Fights are too hard: some of this could come down to party balance on my end, poor strategizing, two dimensional thinking, or other weaknesses on my part. That said, the combat at times veers past challenging (a la Icewind Dale) and straight into "haha prepare to die in one turn, idiot." Obviously there are some situations where this should be the case (if my party wanted to take on a mindflayer at level 1, or a lich or something, yeah, we deserve to die), but there are a few very difficult to avoid combat scenarios that I only really won through luck, and possibly cheese. The specifics that stand out to me are:
- The Githyanki Fight
- Minotaur Fight
- Possibly the Goblin Camp if I hadn't cheesed it (see below)
The minotaur one was particularly rough for me, and I only ended up beating it because one of the minotaurs used its incredibly OP jump skill and ended up one-shotting his friend (lol). That said, I'm not sure if this is an instance of these engagements needing to be nerfed, or just getting access to levels past 4 (at this point in my playthrough I def had enough exp for level 5, quite possibly enough for level 6). But the absolutely astonishingly huge number of actions enemies get when they already almost match you with other stats is
extremely tough. Again, I'm not sure if this is just a level thing, but this was my experience, generally.
First off this is great feedback, not only in tone but in content and honesty.
The hardest fight is admittedly the Githyanki fight. You are right, its brutal. They are level 5, and can murder you on the action economy. Even for experienced players it can be rough. You've got to really use the environment, speed potions, all the buffs, summoned creatures and anything else to win that.
Minotaur's have some surprising weaknesses. Both them and the Bullet are susceptible to the spell
Command:Halt as well as Dissonant Whispers, and a Fighter Battlemaster's Frightening Attack.
Also make sure you never turn your back to them (free advantage).
Keep in mind, these fights are optional. But, you probably want to kill them because why not?
World consequences need some tweaking: the goblin camp is probably the most egregious example I can think of, but even if you manage to kill the Goblin Leader (already forgot his name, sorry) without alerting the entire fortress immediately, you still aggro everything in the camp, even if no alarm was raised. This makes helping Halsin incredibly difficult to do if you want to avoid taking on a literal army of Goblins (which are much stronger than I've really experienced in other TFR games, which is a very welcome change.) A redditor somewhere in a post I can't find put it well when they said that the current state of the Goblin Camp essentially invalidates your decision to not take Halsin with you, because no matter what you do, you end up aggroing the entire camp, so not having a giant murderbear on your side really makes that area a slog (I think it took me several hours to get out). Either dialogue options that let you isolate the warlord in the same way you can isolate the Priestess, or some way of being able to do a fight inside the fortress without the entire exterior being magically aware of it would be really nice. Or both. This is a D&D game after all.
EDIT: oh my how can I forget my biggest one! Please let me sort my inventory by weight, please, and maybe just an overall sort button that removes all the holes in it wouldn't go amis. More of a QOL thing but it'd be nice.
There are some other options when dealing with the Goblin camp outside the Shattered Sanctum - look around. You may find a way to weaken many of them at once.
If you decide to take out the leadership inside the Shattered Sanctum you may find another way to escape the Shattered Sanctum, a few ways possibly.
Last you can sort inventory by weight - hit "I" to pull up all inventories and top center right there is the sort inventory button. You can sort by value, weight, type, and latest.
