yes, but, having them all in one place can be helpful. Besides his questions aren't that difficult to answer. Be nice to the newbie!
Anyway, on to the questions (hey, if
I choose to answer, I can, right?)
Q: How do you use wands and horns?
A: Click on a character. Below, on the quickbar, you should see a row of icons. From left to right they should be:
Talk To (an image of two heads facing each other)
Your weapons (aka quick weapon slots)
(If applicable) Spells and/or thieving skills
Quick Items (an icon of a small silver backpack. Click here to use items like the Cloak of the Sewers)
Wands, scrolls, and horns (aka, the three or less items you've placed in your quick item slots).
Special abilities (a silver star, which can be clicked to access things like trap setting for rogues)
All you have to do to use any of them is to click on their image here on the quickbar, and then (if applicable) click on the target.
Q: How do you hurt/kill:
a) Adamantite Golems
A: They're tough, and I usually just hack at them until they die, but most golems have resistances to certain kinds of damage. Sand golems, for instance, can only be damaged by BLUNT damage, which my sword-weilding Kensai discovered to his dismay. I don't believe Adamantine Golems share this resistance, but I am pretty certain that they can only be hit by certain power weapons and above (I can never remember whether it's +3 or +4 though). In any event, +3 should be sufficient, +4 should be more than safe - of course the question is how to obtain such a weapon. By the way, golems are fairly resistant to magic, so unless you use ludicrous amounts of Lower Resistance, it may be difficult to Magic Missile them to death.
b) Iron Golems
A: Ditto here. Iron Golems are pretty much the same as Adamantine Golems, in my opinion, with maybe slightly different resistances (and I believe they have a poison breath that can be irritating). As far as I remember, I got through the game with a Kensai, and only had problems with blunt-only critters like Sand Golems, so I believe that at the very least, a high enough powered sword or axe can slice through them (not sure about arrows though).
c) Firkraag
A: Dragons have two ways to deal with. One is the cheesy way. The other is the non-cheesy way. I will give you ample warning to ignore what I'm about to say if you hate cheese.
BEGIN CHEESE!!!!
Ok, don't say I didn't warn you!
The number one cheese tactic for killing Dragons in SoA is the trap-kill. Simply put, Dragons don't appear to care if a Rogue places 7 deadly traps at his feet, and then talks to him and have the seven traps simply murder the dragon instantly. This (some would say thankfully) does not work in ToB, as soon as you place a single trap the dragon will go hostile. Not to worry, go just outside the dragon's line of sight, place all your traps, THEN talk to the dragon and lead him to your traps, to the same effect. I see this as uber-cheese and refuse to use this tactic (or any traps at all, for that matter). But that's your perogative, of course. This tactic works on ANY monster (including Dragons, Liches, yes even Demi-Liches like Kangaxx, Golems, Demons, Irenicus ... you name it, traps WILL kill it). By the way, traps bypass any and all protections, making them, by far, the cheapest tactic EVER if you ask me.
Another cheese tactic that might still work if they haven't fixed it yet with a patch is the good old Wand of Cloudkill. You see, for reasons not explained Dragons don't seem to care when you cast Cloudkill from a wand right on top of them (as long as you are casting it offscreen). What you do is, you move away from Firkragg until he's JUST outside your field of vision, then cast Cloudkill with your wand in Firkragg's general direction. He'll just sit there, taking damage after damage from CK, and if need be cast it again and again until he dies. Bingo, one dead dragon and all it took was a single wand. Note, however, that recent patches MAY have rendered this trick obsolete.
A third cheese tactic is the infamous MISSILES OF FLYING DOOM!11!! Simply put, this tactic involves a high level party and a large number of your party being spellcasters. Have one of your spellcasters use a Spell Trigger loaded with three Lower Resistances. Have every other spellcaster use a Spell Sequencer loaded with Magic Missiles. As soon as combat starts have the guy with the Lower Resistances use his Trigger. BAM! The dragon's Magic Resistance is way low. Then, as soon as you see the dragon's resistances go down, INSTANTLY pause the game and have every spellcaster with a Sequencer loaded with Magic Missiles target their Sequencer at Firkagg. Then unpause the game and watch the MISSILES OF FLYING DOOM!11!! do their work.
The last cheese tactic relies on a bug involving talking. Simply put, if the Dragon thinks you're talking to them, they won't fight back. So, pause the game, select the entire party, click on the Talk To button, click on the dragon. then click on the Sword next to the Talk To button (which is the force attack button), then click on the Dragon again. The Dragon will think your party wants to talk to it, but your party's actually attacking it. Essentially, you'll be able to hack the Dragon to pieces and it won't even lift a finger to defend itself. This works, because every dragon in the game begins non-hostile.
END CHEESE!!!!
Now for the REAL advice, for those who don't want to win by default.
Dragons are one of the biggest, baddest, meanest enemies you will EVER face in this entire game. Yes, that's right, even in Chapter 6 Firkragg is STILL a worthy opponent. So don't feel bad if you lose sans cheesing, because it's very probable that you're just not powerful enough to take him on mano-a-mano. That said, there are a few things that makes things easier on you:
- Dragons are casters. So, in case you weren't noticing what's being written at the bottom of your screen, the Dragon is casting such things as Stoneskin and Protection from Magic Weapons - nasty spells that will blunt your physical attacks by a lot. Try using generous amounts of Breach and Pierce Magic on him, they might help.
- Dragons have very high magic resistance - this is probably why your magic is failing so often. If you're high level, one of the best ways to take down Firkragg or any Dragon's MR is a triple Lower Resistance from a spell trigger, but until then you may want to focus just on hacking him to pieces.
- Dragons are NOT immune to Finger of Death or Disintergrate (although I heavily discourage use of Disintegrate, because valuable droppables might be disintegrated with Firkragg)! Use this to your advantage, you just might be able to get in a luckly roll. Also, dragons are NOT immune to a Monk's Quivering Palm ability, either.
- At all costs keep weaker members FAR AWAY from Firkragg, he WILL tear them apart. This means that if Imoen is weilding the Staff of the Magi, make SURE to properly micromanage her so that she does NOT attempt to close melee with Firkragg! She will, I assure you, be killed very quickly if she does.
d) Liches
Begin Cheese
Much of the cheese tactics I gave above will work on Liches, except for the part regarding talk-kill because most liches begin hostile. Liches are even easier with trap-murder because of their relatively low hitpoints, and remember that traps blow through any and all defenses.
End Cheese
A lich is a spellcaster, through and through. Even more so than a Dragon. So, the most important thing to remember is, that once a Lich's defenses are down, he's relatively weak. Of course, the question becomes, how do you bring down a Lich's admittedly formidable defenses? Here's a few suggestions to get you started:
- Breach, Breach, Breach! It's so useful in so many situations. It automatically and (I believe) without fail kills ALL combat protections and a select amount of spell protections, that's quite alot of magic that got murdered instantly!
- Pierce Magic/Warding Whip/Ruby Ray of Reversal/Pierce Shield/Spell Strike
All these spells remove spell protections like Spell Deflection. Ruby Ray, Pierce Shield and Spell Strike have the added bonus in that they can dispel ANYTHING, even the uber spell protection Spell Trap. If your Breaches are not effectual it's probably because the Lich has a Spell Deflection or Absorption spell in effect, and you'll want to use one of these to kill that before using Breach.
- Liches love using Time Stop. It's usually the first spell to go off. If you can, try to make them waste it! Fill up their immediate vicinity with summoned stuff, or as soon as you see them cast run as far and as fast as you can away, so that when the Time Stop hits he's left doing nasty stuff either to an empty room or else to summons that you don't care about, but NOT to YOU!
- Liches seem to detect invisible, I believe, so unfortunately backstabbing doesn't appear to work too well. *sigh* a pity. Even if they didn't, most Liches cast True Sight anyway, so...
- If you have Keldorn in your party, use his dispel magic! It's EXTREMELY powerful as it dispels at TWICE his level, making it ridiculously strong. It will strip the Lich of almost all its magical protections, thus rendering it near helpless for the slaughter.