Imp as I remember. Impressive fight you did there.
Haven't heard of Pete Complete, but I did this fight myself as a bard about 5 months ago at the start of my challenge run. I didn't know about shoving the imp back then either, so it sounds like that might have been quite similar to what Pete did. Though I also had some rules for that run like not using the restoration pods or not using healing potions on my guys
@@Melth Yes RU-vid ate my comment. I am watching you playthrough right now. Pete Complete is a completionist Channel and the "Prologue" on the Nautiloid took him over an hour to finish up. The fight was very similar to yours. I am going to binge your walkthrough now, because it is very entertaining, keep it up ;-)
I tried this as a drow bard, got really close but luck wasn't on my side, too many misses and initiative screwed me over xD well, time for another try. It is fun for sure
Better luck with try 2! It's definitely a luck-based fight any way you tackle the battle. Just to check, I assume you used Faerie Fire on the cambions, right?
Sorry, you're saying ALL classes, including Paladins and strength-based fighters, need 16 in DEX? That makes absolutely zero sense. Strength-based paladins and fighters have very little benefit from DEX. Certain clerics get heavy armor proficiency, and as a result have very little use for DEX. You shouldn't drop it to 8, but it's not essential at all when you have access to heavy armor. If you're worried about initiative, take the Alert feat.
Absolutely all builds including strength based ones should indeed max dexterity in this game if you're trying to optimize NOTHING is more important than winning initiative consistently. And in this game where initiative is a d4, every single point of dexterity makes a huge difference. Alertness is great and every character should try to have it, but a feat is a massive price to pay and most strength builds in particular want something else at level 4 such as GWM or tavern brawler Alertness also simply is not enough on its own because many potent enemies either have alertness too or have +6 initiative from massive dexterity. One needs both alert AND good dexterity to continually go first. Not to mention by act 2 there are multiple medium armors which let you add your full Dexterity to AC and can outclass heavy armor. And then of course the stat has minor benefits too like boosting most ranged attacks and two important skills and an important save
This may not be the healthiest thing to do but you can still save scum on honor mode if you open task manager and kill bg3.exe. It will fail to save and report as a crash. Again, probably not the best thing to do, but it is a form of save scumming lol
Shouldn't your warlock have 2 weapons equipped? If you have on the dual strike option even when an attack of opportunity is procced you get both attacks. And, you weren't using his bonus action either really
@@orionstokesweiss2344 it depends! As I recall, I didn't find a second dagger, so I would have had to use a weapon I'm not proficient with, meaning the hit chance would be pretty bad and thus not help much. Depending on initiative order, I also wanted to be ready to shove the mindflayer with my bonus action, and I didn't want to waste an action switching to a dual wield setup once the battle began and I saw how good my initiative was. But yes, with this initiative it probably would have been *slightly* better to dual wield!
Melth, in your nine hells run, you apply hex strength a lot. Is that purely to reduce chances that enemies will resist being shoved, or are there other uses? I never used it in my playthrough.
That's exactly right! Hex imposes disadvantage on ability checks (but NOT saving throws or attack rolls) for the specified ability. However, most ability checks never come up in combat. The only ability checks that DO come up in combat are Strength or Dexterity to avoid getting shoved or thrown. So it's a good habit to always hex one of those two stats. Almost always, you want to hex whichever is higher for the enemy, Strength or Dexterity. There can be exceptions in theory, but I don't think they're common enough to worry about.
@@Jayboyd1260 paladin is one of the worst classes for this, with no useful features or abilities for this fight. So it's possible but it's pure luck. You'd be better off starting as a class which is actually good at this fight and then re-speccing to paladin when you meet Withers
In this case it wouldn't work. Astral Knowledge: Strength would grant proficiency in Athletics, which does normally help with shoving... but Lae'Zel already HAS proficiency in Athletics so it wouldn't help her at all
It makes a big difference! With 4 people it's outright easy since you have potentially 4 custom characters+ Lae'Zel + Shadowheart + Us for a massive army
I just finished a HM run a few days ago, and watching this I realize I still suck at this game. Sure, I got the sword and Zhalk, but no way I'm finishing the Cambions too.
I have never been able to kill everyone in this fight, no matter the difficulty. Ironically i came the closest in honor mode. My game dice are just as bad as my real dnd dice apparently, xD
With patch 7 they patched the cambions kill cheese without entering in combat in the shadowheart room making almost impossible kill all enemies in honour mode as showed in this video without the warlock and a lot of luck, however the chest trick to stop the cambions still works.
@@heisenberg9236 I just battled them again on a new patch 7 run and wrecked them. My strategies here all still work! You can also do it with a druid or bard pretty well. It's kind of a tradeoff that with druid you need more luck on turn 1 to get Command to work from Shadowheart, but then you need less luck after that because Faerie Fire and Longstrider and Long Jump and Shillelagh make your party outperform a warlock one
@@Melth I am trying to do a "solo tempest cleric sorcerer no respec run", of course solo starts after the nautiloid, do you think this strategy works as cleric or do you have any advise to kill commander zhalk and the cambions as cleric starting class?
@@heisenberg9236 it's workable, but you'll struggle to do enough damage. SOME clerics can do a good job of it (Light cleric gets Faerie Fire, Nature Cleric gets shillelagh, etc.). Tempest cleric will be a bad kind of cleric for the job though. On the plus side you'll have plenty of Command slots and plenty of Bless slots. You can probably spare a spell slot for something like Protection From Evil or Shield of Faith on the mindflayer. Or alternatively you can use 2 blesses at once to have the whole party and the mindflayer do boosted damage that way. You might also want to restart until you get a speed potion. You'll be desperate for damage, and a speed potion boosting the mindflayer + 2 teammates will help
@@facitush4322 well hopefully my tips are helpful! I think besides the kind of strategy things I talk about in my series, one of the most fundamental things is just to know how the game mechanics work. If you know how things like accuracy are calculated, it's easier to know how to make your own characters hit and make enemies miss. It's also good to know which classic fantasy or video games archetypes and roles do or don't work in BG3 (and 5E d&d which it's based on). For example, having a healer or a tank is a terrible idea in 5E or BG3. The mechanics simply don't support it. So the only viable combat roles are dealing damage/buffing the damage dealers, or battlefield control/debuffs on the enemy. This particular video uses lots of tricks that aren't necessary in most fights, but a lot of the same general principles apply. I got great Dexterity so I can win initiative, which is the most important roll of any combat. I cast the excellent spell Bless on my main damage dealers, I try to stay far away from the enemy (ranged is VASTLY superior to melee in this game, and melee enemies can't even hurt you if your party is purely ranged), and I try to make maximum use of every action or bonus action available on every character every turn
Well the point of all these tips is that it doesn't require that much luck anymore. You can see I had 4 whole turns left at the end as a safety margin if things had gone wrong and I'd needed more damage dealt. I succeeded on my first try but then I found there was a glitch in the middle of the video where it didn't record right. So I redid it. The first redo, Zhalk resisted all commands, so that was a fail. This is the third overall run with 2 successes out of 3 tries
@@Brockxz it's because he was standing on Caustic Brine and the pommel strike did fire damage because I had dipped the sword in fire. Caustic Brine explodes and throws people a huge distance in sometimes illogical directions if anyone takes fire damage
@@Melth thanks for reply, yeah, didn't noticed that caustic brine there. Love this game, been playing since early access and every time I see how someone else do some things I always learn more and more ways how to beat things up.
