Toughest Battles
1. The Epic Divine Battle is hardest without question.
2. The battle to keep the Judgment Day sword is the second hardest. I'm pretty sure of that one too.
3. I think Twisted Rune comes next.
4. Not sure, perhaps the regular finale in ToB?

Now any battle can be hard when you face it without sufficient preparation, gear, or levels - so those don't belong in the list.
I think the Chaos encounter is silly. I'd never include it in my list, but others may.
So, I'm interested in what other people think are the toughest battles of IA?

Try improved Demogorgon and maybe you will change your mind about 1'st spot

The best thing about IA is that so many encounters are very well done and the game is challenging throughout! Even Suna Seni is quite difficult. Personally, I always struggle with these 3 fights.

1. Ancient dragon without necromancer (unsilencable) PC
2. Githyanki in WK level 4 (pre-TOB, I almost always complete WK before TOB)
3, Dracolich

Improved Demo is probably still the toughest encounter in the game since this board has been quite good about not posting detailed strategies. I don't know how many people have actually beaten it, but its not many.

I believe EDE was reworked for v6.4 but I've yet to get that far. I recently started a game though so hopefully I'll get there before too long.

Not including doing harder fights as soon as possible and in no particular order :

-Twisted rune has the potential (and used to be) very hard. It's just that positioning can be such a great help that it makes the fight easier by a huge margin.

-The kobolt avatar in Spellhold is not a walk in the park.

-Suna seni is constantly in the head of everyone that starts a new game.

-The wraith lord in watcher's keep can get messy.

-The ending sequence of the necromancer special quest line.

-The final battle of the vagrant special quest line.

-Dracolich.

-Kruin can get messy.

-The first drow ambush with 2 ghost spiders can get messy.

-Demogorgon.

I think EDE became much easier when the ennemies and the party were deployed by script as oppposed to when they would just spawn on the party.

It was mostly just made shorter and less grindy, nothing was seriously changed about its difficulty.

Less grindy - hurrah! Not more difficult when I already consider it very difficult - hurrah! We are all on different levels. I am a good player but not a great player - I just play for my personal enjoyment.
I don't think that I've ever played Improved Demogorgon. I guess I will give it a shot. At the rate I have time to play, I should get to it within a couple of years!

Well, that's better than my pace :-)

Yeah ancient dragon without necromancer PC is hard. Cernd can help a lot if the fight is done later with vagrant protagonist. I don't know if it's the right place to mention it, but there is a cheap way to do that fight for example with vagrant protagonist. I discovered it by accident few years ago :

If ancient dragon manages to greater command protagonist and other party members are away, his behaviour will be to stick next to the asleep PC and do absolutely nothing because in his script there's nothing that says just at least attack the guy next to him even if hes asleep if all else fails.

Just curious - what does Cernd bring besides unsilencable healing? I've tended to keep a cleric tucked as far away as possible out of sight for restorations when needed.

Cernd can be high level enough to be able to dispel magic ancient dragon and he is unsilenceable.

Thanks every one. You are bringing back memories. I can remember having to play that first drow ambush several times - frustrating. I've done most of the battles and agree with you that they were challenging. I don't think that I've ever done the last of the vagrant battles (or maybe I just don't remember it from that description). I haven't done Improved Demogorgon but will. I have never played a necromancer but am considering doing so if I ever actually complete a game.

Gonna bump up an old thread.


How long ago was this? Is it still reproducible?

I've been researching this thing and can't see why the dragon wouldn't attack an unconscious protagonist. The relevant script blocks are there, at the end of the script. The only possibility, of course, is that there's some code block that always triggers before the attack blocks on each script simulation, and the dragon never actually gets to the attack blocks. But I don't see that either.

i also had it on the latest version, but not always.
i had about 20 attempts beating the dragon and it happend 2 times like it is described

Interesting. Do you happen to have a save game nearby for me to investigate?

uff sorry i dont have it anymore. have a new pc and didnt played for a while.