Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Back to noob status...

After patch 5 hit (but before hotfix 12), I started a new game and made a Wizard character. She and Shadowheart handily defeated the 3 intellect devourers on the Ravaged Beach without much trouble. However, I remade the Wizard after hotfix 12 (I'm kind of dumb that way), and now the beach brains are kicking my sorry aft-section all the way back to noob-hood. What changed?

At first I thought it was the brains spamming Dash, but after re-reading the patch notes, it looks like that was implemented in patch 5. That said, I don't recall seeing dash-spam before hotfix 12.

I've made three post-hotfix 12 attempts so far with the same character. First time I went in with my old strategy - 1) blast the nautiloid tank (but I replaced Firebolt with Chilling Touch, and it turns out Frost Bolt doesn't set things on fire - who knew?), and 2) kite the brains while spamming cantrips. That's when I discovered the terrifying power of the new NPC Dash feature. TPK.

Second time: 1) Buff up with Divine Shield and Mage Armor and 2) aggro the closest brain in the hopes that we could kite it to death before the others woke up. Again Dash, again TPK.

Third time: 1) Hit the nautiloid tank with actual FIRE (it worked; one brain down), 2) buff up with AC spells, 3) kite and cast ALL the spells for as long as I could. This time the party went down faster than NSFW things that go down really fast, but I did manage to kill two of them before Shadowheart got one-shot by a 2-HP brain.

One thing I haven't tried is using any of the consumables you get on the Nautiloid (besides healing potions). Might try again next weekend, but in the meantime, any tips would be welcome.

Equip both with crossbows, get high ground, use pin down ...
Never had a chance, two or three rounds top.

Seems undignified for a couple of spell-casters, but I'll give it a shot.

On a similar note, would the Grease spell actually slow the buggers down, or would they make the Dex save? Better yet, could the Grease slick be set on, you know, FIRE?

Funny you should mention it but grease does ignite in Bg3 when exposed to flame.

You could also pepper them with Guiding Bolts (ranged caster attack), Inflict Wounds (melee range caster attack) from Shadowheart

Or Thunderwave/Magic missile from yer wizard.

Well, yes i have somehow missed that ... chilling touch should work the same as pin down, if i remember it corectly. :-/
But Shadow should be able to shoot more than well enough.

Also, if you want to cheese a little bit ... you can allways use NPC stupidity in your advantage ... so far they are unable to understand terain, so if you reach end of that balcony and jump down, they never jump for you (at least they never did on me) but return the same route around.
Then you can easily jump back ... and watch them to run around again ...
Just in case.

Chilling touch does necrotic damage - it's Ray of Frost that slows the baddies. However, I used RoF extensively in my first and second attempts, and still got TPK'ed. The brains have a higher speed than the player character to begin with, and with the Dash spam one or both party members was at least "threatened" on every round. That left me with the "no-win" choice of disengaging, standing my ground, or risking an opportunity attack.

So I guess that means Pin Down wouldn't be an option either, if it functions similarly to RoF.

Place your team in sneak mode and grab the right side high-ground. This will give you advantage on all your spellcasts and general attack rolls. You can start the fight from stealth which should take out one of them and give you a surprise round. Make sure Shadowheart has a light crossbow equipped as its better than her Sacred Flame cantrip at doing damage most of the time.
Also equip shadowheart with a dagger instead of that mace, since she has terrible strength but +2 on dex will give you a better hit chance and higher damage range with the only finesse weapon she is proficient with (3-6 damage much better chance to hit).

That should get you through it. Rough fight.

Just writing to thank you all for the tips last week. I re-ran the fight, not with my Wizard, but with a new Fighter (figured I'd test strats with something that had more survivability). Sneaking up the right-hand side was key, and to be honest, it never occurred to me that you could even do that. I also tossed a void bulb at the first brain to aggro on me, and that seemed to have bought me an extra round. I didn't have to use the balcony trick this time, but it's good to know there's an exit strategy for my squishy Wizard.

I'll probably try the Grease trick next time, but I doubt it will slow down the buggers much. They make their Dex saves against Shadowheart's Sacred Flame too often for my comfort, so I figure they'll just dance across the grease as well, but I might try to barbecue them when they're in the thick of it. Fire solves most problems, after all.

Anyway, thanks again!

Shadowheart's sacred flame sucks in every imaginable way. She can barely hit with it, and it doesn't do a whole lot of damage when she does manage to land it. Personally, I've ended up seeing her as a rogue that traded backstabs and cunning actions for some cleric spells. Thus I go dagger/shield for melee and light crossbow for ranged. And she does lockpicks and traps too, since she's got proficiency in sleight of hand and she's got guidance on top.

And in that style she's actually rather useful. She can tank with good AC, she can deal okay ranged damage with the crossbow, she can play a decent game of hide and sneak, and when needed she can lay down some very decent single target hurt with her spells. You also don't feel bad spending her action on tossing a potion.

This is literally how I do it every time. Right side and have them try to come around. They seldom ever get close enough to do anything if I kite them across the balcony.

After playing DOS:1 and 2, I feel like terrain and surfaces (lighting, electrifying, freezing, etc.) are hug for Larian. They love for you to use them, so I use them all the time. It's how I get through the goblin camp too. Lots of beam walking.

This has been my go-to solution for almost everything, all the time, at least at the start of combat. Maybe it's heavy metagaming, knowing exactly how and where every encounter begins, but I feel like it's trivial to snipe out 25~50% of the opposition in a couple rounds before taking any damage (aside from the Gith party).

You can be anywhere from still level 1, to just turned level 3, by the time you wake up on the beach (in my test saves, I usually keep a save that is 'just before doing the level 3 level up' on the beach before I decide whether I'm getting shadow or not), and that makes a big difference, of course... However, each of the intellect devourers should, on average, be taken out by any damaging first level spell - guiding bolt will kill any brain the vast majority of the time, and whatever 1st level offence you picked for your caster will more or less do the same. If they hit you, they'll hurt, and may even down a 1st level character easy enough, but if they have to dash then they're not going to be attacking that round anyway, and even at disadvantage from being threatened, your odds of hitting them with an attack roll using your casting ability are high. If you sneak when the game warns you to be careful, then your first spell strikes should be almost guaranteed hits, and remove two of the three targets right away.

I believe i just found another Exploit working for this fight (and probably this fight only, since you need your enemy to have quite low HP) ...
Often, when you attack from great distance, you dont get into combat imediatly but there is small window in real time.

It also takes few seconds before enemies start heal themselves ...
So if you attack again (and sometimes even third time) and are lucky enough to not miss in any of those cases, sometimes you manage to kill one of them before combat even starts.
(In tutorial i was able to kill all 3 Imps before combat started after meeting Lae'zel)