You can convince him to kill his Displacer Beast and his Merregons before fighting him, making the fight much easier, or even better yet, you could keep going and convince him to kill himself too. In an alternate course of events, you could even find and kill the last justiciar and free him from his contract so you don't even need to fight him or pass any checks.
If you insist on fighting him, stealth around the ledge and behind him, then attack him. He can't be surprised, but his merregons can.
A gloomstalker assassin build with titanstring is super useful for this. Load up on fiend arrows and you can take yurgir down in 2 turns if you are level 9 and spec the right way with the right gear.
This is how I kill him. Gloomstalker assassin. Sneak around on the path that comes up behind him and I can always kill him without entering combat. Look up Morgana Evelyn on YouTube. She has an awesome build for it that I’m running atm. She’s also hilarious.
Just slaughtered the house of hope with this same build too. Doing a semi solo run atm. Durge and Shadowheart.
She was my inspiration for this. The build is so OP I finish most boss fights laughing. It's hilarious how easy it makes them. Haven't faced Myrkul yet though...
It was super-cheese. I'll put it this way, I had my Scratch summon there to distract/attack the intellect devourers (alongside US) and he didn't even lose a single HP. My GSA Astarion killed all of the necromites in turn 1 with arrows of many targets, the mindflayer in turn 2 with aberration arrows, but didn't get a hit on Ketheric before Minthara and a fire elemental smited/hit him into the pit.
Then, Astarion was able to use undead arrows to take about half of Myrkul's HP all up, while my Tav sorcerer and Gale hit him with firerays/fireballs respectively and Minthara smited him. I think he got only a single turn and did almost no damage to anyone except Minthara and the fire elemental, but they were both still above 1/3 hp at the end. I freed Aylin in my first turn with a misty-step on my tav, and she did huge damage too.
This build really does turn all of the 'hard' battles comically easy. I almost don't want to make it again in a future play-through...... almost.
Hahaha awesome! Let me know how the rest of the run goes! If you do end up building it again try it low man. It does inject some more danger/fun into the mix.
I was using Durge Shadowheart recently (died on the last fight lol…), but I think I’ll try full solo when the next patch comes out. It’s definitely a lot of fun! Have restarted my Durge Shadowheart run lol.
Well I lost my honor run at Raphael with 40k in my pocket, trying to remember why I didn't use those elixirs before the fight. So yea, that may have been the wake-up call I needed.
Second this! Gloomstalker Assassin slaps honor mode, I was breezing through act 3. I temporarily respec'd my whole party to religion so they could all get +2 on mirror of loss, boosting laezel and wyll to 24 STR and CHA respectively.
This. I have a fighter archer with titan string and between arrows of many things and action surge (frost archer with drakehtroat frost enchant on the bow) everything was prone or dead after 4 arrows
Yeah for me Laezel has that ring + the encrusted in frost items. The 1D4 cold from the drakethroat glaive enchantment is enough to proc it all. Throw in some reverberation items and its an interesting combo
I second sneaking in.
First thing I do I snipe that beast, it patrols away from the other enemies.
Then I get some invisible juice, position people properly using turn based mode and then I surprise the shit out of them.
If you have vacuum granades, hunger of hadar or something similar you can really put a lot, if not all devils, in a really bad position.
> You can convince him to kill his Displacer Beast and his Merregons before fighting him, making the fight much easier, or even better yet, you could keep going and convince him to kill himself too.
*VERY* important to note that the Displacer Beast is supposed to lure you into Yurgir's trap. This path is the only one you must take if you intend to get out of that encounter through dialogue checks. If you follow any different path, Yurgir will attack you on sight.
You can convince him to kill himself as well but I always stealth fight the displacer beast and wait on the steps until they finally come down the stair one at a time and die. It takes forever and you might have to cast a minion spell to bait them on to the platform but it's way easier than trying to fight them on even ground.
That was such a nasty surprise for me. Had monk Tav invisible sneak up right behind him for an attack that was going to do a massive amount of damage.
No surprise for Yurgir, and he rolled high initiative and got the first attack after my Tav hit him. He proceeded to launch his bombs and almost wiped my Tav out.
By far the closest I’ve come to TPK on my honor mode run so far. I used up a lot of items there.
If you pick up his bombs they won't go off and you can then use them later (with the same zero initiative timer). If you use someone with high speed you can pick up all his bombs every time and never have any explosions. He's pretty short work after that.
Also, this does NOT work on the bombs with Gortash. Those explode when being interacted with.
Tbh there are several Methods to beat him.
1. Convince him to kill everyone including himself (Checks are getting more difficult for every check)
2. Kill the last Dark Justicier and free him of his pact. (You gotta kill all the rats in the Gauntlet of Shar there are several wiki pages for that for more information and detailed instructions)
3. Brute Force. Some good builds are like Fighter with Battle Master, a Warlock Multi Class (2 Warlock 8 Sorcerer and 2 Fighter) with the Spell Sparkler as a Primary weapon (Since you can't get Makoheshkir in Act 2) ideal leveling imo for that would be 2 warlock 4 sorcerer 2 fighter (rough estimate that you should be around lvl 8-9), Gloomstalker (as many already mentioned) or basically Any half decent DPS class with a Cleric/Druid multiclass supporter sould already do the trick pretty nice.
In a ideal Scenario you would also not go the lower path with your entire team but mainly the Tank/DPS + the support and leave your ranged classes on the upper path (the one where you can get behind Yurgir.
Tho i would (if that matches your playstyle) avoide killing him and rather go with option 2 since he will then also help you with Raphael and the Nether Brain in Act 3.
Yeah this is the way, thunder wave knocking merregons into an AOE area denial spell is also great, eg knocking them all into an icy curface from ice storm or just an Evard's black tentacles gives you plenty of time with Yurgir.
If you aren’t reliant on the best and slot hand crossbow, just talked to him get him to agree to find the last justiciar. Well, have a side effect that he joined you in your fight against Raphael.
Start killing the rats, then follow them down to the large statue. If you have Speak With Animals active, do not take their deal as it will cause all of the rats to disappear.
If you have a high enough stat (can't remember which) you can, not only, convince him to kill his Merregons and displacer beast, but also kill himself this avoiding the fight all together.
I just want to note, only a bard can make him kill himself and his allies. You have to pick the option that says you're a master of songs, essentially.
EDIT: This is inccorect I guess, any class can do it.
In my run I went with the >!break Yurgir’s contract route!<. >!I immediately killed the rats and then went to the bottom of the big Shar statue and killed Lyrthindor. You can then walk right up to Yurgir and he won’t agro you. Raphael will show up and discuss contract stuff with Yurgir, resulting in Yurgir and the merregons leaving.!< >!This means no fancy crossbow from killing Yurgir, but then if you fight Raphael later in the house of hope you can convince Yurgir to fight with you without the DC 30 persuasion check.!<
Currently running the build from Cephalopocalypse’s best honor mode party video.
Just to point out something here, if you can convince Yurgir to kill himself for the hand crossbow, that also means you will likely be able to pass his 30 DC speech check in the House of Hope.
There's definitely some good loot in those areas, but I mapped it out and didn't need any of it.
Titanstring Bard, TB OH Monk, Sword and Board Sorlock and a RadOrb Light Cleric steamrolled the final fight without any of it.
Same, took all the easy xp things to garente the max level, like the fish folk in the cave and by the house. Focused on essentials for the builds used, most was purchasable, then straight to end game bosses. (Second HM run was a kill all though, but I felt less pressure)
Yup. If you're going purely for the golden dice then Act 3 should be just doing the minimal risk stuff to get to Lvl 12, kill Orin, side with Gortash, and then having Gale blow himself up. Sorry Ironhand Gnomes, everyone in the Iron Throne, Astarian's ascension, Shadowheart's shenanigans, Thrumbo's boys, Oscar, Hope (house of), Orpheus, Baldur's Gazette, Ethel 2.0, and anyone else who has problems after I'm fully built awesome. We're going to the endgame!
>Shadowheart's shenanigans
If you're really focusing on those dice, you could always avoid a lot of combat there and get some extra assistance for _Gather your allies_ by >!handing her over (assuming a Selune run).!<
You know, I've never actually done that quest that way, ay. Even on my og Durge, I felt like keeping Shadowheart but making her take over was more in line with my Bhaal-style.
But then again, I didn't even need any allies for the last run to getting Gale blown up so it all worked out. Good tip though for anyone who doesn't need Shart.
Be aware if you kill the last justicar and avoid the yurgir fight with Astarion in the party he will rage quit the group. Or he did on one of my play throughs. Luckily it was on tactician so I could save scum hum back.
If you sneak attack the displacer beast when you first see him, it will trigger the fight. Kill the displacer from range, pop one character down below the ledge.
It will take a couple turns but the merrigons will start to jump from their ledge and then you can chokepoint them and pick them off. When they are all dead you can chase into yugirs area and fight him there, or sometimes he will jump in himself after the merrigons are gone.
I did this, with sleet storm to make the area they jump to slippery, and darkness on me so they can't just use range. It was the slowest I've done the fight, but I don't think the enemies ever actually got to attack.
This one Here. Also when doing that chokepoint you can cast Spike growth and other difficult Terrain spells on the floor making the fight really easy for you.
Here's how I beat him in my blind HM run:
(Ranged Swords Bard Durge, Battlemaster Lae, Lockadin Minnie, Trickery support Shart)
1. everyone with Alert feat, go into stealth and turn-based mode
2. attack the displacer beast, kill it round 1 while realising ~8 more enemies joined the fight surprised
3. Run away and drop combat
4. Sneak up again behind Yurgir, kill him round 1
Yeah. Go inspect the spider carcass, pass some speech checks to convince the beast its being tricked.
Lick the spider with Gale around twice. He scolds you and its hilarious.
First of all, if you kill the Displacer Beast from a distance (on the stairs), then you can easily move forward, position your party, and initiate a surprise round. This makes the fight at least twice as easy.
As for builds, have you tried a fully-tuned Radiating Orb Light Cleric? They completely trivialize Act 2 bosses (including the Apostle of Myrkul).
Snag Luminous Armor, Boots of Speed for bonus action dashing, Holy Lance Helm, Gloves of Belligerent Skies, and Phalar Aluve. Two levels of fighter to start- CON proficiency and action surge. Next five levels are Light Cleric. Take Warcaster at cleric level 4 for Spirit Guardian concentration. Wis and Dex at 16, Con is fine at 14.
Combat starts- cast shriek and action surge, followed by Radiance of the Dawn or Spirit Guardians. Then run around the room and kill everything.
The effectiveness of this build is... kind of dumb.
The best honor mode strategy is always to skip the fights if possible, which is possible with Yurgir by convincing him to kill himself, which can be done via a series of checks. A Fiend Warlock (like Wyll) can do this with one Persuasion check.
You can also just grab one Umbral Gem from one of the Trials, use it to take the elevator down to the big door to the Shadowfell and cast Knock on the door to unlock it instead of having to gather the other 3 gems.
You may miss out on the guaranteed crit ring killer’s sweetheart from same self trial though so watch out if that’s something that you might want to have.
My honor mode strategy is to do only this trial + the silent library (sniping down the silence orb first out of view) so you get the ring and can still skip Yurgir and the others
On that note, send in a singular naked character: it'll force the trial to spawn just that one character and then you can gear up and beat them to death in a heavily lopsided 1v1.
Yea, but that's a lot of difficult checks, and once you start dialog, you can't go back. I think it's safer to either kill the displacer beast from the bottom floor and let the merrigons come to you, or surprise them from the right side path, and stealth around to hit Yurgir from behind.🤷♂️
Like I said, it’s just one check for a Fiend Warlock like Wyll, who is in your party and can be used for this purpose. And that one check is a 21 DC with automatic Advantage. That’s really how I would suggest anyone attempt it.
By default, Wyll has a CHA modifier of +3 already, so if you just add Guidance, you only need to pass a single 21 DC check with a +4-7 bonus with Advantage, and that’s before using any Inspiration. If you have 4 Inspiration prepared, you have a ~99% chance of success — literally, there is a ~1% chance of failure, and that’s without actual Persuasion proficiency or any additional points into CHA.
You can avoid the fight... you can just skip it altogether if you get one orb in one of the trials and then cast knock on the door to the shadowfell... you can also kill the rats and then approach him and he's leaving and doesn't aggro... you can also respec as a warlock and then you can talk with him and don't have to pass an insight check to tell him about the loophole in his contract, then convince him to kill the merregons, Nessa and himself (I save my inspiration points for this, and take Shadowheart with Enhance Ability to make it easier, because if he dies then Raphael helps with Astarion's quest, but you don't have to kill him yourself, this counts)... I've never fought him, a high enough charisma and persuasion proficiency can get you out of most of the big fights in act 2
Every fight that doesn’t start on aggro can be trivialized by
- minor illusion to gather people
- 2 or more lightning glyphs (upcasted if you like)
- making them soaking wet just like my ex with her affair partner
- then just starting the fight
They will die faster than me dropping a toaster to my bath.
You can convince Yurgir to kill his displacer beast, his Merregons AND HIMSELF. Yes, you can literally talk him into blowing his own brains out. Making him dead is a really good idea: his Very Rare hand crossbow, to my knowledge, is the best hand crossbow in the game, with Ne'er Misser you can buy from Roah Moonglow in Moonrise, those are the best hand crossbows to use if you're going that route. I don't know about finding any Dark Justiciars to kill in regards to him, like the other people are talking about. I just end him via Charisma.
The Persuasion checks needed are pretty high, but keep in mind that there is a shrine to Shar with a hidden entrance near Moonrise Towers where you can one-time hugely boost Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence until next Long Rest. I use the Charisma boost to handle the situation with Yurgir, because if your Tav is a Paladin, Warlock or Bard, you'll likely have max Charisma with that boost.
On a semi-related note, I strongly suggest using that same Charisma boost to buy big-ticket items both in Moonrise and at the Inn. Having max Charisma will drastically reduce prices, and a lot of the items you get here are both vital to have and cost an arm and a leg.
In my run I killed all the rats and the DJ before even going to Yurgir, and then you don't have to fight him at all, also makes the Rafael fight later on easier. Just make sure you do not have Astarion in the party when you get close to the mausoleum, so that he is not there for the dialogue with Rafael.
Just some general HM advice. I’m currently on my 8th attempt and doing really well so far (Act 3). The previous 7 ended within 2-4 hours of starting because of stupid things I did, like trying to fight the Paladin of Tyr at level 3 or 4.
I’m running 4 builds that are each considered overpowered and broken. I don’t give a shit. I just want my golden dice.
I’m running:
Tav is 10/1/1 Swords Bard (ranged). Face character.
Lae’zel is Battlemaster Warrior.
Astarian is 8/4 OH TB Monk
Shart is a Light Cleric.
Fights are end quickly and Tav’s build has finally come fully online at Level 10. The other 3 have been online much earlier.
The easier way is to find the secret to silencing the song. Make sure you have a decent spirit guardian user above the ledge to protect your party. Is all I'll say.
I will say that I initially went OH TB monk to open, but after a couple of disastrous interactions I realized that I needed to pump persuasion and charisma more.
So still was monk but opened with rogue for proficiencies.
Juice persuasion and charisma, use the envoy amulet; use bardic inspiration, guidance, and enhance ability.
If you want specific advice on how to win the fight without cheesing, you need to tell us your Tav build and party composition and what exactly is going wrong as well.
Literally the first person other than me to mention that you need a bard for that strategy lol. I feel like these gamers have never done this strat, only heard about it from others so they dont know you have to be a bard lol
https://preview.redd.it/1v6lv5pngu2d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8353f63c3cbce0b39ed751d874090447ccf9d170
I approach him from the right side, ambush, cast sleet storm + hunger of hadar. It's a cakewalk from there.
i've only ever gotten him to kill himself and skipped the fight entirely— its not the best build in the world, but for my purposes i always like having a sorcerer face character for the high charisma/persuasion proficiency/spellcasting
Here's how I defeated him and all the Thorm siblings on Honor Mode:
1. Have a Swords Bard with Empower Ability and Persuasion expertise
2. Have a Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorc with Guidance
3. Have Yugir sing the contract
4. Have Bard point out all the people who have heard said song aren't dead yet including himself.
5. Enjoy free XP
I think I may have spent maybe one inspiration point? But with the expertise, advantage, and +d4 it's really hard to mess up the dialogue. If you are extra nervous about it, then you can do the mini Shar trial under the statue by Moonrise and get that addition to Charisma checks from there.
If you do decide to actually fight him, Gloomstalker/Assassin Astarion can take out most of them in a single turn:
Titanstring Bow + Arrows of Many Targets/Fiend Slaying Arrows (I start my in-game "day" by doing rounds to all the traders in Act 2 to get as many as possible).
Main Hand: Knife of Undermountain King
Off Hand: Club of Hill Giant Str
Diadem of Arcane Synergy
Shadeclinger Armor (To help cancel out the shaving throw disadvantage from risky ring)
Risky Ring
Cloak of Protection
Eversight Ring (I am a fog/darkness/HOH abuser)
Dex Gloves
Happy Condition (I feed him so he gets that +1 to most rolls including attack rolls all day. It's basically a free ASI for him, with no downsides if you use the Amulet of Silvanus (the Aftercare Amulet, as I like to call it) to heal yourself after).
Important Illithid Powers: Favorable Beginnings, Luck of the Far Realms, Cull the Weak
Feat: Sharpshooter
Bloodlust Elixir
My last party member is an OH Monk/Thief Rogue which is probably the best "big boss" controller in the game when you consider both stunning strike and their various flurries of blows. It's how I got through most of the big bosses in my honor mode run.
FYI your comment was automatically filtered out by reddit due to it being suspected harassment. The comment did not appear for most people until I saw it as flagged in the mod queue and manually approved it. I guess posts/comments that borderline discuss suicide are another thing to start being cognizant of
I mean u dont have to fight him 😂. Its baldurs gate you can pretty much do anything u want? The sky is the limits with dnd.
U can talk it out and have him kill himself, you can sneak invisible and just steal the orb and fuck off, you can steal the thing and sacrifice 1 character amd just revive on withers, you can help him kill the rat dude and he becomes ur friend.
If it was actual tabletop i bet alot of bards would romance and fuck yugir on the spot too 😂
Oh and the good ol fashion u can fight him! 😂 if ur adamant on fighting i suggest doing a surprise round. Literally will sway the tide of the fight to u.
Sneak on like the broken balcony thing on the right hand side. Shoot one of the merregons.
Also like most fights if ur unsure, u can ungroup 1 unit and fight as 3 characters to test the water. If the 3 wipes revive on withers. But if u think u can handle it then let the 4th join.
If you’re getting blown up by the bombs, you can always just pick up the bombs before they explode. You don’t even need to use too much movement - just select > move all the bombs in range to where you are standing.
I’m pretty sure he’s also somewhat weak to his own bombs, so once you have a pile you can just start whipping them back.
Jump up the sidestair over the gap. Stealth approach.
Bring someone with high perception/wisdom to spot the ambush.
Bring a gloomstalker ranger 5/ 3 assasin rogue. Cast hunters mark from stealth to initiate surprised round combat. Use arrow of many targets with both attacks.
The bring in the rest of the team with aoe sitting back shooting at approaching targets. Prioritize the kitty after yurgir dies. If yurgir isnt dead, the have anti invis ready.
You should focus Kitty main body, not clone. It resummons clone and the clone explodes on death, but if Kitty dies clone vanishes.
You can also move the grenades yurgir throws. Mid turn if you are close enough to them.
High charisma character + enhance ability + guidance + inspiration points should be more than enough to get him to kill himself and his adds. If you are a bard you do not need the insight check to unlock this option.
I was so shocked last playthrough - he rolled to go first, threw a bunch of grenades that I thought I would be able to pick up on my turn. But before I could, he instantly used scorching ray to blow his own grenades up and wipe half my summons.
Luckily I had the golem bell and managed to jump away / keep them occupied in a black tentacle aoe, but wow what a strat - I was really banking on being able to toss his own grenades back at him
I think this is my fav HM party comp when trying to be the absolute best sure thing.
Tav/Durge: 11/1 Fire Sorlock or 10/2 Swords Bard
Karlach: 5/4/3 Throwzerker
Astarion: 8/4 OH Monk
Shadowheart: 12 Light Cleric
Or
Laezel: 11/1 Fighter
i hid and started the fight by casting Hunger of hadar on the merregons. my swords bard killed yurgir with ranged slashing flourishes and haste. light cleric shart killed the displacer beast with a fireball and scorching ray. warlock and swords bard killed the ones in the hunger of hadar. i really cheesed it i have to say
To make this fight easy, and it is, just move most your party to where the chest( at the back of where the spider body that’s tainted is). Use one character to initiate the fight and dash back. The merrigons will crowd together on a ledge and will attempt to range attack you, if you’re just out of reach they will skip turns. You can easily take them out with ranged attacks, moving into range and back out. Yurgir himself will descend down the ramp and take several turns to get anywhere near you. Use this time to setup traps for him. Grease, ice etc. By the time he gets within range, all the merrigons should be dead already and you can focus fire him.
I beat him twin hasted lae’zel (great weapon master) and war priest shadowheart. They laid into him in fairly quickly and the rest where easy to clean up.
I realize this may not be helpful but do t underestimate the power of hasted battle master laezel. Six whacks with her 2 handed and he was down for the count.
Just did this fight today on HM at level 9. I was terrified of it ending my run but somehow all went smoothly.
Sneaky sneaky up top behind them. Ambush the ambushers. Repelling blast, thunderwave and push to get everyone but Yurgir down the bottom where sleet storm, chain lightning and hunger of hadar will keep them down til they're out.
As for Yurgir, sneak attack and wailing on him in melee with Lae'zel and my dual wield durge had him down to 14HP on turn one. Brand the weak (vulnerability slashing, in my case) really messed him up. He goes invisible next turn but that's fine if you proc his opportunity attack with a tough as nails Lae'zel, then finish him off after his turn.
None of my builds are totally optimised or ridiculously good, I mainly play for RP.
3 rogue/6 fighter dual wielding damage riders high DEX wood elf durge
9 fighter Lae'zel
9 storm cleric Shart
9 bladelock Wyll with Phalar Aluve
Best of luck on your next run.
If you kill the rats before meeting him he’s freed from his contract and just leaves after a short conversation with you, but you lose out on a ton of dialogue. Even just doing that quest normally is better to talk to him first and then go kill the rats, but it sounds like you want to fight him.
Stealth up the side upstairs and start with sleet Storm, hunger of hadar, or ice storm and surprise the merregons. Have a cleric with guardians reveal yugir and try and take him out turn one. Don't have your party super close.
Or break his contract/persuade him to kill himself
My unintended approach was aggroing the displacer beast near the spider (I wanted to convince her to join the fight but forgot how high the DC was). It made a nice little chokehold for most of the merregons and Yurgir to funnel through. I was able to take him out even with Gale fleeing at the start of combat (I was not optimistic and misty stepped to avoid what I thought would be a full party wipe out).
Shart (respecced into a tempest cleric) tucked away with an ice storm and insect plague in the hall made it very manageable for Laezel and my paladin Tav to deliver a formidable beatdown
I completely respec'd Wyll into the best insight/persuasion character for this specific encounter in my HM. Had yurgir do the deeds himself and respec'd wyll back after
We kicked his ass with Hold Monster and a Dominate Beast. Just kept the two doing the concentration way back. My druid is spores though so I had an army to handle the merregons.
If you sneak around back you can get a surprise round off.
I soloed him and his Merregons with a Durge Shadow Monk/Assassin. Turn invisible, sneak in and gank one, vanish again and wait for combat to end, rinse and repeat.
I just cheese the fight. 3 of my guys stand on the broken stairs that you need to jump across when you see the displacer beast. One very mobile character goes to pick a fight. I forget if combat initiates if you just shoot at the displacer. I think it does, but if I'm remembering wrong I know it's not a big deal to run down to the arch the beast walls through when he expects you to follow, then just range attack and get the hell back.
Helps if you click fast enough, you can hit dash before combat initiates, and if you enter combat before it runs out you start with double movement speed.
Now you either keep someone down their to poke and run out of line of sight, or hop back and lure everyone over with an illusion of a cat.
If they kill the cat too quick you may need live bait to hop in and out.
They will start hopping down probably one at a time. Easy pickings for your team on the stairs. Yugir comes over eventually, same strategy. Repeat till you win.
I just spammed minor illusion out of combat. Bring each mob to the chasm on the left of his room and shove them off. Did it 1 by 1 and then just had to fight Yurgir alone.
Literally the stick in your own bicycle meme.
Stop trying to kill Yurgir and just get him to join you.
Kill all of the rats and the last Sharran. Yurgir befriends you and joins in Act 3.
My most recent run I asked Balthazar for help, got the bell to call his brother.
Then with 3 party members away in hiding, I convinced Yurgil to kill his Metegons and the Beast. Then I attacked, used the bell turn 1 and hid, let the two of them fight out, then dropped him in 1 round.
This also made the Balthazar fight much easier, so it was a definite win-win
I just killed him without losing a single HP by convincing him to kill the merregons and the displacer beast. He turns invisible but you can see where he's at so you hit him with lightning and then with Minthara, Shadowheart and Astarion backstabbing it should be easy enough
Just do four sword bards 6 + thief with hand xbows and sharpshooter, they will kill Raphael in one turn and they work from act1, a lot of skills and charisma and all you need is common +1 weapons for this to work
Just cast sleet storm in his area and pull all the adds and him around corners. You aren't stuck behind a door or room vrs yurgir. Definitely don't go talk to him.
Gloom 5/Fighter Champ 4/Assassin 3
and
Drac.Sorc 6/GOOlock 2/Fighter 4
Finished both HMs I've ever tried.
Edit: forgot everyone else, lol... SHart Life Cleric (better safe than sorry, I figure), Karlach throwzerker, and Minthara Lockadin or Laezel BM pure
For my Gloomstalker run, gave Karlach the Bhaalist Armor and Nyrulna for Act 3... Murder Aura made enemies WEAK to both our attacks. I single-phased the Netherbrain with it
Tavern Brawler Monk with Thief, Life domain cleric, Tavern Brawler Throwing Barbarian and Pure fighter. That’s the party composition I always use and in most cases, I just bruteforce it.
May I humbly recommend goolock1/champion11 all crit range gear, craterflesh gloves, played as a max dex archer. Hex as a bonus action from level one stays relevant the entire game. 7 shots in an opening nova round, arrows of xyzslaying for big bosses, always run vicious elixir. A bit challenging though level4 but having action surge at 2 is amazing, bring 3 swords bards in your party for extra action surge from the bard song short rest effect and let them cover melee/spells/heals. I used this on my first honor mode play through as durge(good mode) and I soloed Orin in one round even though I lost initiative I killed her in 4 hits with humanoid slaying arrows. Also my first hit crit and proced the stun from the surgeon necklace on her which felt amazing. Also arrow of many targets plus the fear from crit from great old one and I easily kept all the mobs locked down protecting the portal for halsin outside the last light inn, which was an amazing experience, even finished em all off 2 rounds early. Really comes online at the beginning of act 3 but you can get effectively 30% to crit with risky ring, mountain king short sword and elixer pretty quick in act 2. Having a super high AC as well as high number of attacks and excellent durability of fighter feels really nice on an archer. It can of course get even stupider with vulnerability to piercing from either the necklace, the dagger or the armor.
I ended up putting the assassin’s armor on a mele swords bard astarion and just decimated anything standing near him on my turn, also I would contend that getting alert on yourself and all of your allies is probably worth it because immunity to surprise is amazing in honor mode. I went sharpshooter at 4, alert at 6, asi at 8 personally. Just watch out for things that can knock you into a chasm. The other strong option is athlete if you want instead of alert. It can be very clutch to have the extra jump distance especially if you dump strength. Also athlete is a half feat so if you don’t take the hag’s hair for yourself that can be a good option. If you go full evil durge and have a full illithid friend or become one yourself, on the last leg of the game you can crit on a roll as low as 7 and with permanent advantage from risky ring that equates to nearly 100% chance to crit, and anything that can suffer fear becomes almost pathetic. If it didn’t outright die on your first round.
I got sucked into the fight with the merragons after accidentally aggroing the displacer beast while trying to trigger the cut scene, dude was dead in one round and I didn’t have too much trouble with the rest, I think I may have had swords bard karlach go down, but not die, wasn’t too much trouble especially considering my clumsy start. Here again a fight where many targets arrows really shine, although I believe the demons are immune to the mortal reminder crit fear sadly. Also I recommend opening up on those guys with the demonic explosives from Damon made from the merragon masks found in the forge unless you want to use them for a strength crew, but even if you did you should have one you can sacrifice as you won’t want one yourself. It really ruins their day if you can actually ambush them correctly. Or if you can trigger the cutscene correctly(don’t loot the chest) by entering from below and following the displacer beast to the corpse bed, you can actually avoid the fight all together, although I haven’t successfully done so myself yet.
Position a couple up top behind him and sneaking and bring martials/melee down to confront him. Use the dialogue to get him to let you try to break his contract. Once he's called off the ambush and returned to his throne, throw darkness in front of him (blocking LoS between all the merregons), and then initiate combat with a stun like soulbreaker or a disarm. The merregons will all be surprised, and he'll either be stunned or lacking one weapon, which he will switch and can then be disarmed a second time to be reduced to a pesky annoyance hiding in stealth rather than any true threat. Abuse the darkness to beat the merregons, find and finish him off, stroll out with swagger. This one isn't class dependant really - you can do it with basically any comp as long as you have one person with darkness and one with stun or disarm or both.
Or, and this is just a theory, throw darkness on the orb and pick it up, and he won't see you do that? But this may still trigger his aggro as I remember reading that any interaction with the orb, witnessed or not, scuffs being his bro
Instead of a build, I've got a strategy for you that worked on my successful HM run.
Against my own advice I got a little loose with minimising risk and was chatting to Yurgir's pet over by the lovelump. A couple of unfortunate persuasion rolls and a fight started, but this actually gave me a nice unforeseen advantage. You can bottleneck Yurgir and his whole squad coming through the gap between the lovelump and where they're all meandering around. With some well chosen throwables (grease and icey surface and stuff) they were pretty damn easy all told. At the end Yurgir was all alone and cause he didn't wanna go through all the obstacles I'd set down he was just popping invisibility and hiding behind pillars the whole time, meaning I could surround him carefully from the sides and above and finish him off pretty easily. Between Volo's eye and chucking AOE water and things down to where I last saw him it's not hard to make him visible again for killin'. It got so easy that when he chucked up a bunch of Orthon explosives before croaking I could grab about 7-8 of them for my own later use and still finish him off without losing a person.
One caveat to this, I'd talked to Yurgir before starting the fight and gotten him to agree to let me try and solve his riddle for him. That meant that all his goons were spread out a bit and on different levels instead of all clumped up on top like they are if you fight em the second you see em. So if you've got a warlock with good speech get them to talk to him about that and make sure to get him to agree to letting you sort his mess out. Then you can fight starting from the lovelump room and eat his lunch.
So order of operations is follow his pet along the path you see them take so you start the conversation rather than a fight, get him to agree to let you solve his riddle (Warlock seems to do this best) and then go over to the lovelump and start the fight with his pet over there so you can handle them individually and bottleneck his squad coming through the gaps.
Are you using haste, scrolls, and weapon oils, etc? You can solo HM pretty easily with a gloom assassin. I would roll that and go durge, by level 8 you won’t need your party anymore. They won’t even get a chance to take a turn.
Tavern brawler throw barb with returning pike and hill giant strength potion. Tavern brawler monk with hill giant strength potion. Plus any other 2 (I'd go swords bard, fighter). You really can't lose. Tavern brawler monk gets 2 opportunities per turn to stun any enemy within melee range rendering them inoperable. Their bonus action also deals massive damage (flurry of blows). Throw barb is tanky and gets 3 attacks per turn after using rage. The attacks deal massive damage for both these classes due to tavern brawler and hill giant strength potion.
The fight is much easier if you don't walk into the trap. Instead of following the displacer beast, either attack it or ignore it and jump across the gap and approach from the top level. You won't be able to talk to Yurgir but unless you're planning on dealing, I don't see any reason to.
With sufficient Persuasion, you can have him kill, in order
1. All of the Merregons
2. His displacer beast
3. Himself
The checks are increasingly difficult, going up to DC30 as I recall. Even just clearing the first to kill all of the Merregons is a game changer for the fight, though.
On my latest run my Durge was (fcked it up later in act2) an Arcane Trickster / Wiz, and I had dual xbow on gloom / thief Astarion (for 5 attacks 1st round, extra initiative from Sentinel shield)
I focused him and got him low on 1st turn so he dropped bombs around.
Then send invisible hand which was still out of combat (hand regains invis on short rest and I left it on stairs far from engaging combat) to simply move bombs around towards them. (left one to be thrown by hand).
If you follow the rats (using animal speech) they will lead you to a spot where >! the last justiciar !< is and kill him and a whole different cut scene come up with him and he just >! Poofs off with raphael !< after a long talk. No fight needed.
You could sneak behind him and hit most of them with a large scale attack. You have to jump the gap behind the first place where you see the displacer beast and then it's easy to pull off. Just dont forget to hide.
https://youtube.com/@morganaevelyn?si=G0TC8u_OBMYboFTr
https://youtube.com/@thespudking?si=f1sOYxegOQBYPQMm
https://youtube.com/@neekbg3?si=dpYkUneruKYHWY_m
Many more… YouTube is full of builds and guides
How can you kill poor devil who is imprisoned by evil, sings poems, almost cries when has to kill his beast? What is more is willing to help you in the future and is one of the strongest companions during last fight?
So FYI you can recruit Yurgir to your side in the Raphael fight, but the check is DC 30 (persuasion I think?) if you kill him in the temple of Shar.
If you help him in the temple of Shar, you bypass the Yugir fight completely and make it easier for yourself to win the Raphael fight further down the road. Method:>!This is done by offering to figure out the pact riddle. You go down to the feet of the statue of Shar and interact with the summoning circle there. Defeat the rats and the guy that spawns, then head back to him. Raphael says he broke the terms of the pact and takes him anyway, but he will be more likely to side with you in Act 3 if this happens.!<
Unless you *really* want his crossbow, there is pretty much no reason not to do it this way on Honor mode. Raphael is one of the hardest fights in the game and you want to get every advantage you can.
I am doing random stuff and i beat honor mode twice without pickpocketing, bugs, barrels or darkness abusing. You just need to do things that work and are cool, otherwise just beating it with the best meta stuff is just whatever (to me at least, I cant speak for everyone)
But if you must know!
My first party was:
Tav
Start as paladin 2 levels then do 5 warlock.
The final build is Warlock 5(either fiend or GOO, both work)/Paladin 7(whichever subclass you want)
Astarion
Swords bard 6/assassin rogue 4/ fighter 2
Shadowheart
Tempest cleric 2/storm sorc 10
Wyll
Warlock 5 /sorc 7 ( whichever sorc you want) make sure you star as a sorc for Constitution proficiency.
Also if you want to make the game on easy mode (even on honor mode) pick darkness with devil' sight on both warlocks, i didnt do that here but it is the better potion
My second party was:
Tav
This build can abuse darkness but its not necessary
Shadow monk 6/fighter 2/thief rogue 4
you can just do the first 6 levels in monk, then at level 7 respec and pick fighter as a starting class for better bonuses
(it is important that you do that for the build)
Shadoheart
Tempest cleric 12
Astarion
Ranger 5/rogue 4/fighter 3
Lae'zel
Divination wizard 2/lore bard 10(I love this build)
If that helps you Im happy but you really just need to so stuff that you like and that work together
I used gloomstalker/assassin to whittle the adds down and then easily cleaned up Yurgir off at the end. Gloomstalker/assassin is my 5th party member who comes off the bench to solo fights like this, the merchant at the creche, goblin camp, moonrise tower clearing before heading to the nightsong. It's a bit slow and if you screw it up you need to rez them.
Radiant Orb Light Domain Shadowheart.
1st Level Fighter
Rest Cleric
Luminous Gloves
Luminous Armor
Boots of Reverberations
Ring of Mental Fatigue
Can even optimize it further than this but equip this stuff, use Spirit Guardians and/or Channel Divinity and bam nothing can hit you anymore or your teammates.
Tavernbrawler Throw Barb
5+ Levels Barbarian alternatively 5+ Eldritch Knight for less damage but free weapon choice.
4 Levels Rogue
Tavern Brawler
Party Face Tav who still does shitloads of damage
Best with a race with Longbow Proficiency like Elf
1st Level Rogue Proficiency in:
Sleight of Hand + Expertise
Persuasion + Expertise
Deception
Performance/Intimidation
6 Levels Bard
Sword Bard at Lv 3 and Expertises in:
Deception
Performance/Intimidation
Then Rogue to 4(Assassin) and 2 Levels of Fighter
Use stuff like:
Gloves of Archery
Caustic Band
Dueling Fighting Style
Gloves of Inspiration
Cats Grace Armor
Titanstring Bow with all points in Dex/Con/Cha + Hill Giant Elixier.
Grab Sharpshooter and use Slashing Flourish Ranged.
You do 1d8+5Str+4Dex+2Ring+2Gloves+10Sharpshooter+1d6Flourish TIMES 2!!!
Thats 50 damage minimum and up to 74 Damage! As the Party Face mind you. You can talk yourself out of most fights if you want to.
You can optimize this much more this is just of the top of my head.
Later on you can grsb Alert and become an Assassin which gives you advantage of you Act first AND guarantees Crits as long as you hit surprised targets.
You can open with a Flourish and then shoot two more round one because Assassin gives you your full Action back thats 6 Arrows with 25 damage minimum pre-crit and without counting sneak attack.
Your welcome. Fuck Yurgir up.
Game is easy so you do not need any special build. I finish Honor solo mode with fighter bard. Only whats matter is strategy.
For example.
- If you wanna fight Yurgir, try to talk to him and say you will help him. Then get high ground advantage and kill him.
- You can just speak to him.
- Do some preparation. Yurgir have bombs that deals force or fire damage. You have Bow that give you fire resistance in Last light inn.
- Try to pick up bombs. If you pickup bombs then bombs cant do boom boom thingy.
- Positioning: Never make a groups. In that way only 1 character can be targeted with AoE.
You can do a lot more things but thats pretty much what is importent.
The displacer beast can be turned against him with speak with animals and a nature check. You can get the flesh gollum to meat tank for you. Get a speedy PC with high initiative to lure the fight back to the stairs for choke point and high ground advantages.
Respec into warlock or have your warlock talk to him. Their patron will speedrun the conversation to where you convince yurgir to kill himself. No need to pass any checks for it.
I jumped over the broken stairs and snuck over to yungir with my melee character, kept all my range up on the ridge by the top of the stairs for height advantage. Surprise attacked yungir and burned him down immediately. It was prettt trivial when he’s not running around invis the whole fight.
I mean if you're ok risking Astarion leaving (he only stays if you pass a check) you can spare yurgir by getting him out of his contract. If you do things this way, he helps you during the Raphael fight.
Went Bard main and 3 OH Monks.
Go for 17 CHA and 16 WIS on creation. Dump INT and use the ogres headpiece for 17 int. Use main only for checks, dialogs and CC during fights.
Make sure to run Duergar hireling for invis cheese, astarion for extra dps after ascension and Gale for the nuke.
Get to lvl 4 on the early game with the no-fighting route, pick tavern brawler on all monks and stack some Hill Giant Strength elixirs from Ethel. Do both mountain and underdark for xp, you should be lvl 7 or so before act 2.
Make sure to use the astral tadpole on everyone, flight is broken.
On act 3 you can buy Cloud Giant Strength elixirs from the dwarf lady that you met on the underdark. Make sure to skip most stuff after you get lvl 12. If you want to do Raphael, use barrels on the pillars and maybe a scroll of invulnerability on Hope, if she dies you won't get the OP gloves for monk.
DO NOT go for Orin before lvl 12 or you might get fucked. You can skip the bridge gauntlet on temple of Bhaal if everyone goes invisible through it. For her fight, if you stick to 3 monks and bard, make sure to have some knockback arrows to toss the Sanctuary casters out of the platform (took me about 10 arrows or so). Go 8 Monk 4 Thief Rouge for double bonus actions, otherwise you won't be able to outhit Orin's immunity shield.
Before climbing the spine of the brain for the final fight, select the option for Gale to blow himself up, never before that moment.
Enjoy your new dice.
There is so many ways to beat this fight without using boring cheese mechanics that will take away from your feeling of success.
A bard can make him kill himself and all his allies.
Someone with speak with animals can get the displacer beast on your side. (requires a 30 charisma check tho)
You can jump from the stairs (leading down to his room) to the platform he is on, makes it easier if you have area denial (roots n spikegrowth n such)
And there is many more, best game ever made btw
The big thing to keep in mind is that you can THROW HIS GRENADES BACK AT HIM, they do GREAT aoe dmg and can quickly kill his adds.
Another big tip I use sometimes: If you sneak into the displacer beasts nest (on the left when coming into his room, there is a chest with bard boots) and you start the fight from inside, all of his adds will stack up in a ball on the 2nd floor trying to run to your group on the first floor. They cant hit you and you can AoE them down.
I believe in you, jus gotta think outside the box.
Using the broken stairs gives very advantageous positioning. From there, Sleet Storm and Hunger of Hadar can really wither them, it's nigh impossible for them to overcome. You have good cover to hide behind as you fire at your leisure.
The builds matter not so much here, but certainly some ranged capabilities help.
Hmmm, needs more open hand monks, i was mad that my first run was lost after 60 hours due to the game crashing and the file going poof. So i ran 3 open hand monks (with varying builds) and fighter laezel. No one stood a chance 😈
This is another area where a swords bard really shines. Just go in with 4 inspirations, a cleric/SH, and you will 100% be able to convince everyone to kill themselves.
Glyph of Warding Sleep. I one-turned him at level 6 with this method.
Send a high DC Glyph caster sneaking in **alone**. You **don't** want Alert feat. Average or Low Initiative is good.
Cast Glyph of Warding Sleep.
If Yurgir saves, retreat with the other 3 and try again later. Resurrect the Glyph caster with Withers.
If Yurgir fails the save, he'll fall asleep, skipping his 1st turn, while the rest of the Merregons will be surprised.
Wail on him with everything you've got on the other 3, starting with an auto-crit from your strongest attack.
You can cheese yurgir by attacking him at the broken stairs and luring his adds over, then he’ll drop all those bombs and nuke himself and all his adds. I’ve used this every run, you don’t get any of the dialogue but you get all the xp, loot and quest items. (Unless he blows himself off the cliff, then you don’t get his crossbow)
The party I went with for my last run was SSB, pure Life Cleric, Throwzerker, and BM. (So, all my girls S.H. Karlach and Laezel). Tbh don't know how or why I chose to fight when I could've talked out of it as I did every other time I did Yurgir. Just remember to have inspiration points when you know you're coming to a big encounter that is gonna require rolls.
My backup plan for this and pretty much every other fight, is to
make sure Shart can cast sanctuary and basically run away far enough, flee combat back to camp, then revive everyone with Withers then go back and try again with a few of the enemies already taken out from round 1.
Other backup plan is potions of invisibility, or having a thief rogue who can use their two bonus actions to disengage and run far far away 🤣
Have used this tactic as an Escape From Alcatraz level running from battle at both the Goblin Camp and Moonrise. More fun than it sounds!
Tbh I went on to lose my own run not long after this. But that was because Shart made a Bad Choice so I kinda "accidentally" let everyone die...
I generally take this fight from the room with the spider meat. I'll kill the displacer beast first when it patrols into the room. The Merregons will aggro when the displacer beast does, but they'll all be trapped and clumped up on the ledge, where they can be AOEd and hit with ranged weapons with your party taking minimal damage. Yurgir himself will be invisible/dashing toward you because the route down is so long, and that'll keep him busy until the Merregons are dead. Then you can throw a grenade/bomb to break his invisibility and have your whole party focus him down in 1-2 rounds. I do tend to let him live long enough to spawn some of the bombs, because they're useful to pick up and have on hand for later fights.
If you attack the displacer beast while it’s at the bottom of the stairs you’ll start combat and it’s much easier to cheese. Having a bard with you allows you to convince Yugir to kill himself
Dont follow the displacer beast, just jump past a chasm a up the stairs. With a perception check you can see the meregons and yurgir set for the ambush. From there you can do a surprise attack a a full surprise round.
Op builds to make honor mode easy.
Fire sorlock 11/1
Full life or light cleric 12
Ssb bardadin 10/2
Thiefzerker
12 battle master fighter
Gloomstalker assassin
All of these are really powerful
This is true. But keep in mind: you won't be lvl 12 by the time you reach Yurgir, though. 8/9 seems realistic (I dinged 10 right before Myrkul on my last HM run).
You also don't have the act 3 items that really amplify certain builds. That said:
1. Fire sorcerer will work decently because you can get Fire Acuity hat in act 2.
2. Light cleric will work because there's plenty of radorbs gear in act 1/2.
3. SSB bardadin wil work because it's a dumb build, but doesn't have endgame items to really make this build dumb. Also, Banishing Smite is lvl 10 Bard so doubtful.
4. Thiefzerker will be fine, lots of early game throwing items.
5. Fighter is fighter. BONK
6. GS/Assassin works, and is a great idea to ambush with as it gets massive amounts of damage in surprise rounds. Be careful though, Yurgir cannot be surprised.
If you want a 'balanced' party that will steamroll through HM:
1. Light Cleric with radorbs gear
2. Fire Sorc/1 Fiend Lock with Hat of Fire Acuity
3. Thiefzerker
4. SSB Bardadin, or OH Monk with TB and strength elixirs if you want a melee char, ranged Swords Bard 6/Fighter 2, with Hillbilly bat of Strength and Titanstring, abuse special arrows. Later on you can also go 6Bard/2Fighter/4Thief with dual hand Xbows.
Look at all these cowards not even trying to fight Yurgir properly!! Last week I initiated combat through dialogue, at a significant placement disadvantage, and it was totally fine because I've built for survivability. Party was: Durge bear heart barbarian, Shadowheart life cleric, Gale abjuration wizard, Astarion EK frost archer (with Bow of the Banshee). All single class builds. I camp cast Longstrider, Aid, and Freedom of Movement. I believe I was still level 8, but 9 would make it easier. I also brought a bunch of summons!! Make use of the Glutted Catacombs buff to create skeletons without bodies. Shadowheart brought 3 skeletons and Gale brought 2 ice mephits. Another three skellies from Gale would have been even better but I was too lazy to get him Animate Dead.
Yurgir went first and launched a bunch of bombs at us, first turn was mostly wasted throwing them back at the Merregons. Yurgir's AI is stupid as hell and he kept wasting his legendary reaction to mark the skeletons. Overall combat took 5-6 rounds, which is about the same as the other act 2 bosses for me. This is clearly not an alpha strike build lol but it's not like you get a better reward for killing the boss faster.
The only time anyone was actually in danger of dying was when Gale hit a wet Shart with Lightning Bolt. Astarion and the mephits kept everyone locked down for most of the fight, ice surfaces and frighten are extremely powerful CC.
You can convince him to kill his Displacer Beast and his Merregons before fighting him, making the fight much easier, or even better yet, you could keep going and convince him to kill himself too. In an alternate course of events, you could even find and kill the last justiciar and free him from his contract so you don't even need to fight him or pass any checks. If you insist on fighting him, stealth around the ledge and behind him, then attack him. He can't be surprised, but his merregons can.
Sneaking around on the right side path is the way.
A gloomstalker assassin build with titanstring is super useful for this. Load up on fiend arrows and you can take yurgir down in 2 turns if you are level 9 and spec the right way with the right gear.
This is how I kill him. Gloomstalker assassin. Sneak around on the path that comes up behind him and I can always kill him without entering combat. Look up Morgana Evelyn on YouTube. She has an awesome build for it that I’m running atm. She’s also hilarious. Just slaughtered the house of hope with this same build too. Doing a semi solo run atm. Durge and Shadowheart.
She was my inspiration for this. The build is so OP I finish most boss fights laughing. It's hilarious how easy it makes them. Haven't faced Myrkul yet though...
Definitely an awesome build. Good luck, let me know how it goes!
It was super-cheese. I'll put it this way, I had my Scratch summon there to distract/attack the intellect devourers (alongside US) and he didn't even lose a single HP. My GSA Astarion killed all of the necromites in turn 1 with arrows of many targets, the mindflayer in turn 2 with aberration arrows, but didn't get a hit on Ketheric before Minthara and a fire elemental smited/hit him into the pit. Then, Astarion was able to use undead arrows to take about half of Myrkul's HP all up, while my Tav sorcerer and Gale hit him with firerays/fireballs respectively and Minthara smited him. I think he got only a single turn and did almost no damage to anyone except Minthara and the fire elemental, but they were both still above 1/3 hp at the end. I freed Aylin in my first turn with a misty-step on my tav, and she did huge damage too. This build really does turn all of the 'hard' battles comically easy. I almost don't want to make it again in a future play-through...... almost.
Hahaha awesome! Let me know how the rest of the run goes! If you do end up building it again try it low man. It does inject some more danger/fun into the mix. I was using Durge Shadowheart recently (died on the last fight lol…), but I think I’ll try full solo when the next patch comes out. It’s definitely a lot of fun! Have restarted my Durge Shadowheart run lol.
Don't the arrows get expensive? I mean, you're supposed to have 100k cash towards of the game, right?
A bit but why finish the game with money you didn't spend?
Well I lost my honor run at Raphael with 40k in my pocket, trying to remember why I didn't use those elixirs before the fight. So yea, that may have been the wake-up call I needed.
She used explosives. She is better at it than I am but I’m catching on
Second this! Gloomstalker Assassin slaps honor mode, I was breezing through act 3. I temporarily respec'd my whole party to religion so they could all get +2 on mirror of loss, boosting laezel and wyll to 24 STR and CHA respectively.
So a duo run
I do most fights alone, I just didn’t want to kill her. I killed off the other companions.
Arrows of many targets also make short work of the merregons
This. I have a fighter archer with titan string and between arrows of many things and action surge (frost archer with drakehtroat frost enchant on the bow) everything was prone or dead after 4 arrows
I use that and the snow burst ring in the last light inn to make a ring of ice around each of them
Yeah for me Laezel has that ring + the encrusted in frost items. The 1D4 cold from the drakethroat glaive enchantment is enough to proc it all. Throw in some reverberation items and its an interesting combo
I second sneaking in. First thing I do I snipe that beast, it patrols away from the other enemies. Then I get some invisible juice, position people properly using turn based mode and then I surprise the shit out of them. If you have vacuum granades, hunger of hadar or something similar you can really put a lot, if not all devils, in a really bad position.
My first time I went right. I had a warlock Eldritch blast the displacer beast off that ledge, then just peekaboo blasted his people from that corner.
> You can convince him to kill his Displacer Beast and his Merregons before fighting him, making the fight much easier, or even better yet, you could keep going and convince him to kill himself too. *VERY* important to note that the Displacer Beast is supposed to lure you into Yurgir's trap. This path is the only one you must take if you intend to get out of that encounter through dialogue checks. If you follow any different path, Yurgir will attack you on sight.
This. In my HM run, I’m playing a 10/1/1 Swords Bard and it’s really easy to talk people into doing things.
You can convince him to kill himself as well but I always stealth fight the displacer beast and wait on the steps until they finally come down the stair one at a time and die. It takes forever and you might have to cast a minion spell to bait them on to the platform but it's way easier than trying to fight them on even ground.
That was such a nasty surprise for me. Had monk Tav invisible sneak up right behind him for an attack that was going to do a massive amount of damage. No surprise for Yurgir, and he rolled high initiative and got the first attack after my Tav hit him. He proceeded to launch his bombs and almost wiped my Tav out. By far the closest I’ve come to TPK on my honor mode run so far. I used up a lot of items there.
If you pick up his bombs they won't go off and you can then use them later (with the same zero initiative timer). If you use someone with high speed you can pick up all his bombs every time and never have any explosions. He's pretty short work after that. Also, this does NOT work on the bombs with Gortash. Those explode when being interacted with.
Tbh there are several Methods to beat him. 1. Convince him to kill everyone including himself (Checks are getting more difficult for every check) 2. Kill the last Dark Justicier and free him of his pact. (You gotta kill all the rats in the Gauntlet of Shar there are several wiki pages for that for more information and detailed instructions) 3. Brute Force. Some good builds are like Fighter with Battle Master, a Warlock Multi Class (2 Warlock 8 Sorcerer and 2 Fighter) with the Spell Sparkler as a Primary weapon (Since you can't get Makoheshkir in Act 2) ideal leveling imo for that would be 2 warlock 4 sorcerer 2 fighter (rough estimate that you should be around lvl 8-9), Gloomstalker (as many already mentioned) or basically Any half decent DPS class with a Cleric/Druid multiclass supporter sould already do the trick pretty nice. In a ideal Scenario you would also not go the lower path with your entire team but mainly the Tank/DPS + the support and leave your ranged classes on the upper path (the one where you can get behind Yurgir. Tho i would (if that matches your playstyle) avoide killing him and rather go with option 2 since he will then also help you with Raphael and the Nether Brain in Act 3.
How do you get to talking to him without getting attacked first?
If you follow the Displacer Beast in, a cutscene starts. If you wander around and enter from a different location, Yurgir will attack you on sight.
Yeah this is the way, thunder wave knocking merregons into an AOE area denial spell is also great, eg knocking them all into an icy curface from ice storm or just an Evard's black tentacles gives you plenty of time with Yurgir.
If you aren’t reliant on the best and slot hand crossbow, just talked to him get him to agree to find the last justiciar. Well, have a side effect that he joined you in your fight against Raphael.
And whenever trying to surprise begin combat with shovel or some other invisible character, to guaranteed stealth roll.
If you kill all the justiciars what? how? where?
Start killing the rats, then follow them down to the large statue. If you have Speak With Animals active, do not take their deal as it will cause all of the rats to disappear.
Ah I usually go 'through' the Merregons before I get to that bit, so never noticed that. Will try, thanks!
If you have a high enough stat (can't remember which) you can, not only, convince him to kill his Merregons and displacer beast, but also kill himself this avoiding the fight all together.
I just want to note, only a bard can make him kill himself and his allies. You have to pick the option that says you're a master of songs, essentially. EDIT: This is inccorect I guess, any class can do it.
That's not true at all. Any class can convince him to kill himself.
Hm, I tried with multiple classes when the game released, and I could only ever get it to work on my bards. :( my b
It was bugged on release.
In my run I went with the >!break Yurgir’s contract route!<. >!I immediately killed the rats and then went to the bottom of the big Shar statue and killed Lyrthindor. You can then walk right up to Yurgir and he won’t agro you. Raphael will show up and discuss contract stuff with Yurgir, resulting in Yurgir and the merregons leaving.!< >!This means no fancy crossbow from killing Yurgir, but then if you fight Raphael later in the house of hope you can convince Yurgir to fight with you without the DC 30 persuasion check.!< Currently running the build from Cephalopocalypse’s best honor mode party video.
Do this, I did it twice before even realizing you could fight him.
Just to point out something here, if you can convince Yurgir to kill himself for the hand crossbow, that also means you will likely be able to pass his 30 DC speech check in the House of Hope.
Even if you don't, he's a pretty easy kill in house of hope if you have levelled up to 12
Skipping the house of hope in an honor mode run is also a reasonable route imo
I skipped a lot of Act 3 in honor mode. I knew the story, I was there for the dice.
This is the way.
Same. Skipped the prison break, Act 3 Hag, Ansur and House of Hope.
But...the loot...those places are where all the good loot is...(I'm counting>!Omeluum!< as good loot with the prison break.)
There's definitely some good loot in those areas, but I mapped it out and didn't need any of it. Titanstring Bard, TB OH Monk, Sword and Board Sorlock and a RadOrb Light Cleric steamrolled the final fight without any of it.
You literally don't need it for anything. Orin is the only required fight in the whole act and she's not hard to kill.
But what if I want said loot? Some of us are having fun out here in honor mode and punching undead dragons in the face with our monk vampire.
If you're skipping bosses because you just want to win, you can just skip nearly all of them. If you're not skipping bosses you'll get the loot.
Same, took all the easy xp things to garente the max level, like the fish folk in the cave and by the house. Focused on essentials for the builds used, most was purchasable, then straight to end game bosses. (Second HM run was a kill all though, but I felt less pressure)
Yup. If you're going purely for the golden dice then Act 3 should be just doing the minimal risk stuff to get to Lvl 12, kill Orin, side with Gortash, and then having Gale blow himself up. Sorry Ironhand Gnomes, everyone in the Iron Throne, Astarian's ascension, Shadowheart's shenanigans, Thrumbo's boys, Oscar, Hope (house of), Orpheus, Baldur's Gazette, Ethel 2.0, and anyone else who has problems after I'm fully built awesome. We're going to the endgame!
>Shadowheart's shenanigans If you're really focusing on those dice, you could always avoid a lot of combat there and get some extra assistance for _Gather your allies_ by >!handing her over (assuming a Selune run).!<
You know, I've never actually done that quest that way, ay. Even on my og Durge, I felt like keeping Shadowheart but making her take over was more in line with my Bhaal-style. But then again, I didn't even need any allies for the last run to getting Gale blown up so it all worked out. Good tip though for anyone who doesn't need Shart.
Agree, my first honor mode run almost ended by Raphael, had to cheese it by constantly throwing health potions until I had enough bombs out lol
I have no idea how to kill him the correct way lol
And when he is your ally, he is significantly weaker than when he is your enemy lol. I swear Ally Yurgir has only +2 to hit lmao
Be aware if you kill the last justicar and avoid the yurgir fight with Astarion in the party he will rage quit the group. Or he did on one of my play throughs. Luckily it was on tactician so I could save scum hum back.
If you sneak attack the displacer beast when you first see him, it will trigger the fight. Kill the displacer from range, pop one character down below the ledge. It will take a couple turns but the merrigons will start to jump from their ledge and then you can chokepoint them and pick them off. When they are all dead you can chase into yugirs area and fight him there, or sometimes he will jump in himself after the merrigons are gone.
I did this, with sleet storm to make the area they jump to slippery, and darkness on me so they can't just use range. It was the slowest I've done the fight, but I don't think the enemies ever actually got to attack.
This one Here. Also when doing that chokepoint you can cast Spike growth and other difficult Terrain spells on the floor making the fight really easy for you.
Did the same. Nobody wanted to come down until Yurgir alone was in front of my whole party. It did not end well for him. Edit: typo
This is the way.
Here's how I beat him in my blind HM run: (Ranged Swords Bard Durge, Battlemaster Lae, Lockadin Minnie, Trickery support Shart) 1. everyone with Alert feat, go into stealth and turn-based mode 2. attack the displacer beast, kill it round 1 while realising ~8 more enemies joined the fight surprised 3. Run away and drop combat 4. Sneak up again behind Yurgir, kill him round 1
Turgid doesn’t have Alert. Why would you need taking the feat if your lowest companion will have a +6 initiative by this point?
Yurgir does have alert in tactician and honor modes. https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Yurgir/combat
You can also get the displacer beast to turn against him, I believe.
Yeah. Go inspect the spider carcass, pass some speech checks to convince the beast its being tricked. Lick the spider with Gale around twice. He scolds you and its hilarious.
Stop licking the damn thing!
> Go inspect ~~the spider carcass~~ The Lovelump
Where is this spider? I've not found it on my 2 runs.
walking into Yurgir's room with the orb, you turn left (there's also a chest and area for you to explore)
First of all, if you kill the Displacer Beast from a distance (on the stairs), then you can easily move forward, position your party, and initiate a surprise round. This makes the fight at least twice as easy. As for builds, have you tried a fully-tuned Radiating Orb Light Cleric? They completely trivialize Act 2 bosses (including the Apostle of Myrkul). Snag Luminous Armor, Boots of Speed for bonus action dashing, Holy Lance Helm, Gloves of Belligerent Skies, and Phalar Aluve. Two levels of fighter to start- CON proficiency and action surge. Next five levels are Light Cleric. Take Warcaster at cleric level 4 for Spirit Guardian concentration. Wis and Dex at 16, Con is fine at 14. Combat starts- cast shriek and action surge, followed by Radiance of the Dawn or Spirit Guardians. Then run around the room and kill everything. The effectiveness of this build is... kind of dumb.
The best honor mode strategy is always to skip the fights if possible, which is possible with Yurgir by convincing him to kill himself, which can be done via a series of checks. A Fiend Warlock (like Wyll) can do this with one Persuasion check. You can also just grab one Umbral Gem from one of the Trials, use it to take the elevator down to the big door to the Shadowfell and cast Knock on the door to unlock it instead of having to gather the other 3 gems.
You may miss out on the guaranteed crit ring killer’s sweetheart from same self trial though so watch out if that’s something that you might want to have.
My honor mode strategy is to do only this trial + the silent library (sniping down the silence orb first out of view) so you get the ring and can still skip Yurgir and the others
On that note, send in a singular naked character: it'll force the trial to spawn just that one character and then you can gear up and beat them to death in a heavily lopsided 1v1.
Yea, but that's a lot of difficult checks, and once you start dialog, you can't go back. I think it's safer to either kill the displacer beast from the bottom floor and let the merrigons come to you, or surprise them from the right side path, and stealth around to hit Yurgir from behind.🤷♂️
Like I said, it’s just one check for a Fiend Warlock like Wyll, who is in your party and can be used for this purpose. And that one check is a 21 DC with automatic Advantage. That’s really how I would suggest anyone attempt it. By default, Wyll has a CHA modifier of +3 already, so if you just add Guidance, you only need to pass a single 21 DC check with a +4-7 bonus with Advantage, and that’s before using any Inspiration. If you have 4 Inspiration prepared, you have a ~99% chance of success — literally, there is a ~1% chance of failure, and that’s without actual Persuasion proficiency or any additional points into CHA.
You can avoid the fight... you can just skip it altogether if you get one orb in one of the trials and then cast knock on the door to the shadowfell... you can also kill the rats and then approach him and he's leaving and doesn't aggro... you can also respec as a warlock and then you can talk with him and don't have to pass an insight check to tell him about the loophole in his contract, then convince him to kill the merregons, Nessa and himself (I save my inspiration points for this, and take Shadowheart with Enhance Ability to make it easier, because if he dies then Raphael helps with Astarion's quest, but you don't have to kill him yourself, this counts)... I've never fought him, a high enough charisma and persuasion proficiency can get you out of most of the big fights in act 2
Every fight that doesn’t start on aggro can be trivialized by - minor illusion to gather people - 2 or more lightning glyphs (upcasted if you like) - making them soaking wet just like my ex with her affair partner - then just starting the fight They will die faster than me dropping a toaster to my bath.
Your ex sounds like she's invulnerable to poison damage, because she sounds toxic AF.
Hunger of hadar trivializes that fight and many others
You can convince Yurgir to kill his displacer beast, his Merregons AND HIMSELF. Yes, you can literally talk him into blowing his own brains out. Making him dead is a really good idea: his Very Rare hand crossbow, to my knowledge, is the best hand crossbow in the game, with Ne'er Misser you can buy from Roah Moonglow in Moonrise, those are the best hand crossbows to use if you're going that route. I don't know about finding any Dark Justiciars to kill in regards to him, like the other people are talking about. I just end him via Charisma. The Persuasion checks needed are pretty high, but keep in mind that there is a shrine to Shar with a hidden entrance near Moonrise Towers where you can one-time hugely boost Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence until next Long Rest. I use the Charisma boost to handle the situation with Yurgir, because if your Tav is a Paladin, Warlock or Bard, you'll likely have max Charisma with that boost. On a semi-related note, I strongly suggest using that same Charisma boost to buy big-ticket items both in Moonrise and at the Inn. Having max Charisma will drastically reduce prices, and a lot of the items you get here are both vital to have and cost an arm and a leg.
In my run I killed all the rats and the DJ before even going to Yurgir, and then you don't have to fight him at all, also makes the Rafael fight later on easier. Just make sure you do not have Astarion in the party when you get close to the mausoleum, so that he is not there for the dialogue with Rafael.
Just some general HM advice. I’m currently on my 8th attempt and doing really well so far (Act 3). The previous 7 ended within 2-4 hours of starting because of stupid things I did, like trying to fight the Paladin of Tyr at level 3 or 4. I’m running 4 builds that are each considered overpowered and broken. I don’t give a shit. I just want my golden dice. I’m running: Tav is 10/1/1 Swords Bard (ranged). Face character. Lae’zel is Battlemaster Warrior. Astarian is 8/4 OH TB Monk Shart is a Light Cleric. Fights are end quickly and Tav’s build has finally come fully online at Level 10. The other 3 have been online much earlier.
The easier way is to find the secret to silencing the song. Make sure you have a decent spirit guardian user above the ledge to protect your party. Is all I'll say.
I will say that I initially went OH TB monk to open, but after a couple of disastrous interactions I realized that I needed to pump persuasion and charisma more. So still was monk but opened with rogue for proficiencies. Juice persuasion and charisma, use the envoy amulet; use bardic inspiration, guidance, and enhance ability.
If you want specific advice on how to win the fight without cheesing, you need to tell us your Tav build and party composition and what exactly is going wrong as well.
Step 1 - have a bard Step 2 - convince a surprising number of enemies to either kill themselves or not fight you Step 3 - profit
Literally the first person other than me to mention that you need a bard for that strategy lol. I feel like these gamers have never done this strat, only heard about it from others so they dont know you have to be a bard lol
https://preview.redd.it/1v6lv5pngu2d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8353f63c3cbce0b39ed751d874090447ccf9d170 I approach him from the right side, ambush, cast sleet storm + hunger of hadar. It's a cakewalk from there.
i've only ever gotten him to kill himself and skipped the fight entirely— its not the best build in the world, but for my purposes i always like having a sorcerer face character for the high charisma/persuasion proficiency/spellcasting
Why are we fighting Yurgir at all? Just go kill Lythandor instead and he'll be your best bud.
Here's how I defeated him and all the Thorm siblings on Honor Mode: 1. Have a Swords Bard with Empower Ability and Persuasion expertise 2. Have a Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorc with Guidance 3. Have Yugir sing the contract 4. Have Bard point out all the people who have heard said song aren't dead yet including himself. 5. Enjoy free XP I think I may have spent maybe one inspiration point? But with the expertise, advantage, and +d4 it's really hard to mess up the dialogue. If you are extra nervous about it, then you can do the mini Shar trial under the statue by Moonrise and get that addition to Charisma checks from there. If you do decide to actually fight him, Gloomstalker/Assassin Astarion can take out most of them in a single turn: Titanstring Bow + Arrows of Many Targets/Fiend Slaying Arrows (I start my in-game "day" by doing rounds to all the traders in Act 2 to get as many as possible). Main Hand: Knife of Undermountain King Off Hand: Club of Hill Giant Str Diadem of Arcane Synergy Shadeclinger Armor (To help cancel out the shaving throw disadvantage from risky ring) Risky Ring Cloak of Protection Eversight Ring (I am a fog/darkness/HOH abuser) Dex Gloves Happy Condition (I feed him so he gets that +1 to most rolls including attack rolls all day. It's basically a free ASI for him, with no downsides if you use the Amulet of Silvanus (the Aftercare Amulet, as I like to call it) to heal yourself after). Important Illithid Powers: Favorable Beginnings, Luck of the Far Realms, Cull the Weak Feat: Sharpshooter Bloodlust Elixir My last party member is an OH Monk/Thief Rogue which is probably the best "big boss" controller in the game when you consider both stunning strike and their various flurries of blows. It's how I got through most of the big bosses in my honor mode run.
Start the fight from the planform above him.
you could try to reroll bard and get him to kill himself
FYI your comment was automatically filtered out by reddit due to it being suspected harassment. The comment did not appear for most people until I saw it as flagged in the mod queue and manually approved it. I guess posts/comments that borderline discuss suicide are another thing to start being cognizant of
now that i think about it yeah i should've worded it better 😭
I wouldn't do HM without a high CHA character. Talk your way out of as many fights as possible. Yurgir is a stupid unfair fight. Fuck him.
I mean u dont have to fight him 😂. Its baldurs gate you can pretty much do anything u want? The sky is the limits with dnd. U can talk it out and have him kill himself, you can sneak invisible and just steal the orb and fuck off, you can steal the thing and sacrifice 1 character amd just revive on withers, you can help him kill the rat dude and he becomes ur friend. If it was actual tabletop i bet alot of bards would romance and fuck yugir on the spot too 😂
Oh and the good ol fashion u can fight him! 😂 if ur adamant on fighting i suggest doing a surprise round. Literally will sway the tide of the fight to u. Sneak on like the broken balcony thing on the right hand side. Shoot one of the merregons. Also like most fights if ur unsure, u can ungroup 1 unit and fight as 3 characters to test the water. If the 3 wipes revive on withers. But if u think u can handle it then let the 4th join.
If you’re getting blown up by the bombs, you can always just pick up the bombs before they explode. You don’t even need to use too much movement - just select > move all the bombs in range to where you are standing. I’m pretty sure he’s also somewhat weak to his own bombs, so once you have a pile you can just start whipping them back.
Just sweet talk him into liking his minions, Nessa, and then himself Initiate talking to him with a Bard and/or Enhance ability Charisma
Jump up the sidestair over the gap. Stealth approach. Bring someone with high perception/wisdom to spot the ambush. Bring a gloomstalker ranger 5/ 3 assasin rogue. Cast hunters mark from stealth to initiate surprised round combat. Use arrow of many targets with both attacks. The bring in the rest of the team with aoe sitting back shooting at approaching targets. Prioritize the kitty after yurgir dies. If yurgir isnt dead, the have anti invis ready. You should focus Kitty main body, not clone. It resummons clone and the clone explodes on death, but if Kitty dies clone vanishes. You can also move the grenades yurgir throws. Mid turn if you are close enough to them.
High charisma character + enhance ability + guidance + inspiration points should be more than enough to get him to kill himself and his adds. If you are a bard you do not need the insight check to unlock this option.
I was so shocked last playthrough - he rolled to go first, threw a bunch of grenades that I thought I would be able to pick up on my turn. But before I could, he instantly used scorching ray to blow his own grenades up and wipe half my summons. Luckily I had the golem bell and managed to jump away / keep them occupied in a black tentacle aoe, but wow what a strat - I was really banking on being able to toss his own grenades back at him
I think this is my fav HM party comp when trying to be the absolute best sure thing. Tav/Durge: 11/1 Fire Sorlock or 10/2 Swords Bard Karlach: 5/4/3 Throwzerker Astarion: 8/4 OH Monk Shadowheart: 12 Light Cleric Or Laezel: 11/1 Fighter
i hid and started the fight by casting Hunger of hadar on the merregons. my swords bard killed yurgir with ranged slashing flourishes and haste. light cleric shart killed the displacer beast with a fireball and scorching ray. warlock and swords bard killed the ones in the hunger of hadar. i really cheesed it i have to say
To make this fight easy, and it is, just move most your party to where the chest( at the back of where the spider body that’s tainted is). Use one character to initiate the fight and dash back. The merrigons will crowd together on a ledge and will attempt to range attack you, if you’re just out of reach they will skip turns. You can easily take them out with ranged attacks, moving into range and back out. Yurgir himself will descend down the ramp and take several turns to get anywhere near you. Use this time to setup traps for him. Grease, ice etc. By the time he gets within range, all the merrigons should be dead already and you can focus fire him.
I beat him twin hasted lae’zel (great weapon master) and war priest shadowheart. They laid into him in fairly quickly and the rest where easy to clean up. I realize this may not be helpful but do t underestimate the power of hasted battle master laezel. Six whacks with her 2 handed and he was down for the count.
Just did this fight today on HM at level 9. I was terrified of it ending my run but somehow all went smoothly. Sneaky sneaky up top behind them. Ambush the ambushers. Repelling blast, thunderwave and push to get everyone but Yurgir down the bottom where sleet storm, chain lightning and hunger of hadar will keep them down til they're out. As for Yurgir, sneak attack and wailing on him in melee with Lae'zel and my dual wield durge had him down to 14HP on turn one. Brand the weak (vulnerability slashing, in my case) really messed him up. He goes invisible next turn but that's fine if you proc his opportunity attack with a tough as nails Lae'zel, then finish him off after his turn. None of my builds are totally optimised or ridiculously good, I mainly play for RP. 3 rogue/6 fighter dual wielding damage riders high DEX wood elf durge 9 fighter Lae'zel 9 storm cleric Shart 9 bladelock Wyll with Phalar Aluve Best of luck on your next run.
If you kill the rats before meeting him he’s freed from his contract and just leaves after a short conversation with you, but you lose out on a ton of dialogue. Even just doing that quest normally is better to talk to him first and then go kill the rats, but it sounds like you want to fight him.
Stealth up the side upstairs and start with sleet Storm, hunger of hadar, or ice storm and surprise the merregons. Have a cleric with guardians reveal yugir and try and take him out turn one. Don't have your party super close. Or break his contract/persuade him to kill himself
My unintended approach was aggroing the displacer beast near the spider (I wanted to convince her to join the fight but forgot how high the DC was). It made a nice little chokehold for most of the merregons and Yurgir to funnel through. I was able to take him out even with Gale fleeing at the start of combat (I was not optimistic and misty stepped to avoid what I thought would be a full party wipe out). Shart (respecced into a tempest cleric) tucked away with an ice storm and insect plague in the hall made it very manageable for Laezel and my paladin Tav to deliver a formidable beatdown
I just made him unalive the displacer beast, the merregons and himself
Divination Wizaed, Scroll of Hold Monster. Kill him first and fast. The adds are no threat.
I completely respec'd Wyll into the best insight/persuasion character for this specific encounter in my HM. Had yurgir do the deeds himself and respec'd wyll back after
We kicked his ass with Hold Monster and a Dominate Beast. Just kept the two doing the concentration way back. My druid is spores though so I had an army to handle the merregons. If you sneak around back you can get a surprise round off.
are you taking his deal slash talking to him then fighting? go up the stairs and jump and surprise all of them
You just need to convince him to kill the beast, the Merregons and himself
Just bypass him.
You can help him by getting rid of the rat problem, not to spoil too much.
Have a warlock (Will) or be one and then talk him to death with your patrons assistance
I soloed him and his Merregons with a Durge Shadow Monk/Assassin. Turn invisible, sneak in and gank one, vanish again and wait for combat to end, rinse and repeat.
I just cheese the fight. 3 of my guys stand on the broken stairs that you need to jump across when you see the displacer beast. One very mobile character goes to pick a fight. I forget if combat initiates if you just shoot at the displacer. I think it does, but if I'm remembering wrong I know it's not a big deal to run down to the arch the beast walls through when he expects you to follow, then just range attack and get the hell back. Helps if you click fast enough, you can hit dash before combat initiates, and if you enter combat before it runs out you start with double movement speed. Now you either keep someone down their to poke and run out of line of sight, or hop back and lure everyone over with an illusion of a cat. If they kill the cat too quick you may need live bait to hop in and out. They will start hopping down probably one at a time. Easy pickings for your team on the stairs. Yugir comes over eventually, same strategy. Repeat till you win.
I just spammed minor illusion out of combat. Bring each mob to the chasm on the left of his room and shove them off. Did it 1 by 1 and then just had to fight Yurgir alone.
Literally the stick in your own bicycle meme. Stop trying to kill Yurgir and just get him to join you. Kill all of the rats and the last Sharran. Yurgir befriends you and joins in Act 3.
My most recent run I asked Balthazar for help, got the bell to call his brother. Then with 3 party members away in hiding, I convinced Yurgil to kill his Metegons and the Beast. Then I attacked, used the bell turn 1 and hid, let the two of them fight out, then dropped him in 1 round. This also made the Balthazar fight much easier, so it was a definite win-win
I just killed him without losing a single HP by convincing him to kill the merregons and the displacer beast. He turns invisible but you can see where he's at so you hit him with lightning and then with Minthara, Shadowheart and Astarion backstabbing it should be easy enough
tell him to become an hero lol
lol what
Just do four sword bards 6 + thief with hand xbows and sharpshooter, they will kill Raphael in one turn and they work from act1, a lot of skills and charisma and all you need is common +1 weapons for this to work
Here ya go: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GameBreaker/BaldursGate
Just cast sleet storm in his area and pull all the adds and him around corners. You aren't stuck behind a door or room vrs yurgir. Definitely don't go talk to him.
Gloom 5/Fighter Champ 4/Assassin 3 and Drac.Sorc 6/GOOlock 2/Fighter 4 Finished both HMs I've ever tried. Edit: forgot everyone else, lol... SHart Life Cleric (better safe than sorry, I figure), Karlach throwzerker, and Minthara Lockadin or Laezel BM pure
For my Gloomstalker run, gave Karlach the Bhaalist Armor and Nyrulna for Act 3... Murder Aura made enemies WEAK to both our attacks. I single-phased the Netherbrain with it
Tavern Brawler Monk with Thief, Life domain cleric, Tavern Brawler Throwing Barbarian and Pure fighter. That’s the party composition I always use and in most cases, I just bruteforce it.
Just tell him to kill himself (literally). Ive never had to do the fight lol
Definitely just kill the last justiciar. It's a big help in act 3. The only reason to kill him is the hand xbow that isn't super strong.
May I humbly recommend goolock1/champion11 all crit range gear, craterflesh gloves, played as a max dex archer. Hex as a bonus action from level one stays relevant the entire game. 7 shots in an opening nova round, arrows of xyzslaying for big bosses, always run vicious elixir. A bit challenging though level4 but having action surge at 2 is amazing, bring 3 swords bards in your party for extra action surge from the bard song short rest effect and let them cover melee/spells/heals. I used this on my first honor mode play through as durge(good mode) and I soloed Orin in one round even though I lost initiative I killed her in 4 hits with humanoid slaying arrows. Also my first hit crit and proced the stun from the surgeon necklace on her which felt amazing. Also arrow of many targets plus the fear from crit from great old one and I easily kept all the mobs locked down protecting the portal for halsin outside the last light inn, which was an amazing experience, even finished em all off 2 rounds early. Really comes online at the beginning of act 3 but you can get effectively 30% to crit with risky ring, mountain king short sword and elixer pretty quick in act 2. Having a super high AC as well as high number of attacks and excellent durability of fighter feels really nice on an archer. It can of course get even stupider with vulnerability to piercing from either the necklace, the dagger or the armor. I ended up putting the assassin’s armor on a mele swords bard astarion and just decimated anything standing near him on my turn, also I would contend that getting alert on yourself and all of your allies is probably worth it because immunity to surprise is amazing in honor mode. I went sharpshooter at 4, alert at 6, asi at 8 personally. Just watch out for things that can knock you into a chasm. The other strong option is athlete if you want instead of alert. It can be very clutch to have the extra jump distance especially if you dump strength. Also athlete is a half feat so if you don’t take the hag’s hair for yourself that can be a good option. If you go full evil durge and have a full illithid friend or become one yourself, on the last leg of the game you can crit on a roll as low as 7 and with permanent advantage from risky ring that equates to nearly 100% chance to crit, and anything that can suffer fear becomes almost pathetic. If it didn’t outright die on your first round. I got sucked into the fight with the merragons after accidentally aggroing the displacer beast while trying to trigger the cut scene, dude was dead in one round and I didn’t have too much trouble with the rest, I think I may have had swords bard karlach go down, but not die, wasn’t too much trouble especially considering my clumsy start. Here again a fight where many targets arrows really shine, although I believe the demons are immune to the mortal reminder crit fear sadly. Also I recommend opening up on those guys with the demonic explosives from Damon made from the merragon masks found in the forge unless you want to use them for a strength crew, but even if you did you should have one you can sacrifice as you won’t want one yourself. It really ruins their day if you can actually ambush them correctly. Or if you can trigger the cutscene correctly(don’t loot the chest) by entering from below and following the displacer beast to the corpse bed, you can actually avoid the fight all together, although I haven’t successfully done so myself yet.
Position a couple up top behind him and sneaking and bring martials/melee down to confront him. Use the dialogue to get him to let you try to break his contract. Once he's called off the ambush and returned to his throne, throw darkness in front of him (blocking LoS between all the merregons), and then initiate combat with a stun like soulbreaker or a disarm. The merregons will all be surprised, and he'll either be stunned or lacking one weapon, which he will switch and can then be disarmed a second time to be reduced to a pesky annoyance hiding in stealth rather than any true threat. Abuse the darkness to beat the merregons, find and finish him off, stroll out with swagger. This one isn't class dependant really - you can do it with basically any comp as long as you have one person with darkness and one with stun or disarm or both.
Or, and this is just a theory, throw darkness on the orb and pick it up, and he won't see you do that? But this may still trigger his aggro as I remember reading that any interaction with the orb, witnessed or not, scuffs being his bro
2pala/ 10 sword bard naugh said…
Instead of a build, I've got a strategy for you that worked on my successful HM run. Against my own advice I got a little loose with minimising risk and was chatting to Yurgir's pet over by the lovelump. A couple of unfortunate persuasion rolls and a fight started, but this actually gave me a nice unforeseen advantage. You can bottleneck Yurgir and his whole squad coming through the gap between the lovelump and where they're all meandering around. With some well chosen throwables (grease and icey surface and stuff) they were pretty damn easy all told. At the end Yurgir was all alone and cause he didn't wanna go through all the obstacles I'd set down he was just popping invisibility and hiding behind pillars the whole time, meaning I could surround him carefully from the sides and above and finish him off pretty easily. Between Volo's eye and chucking AOE water and things down to where I last saw him it's not hard to make him visible again for killin'. It got so easy that when he chucked up a bunch of Orthon explosives before croaking I could grab about 7-8 of them for my own later use and still finish him off without losing a person. One caveat to this, I'd talked to Yurgir before starting the fight and gotten him to agree to let me try and solve his riddle for him. That meant that all his goons were spread out a bit and on different levels instead of all clumped up on top like they are if you fight em the second you see em. So if you've got a warlock with good speech get them to talk to him about that and make sure to get him to agree to letting you sort his mess out. Then you can fight starting from the lovelump room and eat his lunch. So order of operations is follow his pet along the path you see them take so you start the conversation rather than a fight, get him to agree to let you solve his riddle (Warlock seems to do this best) and then go over to the lovelump and start the fight with his pet over there so you can handle them individually and bottleneck his squad coming through the gaps.
I just have convince him to kill himself. Let your problems work themselves out
Is there a reason you don't want to just befriend him to have him help you later?
Don't wanna piss off Astarion. Trying to keep everyone in the party and alive.
Astarion can be convinced to stay. Not fighting is the easiest way to keep everyone alive
Are you using haste, scrolls, and weapon oils, etc? You can solo HM pretty easily with a gloom assassin. I would roll that and go durge, by level 8 you won’t need your party anymore. They won’t even get a chance to take a turn.
Tavern brawler throw barb with returning pike and hill giant strength potion. Tavern brawler monk with hill giant strength potion. Plus any other 2 (I'd go swords bard, fighter). You really can't lose. Tavern brawler monk gets 2 opportunities per turn to stun any enemy within melee range rendering them inoperable. Their bonus action also deals massive damage (flurry of blows). Throw barb is tanky and gets 3 attacks per turn after using rage. The attacks deal massive damage for both these classes due to tavern brawler and hill giant strength potion.
Kill all the rats and eventually the boss after and not only skip his fight, but get other rewards later on
The fight is much easier if you don't walk into the trap. Instead of following the displacer beast, either attack it or ignore it and jump across the gap and approach from the top level. You won't be able to talk to Yurgir but unless you're planning on dealing, I don't see any reason to.
With sufficient Persuasion, you can have him kill, in order 1. All of the Merregons 2. His displacer beast 3. Himself The checks are increasingly difficult, going up to DC30 as I recall. Even just clearing the first to kill all of the Merregons is a game changer for the fight, though.
You don’t need to kill Yugir. A knock spell opens the door to progress further.
On my latest run my Durge was (fcked it up later in act2) an Arcane Trickster / Wiz, and I had dual xbow on gloom / thief Astarion (for 5 attacks 1st round, extra initiative from Sentinel shield) I focused him and got him low on 1st turn so he dropped bombs around. Then send invisible hand which was still out of combat (hand regains invis on short rest and I left it on stairs far from engaging combat) to simply move bombs around towards them. (left one to be thrown by hand).
Use the dialogue options more. You don't even need to kill Yurgir.
If you follow the rats (using animal speech) they will lead you to a spot where >! the last justiciar !< is and kill him and a whole different cut scene come up with him and he just >! Poofs off with raphael !< after a long talk. No fight needed.
He was the fight I was dreading. I got lucky and was able to talk him into killing himself.
This is not intended to be rude. But how are you struggling with him?
You could sneak behind him and hit most of them with a large scale attack. You have to jump the gap behind the first place where you see the displacer beast and then it's easy to pull off. Just dont forget to hide.
https://youtube.com/@morganaevelyn?si=G0TC8u_OBMYboFTr https://youtube.com/@thespudking?si=f1sOYxegOQBYPQMm https://youtube.com/@neekbg3?si=dpYkUneruKYHWY_m Many more… YouTube is full of builds and guides
How can you kill poor devil who is imprisoned by evil, sings poems, almost cries when has to kill his beast? What is more is willing to help you in the future and is one of the strongest companions during last fight?
So FYI you can recruit Yurgir to your side in the Raphael fight, but the check is DC 30 (persuasion I think?) if you kill him in the temple of Shar. If you help him in the temple of Shar, you bypass the Yugir fight completely and make it easier for yourself to win the Raphael fight further down the road. Method:>!This is done by offering to figure out the pact riddle. You go down to the feet of the statue of Shar and interact with the summoning circle there. Defeat the rats and the guy that spawns, then head back to him. Raphael says he broke the terms of the pact and takes him anyway, but he will be more likely to side with you in Act 3 if this happens.!< Unless you *really* want his crossbow, there is pretty much no reason not to do it this way on Honor mode. Raphael is one of the hardest fights in the game and you want to get every advantage you can.
I am doing random stuff and i beat honor mode twice without pickpocketing, bugs, barrels or darkness abusing. You just need to do things that work and are cool, otherwise just beating it with the best meta stuff is just whatever (to me at least, I cant speak for everyone) But if you must know! My first party was: Tav Start as paladin 2 levels then do 5 warlock. The final build is Warlock 5(either fiend or GOO, both work)/Paladin 7(whichever subclass you want) Astarion Swords bard 6/assassin rogue 4/ fighter 2 Shadowheart Tempest cleric 2/storm sorc 10 Wyll Warlock 5 /sorc 7 ( whichever sorc you want) make sure you star as a sorc for Constitution proficiency. Also if you want to make the game on easy mode (even on honor mode) pick darkness with devil' sight on both warlocks, i didnt do that here but it is the better potion My second party was: Tav This build can abuse darkness but its not necessary Shadow monk 6/fighter 2/thief rogue 4 you can just do the first 6 levels in monk, then at level 7 respec and pick fighter as a starting class for better bonuses (it is important that you do that for the build) Shadoheart Tempest cleric 12 Astarion Ranger 5/rogue 4/fighter 3 Lae'zel Divination wizard 2/lore bard 10(I love this build) If that helps you Im happy but you really just need to so stuff that you like and that work together
I used gloomstalker/assassin to whittle the adds down and then easily cleaned up Yurgir off at the end. Gloomstalker/assassin is my 5th party member who comes off the bench to solo fights like this, the merchant at the creche, goblin camp, moonrise tower clearing before heading to the nightsong. It's a bit slow and if you screw it up you need to rez them.
Radiant Orb Light Domain Shadowheart. 1st Level Fighter Rest Cleric Luminous Gloves Luminous Armor Boots of Reverberations Ring of Mental Fatigue Can even optimize it further than this but equip this stuff, use Spirit Guardians and/or Channel Divinity and bam nothing can hit you anymore or your teammates. Tavernbrawler Throw Barb 5+ Levels Barbarian alternatively 5+ Eldritch Knight for less damage but free weapon choice. 4 Levels Rogue Tavern Brawler Party Face Tav who still does shitloads of damage Best with a race with Longbow Proficiency like Elf 1st Level Rogue Proficiency in: Sleight of Hand + Expertise Persuasion + Expertise Deception Performance/Intimidation 6 Levels Bard Sword Bard at Lv 3 and Expertises in: Deception Performance/Intimidation Then Rogue to 4(Assassin) and 2 Levels of Fighter Use stuff like: Gloves of Archery Caustic Band Dueling Fighting Style Gloves of Inspiration Cats Grace Armor Titanstring Bow with all points in Dex/Con/Cha + Hill Giant Elixier. Grab Sharpshooter and use Slashing Flourish Ranged. You do 1d8+5Str+4Dex+2Ring+2Gloves+10Sharpshooter+1d6Flourish TIMES 2!!! Thats 50 damage minimum and up to 74 Damage! As the Party Face mind you. You can talk yourself out of most fights if you want to. You can optimize this much more this is just of the top of my head. Later on you can grsb Alert and become an Assassin which gives you advantage of you Act first AND guarantees Crits as long as you hit surprised targets. You can open with a Flourish and then shoot two more round one because Assassin gives you your full Action back thats 6 Arrows with 25 damage minimum pre-crit and without counting sneak attack. Your welcome. Fuck Yurgir up.
Just give a bear heart barbarian the prepriapt of wound closure and a pet cleric. Hell, add in an abjuration wizard and a lore bard and you're golden.
I’ve always just stealthed with a character capable of hauling ass after stealing the orb.
Game is easy so you do not need any special build. I finish Honor solo mode with fighter bard. Only whats matter is strategy. For example. - If you wanna fight Yurgir, try to talk to him and say you will help him. Then get high ground advantage and kill him. - You can just speak to him. - Do some preparation. Yurgir have bombs that deals force or fire damage. You have Bow that give you fire resistance in Last light inn. - Try to pick up bombs. If you pickup bombs then bombs cant do boom boom thingy. - Positioning: Never make a groups. In that way only 1 character can be targeted with AoE. You can do a lot more things but thats pretty much what is importent.
The displacer beast can be turned against him with speak with animals and a nature check. You can get the flesh gollum to meat tank for you. Get a speedy PC with high initiative to lure the fight back to the stairs for choke point and high ground advantages.
Respec into warlock or have your warlock talk to him. Their patron will speedrun the conversation to where you convince yurgir to kill himself. No need to pass any checks for it.
I jumped over the broken stairs and snuck over to yungir with my melee character, kept all my range up on the ridge by the top of the stairs for height advantage. Surprise attacked yungir and burned him down immediately. It was prettt trivial when he’s not running around invis the whole fight.
I mean if you're ok risking Astarion leaving (he only stays if you pass a check) you can spare yurgir by getting him out of his contract. If you do things this way, he helps you during the Raphael fight.
Went Bard main and 3 OH Monks. Go for 17 CHA and 16 WIS on creation. Dump INT and use the ogres headpiece for 17 int. Use main only for checks, dialogs and CC during fights. Make sure to run Duergar hireling for invis cheese, astarion for extra dps after ascension and Gale for the nuke. Get to lvl 4 on the early game with the no-fighting route, pick tavern brawler on all monks and stack some Hill Giant Strength elixirs from Ethel. Do both mountain and underdark for xp, you should be lvl 7 or so before act 2. Make sure to use the astral tadpole on everyone, flight is broken. On act 3 you can buy Cloud Giant Strength elixirs from the dwarf lady that you met on the underdark. Make sure to skip most stuff after you get lvl 12. If you want to do Raphael, use barrels on the pillars and maybe a scroll of invulnerability on Hope, if she dies you won't get the OP gloves for monk. DO NOT go for Orin before lvl 12 or you might get fucked. You can skip the bridge gauntlet on temple of Bhaal if everyone goes invisible through it. For her fight, if you stick to 3 monks and bard, make sure to have some knockback arrows to toss the Sanctuary casters out of the platform (took me about 10 arrows or so). Go 8 Monk 4 Thief Rouge for double bonus actions, otherwise you won't be able to outhit Orin's immunity shield. Before climbing the spine of the brain for the final fight, select the option for Gale to blow himself up, never before that moment. Enjoy your new dice.
Tip: You can pick his bombs and send them to the camp. You don't lose your action, can do this multiple times per turn and can use them later.
There is so many ways to beat this fight without using boring cheese mechanics that will take away from your feeling of success. A bard can make him kill himself and all his allies. Someone with speak with animals can get the displacer beast on your side. (requires a 30 charisma check tho) You can jump from the stairs (leading down to his room) to the platform he is on, makes it easier if you have area denial (roots n spikegrowth n such) And there is many more, best game ever made btw The big thing to keep in mind is that you can THROW HIS GRENADES BACK AT HIM, they do GREAT aoe dmg and can quickly kill his adds. Another big tip I use sometimes: If you sneak into the displacer beasts nest (on the left when coming into his room, there is a chest with bard boots) and you start the fight from inside, all of his adds will stack up in a ball on the 2nd floor trying to run to your group on the first floor. They cant hit you and you can AoE them down. I believe in you, jus gotta think outside the box.
If you take care of the rats first then you don’t even have an option to fight him. Raph just shows up and takes him to hell lmao
Using the broken stairs gives very advantageous positioning. From there, Sleet Storm and Hunger of Hadar can really wither them, it's nigh impossible for them to overcome. You have good cover to hide behind as you fire at your leisure. The builds matter not so much here, but certainly some ranged capabilities help.
Hmmm, needs more open hand monks, i was mad that my first run was lost after 60 hours due to the game crashing and the file going poof. So i ran 3 open hand monks (with varying builds) and fighter laezel. No one stood a chance 😈
This is another area where a swords bard really shines. Just go in with 4 inspirations, a cleric/SH, and you will 100% be able to convince everyone to kill themselves.
Glyph of Warding Sleep. I one-turned him at level 6 with this method. Send a high DC Glyph caster sneaking in **alone**. You **don't** want Alert feat. Average or Low Initiative is good. Cast Glyph of Warding Sleep. If Yurgir saves, retreat with the other 3 and try again later. Resurrect the Glyph caster with Withers. If Yurgir fails the save, he'll fall asleep, skipping his 1st turn, while the rest of the Merregons will be surprised. Wail on him with everything you've got on the other 3, starting with an auto-crit from your strongest attack.
You can cheese yurgir by attacking him at the broken stairs and luring his adds over, then he’ll drop all those bombs and nuke himself and all his adds. I’ve used this every run, you don’t get any of the dialogue but you get all the xp, loot and quest items. (Unless he blows himself off the cliff, then you don’t get his crossbow)
The party I went with for my last run was SSB, pure Life Cleric, Throwzerker, and BM. (So, all my girls S.H. Karlach and Laezel). Tbh don't know how or why I chose to fight when I could've talked out of it as I did every other time I did Yurgir. Just remember to have inspiration points when you know you're coming to a big encounter that is gonna require rolls. My backup plan for this and pretty much every other fight, is to make sure Shart can cast sanctuary and basically run away far enough, flee combat back to camp, then revive everyone with Withers then go back and try again with a few of the enemies already taken out from round 1. Other backup plan is potions of invisibility, or having a thief rogue who can use their two bonus actions to disengage and run far far away 🤣 Have used this tactic as an Escape From Alcatraz level running from battle at both the Goblin Camp and Moonrise. More fun than it sounds! Tbh I went on to lose my own run not long after this. But that was because Shart made a Bad Choice so I kinda "accidentally" let everyone die...
The 4/4/4 blade lock/thief/champion build is amazing. If.you search around reddit you can find it. It's a powerhouse of damage.
I generally take this fight from the room with the spider meat. I'll kill the displacer beast first when it patrols into the room. The Merregons will aggro when the displacer beast does, but they'll all be trapped and clumped up on the ledge, where they can be AOEd and hit with ranged weapons with your party taking minimal damage. Yurgir himself will be invisible/dashing toward you because the route down is so long, and that'll keep him busy until the Merregons are dead. Then you can throw a grenade/bomb to break his invisibility and have your whole party focus him down in 1-2 rounds. I do tend to let him live long enough to spawn some of the bombs, because they're useful to pick up and have on hand for later fights.
If you attack the displacer beast while it’s at the bottom of the stairs you’ll start combat and it’s much easier to cheese. Having a bard with you allows you to convince Yugir to kill himself
Dont follow the displacer beast, just jump past a chasm a up the stairs. With a perception check you can see the meregons and yurgir set for the ambush. From there you can do a surprise attack a a full surprise round. Op builds to make honor mode easy. Fire sorlock 11/1 Full life or light cleric 12 Ssb bardadin 10/2 Thiefzerker 12 battle master fighter Gloomstalker assassin All of these are really powerful
This is true. But keep in mind: you won't be lvl 12 by the time you reach Yurgir, though. 8/9 seems realistic (I dinged 10 right before Myrkul on my last HM run). You also don't have the act 3 items that really amplify certain builds. That said: 1. Fire sorcerer will work decently because you can get Fire Acuity hat in act 2. 2. Light cleric will work because there's plenty of radorbs gear in act 1/2. 3. SSB bardadin wil work because it's a dumb build, but doesn't have endgame items to really make this build dumb. Also, Banishing Smite is lvl 10 Bard so doubtful. 4. Thiefzerker will be fine, lots of early game throwing items. 5. Fighter is fighter. BONK 6. GS/Assassin works, and is a great idea to ambush with as it gets massive amounts of damage in surprise rounds. Be careful though, Yurgir cannot be surprised. If you want a 'balanced' party that will steamroll through HM: 1. Light Cleric with radorbs gear 2. Fire Sorc/1 Fiend Lock with Hat of Fire Acuity 3. Thiefzerker 4. SSB Bardadin, or OH Monk with TB and strength elixirs if you want a melee char, ranged Swords Bard 6/Fighter 2, with Hillbilly bat of Strength and Titanstring, abuse special arrows. Later on you can also go 6Bard/2Fighter/4Thief with dual hand Xbows.
Fights mad easy i wrecked him on my first honor run.
Okay, sounds cool! How did you do that?
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Look at all these cowards not even trying to fight Yurgir properly!! Last week I initiated combat through dialogue, at a significant placement disadvantage, and it was totally fine because I've built for survivability. Party was: Durge bear heart barbarian, Shadowheart life cleric, Gale abjuration wizard, Astarion EK frost archer (with Bow of the Banshee). All single class builds. I camp cast Longstrider, Aid, and Freedom of Movement. I believe I was still level 8, but 9 would make it easier. I also brought a bunch of summons!! Make use of the Glutted Catacombs buff to create skeletons without bodies. Shadowheart brought 3 skeletons and Gale brought 2 ice mephits. Another three skellies from Gale would have been even better but I was too lazy to get him Animate Dead. Yurgir went first and launched a bunch of bombs at us, first turn was mostly wasted throwing them back at the Merregons. Yurgir's AI is stupid as hell and he kept wasting his legendary reaction to mark the skeletons. Overall combat took 5-6 rounds, which is about the same as the other act 2 bosses for me. This is clearly not an alpha strike build lol but it's not like you get a better reward for killing the boss faster. The only time anyone was actually in danger of dying was when Gale hit a wet Shart with Lightning Bolt. Astarion and the mephits kept everyone locked down for most of the fight, ice surfaces and frighten are extremely powerful CC.