[Cerek the Barbaric]

Encounter - Improved Ilyich & Friends
The Good Guys - Kensai (female), Jaheira, Minsc, and Imoen.

I hid my kensai and Jaheira in the series of corridors to the left of the library, then sent Imoen and Minsc ahead to cast a Lightning Bolt on the demon and use Arrows of Biting on Zhivago (cleric) to nullify his summoning of a Fallen Diva. Well, that tactic never worked because Zhivago always managed to summon the Fallen Dive. Finally I left Minsc with the others and just sent Imoen ahead by herself.

I approached close enough to target the room with a Fireball, but NOT close enough to actually "reveal" any of the enemies on the screen. As soon as she cast Fireball, I had her "Haste"ly run back and join the others in the corridors....then waited for the bad guys to show up.

I gave Jaheira a Potion of Invisibility and stationed her next to the door. As luck would have it, Ilyich was the first one through the door. Jaheira quickly slammed the door shut and everybody attacked. Imoend fired Melf's Magic Arrows and Magic Missiles while the rest of the party just pounded on him. We killed him quickly enough to recover 2 of his 3 Potions of Extra Healing (which we were in desparate need of by now). I grabbed the rest of his equipment, then backtracked away from the library towards the room with all the "specimans" in it. Down that hallway and up through the next one into the "Sewage Room" where I had killed the Neo-Otyugh.

I was planning to attack the group from behind....expecting them to still be grouped around the closed door in the library. However, the Glabrezu had decided to "circle around" also and we met each other in the Sewage Room. Since he was by himself - and I now had some weapons that would hit him - we managed to take him out too. The group was too weak to face the rest of the party by this time, because I had used all of damage spells from Imoen and Jaheira was out of Healing spells too. So we took a chance and Rested in the Sewage Room to regain our spells. A random Shadow Thief "popped in" after our rest and we managed to kill him while suffering only minimal damage ourselves. Then we headed into the library to take on the rest of Ilyich's henchmen.

Sure enough, ALL of the others were still grouped by the closed door. I had to try a few different strategies here too, but finally won by sending Imoen up far enough for Rasputin to see her. I then sent the entire party back down the way they came and waited for him in the Sewage Room. With 4-on-1 odds, he was pretty easy to kill. Same thing with the Jailkeeper Golem. That just left Zhivago (cleric) and Karamazov (Wizard Slayer).

This time, I tried a different strategy. Imoen had found a scroll of Dire Charm in the "Lady's Bedroom" (past the dryads). Since I knew I couldn't prevent Zhivago from summoning the Deva, I used the Dire Charm on Karamazov. I then had her attack Zhivago and the Deva came to Zhivago's aid...completely ignoring my group. As soon as Kasamarov was killed, I retreated back to the Sewage Room one last time. I positioned the party in front of a side corridor so I could run in and shut the door behind me if the Deva followed me..but it never did. So I simply waited until the Summons duration wore off and went back into the library again. Zhivago was all alone now and had used his major spells to kill his former comrade. One more "mass attack" put him out of our misery for good.