GameBanshee Forums

As I read thru the comments and forums here day to day, I am truly impressed by the ability of all the "members". I only get about 3 real hours of playing a week, and I just finished the Planer sphere stronghold. Everything was a piece of cake until I had to get the demon heart. They were truly very rude to me, and I always lost 2 or more party members per encounter. I believe my total tries finally ended at 9. UNREAL! With all of the battles I see listed I am starting to think this will take me forever. What I want to know is what strategies seem to work the best in an average encounter? I just usually use haste and then a protection from magic on my main.

I use a lot of summoned critters for big encounters. Fire elementals from Jaheira are great, as are the better animal and monster summoning spells. Even the summon undead spells are not bad. Between several casters you can have a goodly amount of these spells per day.

Other nice things are to mem mage type spells that breach magic protections. There are several....just some are breach magic, pierce magic, oracle, secret word, etc.

This is just a few things I do to make big encounters a bit easier.

for the demon heart quest, protection from evil will help tremendously, and if you go directly to the left, you can just trigger one demon and a few helpers, which is a fairly easy fight with a couple good tanks in yoru party

That was my problem before. I just went up instead of to the left. Got whooped by TWO demons. When I finally figured it out, I went to the left and finally got out of it. Then I killed the other one with no problem? Whenever I try to cast Summon Elementals they just stand there and don't do anything. What the heck?

the planar sphere fight for the demon hart wasn't that hard have all youre mages, clerics and druid's cast summon creature spells and give themn haste and protection from evil and the demon's will fall

when summoning elementals, your mage will focus on the elemental for a round or so trying to gain control of the elemental

when u cast elementals do it with jaheira because she doesn't have to stuggle for th command of the elemental.
ore summon elemantals with staff's i believe it is the staaf of fire control i'm not sure but it gives u ready to use fire elementals

I usually dont summon elementals with my mages....just because of that. I usually summon elementals with my clerics, and summon monsters with my mages.

Also another great spell is insect plague to interrupt enemy spellcasters. I have gotten my butt kicked before, and went back and cast that spell and won without even taking damage lots of times.

After summoning an elemental it turns green. You have to click on it like it was a character and tell it what to do, where to go, what to attack. They usually won't attack automatically, unless they are attacked first.

This could be the trouble.

For some reason I can only cast protection from evil on the caster. How do I cast on a NPC?

cast protection from evil 10 foot radius

The demons in the planar sphere quest cannot hit elementals..except for the demon lord...i usually leave him alone and kill one of the others with 2 fire elementals (jahaira summons them so i dont have to do a battle wills). Elementals are immune to normal weapons and the regular demons attack is considered as such. use them to kill one and you have a demon heart.

Something I try to do is limit the area for fighting. I place my tanks just inside a doorway or other narrow area and limit the number of enemies that can get at me. Meanwhile, throw fireballs and other bits of goodness over their heads to weaken the next wave(s).

If there are spellcasters back there, it gets tougher however, so make sure the front line is well protected first.

------------------
There's nothing I like better than the sound of the bagpipes... unless its the sound of a chicken being strangled.

No strategies work there. Protection form Evil is useful as it is anywhere else but it does not help: the demons aren't summoned, therefore, they aren't forced to ignore you if you are protected form evil. Summon elementals, etc., is good but your level isn't probably enough high to use it efficiently.
Your Enemy No. 1 is the Hold spell cast by the demons. As long as you aren't held you can hack the demons down first then concentrate to their squaddra of mephits and so on. But all demons cast Hold repeatedly there and the squaddras attack held guys preferably.
I suggest to catch Arbane's Sword (permanent free action) and memorize as much Free Actions as possible. Cast Free Action on your gorillas, kill the demon first, then kill the accompanying monsters sooner than they kill some of your guys that happens to fail their save vs. Hold. Also, Jerrods Mace helps. Also, do not forget that you need at least +2 weapons.

ehh the ring of free action will also work

The demons are usually not a problem. They spend time summoning mephits so get the fighters straight in there and Hack & slay. boots of speed + the equaliser are most useful as is a Paladin with Carsomyr.

Something I did early on was concentrate too much on offense. A couple of fireballs and hack em down!

This approach doesn't work very well after a while and I found that a little defensive spell casting and potions beforehand vastly improved my chances in most battles.


------------------
"Pain heals,
chicks dig scars,
glory lasts forever."

Hey steve, if you are strong enough to get the carsomyr surely the puny demon wont be trouble. Skeleton at lever 12 i think become much stronger than the normal ones and they are my second favourite summoning monster next to aerial servants. aerial servants rules, just today one made 48 point damage on the red dragon, and i think they count as +4 weapons too.

yah i love aerial servants, and the skel warriors at level 15 are in my humble opinion one of the best summoned creatures in the game. the nishruu/hakeashar are pretty cool too.

------------------
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats.
-H.L. Mencken