New Player, Requesting Help Options

[Zarathustra]

Hi everyone.

I am a quite experienced BG2 player (as in: the vanilla game provides zero challenge anymore, but Ascension is still a struggle). Having recently started my first IA game, after perusing this forum for a while, I must say that IA is a very polished mod, and highly enjoyable once one accepts what it tries, and does not try, to do (some people seem to have difficulties with that).

However, I am - of course - up to my neck in trouble with most of the new encounters. So, I have opened this thread to occasionally ask advice once a battle has me stumped for hours on end. Any help would be appreciated; both general advice and moderate spoilers are welcome. Many thanks in advance!


My party consists of:

PC (Vagrant, 11) - very powerful kit, by the way; just I what I need for IA!
Valygar (11)
Anomen (12)
Jaheira (10 / 11)
Yoshimo (13) - he seems rather useless in IA, but I like him (it's not like he'll last anyway).
Nalia (12)

I have cleared the De'Arnise keep and done all the unmodded quests except the Unseeing Eye cult (if it even is unmodded). So you might be surprised to hear the Shadow Lover in the Lilarcor quest presents me with great difficulties. Tanking him seems impossible due to his low AC, his regeneration and his strength drain ability; and spells seem not to affect him, not even Bolt of Glory, which was a disappointment. Help? I am quite impressed that Sikret and others did it with lower-level and less-well-equipped parties.

This post has been edited by Zarathustra: Jan 20 2008, 08:05 PM

[Sikret]

Hi, Zarathustra!

Raven's remark about using different damage types was very important and the key point to defeat some of the enemies in the game. Whenever you observe that your weapon does little damage to an enemy, change the weapon to another one with a different damage type and try to find the appropriate weapon type for that enemy. In some cases it makes huge difference. Lazy players and cheaters may do this by looking at the creature's file in an editor to find out its weaknesses, but a serious player will do this inside the game and during the battle.

As for Yohsimo, I, too, think that he is weak for the level of challenges introduced in IA. You already have Nalia for your needs of thieving skills. Replacing him with Imoen is a good idea, IMO.

Although I'm not a big fan of bards, I concur that even Haer'Dalis can be much more useful than Yoshimo (though not as useful as Imoen can be). You can take some NPC instead of Yoshimo for now and then replace that NPC with Imoen in spellhold. (You may even like that other NPC and decide to keep him/her; who knows? )