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First thing about the rat mom - What level are you/your party? On level four, it's hard as all hells, level five party can do it just barly; personally, I never tried that quest before level six (the amazon was usually about to hit level seven by that time).

I ran through that battle twice now and this is what I found to work:

-Stand as back as you can (where the orange crystals rise up from the ground, blocking your way back). Target one of the rats near the rat mom with an archer (the amazon should do the trick). This will usually draw the smaller rats to you, but the big momma won't immediately attack you.

-If the above worked, you can also try placing some traps in front of you before you draw the big rat over (optional, but I found it useful, somewhat). Then use the same tactics to draw the big rat and spare no endurance and astral power attacking her.

-Unlike what you did, whenever the mom rat summoned her minions, I always dispatched the smaller rats first before going back to hacking at her. hat way, I didn't have those small pests biting my behind all the time. If your mage or the giggly girl (Gladys, btw) are still standing by that time, you can use the two of them to buff/heal the dwarf and the amazon while they're killing the smaller rats.

-The rat mom will summon the small rats three times, so repeat this three times. After that, just give her all you've got one final time and she should be down. By this time, I either had just the amazon or just the dwarf still standing, but s/he was able to bring the rat mom down just fine in the end.

-The key thing is to have enough healing potions on everybody and to max out the willpower on all your party memebers - that way, they're less prone to falling down or getting wounded and, consequently, dropping dead.

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The guild - In Wagoner's Home, opposite the tavern and right next to the huckster merchant there is a shed-like thingy (that looks like a privy, really). Just enter it.

Saving every turn in a different slot also helps. Save, fight a turn, and reload if the rats mangle you too badly.

You HAVE to kill the small rats. Ratmom herself is not very scary - have your battlemage put a plumbumbarum on her and Gladys the giggly twit can use Lightning Find You! This makes Ratmom miss a lot of her attacks and you can focus on her brood.

If you don't kill the brood, they will kill you. Simple as that. There's a lot of them and they have a ton of attacks, meaning they roll a lot of dice every turn, and there's a higher probability of them getting some insanely high rolls. My characters went from zero to four wounds in a single turn from the small rats' attacks.

Save your Astral Energy for debuffs - don't blast every small rat with Ignifaxus. Turn off Offensive Combat if you have it to save Endurance. Focus EVERYONE on one small rat, then when it's dead switch to the next one, and so on.

You could try leaving one small rat alive and seeing what happens (maybe Ratmom won't call in the next wave). Remember to debuff her and use Forgrimm's and Rhulana's Mighty Blow to whittle down her massive hit points. And keep wounded characters up by using Treat Wounds on them - it works even in the middle of a fight.

On my first run thru i tried it when you first get the quest level4/5 and gave up. Later in game with spells like Paralysis it's not that difficult.
The second time i made it at level 4/5 with the first try. But i did some things differently:
- don't use 2handed weapons, especially not on your mages (staves suck anyway in this game)
- use shields on everyone (mages can use wooden shields)
-become immune or almost immune to wounding , that is completely max selfdiscipline skill
- before you enter the cave lure the rats (except mother) out and kill them outside, use a bow for it
- if you enter most likely another wave of 4 or 5 rats will attack, run to the exit (now closed by crystals) and fight them there. this way you don't attrackt attention from the mother yet
-use aforementioned spells to debuff the mother
-if she summones help (she does that 3 times) kill those rats asap
-always focus your whole party on 1 target
-if someone gets wounded though, treat the wound immediately, wounds come with heavy stat penalties making the likelyhood to receive additional wounds even greater
-you can quicksave during the fight, so if you have her down to 50% hp, and everone in your party is fine just quicksave

I was level 4 doing the Rat fight and it was impossible. The fight has several problems as I see it: The Rat mother calls for backup when her health is reduced by 25%, 50% and 75% - making it almost impossible if you are a low level. However, the game has an exploit, and if you don't mind the fight taking 35 mins then try this.

Go to the game options and switch combat to pause after every turn:

Attack mother then quicksave
Then quickload and mother doesn't attack you
quicksave and quickload again and repeat until she is dead.

Each time you quickload the mother rat and her minions don't take their turn against you... therefore you can kill them (albeit slowly) at a low level. I had to resort to this as I didn't have a good saved game before entering the rats dominion and I had got killed on the last 5 attempts before this! Of course I was a Charlatan and I had Gladys with me, so there was a pretty big handicap to start with!:laugh: