Grr! The Most Cheesiest Enemy!

Olelghinn · Post by **Olelghinn** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 1:44 pm

I utterly -hate- this guy. He's the most cheesiest NPC I've seen yet. Kangaxx doesn't hold a candle compared to him. Now, I'm not a BG2 expert. I've beaten the game, and this is my second time around it (I recently purchased ToB so I am doing a character over). I've done a lot of things over that I had sorta missed out on.

One of them is that I've come out of the Underdark, and I want to kill Aran Linvail, the Shadowmaster. My "IC" reason is that quite frankly, Saemon betrayed me in a variety of ways. I paid him 15,000 Gold to get nothing.

That's not the problem though. I attacked him and out of nowhere came the biggest bull in the game I've seen so far. Arkanis Gath.

Or something like that. The guy comes out of nowhere, and -instantly- kills your character. He doesn't even register damage. He hits, you die.

Now I've tested this guy out and I've noticed a few things. One, as soon as you hit Aran, he spawns. No matter where you may be, he will spawn by your protagonist. Right there, he will -immediately- hit you. Sometimes he misses and you can run away, and that's about the only chance you have since he will not usually chase after you when there are nearby minions.

Another thing is, he defies all magical protections. I have Stoneskin, Blur, Spirit Armor, Mirror Image, buffed by Viconia with Chant, Aid, Protection from Evil, and Defensive Harmony. Let me put like this. With all that, if he lays a hit on you, you die.

Also, it's not just your protagonist. I escaped his initial hit and he wandered by Viconia. He hit her with one tap, caused 7 damage, and she dropped dead. Yet when he was hitting my Skeletal Warriors, they weren't suffering from the instant death hit. Not to mention RANGE is not a problem! He was half across the room and swung at me, and dropped me.

Now, I'm thinking that this may be a poison coated weapon. Of course, the fact that his Thac0 must be incredibly low to hit me that quickly with my low AC. The thing is, I've noticed this game gets irregular at times. If this is a poison, then I should be immune. I have Gaxx's ring. Not to mention, I've seen my character get hit with Diseases, and he's immune to that stuff too.

The last thing, this guy has INSANE amounts of HP. I've tried to Time Stop, then hit Aran. When he spawns -during- a Time Stop, he's frozen too. I whack him for like 150 HP before it ends, and he's still only Near Death.

What I wanna ask is if anyone can know how to finish this fool off! Any advice, things like that. Please guys.

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 2:46 pm

Arkanis Gath is an immortal, put into the game to not let you screw up plots. He has a girdle that prevents him from going under 1 hp, much like Imoen's at the beginning. He also has a dagger that deals 1000+ damage and never misses.

He can be killed by casting protection from magical weapons on your PC. Then get a Shapechange scroll and choose mind flayer. The int. drain will kill, him. You don't get any exp (as this is an exploit), and he only has some magic armour (you get it anyway if you sided with Bohdi in Chapter 3), as in you can get his girdle or dagger.

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 2:59 pm

Yeah, pretty much....

You can do a search on "Gath" and read the amazing history of the research that went into figuring out how to kill "the cheesiest enemy" back in the first months of 2001...the brave players that devoted countless hours of research to solving this mystery.

I have a link [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=003053"]here[/url] which is one of the breakthrough moments in the struggle.

A few notes - "death ward" will also protect against Gath's attack - it does NOT do 1000 points of damage, it is an ordinary shortsword (that's why prot from magical weapons works), Gath has a 'slay' ability which is "death magic" with no save, hence death ward will stop it.

Gath is there to prevent players from unwittingly ruining the plot of the game by attacking Linvail, Bloodscalp, or other thieves at the guild before the player has gone to spellhold to rescue Imoen. This means that if you attack Linvail or Bloodscalp AFTER you go to spellhold, Gath will NOT appear and you can loot the thieves' guild to your heart's content!

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 3:17 pm

Cheesy? You can be pretty sure that when a character in any game seems to bend the rules to stay alive, that's because they're important to the plot later on.

KensaiRyu · Post by **KensaiRyu** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 3:30 pm

Ah yes, the memories this brings...late night battles with my Arkanis swat team which consisted of 6 level capped sorcerors...Who tried every wizard spell in the game on him. Emotion works sometimes, as does some of the other stun or save type spells...Alot of fun it was finally killing him, though.

Olelghinn · Post by **Olelghinn** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 6:42 pm

Damn. Thanks guys. All of you. I'm glad to see it wasn't just me dealing with this. I had figured he was unkillable when I locked him in the room with four Skeleton Warriors. I kept seeing the HP tick away and yet nothing happened.

The problem is though.. this is already after Spellhold. I sided with Aran, and I just got out the Underdark. It's already Chapter 6, yet he keeps reappearing.

Don't worry though Gath. I'm coming for you with these tips. I'll make sure to save the screenshot of me standing over your body. T.T

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Fri Nov 02, 2001 7:43 pm

glad to help!

Wow it's cool to see Ryu posting in this topic, since he's the one that first did it.

Originally posted by Olelghinn:
<STRONG>The problem is though.. this is already after Spellhold. I sided with Aran, and I just got out the Underdark. It's already Chapter 6, yet he keeps reappearing.
</STRONG>

I don't know what to tell you about this, in the last game I played through there i didn't attack Aran, i attacked Bloodscalp. Maybe that is the difference? I wanted to get Bloodscalp because he has a pair of boots of speed on him. Maybe Aran still is protected. I have TOB installed, with the Bioware patch and the Balderdash TOB/SOA bugfixes if that is any help. Anyway, good luck taking down that stupid Gath and Linvail!

Ode to a Grasshopper · Fri Nov 02, 2001 9:36 pm

Alternately, if you haven't got your heart set on actively killing Gath, you could cast Imprisonment during the Timestop. Unless the belt gives immunity to Imprisonment too...

Just coincidentally, if you talk to Aran after the Underdark he offers to have his Shadow Thieves track down and kill Saemon.

KensaiRyu · Post by **KensaiRyu** » Sat Nov 03, 2001 3:08 pm

Alternately, if you haven't got your heart set on actively killing Gath, you could cast Imprisonment during the Timestop. Unless the belt gives immunity to Imprisonment too...

If I remember right, the belt does indeed give immunity to both maze and imprisonment...

The only way to kill someone wearing it is to drain their stats to less than 0 somehow.

There is actually a couple of weapons in the game that can do this, Haer Daeli's sword can, as can anything that drains stats like dex or str. Trick is to give these weapons to someone whirwinding or improved hasted with grandmastery and let them go off, since they took out the brain drain in TOB for the mindflayer you shapechange into.

Musashi Miyamoto · Post by **Musashi Miyamoto** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 12:26 pm

they did?! arugh i loved that brain drain! anyway to get it back

KensaiRyu · Post by **KensaiRyu** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 12:39 pm

yeah, this should work to get it back, but im not positive... Delete the spell file SPWI916.spl from your override folder...But make a backup of it in case you want to reuse it later...

Nightfire · Post by **Nightfire** » Sun Nov 04, 2001 12:54 pm

Arkanis is annoying, yes ... IMO, he should not longer spawn in Chapter 6.

But the cheesiest and most annoying critter whom you're actually supposed to fight is, without question, Balthazar. (And I'm not even talking about the Improved version.)

Damn, I hate that guy. Innate, unlimited spells, specials and immunities up the wazoo ... he is basically an ubermonk and ubermage rolled into one. Tell me again why my PC is exerting herself so much when that bugger could eat everyone and everything in the game for breakfast if he actually got off his worthless, self-righteous, conceited ass and lived up to his alleged LG alignment (bah, he's LN at best).

Nagroth · Post by **Nagroth** » Mon Nov 05, 2001 12:59 am

One of you guys wrote that this Gath character doesn´t spawn in Chapter 6 since the Spellhold plot has already been fulfilled by then. Well, I tried to kill Aran Linvail after coming back from the Underdark (I want that Elven Chainmail for my Thief/Mage) so I hid in the corridor, had Viconia protect my party from evil and then gated a demon right next to Linvail. All the thieves there immediately turned hostile, and Arkanis spawned right next to Viconia, killing her instantly... So, why did he appear, if Linvail is no longer necessary for the plot ?