Greetings from Cairo, Egypt!

My Arabic classes are grating on me and I've decided to return to my HoW game for some relief. I had just started the Burial Aisle when I gave up because I kept getting my butt kicked by Drowned Dead. Any tactics for defeating these guys? Would rather not lower the difficulty level (which is currenlty set one notch above "normal") but I'm not too proud to do so either.

Thanks a lot!

Cary

Drowned Dead, hmm? Well, IIRC, they're fairly slow and they hit hard. I'd recommend plenty of ranged firepower and AoE spells.

If you've got it, Wall of Moonlight is always an excellent spell on Burial Isle. Setting up and Undead Ward won't hurt either.

Also. Use summons to tank them.

Thanks for your responses. But Drowned Dead seem to have high resistance to both AoE spells and ranged weapons. Any other suggestions?

Whats your party? The level 7 druid spell insect plague or somesuch is quite effective. I also think they are vulnerable to blunt weapons.

EDIT: yes I meant Creeping Doom, thanks for the reminder Aerich ;)

[ 09-24-2006, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: ZFR ]

I have a fighter/druid that has inscect plague. I'll try it out and see how it works. FYI I also have a Paladin, Cleric, Theif, Illusionist, and Bard. Yes, I'll admit it, I'm a power gamer. :-(

I don't think you want to use insect plague (lvl 5 druid spell, 1 dmg per round, prevents spellcasting). Try Creeping Doom instead. ;)

Don't even bother with missiles - DD are 90% resistant. If you have slashing-resistance items, load up one character with those items (and sing the War Chant song). If your F/D has hit druid lvl 15, the water elemental shapechange is highly resistant to slashing damage. If you were lucky enough to get the Bone Marrow Belt (random drop in the Hand) and have a lvl 15 druid, your troubles with drowned dead are over (100% slashing resistance).

Definitely use summons. Try to draw as few as possible at a time so you can make your summons last longer. If you can hold the DD for a short time in one place with summons and/or disablers, layer the area with spells. Spike Growth and Spike Stones from your druid are effective.

Also, make sure you buy the Three White Doves mace from the Waukeen cleric in Lonelywood. A chance to utterly destroy tough undead with a single hit is no small potatoes. You can set up your strategy to maximize your opportunities to hit and minimize your chances of being hit if you only attack DD that your summons have attacked first.

Here is something that might be of interest to you. It's essentially a walkthrough/strategy guide I wrote when doing IWD/HoW/TotL on HoF for the first time. There's a post about Burial Isle about a quarter of the way down the page. Watch out for spoilers.

Dancing Virginia - power gaming?

Not with a straight cleric and thief! The thief should always be MC or DC above all the other characters. That includes normal mode. The second most important character to MC or DC is the cleric class. A SC druid could also be of great help -- even if powergaming. They get good spells earlier and those shapechanges, but a F/D is even better, but they're hard to roll and take longer to come to full power.

The DD are slow, so I find ways to slow them further:
Grease
Web
Entangle
Spike Stones (I think this one can slow - not sure)
Death Fog

Shambling Mound - they can kick DD's ass as well.

Roboghost,

I guess I forgot to mention that all of my characters except my Bard and my Paladin are dual classed fighters with their secondary classes being cleric, druid, illusionist, and thief respectively. Basically wanted the advantage of higher hit points in conjunction with the skills. So I guess that makes me a power gamer, huh? :)

Cary

4 dc classes? I imagine it must have been awkward when it came time to dual them. You didn't dual them all at the same time, did you?

And yes, 4 dc classes does qualify you as a powergamer, assuming you dualled them at lvl 9 or higher... ;)

Yeah! Powergamer. I tried one of these party before and its kind of hard to get through the first part of the game.

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#009999">Drowned dead are defiantly tough, fortunately they are slow. You can use ranged tactics but you have to give them everything you got, run to the tower rest and repeat. You can also use a few tough fighters upfront backed by a cleric if you can maneuver them so they can only come at you one or two at a time. If the cleric can set up an undead ward for them to cross over this will allow you to kill them quicker. The terrain on the island allows for this herding tactic. If you have an Australian Shepard it helps, Just Kidding :D . You will most likely have to retreat at times and heal up and rest. Retreated from the dead masses is always an option.

If your druid has the water elemental shape plus bone marrow belt then you are laughing just have him fight all the undead while everyone uses ranged magic and weapons from afar. This was mentioned before but is the easiest tactic and Druids are my favorite class in this game so I will mention it again.</font>

[ 11-01-2006, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

I have figured out a method of dealing with drowned dead (entangle and spike stone in combination with fireball and ranged attacks work well) and I'm looking at the reanimated animal spirits on the eastern part of the Burial Isle. Have any tips for dealing with the bears and wolves? I haven't been able to keep them from mauling me all at once!

Summons, and while the summons are distracting them... Cast Debuffers, Curses, Buffers, etc...

Cheers.

Summons, and heavy use of the druid multi-round AoE spells. Acid Fog is about my favourite mage spell and is extremely compatible with the druid spells to create a boffo spell trap, so use it too.

The animal spirits are also subject to the Three White Doves, so meatshield summons combined with use of the mace is also effective.

I've mentioned this before but I'll repeat: Creeping Doom. It was my favorite spell in Burial Isle.

Unfortunately I don't have Creeping Doom yet because I'm playing on "Difficult" not Insane or HoF so my levels aren't high enough yet. Can't remember if I have Acid Fog. I'm thinking no. But I'll try all of the other tips. If I have more questions I'll let you know...trying to infuse some life into this board. :-D

Sorry, the spell is called Death Fog; Acid Fog is its name in IWD II. Death Fog is mage-spell lvl 6 and I think it's found somewhere in Lower Dorn's Deep.

Any summons will help, although Creeping Doom does the most damage.

The animal spirits are tough, but they don't have, to the best of my recollection, any major resistances other than those specific to undead (cold, poison, enchantment). It's not like drowned dead, which are majorly resistant to missiles. That said, a spelltrap should be effective; anything to cause them damage and/or keep them in place should work, and they are sufficiently vulnerable to missiles. The bears are slow, so they get caught more often than you might expect in AoE immobilizer spells. Just try to avoid meleeing with them, since they do a lot of damage - hence the recommendation to use summons. The key to using the disruption mace effectively is to have a summoned creature attack also attack the undead you are targeting with the mace. Ideally you want the mace-wielder not to be targeted.

[ 11-09-2006, 12:11 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]