the title says it all... these guys easily deal 50 damage or more per turn, and can give themselves advantage. please don't give them 2 or even 3 attacks per turn...
(I have seen a few people saying they think its easy, and if you're one of them... good for you, but the majority of people I have seen agree that the fight is too hard)

It's hard, but possible.

yeah I know its possible, I have also, after many tries, succeeded. I still think it should be nerved.

With the party at lvl 5 it becomes a much more fair fight so I don't think it should be nerfed, its just an EA issue.

true, then it should be much less of a problem. I hope they eventually allow us to go higher then level 4 in EA.

If you come in through the Zhentarim side, you can shoot them from sneak to death without them every moving from the top of the rope ladder. There are a few ways to use the darkness and terrain. That fight is a good signal from them to be creative. They roast you in a face to face, for sure.

i guess, but thats not really engaging

I never suceed...
It looks like you're fighting the big boss of act one but it's only a random encounter.... Don't know why they're doing things like that...

My first reaction was (i was level 3) to go back across the bridge, fight the spectator, and pretty much do the rest of the game. I did them last and it wasnt any easier at level 4. It ended up just being a puzzle. Though, once I did manage to get them to follow me down a ramp and I triggered the bullette which did a serious number on them for help. Overall, a deflating fight, and even at level 5 would 2 attacks from party would still be a hard one to face tank. Some clearer cues on how to win or how to use the environment would go a long way, as they are gatekeeping that portion of the underdark!

I sucked hard. In the first time I played Baldur's Gate 2 I didn't finish it. That's how much I sucked. And still, although it is a difficult fight, I don't think it's impossible.

It's an okay fight .

Spread out, focus on one mino at a time at all costs and you should be okay.

If I recall correctly I was using battlemaster's menacing strike repeatedly (which then, with careful positioning and a tiny bit of luck, would cause AoO and buy my team some time), using duplicity from Shadowheart to give advantage, then either having the Gith do the same thing as my PC (HE Fighter - Battlemaster) or use Wyll / Gale to do whatever they could in terms of damage. Usually, at that point, it would be something like hex + scorching ray while having advantage or scorching ray, grease, mm, ray of frost whichever really made more sense.

Once you drop one mino it's just a mixture of baiting the mino into wasting effort into killing off your casters and then using aid.

I found that if you go through the Zhent back entrance and go down the lift. You could kill one of them completely in stealth. Throw a fireball and go back into stealth, it will just look dumbfounded for a moment and resume it's patrol. My first time I came through it, I was spotted and didn't know what spotted me until one of them leaped and ground pound me into sausage meat, killed 3 of my characters with one hit. I was level 4.

It's just a cascade effect from Larian's decision to change DnD action economy, they reach you due to jumping(because jump distance str based and BA, not movement). Wait for Frost Giants with 23str to appear, they will jump by a half location right to you wizard.

The thing with having a turn based combat system instead of real time with pause is that there should not be any mob fights, because turn based combat is simply too slow for that (looking at you, Wasteland 3!). So instead, have few but difficult fights, which feel unique. From this perspective, the Minotaur fight is excellent, having dozens of fights with goblin mobs is not.

Then Larian, as in DOS:1 and DOS:2, gauges the difficulty so that walk up and smack 'em in a 2:2 formation won't work, being "creative" is at the core of the game. That "being creative" in the Larian sense breaks immersion for some players is a trade off that is baked into the very concept. It may be worse in BG:3, which aims to establish a more serious mood than the perious games, though, but it seems to be clear to me that Larian won't change this because it is very fundamental to the whole concept.

But I'm sure the final build will have a difficulty slider to let stuck players progress.

The minotaur fight was super easy for me. When the Minotaurs attacked me, the Bullette showed up at the same time and basically killed a minotaur for me lol.

I don't think it's impossible and I love difficulty, but if it's well integrated and if it is consistent.

A boss has to be more powerfull and the combats has to be special.
The first random fight you face in the underdark shouldn't. Combats in the underdark have to be a little bit difficult but here it's probably one of the most difficult fight in the game if you don't exploit it's cheesy mecanics. That's ridiculous.

I think the game should be fine with "normal" and easy combats. The game is balanced for every combats being more or less a challenge and that's not fun. We're not random, let us feel like special and powerfull adventurers sometimes... I don't wanna be the hero that isn't able to fight 3 gnolls in less than 8 turns, with companions falling inconscious against the weakest creatures of the FR.

It's an overdose (the word we should describe BG3 with) of challenge. An adventure doesn't need to be a challenge at every corner to be challenging.

Enter the underdark in BG:2, walk a little bit north, be mindblasted to oblivion by three mind flayers just chillin' there. Walk a little bit east, be ambushed by a drow war party with high level clerics and wizards, just chillin' there in the middle of nowhere.

Just the first two random encounters.

Yeah exactly the first fight in the Underdark is supposed to establish how dangerous of a place it is. Baldur's Gate 2 did it pretty well and this fight works really well also.

Clearly it is really hard for level 4 characters. The only way I found to beat it was to sneak away after jumping from the spiders' pit and move closer to the entrance of the Selunite outpost (which will give you high ground advantage). Then you can position your characters so that they are away enough from one another so the Minotaur jump won't damage more than one. If you are lucky you can also get a shove on the Bullette's trench for 30-40 points of damage.

Level 4 party w/ good gear. BM Ranger, Shadowheart, Lae'zel as EK, Gale. If I didnt beat it first try, I did 2nd. I beat Phase spider queen 1st atempt. Mirror image on Gale and SH . Gale has certain necklace making him MM monster. Didn't even put flame on my weapons. No stealth or cheese. Not bragging, just giving different perspective. Its a strong party, maybe strongest I have played and I have 165 hrs played including all classes and many comps. Gives me quite a bit of experience to draw on.

They are hard and requires either cheesing or min max'ing every advantage because they are overtuned and are Larian'd up, with advantages and attacks they don't actually have. That goes for most enemies in the game, they all are overtuned but the players aren't.

Taken directly from 5e:

Charge: If the minotaur moves at least 10 ft. straight toward a target and then hits it with a gore Attack on the same turn, the target takes an extra 9 (2d8) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 14 Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 ft. away and knocked prone.

Labyrinthine Recall: The minotaur can perfectly recall any path it has traveled.

Reckless: At the start of its turn, the minotaur can gain advantage on all melee weapon Attack rolls it makes during that turn, but Attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn.

Actions Greataxe: Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d12 + 4) slashing damage.

Gore: Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) piercing damage.

Nowhere is there 3 actions per turn and an AoE prone jump with a knockback in the same turn. They are way overtuned...for some stupid reason. Like why? Bc Larian. You can make things difficult and fun in different ways then just giving random shit to enemies and requiring players to reload and min-max for every advantage. That in turn makes the combat feels the same way. Every combat will be the same, and/or every type of combat with that type of enemy will be the same. Which again, isn't fun for a lot of people.

+1




Having "creative" solutions is good, but if the fight is nigh-impossible without finding the "special solution" for every fight, it gets old pretty fast. This was why I stopped DOS1 midway and the biggest issue I had with DOS2 as well. Loved the games otherwise.

That wasn't the purpose of what I wrote.
Anyway it feels a little bit natural to fight in the underdark in BG2 with "high level characters". I'm not saying we shouldn't have to at low level in BG3 nor it hasn't to be a dangerous place.

But even in the underdark you face the situation I describe. The last fight of the EA is way easier than your entrance in the underdark. Even the bulette is easier than the 2 minotors. That's not a good difficulty/challenge management to me.

No one would choose to go to the underdark if you can't deal with it. It's not like if the story was explaining something like "the underdark is the most dangerous place in faerun with the most powerfull creatures but you HAVE to go or you'll become a mindlfayer".....

I know this is not the topic at hand here, but just as a side note: did anyone else think that Minotaurs are a bit underwhelming in terms of model/animations compared to most of the other creatures currently in the game?
They looked a lot more... Unpolished, I'd say?

"INSANE" nooooo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dth-BWAKJz8

yeah I thought the same when I saw them the first time... also I'm not sure they really fit in in this situation, to be honest....

Early access is the "hard" difficulty setting in the game. Larian made the combat hard on purpose to gather better reports on difficult areas.
I think that the underdark misses a few really hard to impossible encounters. Avoiding enemies in the underdark can be just as interesting as fighting them. It is a dangerous place but it seems that it is stuck at level 5 at the moment.

I did beat them originally after 3 tries and a second play through using the Zhent entrance. They are a little ridiculous and my initial reaction was "WTF with this jumping 5 miles across my screen!" Even on my second play through one managed to jump up onto the ledge. I immediately looked them up to refresh my memory on their abilities and shook my head. All that said there are many ways to beat them, Ogre help, elevation bow and arrow and spell DPS, lucky rolls etc. And if you are really lucky, lure their fat asses back to the fort and turn on the lazer beams.

OMG, that settles it: This is INSANE!

Won it easily on second try...

If the fight is to hard for you, how about you try to get better at the game, and ask for strategy and advice to win ?

Yup, I though so too. The jump animation could be better for instance, imo.

Heh, I beat them on the first playthrough on the first try with a L4 party, maybe luck? No special tactics, actually. I wandered into them, because they seemingly spotted me from offscreen . Lae'zal hit them with menacing strike (two lucky hits), Gale with acid arrow, my Ranger simply with her +1 Longbow as a Hunter with Colossus Slayer, and Shadowheart with guiding bolt.

Of course, Gale died despite his mirror image and my Ranger had blind luck that three attacks missed her. It helped that they first attacked Lae'zal and Shadowheart, and then focused on Gale, and after he went down on my Ranger.

It certainly was a true WTF moment, which is probably what Larian intended.

I hope there are more fights like Minotaur fight.

The fight is completely doable with right characters and right setup. No cheese needed. I didn't even have the annoying cleric to heal my team.

My comp was: Ranger (PC) + Wizard + Warlock + Fighter

I was wandering headfirst with my whole team in Underdark then I fell victim to this ambush. I didn't reload a safe save. I continued as it was because I made a mistake and I had to deal with the consequence just like in a table-top game.

I took it as a very good opportunity to test my teams resolve.

I really like this fight, it was an ambush style combat that requires a saving dice roll not to fall into it ( I mean I guess because my not survivor ranger PC failed the roll).

I was expecting some ambush in the game especially in underdark given it's reputation and from the get go I made my fighter a bit tanky and rest of my team is geared towards utility.

This was the fight which ate up a lot of stuff that had been just resting in my bag.

I have to admit I reload the fight couple times but not because I expected a loss because I enjoyed it very much so that I wanted to try different defence and offence combinations to get from being hunted to being hunter.

I really really wish Larian prepare more fights like this for the full release. It really felt like I am playing a DnD game.


PS: Always examine the enemy. Knowing Minotaurs have vulnerability to bludgeoning damage helped a lot.

Shoving definetly needs a str check against different size enemies. An 8 str character should not shove a 300 kg Minotaur.

They can throw a ton of explosives 10m, a minotaur should be no problem. Throwing and jumping in this game are strange.

The "insane" minotaurs kekw...

https://youtu.be/6pQUMqrtExM