I personally found the portal fight to be fun, if a little trivial, thanks to a combination of the Daylight spell and various disabling AoEs. Sleet Storm shuts down all of the advancing shadow zombies fairly easily.
I clearly stated that I was nearly out of spells and had no AoE damage spells.
Just bring Gale evocation school and park shadowheart with guardian spirits radiant damage by the portal so anything that goes near gets fried. Gale with evocation has very large aoe damage with ice storm and fire ball while doing no friendly fire damage. You can bring Wyll to supplement that with some Fireballs of your own.
As far as I know Gale is still stuck in the waypoint back in Act 1. Wyll I briefly had with me until he sprouted the horns. I respecced Shadowheart (cl3/pal5). I clearly stated that I was nearly out of spells and did not have any AoE damage spells.
A lot of these complaints are probably poor party comp optimization and unwillingness to adapt to strategies that are called for in different encounters.
But not this one. I have been playing RPGs for ~25 years so I have decent grasp of party composition and adapting tactics. FYI it is tactics not strategies - these are two different things.
Also, how did you get to Nightsong story point and manage to ignore the portal quest for so long? It starts literally the moment you get to your hub after Isobel, and it even gets you a marker for the progression, which is exactly in a location logically before the Mausoleum. You complain about the long cutscenes, skip by quests that by design are meant to be completed before a capstone dungeon, and then seem bothered that the game becomes difficult or churns out negative consequences for trying to ignore and rush past clear hints and guiding, contextual dialogue in the game.
The entire Art Cullagh thing is a mess.
You meet Art in the inn where he may or may not survive the Marcus attack. You return to camp to inform Halsin about it (I can't recall how you put those two things together). That brings you to a dead end. Meanwhile you go out in the badlands and stumble upon Malus Thorm who just happens to drop the lute you need for Art (is there any reason given as to how or why he has the lute?). So back to the inn and play the lute. Art gives you info about Oliver so off to the badlands. I think this is the point at which Halsin hares off to the lake.
Now my situation was that after the House of Healing I carried on exploring Reithwin as this seemed logical to me - Reithwin is a fairly large area with lots to explore whereas the Art quest is to all intents and purposes a minor sub-quest. I had also already met Oliver when I explored the badlands. That is how I play - logically exploring one map before moving on to another. After the Hse of Healing I eventually end up at the mausoleum where I bump into Raphael which gets me the Yurgir gig which in turn leads me the the Gauntlet of Shar which leads me to Balthazar which leads me to Nightsong. Which leaves me encumbered, nearly out of spells and with no AoE damage spells. So logic dictates that selling off the gear and a long rest would be a smart move.
Now we are back to where we started. I return to the inn to sell gear and it is only at this point that I discover that the lake Halsin mentioned is right behind the inn. For some reason he couldn't have just met me in the inn so we go to the portal site together.
The complaint about not being able to sell heavy items is moot anyways as you can send items to the camp chest and just sell items when the opportunity rises again.
I didn't complain about not being able to sell heavy items. What I said was "Luckily Dammon is still there and he has enough money to buy my heavier stuff". That removed my encumbrance.
I don't want to send junk back to camp and have the ball-ache of grabbing it and doing back and forth between camp and merchant. Especially when I have not got a clue when or where I will find a merchant.
I mean, the game literally tells you that entering the Shadowfell in the Gauntlet is a point of no return. If you knew, Halsin is waiting at the shore, why do you go along, doing stuff, that literally tells you, from here on forward, there is no doing sidequests anymore?
The game doesn't tell you what will be gone. Given the time place the message appears the obvious changes would revolve around what happens with Nightsong etc. not what happens at the inn, not that this has anything to do with my OP. I got a similar message in Act 1 but didn't notice anything of note happening. The Art/Halsin/Oliver/Thallin(?) thing is part of Act 2 and at the point I got that message there was a fair chunk of Reithwin still unexplored and I had not made contact with anyone or anything at Moonrise.
You blame the game for stuff, that you messed up and then complain, that the game hits you with consequences.
At what point did I mess up? My complaint is that the game hits you with consequences you cannot avoid. I will say that at one point I did forget all about Halsin at the lake though I probably wouldn't have done things differently as I am never in a rush to be near him. I don't care about Halsin but I now do not know what the failure of the cure the shadow curse quest entails.
But if you don't like games like this, move on, I guess.
Games I've been playing for ~25 years? It is this game I do not like not RPGs.
Zenith above gave you dome tips how to deal with the situation. So if you want to give the game another chance, go back before the said point of no return, rest, switch maybe some spells around and then the Halsin quest is not that hard.
I didn't need the tips.
Btw, you can heal the portal.
That is a good tip and one I wouldn't not have thought of - my logic again, I would never have guessed that an inanimate object would benefit from a healing spell.
but can you make the portal invisible ?
