Man I have been playing baldurs gate 2 for a week now and are now on Phaere's mission to either kill the illithids or the beholders. I can't seem to kill them because they kill me and my party first. What can I do?

Jonah, welcome

My favourite trick with Ithillids, is to have a thief / ranger with boots of speed and get them to stealth up to a door and open it, then run.

Re-get them to hide and stand by the door way, sneak a mage (or 3) to the edge of the field of view and get them to cloudkill the area just inside the door.

Then when it hits, get the thief / ranger etc to shut the door and everyone runs..........heh heh

Cowardly but strangely satisfying!

Beholders..........mmmm, i just storm them and hope for the best.

I dont see how they are killing me though, all party members are like on level 19 with over 2000hp (imported from baldurs gate) they must be using a powerword: death spell or something like then eh?

I will try what you stated.

I seem to recall the cloudkills having no effect on the Illithids???

Anyway, I tended to try to draw 1 or 2 Iliithids out at a time. More than 2 can be really nasty. Besides that, keep your party well seperated, as a mind control spell will capture all surrounding players to the target.

Take them down with long range and a tank.

Think it takes out the illitihids (must learn to spell one day), dont think it takes out the Ullithiarids (see above) though.. But remembering right, there is only one or two per room, so after CK was wasted the Umber hulks and the rest, then go in with Chaotic Commands on a fighter and use your thief / stalkers backstab to drop the other one.

Have to be honest i was quite dissapointed by the whole level, thought it should have been lots harder..........guess i was lucky with discovering my tactic early on!

You actually have a choice including a third--the Sahuagins. They're probably the easiest to take on, down in the southeast, if I recall correctly. You might want to give them a shot.

To destroy the Beholders, remember that it's all about what real estate agents tell each other: location, location, location. ;) Try to get a character with the Shield of Balduran as close as possible to the pair of beholders you encounter, first. Keep everybody else well back, and if possible, use some form of group invisibility spell, first. After you've dispatched those first two, the rest are much easier. Just use that single character. And remember, even with the Shield, they're not completely immune to the possible spell effects of those beholder rays. Save frequently.

For the illithids, give someone the boots of speed, and summon up skeletons or higher undead to take the brunt of the attack. What isn't living and lacks a mind can't be controlled by the illithi.

Cloudkill works, but it usually just hurts 'em badly, rather than killing them.. Death fog is usually more effective.
The reason those mindflayers will kill you so quickly, regardless of HP is 'cos they drain 5 pts of intellegence w/ every successful hit, and when you hit 0 you're dead. Skeletons are perfect 'cos they can't be blasted or mind-controlled, and don't have any intellegence to drain. I /think/ that protection from normal weapons works too, so they can't hit you, although I could be wrong on that count.

For beholders, Spell deflection, and Spell Turning are your friends, and can reflect thier attacks back.

If you have the cloak of reflection on a tank, combined w/ haste or improved haste, all the beholder family is EASY to slaughter.

Umm fable IIRC they are Kuo-Toans.

I would recommend that you equip your best fighting tanks with the best armor, load them up with potions of genius, haste them, and finally go kick some mind flayer butt. as for the rest of your party, keep them out of sight. oh yeah, make sure you cast chaotic commands on your fighters before sending them out. save often! [img]smile.gif[/img]

as for beholders, i have yet to see any of their rays not be deflected by the shield of balduran. send that guy it with that shield equipped and make choppe suey out of them. keep the rest of your party out of sight.

[ 04-25-2002, 08:24 PM: Message edited by: swavek ]

beholders are easy, buy the shield of balduran...cheap, but hey...it works [img]smile.gif[/img]

illithids are tougher...but! this works pretty well

if you have an assassin with a big backstab modifier and a good weapon, you can usually kill illithids in one backstab

sooo, cast chaotic commands on your assassin, hide in shadows, go stab, drink a potion of invisibility, stab, potion...etc...