Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Ethel

Ok I need help for a strategy to deal with Ethel...I literally tried for hours to kill her in her abode because I wanted her loot.

I ended up shoving her off a cliff in the end, but how have people managed to kill her? Does she have anything valuable on her?

I managed to get her down to 10 health a few times but after I refused to spare her, she created more illusions which was pretty much the death knell for my party because I was all out of spells and actions.

She then kept blasting me with acid blast and hold position so I couldn't even counterattack if I wanted to.

Also I am fairly sure the masks were bugged for me because as soon as I put it on on my character immediately turned hostile. I ended up running through those gas clouds lol. Did this happen to anyone else?

She was bugged for me and I couldn't even fight her once she went into her lair. The masks are supposed to turn you hostile, though. They're how she controls her minions.

Remember your potions of poison resist. She hits hard with those poison attacks. I had potions for 3 members of my party and that helped a lot.

Easy way:

Stealth all your characters and let the girl out of the cage, then aggro Ethel. Sneak one of your characters that has an attack that pushes back like thunder wave or repelling blast behind Ethel.

Yeet Ethel into the pit of doom.

Done

I broke this room so hard when I was here. I stealthed around the entire room looking for Ethel, couldn't find her. I went into her back room and took all her loot. I think went to talk to Myranda and the game crashed. I had her conversation start crash my game I think 4-5 times? Eventually I ran around the room thinking she was probably invisible, and then she appeared and had a conversation with me and the game didn't crash!

At this point, I had my stealth Warlock open up with an Eldritch Blast. Ethel stood there and took it like a champ. So I had Lae'zel walk up to her and hit her with the Sword of Truth! Ethel just stood there and let it happen. I felt so bad for her, but in the end I couldn't let her live with all that I've learned. I slowly chipped at her health and wondered, man this would've been a hard fight because its taking me forever to kill her and she isn't even fighting back. Initiative just never rolled for some reason.

This isn't a fight game, I learned it the hard way. Just play it like Chess: think, move pieces just on by one, think ahead. Never move whole party close to each other, keep them well spread out and in best positions, so while one is chased the others can flank. Except the healer, if have to, go in and back to safety. Before fights examine enemies, know their weakness. And you may need to reload a save, try out a new way. Though only first time is really difficult, will be easy after learning it.

So for the first fight in her house, I positioned my characters around her with my ranger up on the second floor and opened with a bow shot from my Ranger. Got her down to almost half health in first turn. Then she went invisible so we had to just pass turns for one round. When she reappeared we took her down below half and she retreats to her lair.

Once we found her in her lair I tried the same strategy but something must have been bugged because combat would not start after shooting her. She would run around looking for my ranger who kept passing stealth checks and then return to her starting spot. I would shoot her again and same thing, she looks for me, I pass stealth check and she returns to start spot. She didn't even care about the rest of my party and we never actually entered combat. So I just kept shooting her from far range until she was dead. Cheesy and boring but not much I could do if combat wont start after I attack her.

I didn’t do anything fancy. My warlocks hexed her and pummeled her with eldritch blast, Astarion went to town with sneak attacks and my ranger used hunter’s mark and wailed on her. Worked out fine.

I tried asking in a separate thread, but has no one tried using the ogre summon warhorn on her?

Scorching Ray and/or magic Missile on all her clones to kill them asap (you need to deal just 1 point of damage to make them disappear), and focusing fire on her with everyone else did the trick for me.