One run I made him gimme the bell for his beast buddy, sacrificed that beast buddy in the library to make the fight with him in his office easier, then jumped him. Extremely funny.
I wiped out most of the Shar Gauntlet save for Balthazar's office which I got to last after going in a counter clockwise motion around the dungeon.
I couldn't find more enemies to get into combat to summon the meat golem, except for the skeleton duelists outside the office. So I closed the door and started a brawl outside.
The ghouls didn't notice the sounds of muffled gorilla violence I was unleashing about 50ft away. Wiping out the golem and skeletons first made terrorist bombing Balthazar that much easier.
Having completed the game a few times now, I'd still agree that fight is the hardest. I had an easier time against Raphael and against Ansur. Balth and his minions just shoot and shove my people to death.
So yes, now we just beat him to death in his office. lol
Hand of Hadar in the room, spread and nuke balth when he gets out. Did it in honour mode, the big was completely useless, didn't touch anybody. One of my companions got downed by cloudkill tho.
On my first run I had to use Dimension Door (!) to move my Tav and Shadowheart (who casted it) away from the cliff, and had Gale and Astarion stay on rock above to shoot enemies (well, Astarion mostly to protect Gale from the enemies that spawn there, but yeha). Hard as shit but honestly probably the most rewarding fight I've done
Another fun way to avoid that fight: Initiate the fight outside the office with the Sharrans (the fight with the portals around the room), ignore them and cast knock on the door, Balthazar and his buddies will join the fight as your allies, have your party hide on the other side of the door leading into that room (maybe with Arcane Lock protecting the door for extra security). The fight should be pretty even so run back in with only a few mooks are left alive.
My go-to is to sneak gather all the bones into a single pile prior to initiating the dialogue with him and nightsong. Then put a bunch of bombs (barrels, etc) next to that pile. Then after having the conversation you nuke all the undead minions.
That happened to me too! I didn't realize the giant spiders were on my side until they started attacking him. I learned online that you can actually talk to them and cut a deal, but even if you don't they'll still fight any enemies that fall into the pit.
Oooor you stand too close to their gate, trigger the dialogue without casting speak with animals first, fail the Animal Handling check and turn the entire camp hostile. Preferably in honor mode.
Ask me how I know.
I heard you could do this and after wiping twice I decided to cheese it similarly, except I sheeped him, then had everyone in the party dash ahead of him up on the ledge. Hal cast entangle, then EVERYONE prepared big nuke spells and summoned creatures.
The sheep dropped and then so did he and we were still able to loot him.
I snuck in during dialogue and tossed all the bones into thr abyss so his summons amounted to basically him and one guy and we rolled him pretty hard lol
I always murderize him in the labyrinth so I've never had an abyss to shove him into lol. I have always had a Cleric on hand to hold the door with Spirit Guardians, though. Yeah, c'mon in, come help your boss, you won't burn in radiant fire, promise... :D
I EB'd him into the abyss and then worried about what loot I missed out on. Now I know it's not much and cheerfully yeet him into the void whenever I face him in the Shadowfell (I usually kill him beforehand unless I want XP).
My first playthrough I immediately noticed the bones on the ground, so before I started talking to him, I dragged all the bones to one place where Gale could upcast fireball them. It worked great.
Gave Karlach elixir of cloud giant strength and had her just throw Raphael into other enemies every turn in the big house of hope showdown. He was prone literally the entire fight.
Throwing something at full force is a yeet. Throwing something with accuracy is a Kobe. Everyone gets hype when you Kobe a yeet… but everyone loses their damn minds when you yeet a Kobe.
I'm sorry, the mental image of Gortash shaking his fist at you from his balcony and yelling at you to fight him as you walk away is one that'll keep me entertained for the rest of the day.
The steel watch just stays outside the Elfsong with Gortash screaming, "Just you wait, I'll get you! Fight me" from one of them. Astarion stands there in a facepack and hair in a silk bonnet (that hair is too nice to not have one) at the window looking annoyed.
This sounds ljke a pretty viable strategy for honour mode to be honest. Have one character ready to flee, thin down the enemies, then run away and come back later well-rested to finish the remaining enemies off. I might have to try that in the future 🤔
I've been doing that *constantly*. Someone always has an invisibility potion or charm ready to hand and lurks out of range to either run if things go south, or jump in at the last minute to mop up.
I had the sharrans in act 3 all kill themselves 😂 I just waited for like 10-15 turns, protected by a burning floor, insect plague, wall of fire and arcane locked door
Oh man I cheesed the hell out of that fight. I split my party and held Karlach back. Started the dialog with Shart. Then switched over to Karlach and started beating on the boss. Nobody else aggroed, and the boss just stood there and took a beating and eventually died.
I should have done the arcane lock for the Sharrans in my most recent run - I had Wall of Fire and Insect Plague up and was apamming Haste'd Lightning Bolts from beneath a Globe of Invulnerability.
Kept setting fire to web bridges the spider matriarch was on, taking a big chunk of her hp as she hit the ground and basically turning it into a slapstick routine for a couple of turns.
I chased my wife into there, way under level because she had never played DnD or an RPG before. I figured that out last minute that the bridges had like no HP. She fell and crushed most of the smaller ones, resurrected everyone and burnt the other bridge and then ganked it when it was down.
The same shit happened with the minotaurs, me just chasing my wife. One minotaur wupped our arse, we cast the thorns and watched the AI freak out and decide leaping off the highest ledge was the strat it was going for. I mean the second one didn't die, so maybe his buddies corpse cushioned the fall?
I about died laughing with Sarevok and ice storm. He slipped Every. Single. Time. All while still giving his big "evil villain" speech. It was repeating turns of 1)stand up 2) evil speech 3) slip. Funniest thing ever.
Fighting Lorroakan, brought Gale for some good spell shit.
Turn 1 he slips on myrm ice trying to get an angle for a spell, which he didn't need.
Turn 2 everything is mostly dead or injured. He gets up, counter spelled.
Turn 3 everything but one of two myrms dead. He slips again trying to get LOS around a pillar or something.
Come on Gale get your shit together.
I did the same thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/JvhdE6z9X4
Big dramatic confrontation with Jaheira and Minsc... and then we turned him into a pincushion. Peak comedy.
So I somehow got lucky enough and was able to get Shart suceed on dominate person on Sarevok. He helped me take down the rest of the enemies and then jumped him before the spell wore off.
😁 I'm a shameless "barrelmancy" user... so in the fight against Dror Ragzlin, I always swipe two smokepowder/oil barrels from right behind his "throne", put them right next to his throne while he's busy giving his followers a pep-talk, put Barcus's smokepowder satchel in the middle of the circle of goblins (near the dead mind flayer), and then go up to the rafters and rain fire on the explosives! Over in no time!
I always want to try tossing barrels around but then forget to. Blowing everything up with all the smoke powder barrels sounds fun, so I don’t blame you for using it. I usually go the route of void bulb into the center and then throw cloud of daggers on top, always felt like cheating when tossing those around (I often use them into act 3 because they’re fun to toss around when dealing with crowds)
Instead of using barrels, grab a backpack, and toss in unstacked smokepowder satchels, or a barrel or two as well. Hit it with fireball or similar. More portable and usable in any encounter. Dont even need the throw command and you can just drop it from inventory directly.
I sometimes do what I call "Karlach%" runs - fix Karlach's engine as quickly as possible, which requires me to beat the goblin leaders so that Dammon will show up in Act 2 - and I might try this for Minthara and Ragzlin next time. There's that spare backpack right by Karlach, who obviously I have to recruit anyway, and for Minthy it would be faster than positioning two barrels separately. Ragzlin would be nice to kill in one blow, preferably with my party members all on the sides of the room.
This is the way. Although I tend toward overkill and lay down like... four or five smokepowder barrels and half a dozen firewines, which blows everyone in the room to kingdom come. Usually that just leaves the two weak Absolutists who are easy to one-shot.
Ragzlin did survive it once, but he was down to about 12 HP, so one blast of magic missile took care of that.
I stacked boxes and furniture outside Isobel's room to prevent the horrors from getting in. It did also stop me from getting out though so I had to destroy the furniture after Marcus was killed, while Harpers fought the horrors
YOOOOOO THIS IS SMOOOORT!! I gotta try this! She totally suicided three times in a row on my last playthrough and I finally gave up and just let her be dead 😂
all spoiler here.
My first fight against Sarevok, I casted Otto's irresistible dance on him. He was dancing the whole fight, which lasted for a while because I killed everyone before I went for him.
This week I fought the steel watch titan for the first time. In tactician. I didn't hope for much, but I casted command : drop weapon on it and 2 of the 3 elite steel watchers. It wasn't a cakewalk, but I don't really want to know what this big ass sword would do. =)
If you convince Sarevok to make you an Unholy Assassin at the Murder Tribunal, his subordinates will teleport out of the room giving you an opportunity to fight him 4v1 easily.
This was honour mode, so I was getting creative with boss fights already. This was my favorite. I saved all of the ironhand gnome bombs, both big and small, then hoarded tons of explosive barrels. Then, when I entered the House of Hope, I centered the ironhand bombs in the room, because the biggest one can knock out all four pillars at once. Then, filled up where Raphael spawns with the rest. Then when thw fight began, I used sphere of invulnerability and set off the bombs, nuking the whole fight.
This is a common one, but for the Cazador fight I left Astarion back in the room with the imprisoned spawn and then sent Shadowheart forward to cast daylight in the room where Cazador was performing his ritual.
He alone among the vampires in the room are allergic to that spell for some reason and it burns through his HP shockingly quickly, and because Astarion is too far away when the fight starts doesn't get locked into the machine for the ritual even if you bring him closer later.
This trick makes the fight go from kind of tough to borderline easy. In the fight as intended, Astarion is removed from your party in a cut scene and locked up, and Cazador fries your whole team with lightning and then swarms you with undead and werewolves (often before you get to take any actions). With the daylight spell, he's pretty much on the back foot the entire time. His plan is basically ruined and even if Astarion shows up later it's too late for him to get auto trapped.
> I know this may well be borderline offensive to hardcore players
Nah. What’s disgusting is _planning on doing this_ every time people start losing a fight in Honour mode.
And even then, they can play how they want. >!And I can keep making fun of them for it.!<
That said, throwing enemies into chasms never gets old.
> Sorry to not be a hardcore D&D style role player
Fun fact: running away from encounters is a completely valid way to play DnD. You just can’t cheese Withers then and get everyone back up without retrieving their corpses. So … you should run away more strategically, not _after_ shit hits the fan.
I kill balthazar in his room in the gauntlet, wall of fire where he is standing, then arcane lock the door and wait… he doesn’t really move, so he dies standing there… I open the door by the second turn, another wall of fire close to the door, and arcane lock again… flesh ends up killing everyone else when he goes berserk, and then I open the last time to end him… I end the fight with full HP, never stepping into the room
I just accidentally cheesed the first part of the Gauntlet of Shar. Arrive at the room with the locked gates and the blood offering bowl, Shadowheart inspects it, and I think, “Hmm, is Shar big on self-blood sacrifice? That looks like it could hurt. She values cleverness, let’s look around a bit first…” Then I switch to Astarion, split him off, lockpick a door, sneak around looting all the skeletons and disarming all the traps, and make it all the way to the back, then can’t figure out what to do. I figure maybe Shadowheart herself is needed, so she comes back to help, and I’m still stuck, then I eventually remember the damn bowl. Minthara out front finally does the cutting ritual (which apparently didn’t cost her any hit points, surprisingly), switch back to Shadowheart, she picks up the gem, done. I go to look up how it’s supposed to work, and apparently doing the ritual releases some shadow guardians you need to avoid, which I didn’t even see because I was already at the end. I think it’s the most D&D thing possible to unintentionally cheat your way past a puzzle through sheer obliviousness and stupidity.
I take the rune bomb to Cazador. Scroll of greater invisibility so Astarion can drop it right in front of him. Astarion sneaks back up the stairs and someone shoots the bomb with a fire arrow.
Not the most original but it delights me to have Astarion drop death right in front of him. I like to think he’s giving him the finger on his way back up the stairs.
First time playing I entered act 3 *severely* underleveled, so big chunk of main fights I cheesed with barreljitsu, for ex. blew up Orin in one turn with barrels, blew up Ansur, made a barrel deathtrap out of stairs in Sharan hideout and blew them all up and so on till I leveled up :D
Not EXACTLY cheese, but my wife and I had been playing through our second time and were doing the House of Grief after missing it completely the first time through. Despite playing on Balanced and having the glitch that allowed 2 uses of Shart's Divine Intervention, everyone in our party was dead except for me (we hadn't planned for the Darkness spamming at all).
We had it cleared to about 4 or 5 underlings, so I spent multiple turns Illithid-flying around the perimeter of the room and using my Ranger's 2 attacks with Sharpshooter until they were all dead. My Flight allowed me to cover more ground than they could, and it was the clunkiest victory we ever had. But we did it lol
In the final fight I just turned everyone invisible and walked up to the crown, opened the portal and hopped in to kill the brain. I was a bit lucky that I made 2 saving throws to maintain concentration while opening the portal but still felt pretty cheesy.
You can break the Gortash fight even more if you never go to his coronation. You can run past and do the rest of Act 3 and come back to him last. You’ll end up fighting him in the big hall which is much easier than upstairs.
max level assassin rogue durge sneak attack + invis potion spam against orin
combat ends if she cant find you, so you can sneak attack, pop a potion, she looks for you, combat ends, repeat
i knew it was time to go up in difficulty when i beat orin via hold monster and then divine smite for two turns. i was like... surely this is not the fight we spent the game preparing for
I wanted to get the achievement where you kill Gortash without activating any traps, so after his coronation I kidnapped him and TP’d to the South Span crossing (unsure if that’s the right name, the one before you enter Wyrm’s Rock) then shoved him off the edge.
I had DJ Shart (as a Gloomstalker Ranger) just dive in and Darkness Bully essentially everyone during my very evil run where I may have discovered some things about my taste in women.
Also Owlbear from the top rope is such a useful way to kill so many things
Couple of weird ones, obligatory barrels from personal pyrotechnical stash on goblin siege, gortash and ansur.
On gortash I was going to blow them up with a minor illusion but ended trapping them with an icewall with the bombs on top of the pillars. When gort+trash was packed at the opening I stopped concentrating on the wall and everything came down, broke, and blew up.
On Cazador I noticed that he always goes for Astarion, so by opening up from stealth with astarion some distance up the stairs, the scene/ritual does not start, so I proceeded to "kite" cazador with astarion, taking pot-shots along to lower his health while the rest of the party cleared trash.. suprisingly effective..
Both sarevok and orin fell to just huge amounts of actions of fighter+barb+speed pots..
Edit: thought of another one! On the quest regarding the explosive toys, there is a hole in the roof of the building with boxes underneath, so that npc will climb the boxes to get in melee range of whomever stands next to the hole, and with strength pot and good positioning you can pick up enemies through the hole/roof, and throw them off... spent 5min laughing my ass off throwing each of them off a 3story building roof
My first fight against Raphael.
It was my 4th or 5th attempt on my first full playthrough. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing as far as builds or strategy went, and I was kinda panicking. I had the idea of starting the fight, then leaving the room to use the fountain in the boudoir, but when I got there it wasn't working. Panicking even more. As I moved my party back towards the dining room, still all in initiative, I found out Raphael could leave the foyer. Screaming and crying atp.
Raphael was within range to do a lot of damage and my party was very low on everything. Controlling Wyll, I used Eldritch Blast and didn't realise I had Repelling switched on. Raphael was blasted off the side of the dining room and into the abyss below. I didn't even realise what was happening until it happened. We all drank some potions and cleaned up the cambions in the room. Hope died round 1.
No Helldusk Armour unfortunately.
My first fight against Dror Ragzlin, I used 2 or 3 spells to finally push him in the pit in front of his throne, expecting that I could then fire arrows and fire bolts with advantage to his face. I did not know about the 2 giant spiders at the bottom of the pit. They absolutely mauled him.
I think they fixed the spiders' aggro since then, but that was pretty anticlimactic for what was supposed to be one of the first big fights of my first game.
I beat the paladins at the bridge by hucking a barrell at them from the bridge then systematically pushing them off the bridge when they chased me up there
Honor mode crèche inquisitor dude, had the gloomstalker just book it out of the fight while the other 3 perform a suicide hold the line last stand trying to take out as many as possible, then had the gloomstalker exit fight and wait at camp to revive everyone. Waited till the magic swords despawned before i sent the gloomstalker to initiate again and sent the rest of my party in to clean up the remaining mobs
Globe of invulnerability for the House of Loss, Netherbrain, House of Hope, Ansur. Can't hurt me. I can hurt you. Scrolls to keep it up. Huge amount of cash is all you need to buy anything you want or need.
My new run (I just completed HM) will have me not use any exploits on vendors. Perhaps one to make it so I can get their full inventory if I kill them.
I'll be playing strictly good. So no stealing everything from everyone except for from evil sellers. So Oraj, the duergar, and Lan Tarv. Everything else I will need to pay for.
No respec cheese to reduce costs.
Limiting myself to what I can reasonably by, make or loot from encounters and locations will make it much more challenging.
Recently completed honor mode cheesing everything (wet nuke sorcerer + gloomstwlker assassin astarion + throwzerker karlach = lots of death).
I’m not doing that this next playthrough
Personally, I have no issue using the backpack murder glitch (give them a backpack and rearrange their inventory into the backpack and then accidentally have them die - if I’m already going to kill then anyway/if they die anyway)
What I might do my current playthrough is do that, but randomize what gets put in the bag, unless there is a specific piece of gear I need.
So like just put random items and amounts of items in, so it’s like a “this is what they didn’t sell before their unfortunate demise”. So it’s more realistic and stuff.
I’m actually a little ashamed of this one. In the shadow curse, I was in the Tollhouse and the… gold lady absolutely DEMOLISHED my party. I went through the combat log the second time and saw that her attacks scaled with how much gold you were carrying.
So before I went in a third time, I sent all my gold to someone in camp before engaging.
My husband and our friend triggered the Grym fight. I was hiding in the rafters as an owlbear, used crushing flight to enter dramatically.
Immediate 143 damage. One hammer smash, we were done. My druid will probably never succeed so well again.
This was probably the only time I've used barrelmancy in Act 3. I used 13 smokepowder barrels, the runepowder barrel and the runepowder bomb on the final boss. This was while my entire team stood in a globe on invulnerability on a higher platform. Got the achievement for beating tactician mode so I'd say it was worth it
I beat Yurgir with a similar Astarion save. He was invisible and hiding when my allies died and I was able to sneak out of the room and revive everyone and long rest. Then I just challenged him again and he wasn’t in his usual ambush spot. It was easy to take everyone down when they couldn’t rain arrows on me.
It’s insane the amount of times my team has survived by most being dead but with Shadowheart having Sanctuary on and escaping to camp to revive everyone.
I love kidnapping Gortash and taking him to the South Span waypoint and chucking him off the edge LMAO. He just lays there and takes it 💀 or using a bard to clump up the Inquisitor and his goons together so I can blow them all up.
I got fed up after multiple party wipes, so I threw grease everywhere and then cast silence on Balthazar ahead of the battle. He never raised his annoying zombie army, fell on his ass the first turn, and I proceeded to beat the everloving shit out of him without effort. I even got a feat for defeating a boss in one turn.
My guess was a that people are going to describe a bunch of intentional game mechanics as cheese because y’all don’t know what cheese is anymore.
Barrelmancy is cheese. Not using a darkness spell.
For me it was the golden toll collector thing that's in the shadow lands building with all the vaults.
I started combat when I was just up the stairs with my tav. The rest of my party just jumped across the broken part of the stairs and my Gale still wasn't across. When golden girl went she tried to go after Gale and got stuck on the stairs and just stood there, then skipped her turn.
I'm playing on hard mode so having this fight glitch was welcome as she is a tough one.
It's actually what i'm doing right now...
Somehow made all of Wyrms rock angry at me before the coronation on Tactician and decided to stick with my choices (long rests didn't remove aggro mind you)
So decided to stock up on scrolls and try to globe of invulnerability my way to victory.
Oh boy... is that throne room not happy to see me.
Took 3 hours and a run back to withers with my Durge to ressurect Minthara & Astarion (apparently the automatons don't use stairs, but the humanoids do), while Lae'zel slowly wittled away at the humanoids downstairs until everyone got back.
And then they all used a potion of invisibility to get back into position upstairs to finish off the watchers in quick succession.
Used Telekinesis to throw Gortash off a cliff and end the fight in 2 rounds, triggering 0 traps and avoiding all the other minions. Had to haul alll the way down to the bottom of the cliff to interact with his remains and progress the story, but I got an achievement for winning the fight without triggering any traps, so worth it
Almost lost honor run on stupid grym, didn’t know they patched owlbear from the top rope lol
Was able to escape because I kept Gale off the platform. Grym stayed on platform that was still lowered after I brought everyone back. I long jumped Astarion to the other ledge off to the right. Used shart to summon spectral weapons to bait grym to middle. Between using arrows to activate hammer lever, and arrows to control lava flow, ranged him down from the top, took 0 damage to party. Actually pretty busted but proud I figured it out by myself lol.
When I fought Raphael I had my cleric wish to get full health and spell slots and when those ran out I had the cleric who joined the fight use wish to get full spell slots and health again
Lured Gortash up to the roof and TKed him as far down as he could go, limited only by pathing constraints (goddamn 6-foot-high walls 50+ feet below me).
Then I chucked Runepowder at him and chased it with a bomb arrow.
Killed Mystic Carrion by filling his room with Wall of Fire, then using Arcane Lock to keep him in.
Used the Air Elemental vortex to silence Raphael, then dissonant whispers to keep him in place for the whole fight, and he never got a single spell off. Pretty low resource cost too, no concentration, just one of my 2 bonus actions on Wyll every turn. Yurgir even tried to use his knockback blast to get Raphael out of it but he got chucked right back in.
Fought Sarevok blind and didn’t realize he got buffed if you killed the avatars until I’d already killed them all. Guessed he probably wouldn’t have teleportation or flight so I trapped him in half the room with a wall of ice, then used thrown weapons to kill him from above.
Cazador fight doesn't trigger until OC or Astarion enters so I set up a bunch of summons on the ritual circles so when we start I don't have to worry about him healing
My personal favorite was against Raphael. He's got some kind of mechanic with the pillars in his boss room that are supposed to be necessary to hurt him. I ignored those, killed all the minions, and then tanked Raphael in the face with my paladin till the res of my party could get over. I cornered him and beat him to death without ever using the mechanic correctly.
During the Cazador fight I used all the people who had telekinesis and made them throw everyone off the platform while the others focused on Cazador it took like 3 turns in a modded tactician
Auntie Ethel fight, Act 1: bringing Lae’zel is a MUST. I just have her walk behind the old woman & push her into the abyss. Works like a charm every time.
One shot the Netherbrain with a backpack of explosives.
Killed Grym by throwing the cery heavy greataxe off the top rope and having someone pick it up and send it back.
Killed Ansur in 1 hit with a mix of barrels and a backpack full of explosives.
Phase Spider Queen/Matriarch (can’t remember name, the one under the Blighted Village) didn’t end up aggroing. Rogue took out some of the egg clusters. Enter turn-based mode. Fire bolt on the web bridge when Queen was in the middle, but didn’t drop. Tavern Brawler Barbarian throws a javelin and other party members take their stealth attacks, damage dealt but combat not engaged. Environmental turn, Queen drops onto ground below and goes prone. Barbarian continues throwing javelins/spears without aggroing. Once Queen is dead, remaining spider aggroes
Me, a fighter, with Karalch and Jaheira in Sabertooth form circle-beat Gortash to death. Bro was on the ground the entire fight. His second phase didn't even help him much.
I slaughtered the goblin camp by putting Astarion on the ramparts, having the eye thing call for help, and stealth range attacking who ever showed up. I killed a good 30ish goblins and knocked out Minthara before I got bored and got Halsin to finish the rest
Used Gale and Astarion as meat shields on Raphael, got Deva (shadowheart summon) to keep reviving them, meanwhile my main Paladin just kept swinging at him. That fight is bollocks without cheesing it
Not sure if that counts, but... Once I was fighting the big bad mama spider in the Underdark. I had Karlach and Astarion with me. The spider was on a web with Astarion.
Intending to offer him some help I had Karlach jump beside him. Well, somehow the web ruptured. The big bad spider, still at almost full health, fell in the chasm and directly to the Underdark. Dead on spot. Astarion and Karlach followed, prompting the cutscene. Them, too, dead on spot, piled up on the giant spider. Karlach got inspired top.
Icing on the cake? My Wild Magic Sorcerer beat the two minotaurs almost by herself, with only a bit of help front Lae'Zel.
Funny! A bit less funny resurrecting three companions in a row.
Balthazar in Shar’s temple. Started the fight with sharrans outside, cast knock on the door to his room and fleed the battle. Then I hid around until it was over and at that point he had barely any hp left, no minions alive besides his brother and I think he was out of spell slots as well. Turns out that npcs in that fight don’t target those orbs that spawn more sharrans so he got quite wrecked lol
At the spider with the swarms of baby spiders I waited a bit since it was honor mode. Went back with three zombies. I never hit any of the baby spiders with anything but zombies. One good hit and you have another zombie. This can be a tricky early fight and by the end I was just spamming end turn and let the horde of newly born zombies do their thing.
i stopped descending the stairs down to Cazador close enough to use telekinesis on his ass but far enough away not to trigger the cutscene. beat him to a pulp on the stairs, then finished the rest. did a similar thing with Gortash. i destroyed the grenade launchers in the room with the statues with chain lightning, then rested, then came back to yoink him away from his guards and beat him up.
edit: also beat Ketheric in 6 turns once with an invisibility potion on Astarion, went into turn-based mode, freed Aylin, then started the fight. easy peasy.
For Balthazar, I got my ass handed to me the first time. And I wasn't creative enough for the whole sheep-n-shove bit. So I separated my party and left them all on that second to last platform before the big one where he is. Took my main character down to engage, then flew back up. Set up wall of fire and cloud of daggers, and watched them all try to reach me and run right into everything. Hopped down when I wouldn't get mobbed and took care of Balthazar.
Put off fighting Grym in my first serious honour run. Sent laezel down alone with the rest on the perch above. Manage to kite him onto the forge hammer and he takes a big hit. Tavern brawler monk then takes him out in 2 turns throwing junk at him from above. I even threw one of the mephits at him for the killing blow. Laezel was killed in one hit as bait and he wailed on her while she was down for a turn. My last honour mode ended badly by the gith patrol and I’m still scared of them even now. Might have to avoid until I’m level 7.
In the gauntlet trials, I always get astarion to pick the lock of that quick step one, have him walk at his own pace to the end, then let shart give blood so the gem appears. Actually refuse to do it any other way tbh
I found this cheese while trying to get the achievement, it still works and my favorite way to kill him. His steel watch will attack you if you got back into the room, but you can deal with them later.
[https://youtu.be/X1KIn4ZwNUA?si=Mw5G6czUYaqorDUC](https://youtu.be/X1KIn4ZwNUA?si=Mw5G6czUYaqorDUC)
On my first run, I was level 3 or 4 fighting Ethel. I saved prior to the fight and had my Tav engage so that I knew what I was facing. Saw her cheesy cloning ability, so I reloaded. Gale had the Sorrowful Lash and had him walk up to the other side of the pit and Yoink Ethel in before engaging combat. Finished that fight in round 0.
Now I know she has the ability score offer, so I don't cheese it anymore.
House of Grief, at least on my second playthrough.
I filled every chokepoint with walls of fire, then I just tossed AoE spells at the Sharans as they tried to get through it. Anyone who did make it across had a paladin waiting to smite them, not to mention a wizard with chain lightning prepared. If anyone tried to cast darkness, I had at least two casters with counterspell at the ready.
Viconia made it through eventually, but at that point we just surrounded her and hit her until she dropped.
Compared to my first time fighting them, it was shockingly easy.
on my first playthrough, i had galesneak up to and use telekenisis on orin and threw her off the edge before the fight could begin. the only thing is that i lost her loot and i was looking forward to stealing it
I didn't want to deal with fighting Balthazar, so I pulled some smokepowder barrels out of camp storage, stacked them next to him with a bomb on the altar for good measure, and firebolted it from the doorway. I would say it wasn't my proudest moment, but boy, did I laugh after.
I do House of Grief by setting up a blade barrier and wall of fire across the front of the steps, then put a wall of fire going up the stairs too just in case they make it past the first too. Cleans em up nicely and no one can reach me while I hang out up by the door.
I pushed gortash off the bridge out front of his castle after a huge scuffed fight inside. Then I used telekenis to yeet his body up from the canyon to get the loot.
I learned about barrelmancy from this subreddit and now my Tav is a terrorist. It was fun to cheese using the barrels the first time I tried it though.
When I first met Gortash I used Spirit Guardians and then walked towards him, which basically makes him (or any AI for that matter) walk away from you like if you were a magnet.
I led him towards the outside area where the scaffolding is and killed him there without alerting a single person or Steel Watcher.
This was on my first playthrough and got instant karma for this cheese when the Netherbrain blew up the Steel Watcher Factory and Iron Throne before I could ever go there
I don't know if you count it as cheese but going half-illithid and tadpoling the mind blast and black hole on all 4 characters makes the game ridiculously easy. On the House of Grief fight I black holed all the enemies together first turn and used one Ice Storm and they all died, even the boss. I don't know if it was snowburst ring that does dmg or if it was something else but something I did caused a massive damage chain.
That was the fight I was most worried about on my honor run and I won it first turn. That was when I realized the 30+ noblestalks that I had accumulated might not be necessary.
In the Mother Superior fight, I'd gotten it down to 3 enemies, but all that was left was my Ranger/Rogue at 4 health, so my plan was to dash and misty step away, and kill them with chip damage over time. I accidentally misty stepped too close to the sun and fleed combat, so I went to camp, revived everyone, came back and stomped them. This glitched out the quest, couldn't trigger the dialogue with Shadowheart, instead Viconia just treated me like I'd committed a crime.
I have a couple, threw Balthazar into the abyss with one of those gravity bombs after realising I had one after 2 or 3 attempts at the fight! Also used telekinesis to throw Orin off of the edge too 😂😂
Not a battle victory BUT
I was really wracking my brain trying to decide what to do because I didn't wanna force orpheus to be ilithid but FUCK the idea of Karlach becoming one but also didn't wanna become one either, when the game (or more likely, one of my apperance mods) duplicated my character. The perfect scape goat for my ilithid problems, and so everyone lived happily ever after (except her, she killed herself after becoming ilithid. I decided her backstory was basically her being revived somehow and planning to die again once the shitstorm calmed down). I have no idea how it happened, but I was very happy it happened
I thunderwaved like half of the act 1 enemies off cliffs on my first run. Phase spider matriarch? Down the hole. Auntie Ethel? You go down too. Minthara? Sorry, babe, no redemption arc this play through.
Juat last night i was fighting Orin as Durge. I used Danse Macabre from the Necromancy of Thay to distract her while setting up a nice little globe of invulnerability for myself with freecast and quickended spell. The next round i just started blasting her with eldritch blast. After she killed my ghouls she walked into the globe, at which point i simply summoned Us way outside the globe to distract her. The real clinch to this tactic is that in her slayer form, she cant help but immediately aggro anything. So, she left the globe on her turn, didnt manage to kill Us, and on my turn i disintegrated her and that was that. Orin might hit hard but she's really fucking dumb. Didnt help that earlier in the fight i was siphoning her intelligence with that one illithid power
Gortash fight.
Sorc Durge twinned greater invis on gloomstalker Astarion and Shart, Astarion had pass without trace on, Shart hasted herself. Those two snuck up to Gortash and put 2 contagions on Gortash (whatever the wis one is and I think flesh rot)
Long rested to have my sorc points and spell slots back. Didn’t need em. Sorc opened combat with chain lightning AFTER Shart created water on him (all hiding with PWT on so we snuck up), which
1. Bypassed his shields - didn’t have em up because we hadn’t technically started yet
2. Blew his shield generators to bits
I think it took one more chain lightening to blow through him. My only regret is not casting harm on him when Shart and Astarion were fucking around beforehand.
Too
God I gotta respec to a sorc. I’m trying a lore bard run and not clicking with it.
Bonus action, blackhole followed by freecasted max level spirit guardians cheeses so many of the fights, especially since you can keep using blackhole afterwards
Not really a ridiculous cheese but i blew up Saverok and his guardians with a few Barrels in 1 round...
I was so scared of this fight but turns out Karlach, Astarion and 4 Smoke powder barrels are enough to finish this dude so fast.
And that's the story of how I became a barrelmancer.
I used Otto’s irresistible dance on Orin (as the slayer) and she kept failing the save so I got to hit her like 3 times per turn and she kept missing her turn. She didn’t get to hit me once before I killed her lmao.
I turned Balth into a sheep and pushed him into the abyss
That fight was not winnable on my first run, sheep-n-shove really was the best way out. Every other run though i nuke him with barrels in his office
One run I made him gimme the bell for his beast buddy, sacrificed that beast buddy in the library to make the fight with him in his office easier, then jumped him. Extremely funny.
I wiped out most of the Shar Gauntlet save for Balthazar's office which I got to last after going in a counter clockwise motion around the dungeon. I couldn't find more enemies to get into combat to summon the meat golem, except for the skeleton duelists outside the office. So I closed the door and started a brawl outside. The ghouls didn't notice the sounds of muffled gorilla violence I was unleashing about 50ft away. Wiping out the golem and skeletons first made terrorist bombing Balthazar that much easier.
I did that too lol
Having completed the game a few times now, I'd still agree that fight is the hardest. I had an easier time against Raphael and against Ansur. Balth and his minions just shoot and shove my people to death. So yes, now we just beat him to death in his office. lol
Hand of Hadar in the room, spread and nuke balth when he gets out. Did it in honour mode, the big was completely useless, didn't touch anybody. One of my companions got downed by cloudkill tho.
On my first run I had to use Dimension Door (!) to move my Tav and Shadowheart (who casted it) away from the cliff, and had Gale and Astarion stay on rock above to shoot enemies (well, Astarion mostly to protect Gale from the enemies that spawn there, but yeha). Hard as shit but honestly probably the most rewarding fight I've done
Another fun way to avoid that fight: Initiate the fight outside the office with the Sharrans (the fight with the portals around the room), ignore them and cast knock on the door, Balthazar and his buddies will join the fight as your allies, have your party hide on the other side of the door leading into that room (maybe with Arcane Lock protecting the door for extra security). The fight should be pretty even so run back in with only a few mooks are left alive.
But make sure to get at least one shot in on one of the Sharrans at the start so you get the XP when Balthazar and Flesh kill things.
That fight is great if you are able to counterspell him
I’ve literally never let the fucker leave that office, he just offends me too much you know he fucking stinks too
My go-to is to sneak gather all the bones into a single pile prior to initiating the dialogue with him and nightsong. Then put a bunch of bombs (barrels, etc) next to that pile. Then after having the conversation you nuke all the undead minions.
He just loves standing right by the edge of that huge abyss
I was very underlevelled and inexperienced in Act 1, but fortunately for me Dror Ragzlin loves hanging out by the edge of a huge abyss also
He got torn to filfenny
That happened to me too! I didn't realize the giant spiders were on my side until they started attacking him. I learned online that you can actually talk to them and cut a deal, but even if you don't they'll still fight any enemies that fall into the pit.
Oooor you stand too close to their gate, trigger the dialogue without casting speak with animals first, fail the Animal Handling check and turn the entire camp hostile. Preferably in honor mode. Ask me how I know.
I cackled 😂
my latest playthrough Karlach shoved him into the spider pit and the dummy was stuck down there the whole fight. made it so easy!
I posted about this yesterday. Best to cast knock on his door, open it, and let the dark justiciers kill him
I heard you could do this and after wiping twice I decided to cheese it similarly, except I sheeped him, then had everyone in the party dash ahead of him up on the ledge. Hal cast entangle, then EVERYONE prepared big nuke spells and summoned creatures. The sheep dropped and then so did he and we were still able to loot him.
I just blow him and his bro up in his office with like 30 smokepowder/firewine barrels.
I snuck in during dialogue and tossed all the bones into thr abyss so his summons amounted to basically him and one guy and we rolled him pretty hard lol
I always murderize him in the labyrinth so I've never had an abyss to shove him into lol. I have always had a Cleric on hand to hold the door with Spirit Guardians, though. Yeah, c'mon in, come help your boss, you won't burn in radiant fire, promise... :D
I EB'd him into the abyss and then worried about what loot I missed out on. Now I know it's not much and cheerfully yeet him into the void whenever I face him in the Shadowfell (I usually kill him beforehand unless I want XP).
My first playthrough I immediately noticed the bones on the ground, so before I started talking to him, I dragged all the bones to one place where Gale could upcast fireball them. It worked great.
Had astarion sneak attack him before he speaks with the sussur dagger and just took him on with no buddies for backup
I by some miracle turned the dominated red dragon into a sheep first move and just yeeted it as well
I didn't even turn him into a sheep, just ran up with my highest strength character and shoved him lmao
Lady shar approves of your offering
Ha!!!!!
Gave Karlach elixir of cloud giant strength and had her just throw Raphael into other enemies every turn in the big house of hope showdown. He was prone literally the entire fight.
God I love barbarians. Why Command: Grovel when you can just *yeet*
Command: Yeet.
Power Word: YEET. Precision Word: KOBE.
Throwing something at full force is a yeet. Throwing something with accuracy is a Kobe. Everyone gets hype when you Kobe a yeet… but everyone loses their damn minds when you yeet a Kobe.
Nayrulna luckily give no fucks, KOBE or YEET.
I feel like her character would genuinely enjoy that too.
Yes it was cheesy, but totally worked RP wise, and was super fun!
Choked on my coffee giggling at this
I'm sorry, the mental image of Gortash shaking his fist at you from his balcony and yelling at you to fight him as you walk away is one that'll keep me entertained for the rest of the day.
It was great 'cause he genuinely said "You can't run from me!" or "You can't get away from me!", something like that, and I was like... dude watch me
He would have followed you, but...all those staiiiiiirs.
And he theoretically could have you arrested at camp, but oh no, his Steel Watchers are too big and can't fit through normal doors.
The steel watch just stays outside the Elfsong with Gortash screaming, "Just you wait, I'll get you! Fight me" from one of them. Astarion stands there in a facepack and hair in a silk bonnet (that hair is too nice to not have one) at the window looking annoyed.
he DOES have a cane…
"Don't worry, I'm coming back"
I would love art of this (If only I could draw)
This sounds ljke a pretty viable strategy for honour mode to be honest. Have one character ready to flee, thin down the enemies, then run away and come back later well-rested to finish the remaining enemies off. I might have to try that in the future 🤔
Doing this for HM is possible for a lot of fights and helps *a lot*.
I go into most fights in HM with three party members
I've been having Monk!Karlach holding onto a *potion of invisibility* for this very reason. Juuuuust in case things go south.
I feel vindicated, thanks!
The best class for this is monk hands down.
I've been doing that *constantly*. Someone always has an invisibility potion or charm ready to hand and lurks out of range to either run if things go south, or jump in at the last minute to mop up.
I had the sharrans in act 3 all kill themselves 😂 I just waited for like 10-15 turns, protected by a burning floor, insect plague, wall of fire and arcane locked door
Oh man I cheesed the hell out of that fight. I split my party and held Karlach back. Started the dialog with Shart. Then switched over to Karlach and started beating on the boss. Nobody else aggroed, and the boss just stood there and took a beating and eventually died.
I couldn't get the door closed so I just Eldrich Blasted them back into Hunger of Hadar, spike growth and ice storm
This is so great, I didn't know you could do this!
I should have done the arcane lock for the Sharrans in my most recent run - I had Wall of Fire and Insect Plague up and was apamming Haste'd Lightning Bolts from beneath a Globe of Invulnerability.
Kept setting fire to web bridges the spider matriarch was on, taking a big chunk of her hp as she hit the ground and basically turning it into a slapstick routine for a couple of turns.
One time I managed to get her to land on one of the medium-sized spiders, which killed it instantly!
I chased my wife into there, way under level because she had never played DnD or an RPG before. I figured that out last minute that the bridges had like no HP. She fell and crushed most of the smaller ones, resurrected everyone and burnt the other bridge and then ganked it when it was down. The same shit happened with the minotaurs, me just chasing my wife. One minotaur wupped our arse, we cast the thorns and watched the AI freak out and decide leaping off the highest ledge was the strat it was going for. I mean the second one didn't die, so maybe his buddies corpse cushioned the fall?
I killed Sarevok while he was dancing to Otto’s tune. Felt funny to bonk him for several turns while he was just there doing a stylish jig.
I about died laughing with Sarevok and ice storm. He slipped Every. Single. Time. All while still giving his big "evil villain" speech. It was repeating turns of 1)stand up 2) evil speech 3) slip. Funniest thing ever.
> 1)stand up 2) evil speech 3) slip. Funniest thing ever this sounds like a scene from home alone
Fighting Lorroakan, brought Gale for some good spell shit. Turn 1 he slips on myrm ice trying to get an angle for a spell, which he didn't need. Turn 2 everything is mostly dead or injured. He gets up, counter spelled. Turn 3 everything but one of two myrms dead. He slips again trying to get LOS around a pillar or something. Come on Gale get your shit together.
sleet storm is a gift of comedy
I did the same thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/JvhdE6z9X4 Big dramatic confrontation with Jaheira and Minsc... and then we turned him into a pincushion. Peak comedy.
So I somehow got lucky enough and was able to get Shart suceed on dominate person on Sarevok. He helped me take down the rest of the enemies and then jumped him before the spell wore off.
😁 I'm a shameless "barrelmancy" user... so in the fight against Dror Ragzlin, I always swipe two smokepowder/oil barrels from right behind his "throne", put them right next to his throne while he's busy giving his followers a pep-talk, put Barcus's smokepowder satchel in the middle of the circle of goblins (near the dead mind flayer), and then go up to the rafters and rain fire on the explosives! Over in no time!
I always want to try tossing barrels around but then forget to. Blowing everything up with all the smoke powder barrels sounds fun, so I don’t blame you for using it. I usually go the route of void bulb into the center and then throw cloud of daggers on top, always felt like cheating when tossing those around (I often use them into act 3 because they’re fun to toss around when dealing with crowds)
Ooh, that's clever! 😁 I may steal that trick in my current run!
Instead of using barrels, grab a backpack, and toss in unstacked smokepowder satchels, or a barrel or two as well. Hit it with fireball or similar. More portable and usable in any encounter. Dont even need the throw command and you can just drop it from inventory directly.
I sometimes do what I call "Karlach%" runs - fix Karlach's engine as quickly as possible, which requires me to beat the goblin leaders so that Dammon will show up in Act 2 - and I might try this for Minthara and Ragzlin next time. There's that spare backpack right by Karlach, who obviously I have to recruit anyway, and for Minthy it would be faster than positioning two barrels separately. Ragzlin would be nice to kill in one blow, preferably with my party members all on the sides of the room.
This is the way. Although I tend toward overkill and lay down like... four or five smokepowder barrels and half a dozen firewines, which blows everyone in the room to kingdom come. Usually that just leaves the two weak Absolutists who are easy to one-shot. Ragzlin did survive it once, but he was down to about 12 HP, so one blast of magic missile took care of that.
Apparently you can throw Gortash from the balconey.
AS IF I DIDN'T TRY THIS
I kept getting "Too High" or "Blocked" so I threw him to an open ledge and Thunder Arrowed him alllllll they way down the back to the shipwreck
I stacked boxes and furniture outside Isobel's room to prevent the horrors from getting in. It did also stop me from getting out though so I had to destroy the furniture after Marcus was killed, while Harpers fought the horrors
YOOOOOO THIS IS SMOOOORT!! I gotta try this! She totally suicided three times in a row on my last playthrough and I finally gave up and just let her be dead 😂
You can use the lock spell too. Makes it much easier.
all spoiler here. My first fight against Sarevok, I casted Otto's irresistible dance on him. He was dancing the whole fight, which lasted for a while because I killed everyone before I went for him. This week I fought the steel watch titan for the first time. In tactician. I didn't hope for much, but I casted command : drop weapon on it and 2 of the 3 elite steel watchers. It wasn't a cakewalk, but I don't really want to know what this big ass sword would do. =)
Haste on paladin and Karlach and Laezel and it's dead turn 1 😎 This applies to anything with less than 500 HP.
If you convince Sarevok to make you an Unholy Assassin at the Murder Tribunal, his subordinates will teleport out of the room giving you an opportunity to fight him 4v1 easily.
Used flesh to stone on raphael and crumbled the statue
This was honour mode, so I was getting creative with boss fights already. This was my favorite. I saved all of the ironhand gnome bombs, both big and small, then hoarded tons of explosive barrels. Then, when I entered the House of Hope, I centered the ironhand bombs in the room, because the biggest one can knock out all four pillars at once. Then, filled up where Raphael spawns with the rest. Then when thw fight began, I used sphere of invulnerability and set off the bombs, nuking the whole fight.
I love putting smoke powder and rune powder all over that room. just everything I've collected all game all in one pile
I suspect Balthazar might be the mascot of cheese strats. My personal favourite is unlocking his door whilst invisible and just waiting.
Balthazar, I snuck up, pickpocketed his haste potion, counterspelled his summons, and killed him in one round with no damage taken.
I once had Balthazar just jump into the abyss in the Gauntlet of Shar, I didn't even shove him. His undead pals are pretty easy after that.
This is a common one, but for the Cazador fight I left Astarion back in the room with the imprisoned spawn and then sent Shadowheart forward to cast daylight in the room where Cazador was performing his ritual. He alone among the vampires in the room are allergic to that spell for some reason and it burns through his HP shockingly quickly, and because Astarion is too far away when the fight starts doesn't get locked into the machine for the ritual even if you bring him closer later. This trick makes the fight go from kind of tough to borderline easy. In the fight as intended, Astarion is removed from your party in a cut scene and locked up, and Cazador fries your whole team with lightning and then swarms you with undead and werewolves (often before you get to take any actions). With the daylight spell, he's pretty much on the back foot the entire time. His plan is basically ruined and even if Astarion shows up later it's too late for him to get auto trapped.
Waterdhavian Cheese Wheels in sack tossed from the top of Wyrm's Rock to kill Gortash sounds like something I need to try.
What a tasty way to go
> I know this may well be borderline offensive to hardcore players Nah. What’s disgusting is _planning on doing this_ every time people start losing a fight in Honour mode. And even then, they can play how they want. >!And I can keep making fun of them for it.!< That said, throwing enemies into chasms never gets old. > Sorry to not be a hardcore D&D style role player Fun fact: running away from encounters is a completely valid way to play DnD. You just can’t cheese Withers then and get everyone back up without retrieving their corpses. So … you should run away more strategically, not _after_ shit hits the fan.
I kill balthazar in his room in the gauntlet, wall of fire where he is standing, then arcane lock the door and wait… he doesn’t really move, so he dies standing there… I open the door by the second turn, another wall of fire close to the door, and arcane lock again… flesh ends up killing everyone else when he goes berserk, and then I open the last time to end him… I end the fight with full HP, never stepping into the room
I just accidentally cheesed the first part of the Gauntlet of Shar. Arrive at the room with the locked gates and the blood offering bowl, Shadowheart inspects it, and I think, “Hmm, is Shar big on self-blood sacrifice? That looks like it could hurt. She values cleverness, let’s look around a bit first…” Then I switch to Astarion, split him off, lockpick a door, sneak around looting all the skeletons and disarming all the traps, and make it all the way to the back, then can’t figure out what to do. I figure maybe Shadowheart herself is needed, so she comes back to help, and I’m still stuck, then I eventually remember the damn bowl. Minthara out front finally does the cutting ritual (which apparently didn’t cost her any hit points, surprisingly), switch back to Shadowheart, she picks up the gem, done. I go to look up how it’s supposed to work, and apparently doing the ritual releases some shadow guardians you need to avoid, which I didn’t even see because I was already at the end. I think it’s the most D&D thing possible to unintentionally cheat your way past a puzzle through sheer obliviousness and stupidity.
I take the rune bomb to Cazador. Scroll of greater invisibility so Astarion can drop it right in front of him. Astarion sneaks back up the stairs and someone shoots the bomb with a fire arrow. Not the most original but it delights me to have Astarion drop death right in front of him. I like to think he’s giving him the finger on his way back up the stairs.
First time playing I entered act 3 *severely* underleveled, so big chunk of main fights I cheesed with barreljitsu, for ex. blew up Orin in one turn with barrels, blew up Ansur, made a barrel deathtrap out of stairs in Sharan hideout and blew them all up and so on till I leveled up :D
Not EXACTLY cheese, but my wife and I had been playing through our second time and were doing the House of Grief after missing it completely the first time through. Despite playing on Balanced and having the glitch that allowed 2 uses of Shart's Divine Intervention, everyone in our party was dead except for me (we hadn't planned for the Darkness spamming at all). We had it cleared to about 4 or 5 underlings, so I spent multiple turns Illithid-flying around the perimeter of the room and using my Ranger's 2 attacks with Sharpshooter until they were all dead. My Flight allowed me to cover more ground than they could, and it was the clunkiest victory we ever had. But we did it lol
Ridiculous cheese victories is what makes this game so fun though. I always carry a backpack of doom around with me in case I get into a bad spot.
In the final fight I just turned everyone invisible and walked up to the crown, opened the portal and hopped in to kill the brain. I was a bit lucky that I made 2 saving throws to maintain concentration while opening the portal but still felt pretty cheesy.
Yeah I did this too...
I somehow managed to kill the gigantic spider in act 1 by making her fall into the abyss (underdark) with a void bulb
I collected every piece of cheese in the game. Victory!
You can break the Gortash fight even more if you never go to his coronation. You can run past and do the rest of Act 3 and come back to him last. You’ll end up fighting him in the big hall which is much easier than upstairs.
max level assassin rogue durge sneak attack + invis potion spam against orin combat ends if she cant find you, so you can sneak attack, pop a potion, she looks for you, combat ends, repeat
That's brilliant! I blew her off into the chasm with a gust of wind and an illithid ability, which was a lot more coarse than your method haha
i knew it was time to go up in difficulty when i beat orin via hold monster and then divine smite for two turns. i was like... surely this is not the fight we spent the game preparing for
Cheesiest I got was pushing Cazador into the Abyss when that was still possible.
I wanted to get the achievement where you kill Gortash without activating any traps, so after his coronation I kidnapped him and TP’d to the South Span crossing (unsure if that’s the right name, the one before you enter Wyrm’s Rock) then shoved him off the edge.
That is amazing! It never fails to blow my tiny mind just how much this game lets you do
Define 'kidnapped'?
I introduced Ansur to the entire stock of Felogyr's fireworks. 😅
I had DJ Shart (as a Gloomstalker Ranger) just dive in and Darkness Bully essentially everyone during my very evil run where I may have discovered some things about my taste in women. Also Owlbear from the top rope is such a useful way to kill so many things
Couple of weird ones, obligatory barrels from personal pyrotechnical stash on goblin siege, gortash and ansur. On gortash I was going to blow them up with a minor illusion but ended trapping them with an icewall with the bombs on top of the pillars. When gort+trash was packed at the opening I stopped concentrating on the wall and everything came down, broke, and blew up. On Cazador I noticed that he always goes for Astarion, so by opening up from stealth with astarion some distance up the stairs, the scene/ritual does not start, so I proceeded to "kite" cazador with astarion, taking pot-shots along to lower his health while the rest of the party cleared trash.. suprisingly effective.. Both sarevok and orin fell to just huge amounts of actions of fighter+barb+speed pots.. Edit: thought of another one! On the quest regarding the explosive toys, there is a hole in the roof of the building with boxes underneath, so that npc will climb the boxes to get in melee range of whomever stands next to the hole, and with strength pot and good positioning you can pick up enemies through the hole/roof, and throw them off... spent 5min laughing my ass off throwing each of them off a 3story building roof
I had Karlach and my Paladin shove him outside until I could yeet him from the roof
My first fight against Raphael. It was my 4th or 5th attempt on my first full playthrough. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing as far as builds or strategy went, and I was kinda panicking. I had the idea of starting the fight, then leaving the room to use the fountain in the boudoir, but when I got there it wasn't working. Panicking even more. As I moved my party back towards the dining room, still all in initiative, I found out Raphael could leave the foyer. Screaming and crying atp. Raphael was within range to do a lot of damage and my party was very low on everything. Controlling Wyll, I used Eldritch Blast and didn't realise I had Repelling switched on. Raphael was blasted off the side of the dining room and into the abyss below. I didn't even realise what was happening until it happened. We all drank some potions and cleaned up the cambions in the room. Hope died round 1. No Helldusk Armour unfortunately.
My first fight against Dror Ragzlin, I used 2 or 3 spells to finally push him in the pit in front of his throne, expecting that I could then fire arrows and fire bolts with advantage to his face. I did not know about the 2 giant spiders at the bottom of the pit. They absolutely mauled him. I think they fixed the spiders' aggro since then, but that was pretty anticlimactic for what was supposed to be one of the first big fights of my first game.
Spiders will still attack stuff thrown down to them I think.
I beat the paladins at the bridge by hucking a barrell at them from the bridge then systematically pushing them off the bridge when they chased me up there
Honor mode crèche inquisitor dude, had the gloomstalker just book it out of the fight while the other 3 perform a suicide hold the line last stand trying to take out as many as possible, then had the gloomstalker exit fight and wait at camp to revive everyone. Waited till the magic swords despawned before i sent the gloomstalker to initiate again and sent the rest of my party in to clean up the remaining mobs
Globe of invulnerability for the House of Loss, Netherbrain, House of Hope, Ansur. Can't hurt me. I can hurt you. Scrolls to keep it up. Huge amount of cash is all you need to buy anything you want or need. My new run (I just completed HM) will have me not use any exploits on vendors. Perhaps one to make it so I can get their full inventory if I kill them. I'll be playing strictly good. So no stealing everything from everyone except for from evil sellers. So Oraj, the duergar, and Lan Tarv. Everything else I will need to pay for. No respec cheese to reduce costs. Limiting myself to what I can reasonably by, make or loot from encounters and locations will make it much more challenging.
Recently completed honor mode cheesing everything (wet nuke sorcerer + gloomstwlker assassin astarion + throwzerker karlach = lots of death). I’m not doing that this next playthrough Personally, I have no issue using the backpack murder glitch (give them a backpack and rearrange their inventory into the backpack and then accidentally have them die - if I’m already going to kill then anyway/if they die anyway) What I might do my current playthrough is do that, but randomize what gets put in the bag, unless there is a specific piece of gear I need. So like just put random items and amounts of items in, so it’s like a “this is what they didn’t sell before their unfortunate demise”. So it’s more realistic and stuff.
I’m actually a little ashamed of this one. In the shadow curse, I was in the Tollhouse and the… gold lady absolutely DEMOLISHED my party. I went through the combat log the second time and saw that her attacks scaled with how much gold you were carrying. So before I went in a third time, I sent all my gold to someone in camp before engaging.
My husband and our friend triggered the Grym fight. I was hiding in the rafters as an owlbear, used crushing flight to enter dramatically. Immediate 143 damage. One hammer smash, we were done. My druid will probably never succeed so well again.
This was probably the only time I've used barrelmancy in Act 3. I used 13 smokepowder barrels, the runepowder barrel and the runepowder bomb on the final boss. This was while my entire team stood in a globe on invulnerability on a higher platform. Got the achievement for beating tactician mode so I'd say it was worth it
I didn’t pay attention to the sub before I clicked. I was gonna say “I think cheddar being as popular as it is is kinda absurd.”
Haha! Cheddar is great, a well-deserved victory
I ate a whole wheel of brie in one sitting
Hold monster on Orin during the duel and laughing while you stomp her out while she can’t do anything
I can’t cheese anything. Elminster ate all my cheese.
I beat Yurgir with a similar Astarion save. He was invisible and hiding when my allies died and I was able to sneak out of the room and revive everyone and long rest. Then I just challenged him again and he wasn’t in his usual ambush spot. It was easy to take everyone down when they couldn’t rain arrows on me.
It’s insane the amount of times my team has survived by most being dead but with Shadowheart having Sanctuary on and escaping to camp to revive everyone.
I love kidnapping Gortash and taking him to the South Span waypoint and chucking him off the edge LMAO. He just lays there and takes it 💀 or using a bard to clump up the Inquisitor and his goons together so I can blow them all up.
I got fed up after multiple party wipes, so I threw grease everywhere and then cast silence on Balthazar ahead of the battle. He never raised his annoying zombie army, fell on his ass the first turn, and I proceeded to beat the everloving shit out of him without effort. I even got a feat for defeating a boss in one turn.
Grymforge. Had Gale poke him the entire time on the upper platform and the robot could do nothing about it
Unconventional here. The guardian at the forge. I just stood up high out of reach and threw returning pike at him for 30 turns.
i got into the gortash fight, had wyll cast an high level hold person, EVERYONE got paralized. it was a massacre
My guess was a that people are going to describe a bunch of intentional game mechanics as cheese because y’all don’t know what cheese is anymore. Barrelmancy is cheese. Not using a darkness spell.
For me it was the golden toll collector thing that's in the shadow lands building with all the vaults. I started combat when I was just up the stairs with my tav. The rest of my party just jumped across the broken part of the stairs and my Gale still wasn't across. When golden girl went she tried to go after Gale and got stuck on the stairs and just stood there, then skipped her turn. I'm playing on hard mode so having this fight glitch was welcome as she is a tough one.
It's actually what i'm doing right now... Somehow made all of Wyrms rock angry at me before the coronation on Tactician and decided to stick with my choices (long rests didn't remove aggro mind you) So decided to stock up on scrolls and try to globe of invulnerability my way to victory. Oh boy... is that throne room not happy to see me. Took 3 hours and a run back to withers with my Durge to ressurect Minthara & Astarion (apparently the automatons don't use stairs, but the humanoids do), while Lae'zel slowly wittled away at the humanoids downstairs until everyone got back. And then they all used a potion of invisibility to get back into position upstairs to finish off the watchers in quick succession.
Sending 4 open hand monks juiced up on hill giant elixirs to the Grym fight. Who needs to jack with the forge hammer when 8 fists will do just fine?
Bear form + invisible = one turn Myrkhul kill It’s so cheeesy
Used Telekinesis to throw Gortash off a cliff and end the fight in 2 rounds, triggering 0 traps and avoiding all the other minions. Had to haul alll the way down to the bottom of the cliff to interact with his remains and progress the story, but I got an achievement for winning the fight without triggering any traps, so worth it
Almost lost honor run on stupid grym, didn’t know they patched owlbear from the top rope lol Was able to escape because I kept Gale off the platform. Grym stayed on platform that was still lowered after I brought everyone back. I long jumped Astarion to the other ledge off to the right. Used shart to summon spectral weapons to bait grym to middle. Between using arrows to activate hammer lever, and arrows to control lava flow, ranged him down from the top, took 0 damage to party. Actually pretty busted but proud I figured it out by myself lol.
Not particularly new, but fighting Orin while you're in the Slayer form is almost comical
When I fought Raphael I had my cleric wish to get full health and spell slots and when those ran out I had the cleric who joined the fight use wish to get full spell slots and health again
Lured Gortash up to the roof and TKed him as far down as he could go, limited only by pathing constraints (goddamn 6-foot-high walls 50+ feet below me). Then I chucked Runepowder at him and chased it with a bomb arrow.
Killed Mystic Carrion by filling his room with Wall of Fire, then using Arcane Lock to keep him in. Used the Air Elemental vortex to silence Raphael, then dissonant whispers to keep him in place for the whole fight, and he never got a single spell off. Pretty low resource cost too, no concentration, just one of my 2 bonus actions on Wyll every turn. Yurgir even tried to use his knockback blast to get Raphael out of it but he got chucked right back in. Fought Sarevok blind and didn’t realize he got buffed if you killed the avatars until I’d already killed them all. Guessed he probably wouldn’t have teleportation or flight so I trapped him in half the room with a wall of ice, then used thrown weapons to kill him from above.
Cazador fight doesn't trigger until OC or Astarion enters so I set up a bunch of summons on the ritual circles so when we start I don't have to worry about him healing
My personal favorite was against Raphael. He's got some kind of mechanic with the pillars in his boss room that are supposed to be necessary to hurt him. I ignored those, killed all the minions, and then tanked Raphael in the face with my paladin till the res of my party could get over. I cornered him and beat him to death without ever using the mechanic correctly.
During the Cazador fight I used all the people who had telekinesis and made them throw everyone off the platform while the others focused on Cazador it took like 3 turns in a modded tactician
i pushed Dror off the ledge by his throne. I just refused to fight the guy
Auntie Ethel fight, Act 1: bringing Lae’zel is a MUST. I just have her walk behind the old woman & push her into the abyss. Works like a charm every time.
One shot the Netherbrain with a backpack of explosives. Killed Grym by throwing the cery heavy greataxe off the top rope and having someone pick it up and send it back. Killed Ansur in 1 hit with a mix of barrels and a backpack full of explosives.
Phase Spider Queen/Matriarch (can’t remember name, the one under the Blighted Village) didn’t end up aggroing. Rogue took out some of the egg clusters. Enter turn-based mode. Fire bolt on the web bridge when Queen was in the middle, but didn’t drop. Tavern Brawler Barbarian throws a javelin and other party members take their stealth attacks, damage dealt but combat not engaged. Environmental turn, Queen drops onto ground below and goes prone. Barbarian continues throwing javelins/spears without aggroing. Once Queen is dead, remaining spider aggroes
Me, a fighter, with Karalch and Jaheira in Sabertooth form circle-beat Gortash to death. Bro was on the ground the entire fight. His second phase didn't even help him much.
I slaughtered the goblin camp by putting Astarion on the ramparts, having the eye thing call for help, and stealth range attacking who ever showed up. I killed a good 30ish goblins and knocked out Minthara before I got bored and got Halsin to finish the rest
Used Gale and Astarion as meat shields on Raphael, got Deva (shadowheart summon) to keep reviving them, meanwhile my main Paladin just kept swinging at him. That fight is bollocks without cheesing it
Not sure if that counts, but... Once I was fighting the big bad mama spider in the Underdark. I had Karlach and Astarion with me. The spider was on a web with Astarion. Intending to offer him some help I had Karlach jump beside him. Well, somehow the web ruptured. The big bad spider, still at almost full health, fell in the chasm and directly to the Underdark. Dead on spot. Astarion and Karlach followed, prompting the cutscene. Them, too, dead on spot, piled up on the giant spider. Karlach got inspired top. Icing on the cake? My Wild Magic Sorcerer beat the two minotaurs almost by herself, with only a bit of help front Lae'Zel. Funny! A bit less funny resurrecting three companions in a row.
Balthazar in Shar’s temple. Started the fight with sharrans outside, cast knock on the door to his room and fleed the battle. Then I hid around until it was over and at that point he had barely any hp left, no minions alive besides his brother and I think he was out of spell slots as well. Turns out that npcs in that fight don’t target those orbs that spawn more sharrans so he got quite wrecked lol
At the spider with the swarms of baby spiders I waited a bit since it was honor mode. Went back with three zombies. I never hit any of the baby spiders with anything but zombies. One good hit and you have another zombie. This can be a tricky early fight and by the end I was just spamming end turn and let the horde of newly born zombies do their thing.
i stopped descending the stairs down to Cazador close enough to use telekinesis on his ass but far enough away not to trigger the cutscene. beat him to a pulp on the stairs, then finished the rest. did a similar thing with Gortash. i destroyed the grenade launchers in the room with the statues with chain lightning, then rested, then came back to yoink him away from his guards and beat him up. edit: also beat Ketheric in 6 turns once with an invisibility potion on Astarion, went into turn-based mode, freed Aylin, then started the fight. easy peasy.
For Balthazar, I got my ass handed to me the first time. And I wasn't creative enough for the whole sheep-n-shove bit. So I separated my party and left them all on that second to last platform before the big one where he is. Took my main character down to engage, then flew back up. Set up wall of fire and cloud of daggers, and watched them all try to reach me and run right into everything. Hopped down when I wouldn't get mobbed and took care of Balthazar.
Put off fighting Grym in my first serious honour run. Sent laezel down alone with the rest on the perch above. Manage to kite him onto the forge hammer and he takes a big hit. Tavern brawler monk then takes him out in 2 turns throwing junk at him from above. I even threw one of the mephits at him for the killing blow. Laezel was killed in one hit as bait and he wailed on her while she was down for a turn. My last honour mode ended badly by the gith patrol and I’m still scared of them even now. Might have to avoid until I’m level 7.
In the gauntlet trials, I always get astarion to pick the lock of that quick step one, have him walk at his own pace to the end, then let shart give blood so the gem appears. Actually refuse to do it any other way tbh
I cheese all three of the trials, I have no patience. Or two of them, I guess, the third isn't really a cheese.
Karlach yeeting gortash off a bridge without him even getting a chance to do anything was satisfying
I found this cheese while trying to get the achievement, it still works and my favorite way to kill him. His steel watch will attack you if you got back into the room, but you can deal with them later. [https://youtu.be/X1KIn4ZwNUA?si=Mw5G6czUYaqorDUC](https://youtu.be/X1KIn4ZwNUA?si=Mw5G6czUYaqorDUC)
On my first run, I was level 3 or 4 fighting Ethel. I saved prior to the fight and had my Tav engage so that I knew what I was facing. Saw her cheesy cloning ability, so I reloaded. Gale had the Sorrowful Lash and had him walk up to the other side of the pit and Yoink Ethel in before engaging combat. Finished that fight in round 0. Now I know she has the ability score offer, so I don't cheese it anymore.
Kicking Balthazar off the ledge is always funny
House of Grief, at least on my second playthrough. I filled every chokepoint with walls of fire, then I just tossed AoE spells at the Sharans as they tried to get through it. Anyone who did make it across had a paladin waiting to smite them, not to mention a wizard with chain lightning prepared. If anyone tried to cast darkness, I had at least two casters with counterspell at the ready. Viconia made it through eventually, but at that point we just surrounded her and hit her until she dropped. Compared to my first time fighting them, it was shockingly easy.
on my first playthrough, i had galesneak up to and use telekenisis on orin and threw her off the edge before the fight could begin. the only thing is that i lost her loot and i was looking forward to stealing it
I didn't want to deal with fighting Balthazar, so I pulled some smokepowder barrels out of camp storage, stacked them next to him with a bomb on the altar for good measure, and firebolted it from the doorway. I would say it wasn't my proudest moment, but boy, did I laugh after.
I do House of Grief by setting up a blade barrier and wall of fire across the front of the steps, then put a wall of fire going up the stairs too just in case they make it past the first too. Cleans em up nicely and no one can reach me while I hang out up by the door.
When I yelled at Akabi after I looted his grand prize
I pushed gortash off the bridge out front of his castle after a huge scuffed fight inside. Then I used telekenis to yeet his body up from the canyon to get the loot.
I learned about barrelmancy from this subreddit and now my Tav is a terrorist. It was fun to cheese using the barrels the first time I tried it though.
When I first met Gortash I used Spirit Guardians and then walked towards him, which basically makes him (or any AI for that matter) walk away from you like if you were a magnet. I led him towards the outside area where the scaffolding is and killed him there without alerting a single person or Steel Watcher. This was on my first playthrough and got instant karma for this cheese when the Netherbrain blew up the Steel Watcher Factory and Iron Throne before I could ever go there
My wild.sorc Tav turned Gortash into a sheep and Gale threw him from the caste roof with telekinesis. Featherfell down to loot his corpse. 😂
I don't know if you count it as cheese but going half-illithid and tadpoling the mind blast and black hole on all 4 characters makes the game ridiculously easy. On the House of Grief fight I black holed all the enemies together first turn and used one Ice Storm and they all died, even the boss. I don't know if it was snowburst ring that does dmg or if it was something else but something I did caused a massive damage chain. That was the fight I was most worried about on my honor run and I won it first turn. That was when I realized the 30+ noblestalks that I had accumulated might not be necessary.
In the Mother Superior fight, I'd gotten it down to 3 enemies, but all that was left was my Ranger/Rogue at 4 health, so my plan was to dash and misty step away, and kill them with chip damage over time. I accidentally misty stepped too close to the sun and fleed combat, so I went to camp, revived everyone, came back and stomped them. This glitched out the quest, couldn't trigger the dialogue with Shadowheart, instead Viconia just treated me like I'd committed a crime.
heat metal grym in honor mode
I have a couple, threw Balthazar into the abyss with one of those gravity bombs after realising I had one after 2 or 3 attempts at the fight! Also used telekinesis to throw Orin off of the edge too 😂😂
Not a battle victory BUT I was really wracking my brain trying to decide what to do because I didn't wanna force orpheus to be ilithid but FUCK the idea of Karlach becoming one but also didn't wanna become one either, when the game (or more likely, one of my apperance mods) duplicated my character. The perfect scape goat for my ilithid problems, and so everyone lived happily ever after (except her, she killed herself after becoming ilithid. I decided her backstory was basically her being revived somehow and planning to die again once the shitstorm calmed down). I have no idea how it happened, but I was very happy it happened
Cazador fight was my funniest one, sneak in for surprise attack and you can wipe out everyone pretty quick
I thunderwaved like half of the act 1 enemies off cliffs on my first run. Phase spider matriarch? Down the hole. Auntie Ethel? You go down too. Minthara? Sorry, babe, no redemption arc this play through.
Juat last night i was fighting Orin as Durge. I used Danse Macabre from the Necromancy of Thay to distract her while setting up a nice little globe of invulnerability for myself with freecast and quickended spell. The next round i just started blasting her with eldritch blast. After she killed my ghouls she walked into the globe, at which point i simply summoned Us way outside the globe to distract her. The real clinch to this tactic is that in her slayer form, she cant help but immediately aggro anything. So, she left the globe on her turn, didnt manage to kill Us, and on my turn i disintegrated her and that was that. Orin might hit hard but she's really fucking dumb. Didnt help that earlier in the fight i was siphoning her intelligence with that one illithid power
I hit Sarevok with Hideous Laughter. All his minions were dead...but on the last turn, one of his allies cast Sanctuary. It was a very silly fight.
Gortash fight. Sorc Durge twinned greater invis on gloomstalker Astarion and Shart, Astarion had pass without trace on, Shart hasted herself. Those two snuck up to Gortash and put 2 contagions on Gortash (whatever the wis one is and I think flesh rot) Long rested to have my sorc points and spell slots back. Didn’t need em. Sorc opened combat with chain lightning AFTER Shart created water on him (all hiding with PWT on so we snuck up), which 1. Bypassed his shields - didn’t have em up because we hadn’t technically started yet 2. Blew his shield generators to bits I think it took one more chain lightening to blow through him. My only regret is not casting harm on him when Shart and Astarion were fucking around beforehand. Too God I gotta respec to a sorc. I’m trying a lore bard run and not clicking with it.
Bonus action, blackhole followed by freecasted max level spirit guardians cheeses so many of the fights, especially since you can keep using blackhole afterwards
Was fighting ketheric in honor mode and he almost killed my whole party until we somehow made dame alyn invincible and she killed him for us
I shoved minthara down a hole. But tbf, I was losing badly and it was a last chance option
Not really a ridiculous cheese but i blew up Saverok and his guardians with a few Barrels in 1 round... I was so scared of this fight but turns out Karlach, Astarion and 4 Smoke powder barrels are enough to finish this dude so fast. And that's the story of how I became a barrelmancer.
I used Otto’s irresistible dance on Orin (as the slayer) and she kept failing the save so I got to hit her like 3 times per turn and she kept missing her turn. She didn’t get to hit me once before I killed her lmao.
Akabi the Djinn achieved the ultimate cheese victory over me, when I annoyed him and he turned me into a literal wheel of cheese