I am facing these undead busters in the Thieves' Maze right now and they keep slaughtering my party. I managed to kill off one of them, but only after summoning 4 groups of monsters and using almost every offensive spell I had. Unless I camp out in the hallway in order to memorize spells again, I can't really figure out how to beat the other one, not to mention the rest of the creeps yet to be confronted.
Does anyone have any pointers on how to beat these guys without using all my resources?

Speaking of resources, I've never been able to use the Lightening Wand indoors without having it come back and ruin my character's hair. Is there some trick to this?

purina cat ciao- ciao ciao ciao

Gee, what level are you?

I say ATTACK! Rush in with haste the ice arrows are all they really have once you engage them in close combat they are yours.

Camping is pretty safe ... if your a wussy.

Good to meet you, Katherine [img]smile.gif[/img]

Well, what I'd do if I was you, is take your thief, disarm the traps, and lure out ONE of the skeleton warriors. Your thief will take quite a bit of damage from the ice arrows, but just make sure your tanks are ready to fight the skeleton warrior hand to hand, so that your thief can slip away somewhere, out of the line of fire, while they fight it. The skeleton warriors have 84 hp, so the battle shouldn't be that hard. Just make sure your main fighter has very low AC, so that the skeleton warriors have a hard time trying to hit him/her. My main fighter had AC -6 and he hardly got a scratch from the fight. Just make sure they attack your toughest party member. This battle really isn't that hard, you just need a bit of luck. And there's nothing 'wussy' about camping - it's a perfectly good way of restoring your hit points and spells.

Good luck, and hope to see you in General Discussion some time ;)

Re: safely using the lightning wand indoors, a Potion of Absorption will do the trick; that or a some combination of the Boots of Grounding (50%), Robe of Electrical Resistance (20%), a Protection From Electricity scroll (50%), and Potion of Insulation (50%) (although keep other characters well away because they can still get zapped by the ricchochets).

The reason the skeleton warriors are so tough is they have magic reistance (spells don't work on them) and their arrows of ice do tremendous damage in that narrow corridor as you move in on them. All enemies who fire a ranged weapon will switch to melee weapons when you engage them mano y mano. First you have to figure out a way to disarm the traps without taking too much damage. Then send a hasted tank or two (souped up on clerical spells like Chant and Defensive Harmony, and maybe having quaffed a potion of heroism, defense, power, or invulnerability to boot) to engage them up close with melee weapons. As Worm and Arledrian both said, once you get up close they aren't as quite tough as they seemed when they were shredding your ass with those ice arrows.

I wouldnt advise caming, the respawn would be bad enough. Just try and rush in there with all your characters.

A Thief can Stealth and Disarm Traps at the same time: Turning your Find Traps on will cause you to Leave Shadows, but you'll still be invisible for a few seconds, and you can just go into Stealth again.

A Fighter/Thief or Cleric/Thief can Find Traps in full armor--very handy for just this type of situation. If you don't have one, leave the rest of your party a safe distance behind while your Tank and your Thief scope out the territory. Try to draw the bad guys out towards your party, then rush in with Blunt & Spiked.

Question, do you have the boots of speed and the sword of backstabbing?

if so lure them to a corner where you turn 180 degrees and just back stab, run , hide in shadows, back stab, run , hide in shadows.

I always had trouble taking them up front even with 3 fighters...although that was 2 years ago (since then I always used the back stab run tactic and I only got there what 3 times 2 times which I stopped playing (and a third time a few weeks back when I finally killed that sucker sarevok when I got to him.)

This tactic is good for getting close to them without them putting arrows through you. You must have a mage with the invisibility spell or potions of that name. First send your thief invisible to disarm traps. That way said thief can disarm them without loosing the invisibility. Make two of your fighters invisible on have them walk right up to each of the skeleton warriors. Why two of them. Because their are two skeleton warriors. Engage Each of the warriors with one fighter. Once the fight starts, have them concentrate on one. Let your thief attack with the bow and bring in all the others that were standing at a safe distance and let them join the fight.

It's been so long that I forgot how I fought them beyond forcing them into melee. For the traps JR's strategy is great if you have the means to do it. Cast Invisibility on your thief or have him gulp down an Invisibility potion (or as Six said just scoot back out of their sight when you leave shadows). And if you have Invisibility Radius 10' you will be sitting pretty for this fight. Because then you can position your thief behind one of the skeleton warriors (or if you have two thieves then, even better, place one thief behind each of them), your tanks right in front of them, and your archers standing away a bit do their thing. Then they are yours.

Thanks for all the different tactics- I will certainly try some next time. In the interim, I passed these guys by luring them down the hall to the turn, then used the Monster Summoning Wand repeatedly while my characters shot arrows. It took forever, but I was able to get passed them without injury. My characters were all level 5 and 6, I believe (PC being level 5, and NPCs being a mix of 5 and 6). My fighters were all too weak to take these guys on in melee combat (I had to reload several times when I did it that way), or maybe I am just not very good at melee tactics. At any rate, I was only able to get past these boney chaps by creating summoned monsters for them to hack up. The pile of dead at the end of the battle was overwhelming- I had a very difficult time finding the piles that had been the Skeleton Warriors' possessions!

Thanks for the feedback!
Katherine