Newbie in need

[Wanchu]

First of all, I have searched through the forum and I haven't found an answer for me, so please give me a link if I could find help somewhere.

As some others in this forum, I bought BG2:SoA when it was released but didn't finish it. It is a great game, so I have given it another shot. The problem is that I am having trouble with quests being too hard, even when I set the difficulty level to the minimum. I would greatly appreciate some advice on what to do to get stronger in a moderately easy way, even if it is killing lots of weak stuff to level up.

I am currently on chapter 3 in the Astral Prison quest and I keep dying to the Warden (by the way, the Master of Thralls disappeared so I can't kill him for the orb).

Is this party too weak for chapter 3? Which quests should be easy for me? Which weapons am I lacking? I will only list current weapons when they are strong:

Me, sorcerer, level 11, AC 7, 61 HP
Minsc, level 9, AC -3, 98 HP, +3 sword Lilarcor, +3 bow Heartseeker
Keldorn, level 9, AC -1, 95 HP, +5 sword Carsomyr
Aerie, level 9 cleric / 10 mage , AC 4, 44 HP
Yoshimo, level 12, AC 0, 80 HP, +2 sword Arbane's, +1 bow Tuigan
Jaheira, level 9 fighter, 11 druid, AC -3, 84 HP, +1 scimitar

Don't hesitate to ask if you would need some more information.

Thanks a lot for your help

[Novos]

hmmm,

Your equipment seems to be really good. How are your spells? If you are stuck, they're are a number of cheese tactics you can use that the comp will crumble to. First things first, spells like cloudkill, skull trap, and breach are essential. Check out my mage rotation post a few threads down, you can do this all with Aerie alone.

**How To Cheese**


Method 1: Inch up very slowly and lure the enemies one at a time.

Method 2: Cast a few cloudkill spells and run out of site. The enemy will be to stupid to get out of them and will wither away and die.

Method 3: Take advantage of Yoshimo's stealth backstab. Its a great way to kill mages.

Chech out the general strategy section of this site, it will teach you much. But I say the best method is number 2. How exactly is the warden beating you?

[Ares2382]

For me the Astral Prison is usually one of the tougher dungeons in that chapter (mostly because of the first fight and the warden), so I usually leave it to the last.

What I normally do is try to pull the golems and kill them before I aggro the warden. If that fails I'd have one of my fighters tank the warden with cleric buffs and heals.

Maybe give Minsk a sword and shield so he can get hit leff often. Or use Jaheira buffed up. Druids have some good buffs, too. Kill all the other enemies around him and then concentrate on him.

Or use summons to occupy him while you beat up his friends. Once you get him alone it's not hard to kill him.

Also, do you have an earlier save? You seem to have a bug with regards to the Master of Thralls. I do seem to remember that if you release the thralls some of them will help you fight the warden. They aren't particularly powerful, but they do provide a distraction.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

[Wanchu]

Thanks a lot for your answers

I have tried the suggestions and there is no clear winner, but I may be successful if I combine them all. These are the problems:

- I have lured out a couple of enemies, but the warden is the next one and there are several men behind him, so it's not definitive.

- Summons help a little, but they die fast or they are an obstacle to area damage spells like Skull Trap.

- Breach is not very helpful, because the Warden reapplies a lot of protections very fast.

- The cloudkill method doesn't kill them, they get a little damage and then run after me. Also, I don't have the cloudkill spell learnt, so I am using wands with few charges left, I wouldn't want to overuse them.

- Somehow they see me even if I use invisibility or if Yoshimo is in stealth mode.

- The Warden casts very powerful protections and spells, including level 8 like Abu Dhazim's something, so that makes it harder.

Anyway, combining all the tactics I almost got it once, so I guess I will do it if I try some more. Again, thank you for your help

[galraen]

I tend to agree with Ares2382, it is one of the tougher quests, but what puzzles me is how you can have Carsomyr, have got the conduit gem and be such a low level, definitely low for the Astral Prison quest IMO. If I was you I'd revert to a save before entering the theatre and do some other quests, such as D'Arnisse keep and some others.

[Wanchu]

Then I think I will try with unfinished quests from other chapters after the Astral Prison quest (if I can finish it ). I got this far reading walkthroughs and using save / load game functions a lot.

Thank you all

[wise grimwald]

A useful tip may be that you can sell a wand and buy it back. It will then be fully charged.

It will however be expensive!!

[Crenshinibon]

Wands are really the way to finish this quest. It's usually one of the first I do (when soloing) due to the fact that you can get Boots of Speed from there.

By the time I'm at the Warden, my character is usually level fifteen or so (I can't remember for sure). Cloudkill will kill him eventually (you can spam it through the wand). Also, if you're ever fighting a strong magical opponent, don't hesitate to just use Protection From Magic on them, to take away their protections and the ability to recast them.

[Wanchu]

For future reference of newbies: another cheesy way of killing stuff is setting a lot of traps (sleeping a lot to recharge them and set more) and then lure enemies towards them. I used Yoshimo like that to kill certain dragon whose name I won't spoil

The astral prison stuff has been properly finished now I restarted from a previous save to find the missing Master of thralls. It seems he runs around through the prison to meet you at the path where you come from. Freeing the prisoners really helped in the fight with the Warden as he was busy with them, and everything went smooth enough.

Again, thanks to all who took the time to answer in this thread This forum is so friendly!