[Rataxes]

Indeed. I already have my entire character planned - i just need to actually obtain these items.

True. What weapons are you planning to use? I went for Long Swords and Katanas myself. Blade of Roses and Dak'kon's Zerth Blade is a good and fairly cheap combo early on. Later on I reckon I'll be swinging Fulcrum and Crom Faeyr.

What do you mean? Most computer-cast disabling spells are character-targetted (as opposed to area-targetted), so running away isn't always a valid option. Care to shed some light?

Lets just say I always carry around a stack of Potions of Invisibility and keep 2-3 lvl 2 slots occupied by Invisibility spells. Whenever I spot a someone casting a disabling spell (easily recognizable by the yellow animation) I simply go invisible, mostly by just running away and hiding in shadows, but I always have those potions and spells as a last resort. This will instantly interrupt the spell and there are only a handful of enemies in the game who aren't vulnerable to this tactic. Against those few I use Potions of Magic Shielding or Invulnerability.

Oh, please, please do! As much as i would like to consider myself as a player with some semi-decent tricks up his sleeve, I admit it - i'm a complete newbie when it comes to soloing Imp. Ilyich. So, any tactic that will help my F/M/T to kick his russian posterior (some knowledge in history required ) are welcomed.

Ok sure. Here's my exact procedure list in extreme detail, most things here should already be pretty obvious to you though I'm assuming that you play with at least v12 of Imp Ilyich.

IMP ILYICH WITHOUT RELOADS FOR DUMMIES

• Make sure character can at least temporarily (DUHM) pump his Find Traps score up to 75, Pick Locks score up to 35 and preferably also Set Traps to 100. Invest everything else evenly between both Stealth Scores, neither Pick Pockets nor Detect illusions are the least interesting for now. My own character is a BG1 Elven template with 19 STR, 20 DEX, 18 CON, 19 INT, 13 WIS and 11 CHA (yes a real power-player), he also had 2 Slow Poisons, 2 Cure Minor Wounds, 1 DUHM (only one is bad!) and 1 Vampiric Touch (surprisingly good) as Bhaal Powers. The ideal Bhaal Power setup would IMHO be 2 DUHM, 2 Slow Poison, 1 Vampiric Touch and 1 Cure Minor Wounds. Necessary spells to choose upon creation are Haste, MMM, Invisibility, MM and MA.
  My own character was at lvl 6/6/7 after doing all the routine stuff in the beginning (freeing characters and getting the dagger + healing potions), right before confronting the Mephit machine. He was wielding longswords (katana first, +1 LS later on), had 65 HP and the base thief scores of
  Open Locks 30
  Find Traps 65
  Pick Pockets 40
  Hide in Shadows 81
  Move Silently 80
  Detect illusions 0
  Set Traps 70
• Stealth, turn off the mephit machine and kill mephit.
• Stealth, move on to djinn and backstab Ogre, usually takes 30-35 dmg and gets a morale failure, kill he if he does, run away, go stealth and backstab again if he doesn't.
• Stealth, go in to the glass chamber room, backstab mephits and take the staff. Disarming and picking the lock on the box earns my character a mage level-up.
• Stealth again before you leave the room, go to the small room with two golems and backstab them (it's possible to turn the right golem around so his back faces the other golem). If one of them doesn't die on the first hit (only 30 hp so it shouldn't happen), hide again quickly before it turns red, backstab again. One hit from these things can swipe 60-70% of your life so make sure they don't. If you fail to hide in shadows when the golem doesn't die, immediately run out of the room and slam the door shut (I'm not sure how close to the door you or the golem can be without obstructing it, but experiment with stop-motion pauses to find out ). If you think you're not going to make it out of the room (and believe me, you're dead if you don't), then stop just infront of the door and let the golem catch up. As soon as he stops to initiate an attack, start moving again, and hopefully you'll get enough distance between him to shut the door.
• Stealth, go past the thief pack and talk to rielev, get the healing potions and stone, ditch the useless thing he gives you.
• Stealth, go to the Sewage Golem room and backstab the mephit. Pick the lock and scribe all the scrolls you get (flame arrow and dispel magic). This earns me a Fighter level-up. Give the golem the stone.
• Stealth, follow golem and kill the goblins. In my game one of them carries a scroll of Mislead (very good for me ), so there's an extra 6000 XP.
• Stealth, walk straight past the Greater Otuygh and move into the opposite corridor. Kill the goblins quickly (the one with the bow can zap your life fast otherwise).
• Detect traps, disarm the bookshelf and floor trap. This earns me a thief level up, raise Pick Locks to 35, which is enough to pick the chest in this bedroom. Scribe all the scrolls and equip helm of Balduran.
• Stealth, go back to the Otuygh and backstab him, this will hopefully deal 18+ dmg and trigger his regen. Run back to the safety of the eastern yellow corridor as quickly as possible, don't want to attract two Dolorious Decay's before getting out of his sight. Use Slow Poison once you're in the clear if you got poisoned. Only cast it immediately after you take damage from the poison, since you'll be interrupted by the next HP zap if you do it later.
• Speak with the nymphs and go to the circular bedroom, disarm and detect as many traps as you can, get all the items and scribe all the scrolls you can as well. When that's done, initiate a casting of DUHM and begin detecting traps immediately afterwards. The table trap and the 2nd bookshelf trap in the first bedroom are the only ones that require FT score of 75 to find and disarm, though the floor trap infront of the center chest in the 2nd bedroom and the third of the three floor traps right by the entrance, also needs 75 to be disarmed.
• Disarm all remaining traps and get all remaining items and quickly head over to the first bedroom and disarm the bookshelf trap there as well.
• The Otuygh's regen will have run out by now, so make your way there and backstab him while DUHM is still on. Retreat to the corridor immediately afterwards and wait for the slow to wear off. If you get poisoned and you've run out of Slow Poison, you should consider letting yourself be hit by the Otuygh before retreating, since his very long-lasting Slow effect will lessen the effect of the pretty much devastating poison (will zap 90 HP on Insane if you just let it be). Continue to backstab and retreat until he dies. Quickly move away from him when you deal the killing blow to avoid the Insect Plague.
• Disarm and pick all the chests, scribe all scrolls and get all items.
• Move to the library and attract the mephit there, kill him and then proceed to lay one trap somewhere in the middle of the corridor , and another one just by the door to the central room.
• Stealth, move to the portal room and get the scroll of Fireball from the left urn, the thief there (may be dogs as well) will hunt you so run back to the corridor and slam the door shut behind you. Scribe the fireball.
• Now sleep, the first night doesn't yield me any thief packs for a very long time, so it is at least for me possible to do all things necessary and sleep again before they even appear. If you're sure that they will appear, move to the glass chamber room. Memorize a familiar, 3 MMs, 3 MAs, 1 Invisibility and 2 Fireballs before resting and try to hide in shadows the instant you wake up, if you fail and the thieves appear, cast Invisibility and make your way to the central room.
• Cast the familiar, use DUHM and lay your two traps in the central room, with some distance between them, you want whoever enters the central room to get a chance to be killed by the first before he stumbles upon the 2nd.
• Now here the somewhat tricky part begins. Wait and listen for the familiar "Shadow Thief: Poison" sound, and then cast both Fireballs into the middle of the room, they should obviously be aimed so that they'll harm the thief. This is why Skulltraps are no good, since they require you to get much, much closer to hurt the thief. You have to wait and listen so that no one of Ilyich's party is anywhere near when you cast the spells (good stereo sound is nice to have here ), otherwise you'll be in mucho trouble if they discover you.
• Stealth, wait until you're alone with the thief (any dogs should've died from the fireballs). Make yourself visible (touching a nearby bookshelf is good) and lure him towards your traps. If you're lucky and get your traps to activate twice (purely random glitch in my experience), or if he took a lot of damage from the dual fireballs, he should die before reaching the center room.
• Stealth yet again, keep away from Zhivago since he'll cast TS if he spots you but cant see you. Wait until you hear heavy thumps moving towards the library and then walk into the middle of the room. Only the Glabrezu can see you, but the other members of Ilyich's party will temporarily move to the spot where he first saw you, and then only after 15-20 secs go after him (not sure how their AI works, but I know they will never actively follow anyone who spots you, just periodically move to new locations where one of them spotted you most recently. Wait until you gain a distance of at least 2/3 of a screen (800x600) and then cast MA on him, keep luring him into your remaining traps and keep pumping MA's into him whenever you gain a sufficient distance. Move on to MMs once you've depleted your MA's. If you're lucky with your remaining traps, and he's unlucky with his 25% MR, you should be able to kill him with these spells before resting. Killing him gives me a new mage level-up and a much needed extra lvl 3 spell.
• Rest, this time the thief pack appears instantly even for me. Your choice where you want to sleep, though I usually sleep in the djinn chamber since it's close and it saves time. Memorize 4 MM's (maybe an ID if you got an interesting wand) 3 MA's, 1 Invisibility, 2 MMM's and 1 Haste (only if you levelled up before resting) Hide or use spell upon waking up and then move to the library while in stealth mode.
• Here comes the part where my strategy has differed the most in all my runthroughs. What I usually do though, is to go stealth mode and lurk behind a bookshelf just outside the center of the library. Wait until you hear only fast-moving and clinking (the sound of chainmail) footsteps approaching the library. Wait until Ilyich moves into the middle and then make yourself visible, skip the dialouge and use an Oil of Speed. Immediately move straight away from him once you get the "Classic Blunder: Land war in Asia" message, and you should be able to avoid it, just like any other non-targetted AoE spell. Ilyich will give chase, but it's still important that he never loses sight of you since he'll then return to patrolling. Lure him into the center room and close all other doors (except the one leading to the bedroom). Once he's in, rush to the door leading to the library and shut it. Run to the corridor and hide. Ilyich's behaviour at this point is a bit unpredictable but normally he'll go hugging the door to the library. Now cast DUHM, MMM and lay two traps in the other end of the central room. Start pelting Ilyich with MMM and lure him into your traps. Deplete your MMM's on him and then start doing normal Hit'n'Run'n'Hide charges until he simply drops dead. Their new AI script has done this easier than ever since they'll stop chasing you just about the instant you move outside their sight range, thus you don't even have to successfully hide in the shadows to be in the clear anymore.
• Open the door, if you're lucky, the rest of the party is still waiting outside and will rush through the door once you open it (dont worry, they'll retreat). Try to lock either the golem or Rasputin in. Neither are particularly easy to face once your Haste has run out, but you can soften Rasputin up with spells beforehand, so doing the golem first is preferable. The weapons Ilyich provided you with should be more than enough to take him down with one or two backstabs.
  If they're not waiting outside, just lure one of them in the same way you lured Ilyich to you. The Golem makes very easily recognizable clinking and fast-moving sounds, and Rasputin has very soft footstep sounds, but they move quickly, so they should still be fairly recognizable.
• Now do the same with whoever you didn't kill in the previous step. Your Haste may run out by now which could pose a problem no matter who you face. Rasputin has a sickeningly long range and very scary Stunning Blows (you're quite simply dead if you get hit), and the Golem has the capability to easily knock you down in two hits if you're unlucky. Regardless, the Hit'n'Run'n'Hide into the yellow corridor is still viable due to their script which causes them to stop giving chase as soon as you move out of their sight range for a split second. If you face Rasputin, soften him up and with all the MA's and MM's you got left, both of them are vulnerable to backstabs unlike Ilyich, so more than 2-3 backstabs (4-5 for Rasputin due to his many healing potions) shouldn't be necessary.
• Rest when they're both dead. You shouldn't need any more offensive spells now, so memorize a lot of ID's (to save money later on),2 Invisibility, Blur and Mirror Image, 2 Haste and 1 Slow.
• Stealth, DUHM and Oil of Speed. Only Zhivago and Karamazov are left now, though both of them are annoying enough. This one I usually solve without locking either of them up. It's just regular Hit'n'Run'n'Hide in the whole area they patrol, until they die. Try to get Zhivago to cast his Fallen Deva and lock it up (easily done) before moving on. Also get him to waste his TS. An excellent way to make him stop and give you a nice oppurtunity for a backstab is to walk up to him while in stealth mode, he'll begin casting TS and you can backstab him to interrupt it, two birds in one shot! Try to make them stop (just show yourself to one of them and they'll move and stay there for a few rounds if you hide again) in one of the yellow U corridors, preferably in one of the corners, or near a bookshelf in the library, this will give you a short distance to your hide-out which not only makes it less probable that they'll get a shot at you before you hide again, but also makes your runs much quicker. You can try to Slow them if you want to, it makes the whole thing a lot easier and essentially makes both of them completely harmless unless you linger too long before moving back and hiding.

This post is getting way too long and the hard part is now over, so I'll stop here, so just tell me if you want tips for the remainder of the 1st level or the 2nd level

[ 04-04-2003, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]