Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Apostle of Myrkul fight made me quit the game

SPOILERS


Apostle of Myrkul is the fight that feels so restrictive it made me quit the game. in the first phase the Mindflayer one shotted 3/4 of my characters, in another attempt the little brains one shotted Gale. If you don't destroy the range undead on the top left you are fucked. If you dont destroy the bone eggs you are fucked. You save Nightsong but she is fucking useless, dies too fast. Karlach cannot literaly do any damage to the boss in 2nd phase. By the time i reach 2nd phase i have no spells left so i just melee attack the boss that FUCKING ONE SHOTS EVERY1. For a game that offers so many ways of play i find this fight forces you to play in a certain way to have a chance.
BONUS: You cannot go back to do other quests and get higher in level because the game made sure to block everything behind after you save Nightsong
THANK YOU LARIAN for making this game more frustrating that fun

You can tell Ketheric to kill himself to skip straight to the 2nd stage.

Uh, ok.
It was almost anti-climatically easy for me.

Same... On tactician.

We can't choose a higher difficulty, but I bet you can choose a lower one.

Perhaps if more folks want to comment here to say that they found this fight easy, they could also give a hint or two about how they approached it that might help the OP or others?

I did spread my party out. I had my halfling bard, Wyll, Karlach and Shadowheart.
My bard sneaked to Nightsong, freed her and started the fight. Karlach kept Ketehric busy and Wyll nuked everything from a higher position, where I parked him before the fight started. Shadow, who by that time had pretty good armor, just healed and buffed mostly and got rid of the riffraff. My bard used stuff like Vicsious mockery and Tashas Hideous Laughter on Ketheric and bard song on Karlach. The nIghtsong and Karlach did most of the hitting on Ketheric.
I wouldn't say the fight was a breeze, far from it, but everyone survived in the end.

The important thing is: You have to free Nightsong first or Ketheric will be unkillable after a while.

What level were you? That's probably a key bit of info.

I managed it today but it was only on explorer.

Annihilate that mind flayer fast. He will destroy you.

Perhaps the people complaining could start pointing where their approach failed to begin with.

Because the problem with these RECURRING threads is always the same: that they don't come with a request of help but as a COMPLAINT that the game is supposed to be unfair.

Guess what? If people are playing this at Tactician and getting on just fine, there's simply NO ROOM to give credibility to any complaint that the game is too punishing at easier difficulty levels.

Anyway I wouldn't even know what to tell the guy since I didn't have exactly to come up with the most sophisticated tactic. Even just having someone in your party holding the Blood of Lathander is enough to put your entire team at a clear advantage.

I played on normal, and while it was the first fight to last longer than couple of turns, it wasn’t too difficult. Wyll focused on killing the archers - before that he summoned a devil (granted by Mizora) to occupy mindflayers. My Tav bard cast haste on Karlach drank potion of invisibility and went hiding in the corner => Karlach andnShadowheart went on to murder non-archer minions, and than went to focus on Kethrck. Once he fell Karlach kept smashing the new boss with 5 attacks per turn, while the rest took care of the summons and focused on the boss if there was no other target.

I think the Apostole fell in 2 or 3 turns - I remember thinking that Karlach is about to go down, and was about to retreat her, but she burned through the remaining boss health.

I suck at this game, played on Tactician, and didn't have too think too hard on this fight either.

How I approached it, IIRC:

- invisibility on team
- sent Gale to AoE the little brains
- sent my sorcerer to AoE the undead
- sent Astarion to free Nightsong
- sent Karlach (respecced to warrior) to instagib the mindflayer

Proceed to jump over to Ketheric, maul him, then play the 2nd phase with almost full resources.

I think something that may help is you can respect Shadowheart to lifedomain, all the healing abilities really helps keep your team alive plus radiant damage does very well here. Second, if you are using Gale using fireball to clear the little brain guys also helps. Third, before you go down to confront the boss battle there is this blue thingy that heals you, cannot remember if it restores spell slots tho. Hope this helps and if not could you please post screenshots of your character builds? This would help me give further advice, good luckl!

I thought the Myrkul creature felt a bit dated in this fight. Did anyone else get that impression? This giant whack-a-mole type thing pops up and fights from it's one spot. It almost felt like an arcade game boss scene, if that makes sense.

Would have preferred if Ketheric was just tougher.

If I'm being really nitpicky, the boss fights in this game don't feel like boss fights so much as they feel like gimmick fights. There's no fight with a character that gives me the impression it's supposed to be important due to its difficulty; rather, it feels important because there's some gimmick to it. Then again, that's basically how Nintendo handles boss fights.

On both tactician and normal this was my main goal.

First i use the fastest character, with haste and speedbuffs to rush to Dame Aylin and they usually arrive within 2 turns.

Then I use wall of fire or Cloud of Daggers ( two of the best spells imo ) on the platform and bomb Ketheric with spells and/or martials.

when he goes Apostle, I used wall of fire, over the apostle, and then use high damage spells or attacks.

The gist of the advice in this thread is that one needs a character with high mobility for Aylin, a character with AOE for the big boss and the lesser grunts, and a heavy hitter/tank who can do a lot of damage and take a lot of damage to focus on the front lines. Then a fourth that is either AOE or high damager for extra security.

I talked Ketheric into killing himself so it went right into the second phase. Then wizard misty stepped up to the mindflayer and used thunderwave to push him down to the ground below. Melee (Jaheira respecced as a paladin and Astarion as a fighter/rogue) took care of him quick, I don't think he even got to do anything. A combo of sunbeam (from shadowheart using blood of lathander) and fireball took out the little brains.

After that, I think I had Jaheira make a beeline for nightsong while astarion and shadowheart kept Myrkul distracted. With my wizard I also plopped down a fire wall on top of Myrkul and summoned a fire elemental. From there it was pretty simple: Nightsong and Jaheira spammed smites on Myrkul, Shadowheart healed when necessary, and astarion and the fire elemental cleaned up the necromites and their spawners. My wizard either launched fireballs to help astarion and his elemental, or just cantripped for some more damage on the boss. I got the achievement for killing him before he absorbed any of the little undead guys, so I don't know what that would do. The platform that the mindflayer starts on is good for casters or ranged damage dealers, my caster was up there and had free reign pretty much the entire fight. I think Myrkul might have once used a weird pull move that teleported my wizard right next to him, but I just misty stepped back up there. It lets you hit most of the battlefield with whatever spells you want. Scrolls of misty step would probably be useful for everyone in the fight since I think myrkul has a "no heal" aura that affects anyone that stands near him. Misty step would let people get to safety, and would also let other characters teleport around the battlefield when they need to take care of adds on the platforms and everything.

Here's the best advice I can give.

1) Have a character sneak up to rescue the Nightsong before the fight begins.

2) Take down all the additional enemies before tackling Ketheric. The Mind flayer should be priority number one.

3) Ideally you'll have a Paladin, Fighter, Monk or Barbarian. Cast Haste on them one way or another. They will probably be able to down Myrkul in a round or two. Have everyone else deal with any additional enemies being summoned. If one of your characters is concentrating on Haste then you need to keep them protected, keep them away from Myrkul and ideally cast Sanctuary to keep them healthy.

If you don't have any of these consider dropping the difficulty down to explorer and use whatever sources of damage you do have to take him down as fast as possible.

fully agree with OP, there seems to be no counter other than having the PERFECT set up and basically cheesing.

I believe they upped the difficulty on this fight also since I started honour mode, imo they went FAR to far, this isn't a souls game.

to everyone saying it was easy, your genuine psychopaths and I don't believe you, you've cheesed or prepared so much it may as well be considered cheesing yes i could haste everyone with a thousand hastes and filled the room with barrels but that's obviously not how the game "should" be played, i don't want to feel like im cheating, i want it to feel earned, and as your so blasé about it i doubt you feel like you "really" beat it either

re playing the game 9 times all the way to this point just to feel like a toddler fighting paddy the baddy is Bull.

my preparation was do ALL quests and get all decent items, i was lvl 9 ish. and had a decent amount of scrolls and potions.

please larian take the edge off this,

also i think it may be too easy on normal mode but honour its ridiculous

I beat it without haste on patch 6 and it was alright. The blood of Lathander really helped my squishest character stay alive, though. However, I had someone sneak in to free the Nightsong first thing. I found the Githyanki ambush more difficult if you don't avoid it -- I had one character go down, one almost down, and one to half HP. The thing about my builds is that I make sure the party can still function with only 3 people if need be and that I use spell slots efficiently. Myrkul really tests your capacity to function in that regard.

There are many fights more difficult than this one. The preceding assault on Moonrise Towers being one. Those Absolute Paladins and Clerics are an absolute pain.

Ol Murky can be dealt with at range quite comfortably.