I'm in the cave of Auntie Ethel's tea party and I'm struggling quite a bit with these guys.

What was your guys' strategy for them?

I don't remember there being much a trick to it. Sometimes they even lose turns because of the masks. Grease and Mist Cloud help too.

i had astarion sneak onto the high ground and take 1 out before they engaged the rest of the party. when another one came onto the same ridge to shoot down on the party he took that one out as well.

It was kinda implied that they were under her spell, like that elven guy in previous room, before the illusory door, so I dealt with them in 2 different ways:

1. On my first playthough I slaughtered them all. Stealthily moved all my companions to the high ground, and scum saved whenever someone of my team died.

2. On my second playthough I took a different approach. I was curious if you don't kill them, but kill Ethel instead, will her magical hold on them wane and will they be free? So I gave each of my companions potion of invisibility and moved them, one by one, to the end of the poisonous room. Never even touched them, and to my disappointment, after I went back to chat with that elven guy and that dwarf that was petrified, I checked the masked guys and they still were red... thinking outside of the box doesn't always reward you sadly. I hoped you could have a chat with them, well, maybe when the game is fully released, pretty please Larian?

I did something similar by knocking them out, but I never actually went back after a long rest to see if they'd been freed

You can sneak your squad in and get them into position before the fight kicks off. I split my party up a bit, had most of them group up on the isolated guy close to the door, and I believe I had Lae'Zel placed really far up to take swings at one of their spellcasters / ranged fighters. Other than that, you best come fully rested, the fight is still going to be tough either way.

On my very first attempt.. I kind of assumed that the masks were needed to pass the door. Hells, was I wrong. Regardless, I checked the debuff, and it said; "Lasts until caster is dead". I tried to sneak past them, kill Ethel and save her captors... but then Ethel never spawned. Going to try again on my next playthrough.

I got it guys, thanks.

I don't know why I was struggling with it last night. Took the advice of sneaking and taking out one of the enemies first.

You can sneak the whole party up to that high ground too . Sneak attacks are great, you can take down one of the enemies when all of your party attacks from sneaking.

Oh, I had the same bug happen. She does spawn, but is always invisible in the beginning of the fight. What's supposed to happen is... you walk in her vicinity, she does her little speech and attacks. But that scenario is a little bit buggy right now, basically she's on that tiny bridge close to the orb, if she doesn't do her little speech you have to draw her out by using aoe attacks on that bridge (drop acid cantrips on that bridge or alchemist's fire bottles), it will make her drop her invisibility, but.... in my case she didn't attack me back. She just stood there and took the beating.

Definitely Larian should fix that fight.

I feel like I'm the only one who can't get past the stupid bibberbang clouds. someone in another thread said something about a plate that needs to be covered but all I've been able to perceive so far are the peculiar flowers that explode and disperse the poison for a few seconds, but that's it. And you can only trigger the flowers with a melee attack, which means running your whole party in to get poison damage, then fire damage, through 4 clouds of poison, with nothing but a single short rest and whatever food you have on hand, because you can't travel to camp from within her secret tunnel.

The Bibberbang gas comes from a vent somewhere in the gas, if you consistently fail the perception check, just get a big crate or barrel and put it somewhere in the middle, good luck. I think the game expects you to throw the rocks you can get from the masked guys into the vent holes, but anything will do.

way better than my tactic to pass the poison section. I just blew them up with a fire bolt and did a few jumps to minimize fire damage

Okay that seems.. a little more doable, I think? I don't know why it wouldn't show me the vent when I'm standing in the middle of the cloud and detect the flower, but I guess I'll do some good ol' trial and error. Thank you.

Got through it, killed the hag, etc etc... what is bothering me the most right now is if you have Speak with Dead you can't use it on you-know-who's dead you-know-what. Seems like a missed opportunity to tell this person to get the fuck on with their life. I have save scummed and exhausted that conversation and every path it can take and it still.. honestly, it sucks. Straight up just 100% sucks that there isn't even a skill check to try and make them see a lick of sense.

Yea, with there being no good outcomes for that quest it feels like you might as well just savescum it and pick the best Approval options, which is offputting.

Sneak past using pass without a trace, kill the green hag, and go back to talk to (one) of them. Only works after the patch.

So I managed to sneak past the Masked group and came back after the Ethel fight to talk to them.



...Spoilers.....










Snuck up to the guy by the waterfall first then the dwarf to the left. The dwarf was clear headed and was going to leave for BG Elves Song Tavern but the rest of them were lost. Problem is if you talk to any of the lost ones it starts a fight and the only one you can free is going to die in that fight anyways. Kind of a strange way to end this section.

I passed the poison by setting it on fire and just enduring the fire damage... no problem since I was carrying around an 80 kilogram bag of food and potions...

By the way can you knock out the masked lot and just loot their masks?

There are a lot of these quests that seemingly will continue when you reach Balur's Gate, so not all hope is lost.