i finally made it to dragon's eye level 4 ,but now i'm not sure what i am supposed to be doing. i've talked with all of the Eldathyn priests down there , but they say they don't know anything about the Heartstone Gem that i am looking for.when my thief tries to pick the locks on any of the locked doors ,they all start attacking me . i'm not sure if i am supposed to try and fight all of these guys or what but i have a feeling they are hiding soemthing .any hints?

Yes you will eventually have to fight them... but instead of picking locks there are better ways to do it that will gain you XP. You have to talk to the main priest at the entrance:
(DONT READ BELOW IF YOU WANT TO TRY AND LEARN YOURSELF)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
_Talk to him with someone with high intelligence.
_Talk with a paladin.
_Talk after walking on the golden carpet and getting the text message.
_Talk after clicking on the bookshelf in the small room next to him. You may have to tell the guy guarding it that he's needed outside.

ok thanks, i hadn't thought of trying to talk to him a second time..anyways,i've now "exposed" them as the snake worshippers that they are, and i have fought my way up to where the ritual is taking place.i freed the 4 prisoners and they were helping me for a while , but they all ended up turning on me because my mages were casting skull trap & ice storm and they were taking damage from it as well..my question is if i happen to kill the prisoners while fighting the snakes,is it going to affect the outcome of the game at all or do i need to re-load my last save and do it over? i know one of them had some pretty good loot on him (plus it gave me EXP when i killed him) so that's why i was asking.

About the prisoners....

No technically it wouldnt affect the outcome at all but I strongly advise to reload because...

The prisoners offer you the only safe place to rest on this level and the level above. And you will need to rest a lot later on DE.
My advise is leave the prisoners alone. Dont let them help you. Kill all enemies by yourself (this way you'll get more XP since you dont get XP for enemies killed by the prisoners). After clearing up the level (or at least killing the high summoner) talk to them and they will let you rest should you need it.

MY advice is to do that, take a rest, then kill them. No rep loss, no long term bad stuff, and a flaming longsword (great troll killer!).

well, my last savegame already has the prisoners freed so i guess i have no choice as far them helping me or not because they are already in the main chamber fighting everything.(the save i have before that is WAY too far to go back).

yeah, i knew the pally had a flaming sword because he was tearing up one of my fighters with it. lol. (did not know it was a troll slayer though, that could come in handy) ...i did manage to kill him and 2 of the other prisoners, and i think he had some kind of plate mail on him too (and a LOT of other stuff) but i didn't get a chance to identify anything because by that time, half of my party was dead so i had just quit.i will try again later though.

By "troll slayer", I mean a useful weapon for killing trolls. Any weapon that always does fire or acid is a "troll slayer", and very useful, as it eliminates the need to fill spell slots with acid arrows and agannazer's scorchers.

<font color=green>I always kill Marchon Of Waterdeep and his crew, good stuff and its not that hard to work back down 2 levels to rest if your in the last level. </font>

[ 11-14-2004, 04:16 AM: Message edited by: lost prophet ]

Yeah, +2 flaming longword is great for killing trolls, but not to be confused with the +1/+4 Trollslayer bastard sword you can buy in Kuldahar.

I noticed you can kill Marchon and his party without any reputation loss. I think the reason for this is that they're not really human. The game data says they're actually a party of neutral "goblins". Strange.

It could be that the "neutral goblins" thing is a programming shortcut. I'd assume that the programmers set it up so that killing any human NPC (unrelated to the quests, of course) would result in a reputation loss. In terms of simplicity, it is easier to classify Marchon & Co as something else rather than code in no rep loss for killing just those specific humans.

The reason I think you don't lose rep is that no neutral or good NPCs know they're there. Hence, your party can keep it secret.

I've killed them off a couple times, but it just doesn't feel right.