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Once again i have breezed through begging chapters and im going to the Under dark, which means bloody mindflayers killing my mage and everyone else. I understand magic protections and undead summonings but i still believe my death is unaviodable...any words of wisdom?

Don't worry, Mindflayers are easier than they seem. If they give you any trouble, either do a search for different strategies, or tell us who's in your party and we'll try to come up with something

hasted and mass invisible skeleton warriors will go thru them like linseed oil thru a goose...try it...

Here is my strat for those idiot mindflayer, i bet i just hate them like you do

1st - you need a rogues with some non detect clock and / or invis potion to open the doors of each room.

2nd - you use your magician or sorceror to drop some toxic cloud, death cloud etc to kill the others mobs with the mindflayer ( don't know their name, sorry i don't play an english version ) that can kill your skeleton.

3rd -once there is only mindflayer left in the room, summon skeleton to tank and use with all your char : bow, crossbow and any other ranged attack weapon you can use.
tank with skeleton that are immune to mindflayer ( they don't have brain since they are already dead ) and their resist magic own them aswell, so while your skeleton tank you shoot them with arrows.

4th- Do the same for each room and you wont lose a single character for this dongeon and it don t take much time.

IMPORTANT : remember that you launch your skeleton only when there is only mindflayer left in the room!

it s easy way to do it, i have read many thing about trap and such but it s all way too long to do when it s so easy to use a bow and a skeleton

Another way is to use a barbarian's hordes with 18 int that stomp the dongeon, hehe never tried but this is prolly funny to watch

Thank u

thanx to all

It seems that mass invisibility (which i didn't use my last game) does make a huge difference. Along with 4-5 invisible stalkers which are immune to mind control. I must say that im happy to see baldur's gate forums so alive.

Thanx

I used to hate mind flayers too, until i discovered Korgan made all his saves against their psionic & domination attacks EVERY time (dwarfs have very low saving throws, should've thought of that earlier). So the only thing you really need are some boots of speed to outrun them: if they can't touch you, they can't drain your intellligence. A throwing axe (e.g. rifthome (sp?) ) for a ranged attack now and then comes in handy, all the rest is just hit and run.
I put the rest of my party in a safe spot while Korgan cleared out the Illithid lair all by himself. Ok, it took some time, but the sight of Korgan dissappearing (he is very small after all) between all the brain golems sprites in the Elder Brain room was just priceless Oooo, where's my dwarf ? He hardly took a hit btw, i believe he had AC -15 or sthing.
Definitely one of my favourite NPC's...

You can do the same with Mazzy (haflings have even better saving throws than dwarves ).

Aha, now that would be a nice tip for my next run through the game, since i've never taken Mazzy in my party. Plus i've seen it mentioned several times she has fun banters with Korgan.

keldorn (or another paladin, for that matter) will do the job as well.

a priceless item agains mindflayers is the arbane sword - it provides immunity to stun. just give as an off-hand weapon it to a duel-weilding char, add some protection from charm (item or spell) and go in. if your main-hand weapon is a good one (i'd go for Celestal Fury or Flail of Ages), you'll be ok. use potions of invisibility if your int gets drained.

Chaotic command is a must.

I've got Korgan and Mazzy in the game I'm playing just now; yes, they have some pretty good banter, mostly around Korgan making lewd and lascivious remarks and Mazzy giving him the knock-back.

Can't wait to try mashing the mind flayers with them.

Mazzy is actually has very funny banters (not Jan style) with others, as she's very noble yet less experienced than wise Keldorn. She telling Valygar to clean her boots and insisting they should travel together to the north is really funny.

Anyway, another tactic against Mindflayers was to use cleric. Cast a offensive barriers (Blade Barriers, Globe of Blades) then cast Sanctually over it. Enemies can't touch a priest under Sanctually, so send her/him to the room, walk around as close to them as possible. Make sure to have a few Sanctually memorized to recast before the first one runs out. You may not kill all of them, but will reduce the number significantly. Make sure to cast Sanctually *after* the offensive protection spell, otherwise the offensive spell will negate it.

How I conquered the dungeons:

MY PC: Male Human True Fighter w/

Helm of Charm Protection
Boots of Speed
Sword of Roses (+3 Long Sword)
+3 Shield
AND....
Cloak of Mirroring (One of the strongest items in the game IMHO)

The Cloak of Mirroring allowed me to walk solo through the Beholder and Illithid dungeons. (Hope you can stand the globe that is constantly around you.)

That Cloak isn't very strong at all if you get SoA patched, or add in ToB (which comes with the SoA patch).

Originally posted by fable
That Cloak isn't very strong at all if you get SoA patched, or add in ToB (which comes with the SoA patch).

True. I remember having the cloak on and running into the Beholder dungeon and they'd kill them selves. Now it just protects you from targeted, offensive spells. Which is still awsome, I think.

Originally posted by Badseed
The Cloak of Mirroring allowed me to walk solo through the Beholder and Illithid dungeons. (Hope you can stand the globe that is constantly around you.)

There's a tweak that replaces the annoying globe-effect with a glowing circle, like the Shield of Balduran.

Originally posted by Badseed
True. I remember having the cloak on and running into the Beholder dungeon and they'd kill them selves. Now it just protects you from targeted, offensive spells. Which is still awsome, I think.

Not targeted offensive spells, but targeted offensive spells that deal damage. If the spell's aim is to hold you, or put you to sleep, it will ignore the cloak.

But Arbane's sword in your off-hand should protect against the holding, and a helm of charm protection will protect against charm.

I think that mind flayers aren't too difficult when faced in the narrow hallways. The toughest fight with them would be when you have to ambush them to save that annoying, arrogant drow woman.

In the Illithid city, I always summoned monsters and had them go forward as cannon fodder, and then hit the flayers from a distance with missile weapons and Melf's Minute Meteors (one of my favourite spells, the mind flayers' magic resistance makes them almost immune to the added fire damage, but you get 5 attacks/round with those, so it's not too bad).

Those monsters that are with the Mind Flayers are Umber Hulks, annoying, due to their ability to confuse your party members, and confusion can get your party killed faster than almost anything in the game. They are, however, extremely weak vs. cloudkill, so that above mentioned strategy would be good. It's always fun to open a door, cast cloudkill into a room, and then close the door again. The monsters are always too stupid to open the door and escape. (I never murder the dogs in the D'Arnise keep to make dog stew for the umber hulks, the fight is so blasted easy anyways, 1 cloudkill kills nearly every enemy in that room)

Edit: If you have the pre-order or collectors edition of BG2, or the patch which adds their special merchants, you can buy the Robe of Vecna. It's very nice, as it decreases spellcasting time by so much, that the spell seems to fire almost instantly, which gives you more time to close doors/escape.

I have discovered a tasty exploit that makes the Illithid city a bit easier to conquer. I am not sure if this exploit is known already, but it's new to me. Anyways, here it is:

When you summon monsters from a mirror image, the 5 monster limit is bypassed, allowing you to summon as many monsters as your memorized spells will allow. Furthermore, if you fill your quick item slots with the mind controlling collars before mirror imaging, you can charm the illithids using your mirror image, and the actual items aren't used. With a high level spell caster, you can create an army of skeleton warriors and invisible stalkers. Note also that casting your spells from a mirror image doesn't use up any of your actual memorized spells. Since the illithid lack spells to dispel illusions, they are pretty much toast if you use this strategy.

Edit: For added fun, cast a simulacrum from a mirror image. More free spells. An extra simmy flinging Melf's Minute Meteors can be devastating to your enemies.

Snoon, as a rule, we try to keep replies down to topics that are no more than a month or two old. This one dates back to 2003. The original poster has long since departed for whatever people go when they leave these boards. Please let 'em rest in peace.

Here's how I get through the mindflayer dungeons:

Minsc with Lilalcor - right there you're immune to everything the flayers can throw at you except stun and intelligence drain.

What I do is give him boots of speed, leave everyone else in an adjacent room, and then have him cautiously lure out the flayers/umber hulks 1 or 2 at a time. If you're comfortable with using Minsc's berzerker ability (and I am), that'll make him immune to the stun effect as well, just make sure not to put him right next to your other party members. But if you don't like making him berzerk, it's no big deal, because with the way these rooms are set up, splitting up the spawn really isn't hard to do at all. With the boots of speed he can get the attention of one or two of them and then run all the way back to the rest of the crew before the psionic blast hits him. If he's stunned (and most of the time he makes his save), many times the flayer won't come out all the way and you can just wait for it to wear off and he can lure it out again, but if it does come out while Minsc is still stunned, then the flayer will concentrate on Minsc to the exclusion of all else, and the rest of the party can block/run interference and take it down fairly quickly. If he's -not- stunned, well, great, have everyone pile on. One or two at a time they're usually not too much of a threat.

It was actually pretty amusing doing the flayer dungeon in the sewers in my most recent game with the Item Upgrade mod installed. Minsc with upgraded Lilalcor (immune to intelligence drain) wearing a Tower of Iron Will (immune to charm and psionics) = Minsc mows them ALL down without even breaking a sweat. Trivially easy, actually. The only one that could do anything was the very last flayer in that dungeon - "Adalon" or something? He managed to maze Minsc just before Minsc was done, but at that point it was easy to bring in everyone else to finish him off.

Fable: Oops, sorry.

Qwinn