Damned Spectral Guards!

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OK I am playing ToTLM, and in Maruladek's castle. I always played on insane till this time and I did not have any major difficulties. Well, AB or some HoW additions added some, rather, interesting and new battles, and I did reload a few times but they were fun.

Those damned Spectral Guards are not fun. First, they are too numerous, they just appear out of nowhere in the first floor and surround my scout. Second, they hit no matter how good my character's AC is. Just what is their THAC0?

Example. My Thief9/Cleric. He wears Elven Chain Mail, wields a very ncie shield with ac bonus of 4, buffs himself crazily withrotection from Evil 10', Protection from Evil (mage version from my bard), Shield of Faith, Draw upon Holy Might (to make his already 17 DEX become inhuman), Entropy Shield, and another level 4 spell which is like Barkskin but better. (forgot name, it is a AB add-on I guess) he has an AC of -18 finally. But when those damn Spectral Guards surround him he goes down in a blink. This makes no sense to me!

So I used my Bard and F/M/T as scouts and meatshields, as they both had Mirror Imaegs+Stoneskins to absorb blows from Guards, Bard casted deadly Sunfires, and slowed them down with a handy Slow, while my F/M/T kept bashing and occasional-backstabbing. It was damn hard. If it was BG2, I would have them use Protection From Magical Weapons spell, this way they would be high untouchable as long as they have 6th level slots left. But IWD does not have such a spell and miror images and stoneskins fall fast when they are surrounded by damned Spectral Guards. It was hard and tiring but I managed to kill them all, finally.

So maybe I don't know how to effectively play the area, how do you guys manage to beat all those numerous accursed Spectral Guards? Do you have any advice? Also what strategy do you recoomend? I play BG2 masterfully, maybe it is due to the fact spell-casters are way more powerful there. But it seems I really need some help in IWD. Oh, btw, my party consists of Bard, F/M/T, Paladin, F/D, Thief9/Cleric, and newly added R/C. They are all highest level, my bard can cast a single 8th level spell. (but Spectral guards are undead=immune to ABDHW ) Any help would be appreciated.

 

The real fun is developing the right tactics for yourself.

You forgot to cast improved invisibility and luck on your cleric.

There are many ways to handle the guards:

My cleric29/mage30 was able to kill a few of them and to make the rest run by turning even in HoF mode. A level 19 cleric should be sufficient to turn them in insane mode.
So your level 30 cleric in sanctuary should be able wipe the floor with them unless Auril's Bane changes this.
But I defeated them without turning in my party game. I just used the standard buffs and a few summons and hacked them to pieces.

If turning doesn't work here's some advice:

You shouldn't have problems giving 100 percent slashing resistance to your druid (water elemental), making him immune to their attacks.

If this is too easy for you then:

Make sure that you don't trigger too many of them together.
Power word blind should work on them with great effect. Blinded enemies only attack characters standing near them and get penalties.

Crippling strike also works very well against them.

A cleric in sanctuary casting blade barrier and circle of bones can also be fun.

 

Now these are all fun ideas. I thought about turning, problem is, my C/T is evil and as such he can only control thm, not blast on sight. My R/C has too little cleric levels as she has freshly joined.

I will consider your ideas though, yes Improved Inv. would be nice indeed. Powerword Blind...does my bard have that spell? Gotta check.

Ah I never bothered with druid elemntal shape changes, are they that good? You say water elemental is completely immune to slashing damage? That is a major bonus indeed!

 

A shapeshifted water elemental is not immune but gets 75 percent physical resistance.
But you can easily reach more than 100 slashing (or other) resistance by wearing some of those things:

- Bone marrow belt gives +50
- Clasp of Bron's cloak +5
- Great shield+3 +15
- Tiernon's shield gives +10 and the special ability gives another +15 to all physical resistances temporary
- there's a leather armor which gives +15 slashing resistance
- the bard song also adds resistance

When your druid shapeshifts spells like protection from fire stop working, so cast them afterwards.
The natural weapon is considered non-magical but your water elemental can use other weapons if you cast dispel magic on her.


You can even raise a C/T's or F/T's slashing resistance above 100 if they are not good aligned (for the bone marrow belt) and you have found and kept the right items.

Only a few monsters have the ability to ignore physical resistance.

I didn't know that evil clerics can control undead in IWD, did you test it ?

 

Sure, I had tried it in Burial Isle and my cleric managed to control a few wighs time to time. It was a headache though, I hate controlling undead (I want to kill them for XP) so I rarely use it.