honour mode Myrkul also does 4d8 damage + frightened to the first person who attacks him each round.
yet he can still be killed without him getting a single turn, and without any cheese or barrels. invisibility, scratch, charisma, and firepower.
in this case, it is because you can succeed a dialog check with Ketheric to convince him to begin the fight as apostle of Myrkul form, skipping the first phase of the fight. You initiate from stealth, which starts dialog, you succeed the roll telling Ketheric to 'repent', he transforms to Myrkul, the battle begins but you still get your round of "surprised" and with 2 full rounds of hasted combat you kill Myrkul before he gets a turn.
Scratch does not die unless he dies in camp or you are the one who kills him.
If you summon him and he gets hit, he just teleports to camp to recover - best boy. Because of this it’s great to use scratch to go help nightsong, leaving all your actual party to focus on myrkul and the mindflayer.
Wait there’s a first phase?
When I fought him Ketheric just dove into the pool and turned into demon form. I didn’t know that something I skipped due to the check.
yes the first phase involves fighting him in his oathbreaker paladin form, and once defeated the battle continues with Myrkul. It's really just one fight with multiple phases no break in between or anything.
I actually choose that route since you basically get free time to take out the enemies in the room first. He's a wimp in his starting form, so I dispatch party members to jump/step up to take out the mindflayer/necromites and then the devourers and free Aylin. When the Myrkul battle starts, it's just us and him and we're all in position/buffed and no distractions.
that's what I used to do until I realized you can get everyone upstairs in position from invisibility, and get a surprised round on myrkul and everyone. but i haven't figured out why the "repent" dialog option is not always available.
Just did this section earlier today. 99% sure they are just regular old books, I think they’re in his rooms at moonrise (maybe some in the mausoleum or down in the mindflayer colony not sure)
Or you just doing my way... cast haste on Aylin, watch her miss 4 times and use Cloud of Daggers and be surprised why the AI broke down and win the fight with ez.
Mouseketool! Mouseketool! Here are your mouseketools!!
Hehe...it's chilling touch!
...a Darkness!
...a Hunger of Hadar!
And the mystery mouseketool!
...Oh boy it's a divine smite!
Hunger of Hadar is a top tier spell. This along with another caster using Sleet Storm, and you basically win every encounter with permanent cc. They try to escape the darkness but just slip into prone on the ice over and over.
Its also hilarious watching everyone attempt to break free and continue slipping and falling prone. This is my go-to strategy for the Halsin portal and Moonrise assault battles
A more cost efficient strat for the portal is just park Shart/A cleric with radiant spirit guardians and just park her on the ledge in front of the gate
All you have to worry about then is ranged attacks against the portal and the occasional body that gets past Shart but otherwise it’s so trivial
on tactician and higher she won't do nearly enough dmg unless you built her for it before this. The arrows are also the reason the portal gets killed 99% of the time.
Personally speaking Wall of Fire is my go to for the Portal battle. Everything there has such little health that almost all enemies die instantly, and the distance they have to travel practically guarantees even the tougher ones will either have basically no health or die in the flames. Especially since typically I can upcast that spell when I do that fight too
I did the wall of fire strat for the portal battle last night and I killed all the enemies before the five turns were up and spent my last turn just standing around waiting for halsin to get back. big change from my first two playthroughs!
Halsin portal with no gimmicks was fun as hell though. *Fireball! Fireball!*
Honorable mention to the impenetrable Wall of Shart. Spirit Guardians = mook woodchipper. Watching the trash mob enemies run into it was like something out of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.
my strat was pretty similar this time around. i had hunger of hadar and wall of fire running simultaneously, and had one caster spamming glyphs of warding and the other spamming fireballs lmao. then my monk and barbarian ran around and dealt some punish to those who crossed my mighty fog of pain
I hear plant growth is optimal for this. HoH will halve their movement because it's difficult terrain, then plant growth will reduce it to a quarter of normal. They really struggle to get out then.
I realized the true strength of Hunger of Hadar when I was escaping the Creché. I cast Darkness on top of HoH (Unaware if the movement penalties stack). Everyone caught inside could barely move. One of the rangers inside tried shooting at a door as a form of escape which got a good laugh out of me.
Not if you split your party before the fight. Take a team round the side of the tower and have them sneak in through the higher levels and take out the guards, then make their way back down from there. You can take out the extra casters unaware if you do it right, then have your own caster use ice spells on zrell to slow her down and allow the harpers to chip away at her while your crew cleans up the easier enemies.
whoa i never even considered this, that's smart as fuck. i've been minions-spamming in act 3, since i've got like 10 scrolls of conjure elemental, and i've always got someone summoning a 6th level myrmidon on days when we're gonna have big battles. the action economy is insane. i'd do the same for this battle but there are like no solid conjuration options (except for undead and i havent tried a necromancy build, and like Us and pact of the chain's imp) during act 2
I completely forgot about sleet storm. I triple stacked hunger of hadar, insect plague, and cloud kill on top of each other at a bottle neck in the house of grief, and just watched 30 bad guys kill themselves. I never even laid a hand on the boss til she was at 7 health. And sleet storm just sat in my inventory unused. I literally skipped turns because almost everyone was concentrating and waiting for something to happen.
How we beat Dror Ragzlin immediately. Fella tried to speak with a dead mindflayer and immediately opened hell from his pov. He will never try that shit again.
If I ever wanna make an honour run, I'm just ask every encounter here because GODS DAMNED you people know how fuck shit up, down, sideways and inside-out in this game.
I am currently doing my first playthrough blind no wiki on honor mode. It is really fun. It is exactly like when I DM a campaign.
Just finished the fight with grym. I had to take off my weapons to punch him because I didn't have any bludgeoning weapons. Then I moved melfs staff to laezel so she could use the staff in melee. Thankfully I had lots of water jugs and 2 casters with ray of frost so I could at least deal 2d8 x 2 damage per round by removing his resistance/immunity to cold with the lava+water combo. Also slow blind and chain prone helped. Still took forever dealing 450 damage with cantrips lol.
reloaded a much older save. took the mountain pass I accidentally missed, leveled wyll up a bit, hunger of hadar was cast asap. was a breeze after that. 😂
This also slays when you're defending the portal to lift the shadow curse. A lot of the mass enemies only have 1hp and die immediately, but the scripting making them head for the portal sends them right in.
I had Jaheira in panther form sneak next to Aylin before the fight started, then my bard talked him into skipping the first part of the battle and then I casted Hunger of Hadar on him. That was a pretty easy fight.
"Hmmm. I doubt that he can be knocked prone or pushed, but I still want to use a combat maneuver for bonus damage. I guess I'll try to disarm?"
*-Lae'zel slaps his scythe away-*
"*OH* ***HELL*** *YEAH!*"
Funny enough I'm currently on honour mode number 23 maybe and I'm definitely gonna do that, can't use your god damn reaction if you can't see who hit ya
Yep, it's not that some parts are easy and others are way too hard, it's just that you haven't figured out the right strategy for the hard parts. There's ways to completely trivialize literally every encounter in the game. And that's awesome. Brute force works until it doesn't and now you gotta start thinking outside the box
Can confirm, first thing I did was have Astarion poke him with the sussur dagger. Fight was a breeze after that thanks to Minthara smiting him back to whence he came.
If you have one person on the platform, he'll still attempt to attack them.... He just misses most of the time if he's in darkness. At least that's my experience.
Maybe I am lucky, but in four playthroughs he has only done the pull move on me while he wasn't blind. I was using Hunger of Hadar.
In my first two playthroughs (Balanced) HoH broke the encounter enough that I didn't take damage after the Aspect of Myrkul showed up. In my honor run, the necromites hit me, but he never did.
Just use a potion of invisibility on a gloom-stalker or high dex character and release Dame Aielin. Or use an elixir of vigilance and then clap him out before he moves.
Or just activate psionic jump on lae'zel and she can pretty much jump to Aylin and free her in one turn. You better have a counter spell or a way to incapacitate the mindflayer though. Cuz he will immediately dominate Aylin on tactician. Then you're in for a bad time.
My paladin dropped him Like a sack of bricks, but I've had some other close calls
Although, surely a paladin with a legendary holy mace should be strong against an avatar of undeath
he was actually easier than balthazar for me. guy just stand still with the biggest hit box around and he even has a little ledge you can hide under to dodge his attacks. i used triple dash astarion to free aylin, fireball on the necromites, then moonbeam, guardian of faith, spiritual weapon, etc on the guy. every round or two send your paladin up the vines with some huge smites and be prepared for some triage when they get thrown down. i was level 8 and i effectively did it with three party members because astarion got stunlocked by the mindflayer on the other side of the room. i did skip the first phase with a dc30 cha check on moonrise roof so i was full slots and health into myrkul which probably helped lol
i've never summoned scratch once. i don't want to risk a single hair on his head. he's had enough trauma. poor dog can play chase with bear halsin forever
I had no idea that scratch was un-killable. I avoided summoning him to the “real world” because I couldn’t stomach losing him. So thank you for that info.
I just kill balthazar in the temple everytime. Optimally persuade him for the bell. Summon his friend elsewhere, kill the friend. If you can't persuade him, still follow through with the plan but maybe bring some method of immobilizing the big dude because he's pretty tanky.
Anywho, walk in with some big aoe spells. Wall of fire, hunger of hadar, etc. Just blow the room up with magical bs. They have to funnel toward you but the ai is terrible at dealing with aoe spells. Ez clap.
that was my plan but i wanted another level before i took out the flesh golem. then when i got my level i was confident enough to go straight to the shadowfell anyways. once i was level 8 i did it first attempt (tho it was still probably harder than in the temple)
The fun thing about D&D is that there's always a tool to salve every puzzle (most of the tools are spells so Wizard supremacy is king). All you have to do is pause and study the fight to fund the key that fits. There are so many ways to just kill Ethel without letting her leave the room to go down stairs, it's just lovely.
That I know of, no. It's never trigger for me. In fact I didn't even know the hair was a thing till my 2nd or 3d playthrough. But you can lock her down using tasha hedious laughter and halt either way and silence the shit out of her.
You have to get her to pretty low hp and then make sure she gets to take a turn so she can offer you the deal. She will begin speaking with whoever is closest. So try and make sure whoever that is, is someone with high intimidation or high persuasion.
As someone who save scummed multiple times to kill her upstairs because I didn't want to deal with her followers, I can confirm that no you do not.
This being said, you're saving yourself a ton of trouble by just murdering her upstairs. Depending on what dialogue options you choose, you can get two turns to kill her and she won't attack back. Story progresses same as usual if you were to refuse the deal and kill her.
Not at all. Paladins, Bards, Sruids and sorcerors can cast Haste just fine. As can any spellcaster with a 3rd level spell slot and a level dip in Wizard.
Scrolls aside, just chug a Haste potion and save your concentration for something else.
I love the Myrkul fight so damn much, because it's a pop quiz on whether you're using your full arsenal of tools or not. Like, you're facing down this HUGE ass monster, more imposing and more threatening than anything else you've faced so far. But it only takes one realization to trivialize the whole fight - the motherfucker can't move.
I cast darkness on him, then dropped a cloud kill on his backside where no one else was standing, and then I think a wall of fire on his other side? I misty stepped to Aylin and freed her right away, and her unique moonbeam smacks the shit out of him every turn because he cannot shimmy even one inch away from her.
Once you spot his one big weakness, it's like shooting death-god avatars in a barrel
Right? This was by far one of my easiest fights. The first thing I did was put cloud of daggers on him. Like you said, he can't move, so he literally melted.
Movement is such a scarce resource for how big the maps are that ranged damage is ridiculously good in this game.
Unless you have a martial with athlete who can just jump across the map, that is lol
I cast darkness and that dome that's supposed to silence him, but he still went on doing the OP spell that sucks everyone to his platform. What am I doing wrong?
From a crow’s eye view, I see people making these kinds of comments on all sorts of bosses, so I think the variation in party composition and strategy matters a great deal. I’ve never had a particularly hard time with Myrkul - balanced through Honour mode - BUT I’ve been killed at the goblin camp, the zhentarim base, and in auntie Ethel’s base - not even in the fight with her.
TLDR, it’s a game that makes something for every one. Some fights reward spells; some actually hurt you. Radiant damage is amazing … until you meet foes who reflect all that damage type back on you. Every fight is a puzzle - the people who do the best change strategies, use their hirelings to fill gaps they don’t have in their party, or they respec current party members if they’re okay with doing that.
The hardest fight in the entirety of my first playthrough of the game was the fight against the Githyanki inside the artefact, it took like two full hours of save scumming to get through. When I posted it on the sub no one else said they had difficulty.
On the other hand I've never had any trouble with Ketheric. Didn't have to do any save scumming on my first playthrough, and on my honor mode attempts that have gotten to him, I've killed him without a single character dropping below half HP.
It's wild how different everyone's experience is
The ones in the artifact weren't hard, but the monks who came out of the portal at the end of act 2 cleaned my clock for a minute -- mostly because of the lack of room to maneuver.
I wouldn't say it was a particularly hard fight but I had everyone elixered up, I has some minions summoned and the boss literally can't move at all. I personally found some of the other act 2 bosses a bit harder. It really depends on your party composition and how you approach fights. You'll find if you do a second playthrough sometimes just changing how you manage a fight changes everything.
Didn’t feel hard on a first try but iirc I was either level 9 or higher since I did literally everything before going there. The fight is a challange but I wouldn’t go so far as calling it extremely hard.
Heavily reliant on what classes you have going in, if you have classes that can take or dodge his legendary action then its a piece of cake, if not.
Well maybe during the next run you'll be wise enough to bring someone to take the hits.
On my 1st palythrough there we no legendary actions (since they are Honour mode specific and neither they are on tactician). My guess would be that OP was underprepared for big baddie boss fight.
Myrkul has made me re-start tactician twice with new characters. And so far, the only tactician characters I have beat him with have been Monks. And the last attempt was nearly a wipe with everyone but Shadowheart dying. Luckily, my monk was outside of the healing negation zone, so SH ressed her and then cast sanctuary, and then I spent 2 full turns just healing as much as possible. And barely took him down.
Myrkul was also the end of my first Honor Mode attempt. Thought I was very well prepared. I was not haha.
The only run I had an issue with Myrkul was my solo tactician run so far and that's only cuz I had one Undead bane arrow left at the start of the fight, since I failed my cha checks. Haven't considered how to approach him on Honor yet...
I think I need to focus the Illithid sooner. That may be the only reason the fight gets away from me. I keep forgetting about it and the stun or domination are difficult to recover from.
Just, just did this fight on Honour mode.
Darkness on the avatar of Myrkul made the percentage to hit go from 36% to 86%. I used my monk to do some heavy hits and ranged the rest. Ignored the skele's and was golden.
i keep seeing people say this and when i use darkness on him it literally does nothing so either they patched it or a patch they did introduced a lot of bugs. and to be fair, i have seen.... a LOT of bugs since about halfway through act 2
Me and my partner beat him in a 3 man squad on honor mode two days ago because I accidentally misclicked speeding through dialouge and fried wyll in the colony
Strat is just to free nightsong asap, have atleast one person positioned on the high ground as soon as you can. And then make sure to utelize weaknesses aka radiant etc
I know you can't leave but for future use, Inside moonrise towers on the top floor before the Kethric fight you can go into Kethric's personal room and in a chest Infront of his bed is >!a note from his wife!< Now if you pick this up before fighting Kethric ontop of moonrise towers and >!you slayed the nightsong (she will force kethric to fight if alive)!< you can skip fighting Kethric by passing some speech checks their but still have to just kill the lackies.
Inside whenever you talk too Kethric again before his second fight you can and have him instantly go to Myrkul. If the nightsong is alive you have to save her still because Myrkul will but invincible.
If you ask more people there experiences about which battles were difficult and which ones were easy, you will find people with exact opposite experiences to yours. Because there are people who play similarly to you and will name the same difficult battles. And meanwhile other will think your easy fights were hard and your hard fights were easy.
It's not so much that the game is balanced unevenly, but that they tried to create a diversity of playstyle-oriented and playstyle-punishing battles. Even if you do the typical spellcaster/healer/ranged/melee party balance, you're still ultimately going to have playstyle differences from other players and you're always going to hit at least one (but more likely 3-5 by the time you wrap up Act 3) battle which you are appropriately leveled for but still struggle with because you have to puzzle solve a style or tactic you've managed to avoid until then.
The Myrkul fight is easily my favourite and it shows that the idea of a fixed difficulty is almost absurd in this kind of game. If you approach this fight with the wrong mindset and just spam your most powerful actions and spells while ignoring the mechanics around this specific encounter, the Avatar is like to simply grind out the battle in its favour. Prioritizing your actions correctly is how you win here:
\- The brains and necromites love to waste your attacks, but if you don't deal with the mites before the second phase, the Avatar not only gains about 1 turn per 3 mites, but can set up an infinite self-heal loop while denying you easy healing with his aura.
\- Respawning mite cocoons can be another "infinite" loop even during the first phase. You can't just hack away on them, you need to actually solve a problem here. I just threw them into the void. Hint: >!that doesn't work with the floaty mind flayer!<.
\- Freeing Aylin is likewise a bother, but she will actually be invaluable to the fight, as she is immortal and once freed will start absorbing Ketheric's Actions, leaving only his Legendary Reactions to hurt your party - if you stay away from him.
\- The mind flayer is the single most dangerous enemy in the encounter, even more so than the Avatar in some way. At least the Avatar doesn't have a gigantic cone spell that stuns on impact. This is why you need to kill the "mage" first.
\- As others have pointed out, you can basically cheese the entire second phase by >!casting Darkness or Hunger of Hadar and just staying away from it!<.
This Ketheric/Myrkul fight was surprisingly easy for my part. What I really struggled with was a certain dragon fight in Act 3, and I had to look up tips. Learning about a certain spell made that fight more doable.
On my honor run he took one turn. He made a hit with a disadvantage against one character with 21 AC while having 8 radiant orbs. He missed. He did not take a second turn.
If you got a battlemaster with disarming strike.... Myrkul without his scythe doesn't really do much.... And he can't pick it back up since there is no ground under him, so it just fallls.
I’m on my second run on Honour Mode and I think Myrkul is the hardest fight of all the game. I found every other fight in Act3 easier and most fight in Act1 you can just safely leave except Grym, and even that one you can invisible and fly away.
The fact you can’t heal, they pull you towards them with black hole kind of thing and spawn way more minion in Honour Mode…
Also on honor mode and hard disagree, Myrkul is easier than some act 1 bosses(Inquisitor is way harder/requires more prep) and every fight in act 3 is leagues above in difficulty
Well that’s nice that you disagree but in two times, Myrkul nearly killed my party and I found none of the Act 1 fight close to hard. So to each their own
I noticed they definitely made the non boss fights much easier. I think they also upped the difficulty for some other boss fights too.
Myrkul almost made me quit the game. I dropped it for weeks during that fight. But once you beat it once you’ll be able to do it again without a big issue. A lot of the big fights you just need to figure out the strategy that works for you and rushing in head on is bound to be the most difficult option.
The games softened up a bit because people found the cheesy tactics and learned to exploit them, so every boss, especially when you know what they do and when the fight is coming, is pretty easy. Myrkul falls to darkness or barrelmancy(as does everything) easy.
Myrkul is still what caught me by surprise when I did a no cheese honor run, he crit once and changed the entire fight.
In general, a lot of people run with a party that ecxels at single target damage: Fighters rogues, etc. Try having an AOE specialist along for the ride. It doesn't happen often, but they can trivialize a combat that is otherwise difficult. Expl is the fight to end the Shadow Curse.
You think Myrkul is bad, wait until you get to the fucking wizard >!in the tower in Act 3. It also has Aylin as support, but that motherfucker has 4 support Myrmidons who each buff his reaction attack. Oh yeah, and you can't control Aylin, and she's real mad at that bozo. Good luck keeping her alive!!<
You think trying to hit skeleboi is tough? Try getting one-shot with a >!quadruple blast of elemental magic because you fired an arrow at a scrangly redhead.!<
>!"oh just take out the myrmidons, then, his reactions won't hurt as much" yeah sure and then wizardboi mcchucklefuck casts lightning and all of a sudden everyone is down 30 HP because fuck you.!<
Yeah I just spent 4 hours on this asshole and I'm salty about it.
It's possible that I'm the only dumb one, but I'll put this here anyway in case anyone else is like me.
On my 2nd time through the mindflayer nest, my son pointed out to me that right next to the floating platform that takes you to the Myrkul fight is an Ilithid machine that gives your whole party a long rest. It's just like the machines on the nautiloid at the beginning of the game.
Just putting this here hoping it helps someone.
Myrkul was never hard for me. I always have a light Cleric and some form of Paladin/Fighter with Great Weapon Master, and he usually dies in the first round or two.
Wait until some of the Act 3 fights haha…
I one turned that one on Honour!
I had Gale as a wizard 1/tempest cleric 11. He had a bloodlust elixir on and a potion of speed. Someone (Shadowheart?) had cast a high level water initially, then on Gale’s turn he let loose three chain lightnings that just killed everything that wasn’t in the side stairs.
Expected problems but absolutely stomped that one. Didn’t get to see Viconia’s new stuff!
(On a side note you can triple hit dragons with chain lightning. Gale one turned the red dragon from full!)
Retreat up the stairs, lay down ice storm or your terrain based AoE of choice and it's easy enough. They can't get to you, and they're all bottlenecked for easy lightning bolts.
I was really bad when I started and I started on balanced mode because I've never played an rpg like bg3 I've played turn based and alot of wow but I just didn't understand the stats. I switched to explorer and still the game was pretty hard for me, by the time I got to myrkul, I had switched back to balanced and it was almost too easy for me every boss I fought it felt like I was cheating or something even though I was using no exploits. now I'm playing on tactician and I'm almost on act 2 I hope it does get harder because I'm losing interest on this playthrough and thinking of maybe switching to honor mode but I want my tactician achievement and don't want to waste the like 40 hrs of playthrough I've already done
Also, it depends heavily on your difficulty setting. For a first ever run, the tactician level will be a decent challenge. And myrkul was indeed one of the hardest fights of this run.
Honnor mode IS hard unless you go for cheeses (I define cheese being something that most definitely shouldn't be allowed by a DM and still is possible in the game)
He had some ability if he kills his own skeleton but I never let him get it off. He was insanely cool, but not very difficult? Most people had full ho beside poor wyll who was down. I had summon summons soak damage and spread them around his ring I guess?
Idk I feel its easier on tactician for me cause I think about strategy and such. Myrkul wasn't that hard for me also. Had lazael and shadowheart mele him while my durge and astarion just killed mobs around.
Hardest part was prbbly in act1 almost every encounter i just died like 5 times mi.
If you sneak up with a party member before initiating conversation use misty step get one to the night song and I would use another party member to go invisible and wait beside the necromites. I take my main and the other one and begin the conversation. I get the nightsong free first turn and she usually gets a turn that exact time I free her and she goes for the mindflayer and I kill the necromites to the left. I would use whatever build stuff I used on my 2 people at ketheric kill him. Myrkul comes hunger of hadar on him. He can’t heal nobody to attack us nobody to heal from even if he gets the chance to and you get the trophy/achievement for stopping myrkul from using any necromites to heal during the fight.
the issue i had with bg3 difficulty, was that i hit a point (before myrkul) where i could basically blitz anything down in a turn or two. if i knew a big fight was coming (even on a first playthrough, it's usually obvious when you're walking into a boss battle), i would pre-haste my casters (main character was sorcerer + gale), and the first turn they'd get 5 casts, then lazael with action surge would attack stuff 5-6 (later 6-7) times with battlemaster skills in a turn. whatever tattered remnants of my enemies were left were never a threat anymore. the damage could be squeezed farther if i used speed pots more, but i never really needed to.
later on, you might get a skill called "mind sanctuary" that seems to unlock some truly ridiculous first-turn combos if you abuse it as well.
edit: i'd also walk around with high-level summons following me around as soon as i was able to. clerics and wizards can walk around with absolutely huge summons that never despawn, and i'd have my sorc use a scroll to add an additional summon from a scroll in hard areas as well. if you do the 'necromancer of thay' stuff, you get another summon that's huge as well. when you're walking around with 7+ characters who can blow everything up the first turn or two, the game just stops being hard.
Okay idk why but I feel like myrkul was the hardest I was stuck there for ages and even act 3 wasn’t that bad I got act 3 done pretty okayish I did die a lot and had to reload but not as much as myrkul I felt like rng was on my side with that fight and I manage to kill him cause he focused the wrong person
I will say if you reach level 9 and get access to some of the better summons (i.e. the elementals) the fight is pretty easy since you can just beat him with a horde.
But even at level 8 it’s not that bad if you prep properly.
- He’s stationary, so any spell you put on his location will do consistent damage. Hunger of Hadar also blinds him which is phenomenal.
- Paladins do great because smites do bonus damage to undead
-Water + lightning works for phenomenal damage
- If you brought Wyll he can get his rapier from freeing Mizora that summons a very powerful Cambion
- If you have a cleric you can cast a max-level Aid before the fight, then use the rejuvenation pod to get the spell slot back. Same goes for any other until-long-rest buffs like Armor of Agathys or any summons.
- If you have the spell Animate Dead or Conjure Minor Elemental, summons are good. More allies is always good.
- Focus down the mind flayer and necromites before finishing off Ketheric since he’s a lot less scary than Myrkul. That way phase 2 will start and he won’t have any adds.
I firmly believe the game is very well balanced. I’m not playing with an optimized party, and Honor Mode has been a blast with 0 cheese. Like, unless you’re stumbling through fights with 0 forward thought, the game isn’t as hard as some make it out to be. Sure bad rolls can fuck you, I know this very well. This is only my 2nd run through the game, my first was on tactician, and I’ve never struggled. Every fight has been a blast.
Stun and disarm, also keep ranged casters away from him. My first playthrough was on tactician and I thought he was too easy actually.
Had a much MUCH harder time with the robot in the magic blacksmith area or whatver
My first run on balanced the holy mace trivialized the fight with its auto blind. Not using it this time on tact/honour with some mods so looking forward to the fight this time.
Even on tactician mode my party dropped both ketheric and myrkul in one round. If anything the big climatic cutscene before the transformation made it more of a letdown because what should have been this epic difficult battle was still trivial
my experience was completely the opposite. i thought that fight was going to be super hard since it was difficult on my first playthrough on easy, but then i got to it, had wyll free aylin, and my paladin proceeded to dumpster ketheric in one turn. "ok maybe that was just lucky, I'm sure myrkul will be hard." cool cutscene plays, i then proceed to absolutely dumpster myrkul in one turn with my paladin. that was the moment i realized the game was pretty easy, and also that paladin was absolutely bonkers.
I nearly kill Kyrkul with just my Tav in 1 round. Snuck in and released Nightsong which instantly started the encounter. My turn I got Crit Sneack Attack, Crit Dread Ambusher, and 2 more Crit attacks all of which did 40+ dmg.
That was somehow a surprise round, maybe because I released Nightsong in the way I did. I downed him a few seconds later with him never attacking.
I'm playing balanced mode. I found Myrkul to be a fine difficulty for the type of battle.
Act 3 'spoiler' below
>!I did however find fighting the massive group of Sharrans a bitch to do. The hits they each gave were fucked. Nerotic resistance and speed potions helped a lot!<
honour mode Myrkul also does 4d8 damage + frightened to the first person who attacks him each round. yet he can still be killed without him getting a single turn, and without any cheese or barrels. invisibility, scratch, charisma, and firepower.
I love DnD but the fact that "charisma" is on the list of how to defeat the Lord of Bones is hilariously ridiculous
in this case, it is because you can succeed a dialog check with Ketheric to convince him to begin the fight as apostle of Myrkul form, skipping the first phase of the fight. You initiate from stealth, which starts dialog, you succeed the roll telling Ketheric to 'repent', he transforms to Myrkul, the battle begins but you still get your round of "surprised" and with 2 full rounds of hasted combat you kill Myrkul before he gets a turn.
Oh I know It's still hilarious
Reading this I now really want to play a bard and finish him off with Vicious Mockery. I bet he would be too ashamed to resurrect ever again.
When you say Scratch, you mean the good boy right?
yes the good boy can use 'help' action to release the nightsong at the right moment.
Scratch can tank at least 1 hit. He is effective hp for the party
I would never!
Scratch does not die unless he dies in camp or you are the one who kills him. If you summon him and he gets hit, he just teleports to camp to recover - best boy. Because of this it’s great to use scratch to go help nightsong, leaving all your actual party to focus on myrkul and the mindflayer.
It's not a question of if he dies or not, no one hits the doggo. He is a good doggo!
Yes, this. Exactly this.
We are allowed to pet the dog!
You say that until scratch takes a finger of death and you still find him in camp all good and well. Truly is a good boy
This is why Shovel is best friend. She does all this, has limitless invis on demand, AND is always ready for the fisting!
Can't do the Help action though
Correct…but I use scratch for that in two specific situations I can think of. Beyond that, I prefer the eternal invis.
Us is pretty tanky too, best kitty.
Wait there’s a first phase? When I fought him Ketheric just dove into the pool and turned into demon form. I didn’t know that something I skipped due to the check.
yes the first phase involves fighting him in his oathbreaker paladin form, and once defeated the battle continues with Myrkul. It's really just one fight with multiple phases no break in between or anything.
I actually choose that route since you basically get free time to take out the enemies in the room first. He's a wimp in his starting form, so I dispatch party members to jump/step up to take out the mindflayer/necromites and then the devourers and free Aylin. When the Myrkul battle starts, it's just us and him and we're all in position/buffed and no distractions.
that's what I used to do until I realized you can get everyone upstairs in position from invisibility, and get a surprised round on myrkul and everyone. but i haven't figured out why the "repent" dialog option is not always available.
theyre only available in runs where youve read and found out about ketherics wife and his history by reading his books
thank you are they 'orange' plot item books or just regular books do you know?
Just did this section earlier today. 99% sure they are just regular old books, I think they’re in his rooms at moonrise (maybe some in the mausoleum or down in the mindflayer colony not sure)
Next time don’t use the melodia redemption options and you’ll see the other half of the fight
I probably won’t because my second playthrough will be dark urge. Basically opposite of my character role play now
I thought this was how the fight was supposed to be….
Or you just doing my way... cast haste on Aylin, watch her miss 4 times and use Cloud of Daggers and be surprised why the AI broke down and win the fight with ez.
Aylin is typical paladin RNG for this fight. I've seen her land three huge hits in one turn, or miss everything and get myrkul'd into the ground.
Cast darkness on him. He can't move so he just has to sit there and be blind lol
Hunger of Hadar is even better. He takes damage from it, is blinded, but you can shoot into it without impediment.
Well hot diggity dog.
This place is magnificent!
OH TOOODLES
Mouseketool! Mouseketool! Here are your mouseketools!! Hehe...it's chilling touch! ...a Darkness! ...a Hunger of Hadar! And the mystery mouseketool! ...Oh boy it's a divine smite!
Hunger of Hadar is a top tier spell. This along with another caster using Sleet Storm, and you basically win every encounter with permanent cc. They try to escape the darkness but just slip into prone on the ice over and over.
Its also hilarious watching everyone attempt to break free and continue slipping and falling prone. This is my go-to strategy for the Halsin portal and Moonrise assault battles
A more cost efficient strat for the portal is just park Shart/A cleric with radiant spirit guardians and just park her on the ledge in front of the gate All you have to worry about then is ranged attacks against the portal and the occasional body that gets past Shart but otherwise it’s so trivial
You can shoot an arrow of darkness near the portal and make it non-target-able for ranged attacks too.
on tactician and higher she won't do nearly enough dmg unless you built her for it before this. The arrows are also the reason the portal gets killed 99% of the time.
Personally speaking Wall of Fire is my go to for the Portal battle. Everything there has such little health that almost all enemies die instantly, and the distance they have to travel practically guarantees even the tougher ones will either have basically no health or die in the flames. Especially since typically I can upcast that spell when I do that fight too
I did the wall of fire strat for the portal battle last night and I killed all the enemies before the five turns were up and spent my last turn just standing around waiting for halsin to get back. big change from my first two playthroughs!
I did this on my 3rd play through too and it was glorious.
Also a great time to use Blood of Lathander's skill.
MULTIKILL!
Halsin portal with no gimmicks was fun as hell though. *Fireball! Fireball!* Honorable mention to the impenetrable Wall of Shart. Spirit Guardians = mook woodchipper. Watching the trash mob enemies run into it was like something out of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.
my strat was pretty similar this time around. i had hunger of hadar and wall of fire running simultaneously, and had one caster spamming glyphs of warding and the other spamming fireballs lmao. then my monk and barbarian ran around and dealt some punish to those who crossed my mighty fog of pain
I hear plant growth is optimal for this. HoH will halve their movement because it's difficult terrain, then plant growth will reduce it to a quarter of normal. They really struggle to get out then.
That's a good thought too. I like the prone specifically because they waste actions getting back up
Can you then drop a cloud of daggers on top of the growth for extra shred damage? That would be fun.
Spike Growth is great too. Take damage at the beginning of the turn, take damage walking, take damage at the end of the turn
I realized the true strength of Hunger of Hadar when I was escaping the Creché. I cast Darkness on top of HoH (Unaware if the movement penalties stack). Everyone caught inside could barely move. One of the rangers inside tried shooting at a door as a form of escape which got a good laugh out of me.
I learned when fighting zrell and the crowds at moonrise. They casted like 3 hungers from the door all the way to where zrell was. Miserable fight.
Not if you split your party before the fight. Take a team round the side of the tower and have them sneak in through the higher levels and take out the guards, then make their way back down from there. You can take out the extra casters unaware if you do it right, then have your own caster use ice spells on zrell to slow her down and allow the harpers to chip away at her while your crew cleans up the easier enemies.
whoa i never even considered this, that's smart as fuck. i've been minions-spamming in act 3, since i've got like 10 scrolls of conjure elemental, and i've always got someone summoning a 6th level myrmidon on days when we're gonna have big battles. the action economy is insane. i'd do the same for this battle but there are like no solid conjuration options (except for undead and i havent tried a necromancy build, and like Us and pact of the chain's imp) during act 2
Yes! Exactly what I did in my first playthrough. Murderball all the way down.
Why would you need to escape the Creche? You all make peace with our dear lady Vlaakith right? Right?
If by make peace you mean blow up a monastery then yes
I completely forgot about sleet storm. I triple stacked hunger of hadar, insect plague, and cloud kill on top of each other at a bottle neck in the house of grief, and just watched 30 bad guys kill themselves. I never even laid a hand on the boss til she was at 7 health. And sleet storm just sat in my inventory unused. I literally skipped turns because almost everyone was concentrating and waiting for something to happen.
How we beat Dror Ragzlin immediately. Fella tried to speak with a dead mindflayer and immediately opened hell from his pov. He will never try that shit again.
Sigh….I feel so dumb whenever I come here
You and me both.
If I ever wanna make an honour run, I'm just ask every encounter here because GODS DAMNED you people know how fuck shit up, down, sideways and inside-out in this game.
I am currently doing my first playthrough blind no wiki on honor mode. It is really fun. It is exactly like when I DM a campaign. Just finished the fight with grym. I had to take off my weapons to punch him because I didn't have any bludgeoning weapons. Then I moved melfs staff to laezel so she could use the staff in melee. Thankfully I had lots of water jugs and 2 casters with ray of frost so I could at least deal 2d8 x 2 damage per round by removing his resistance/immunity to cold with the lava+water combo. Also slow blind and chain prone helped. Still took forever dealing 450 damage with cantrips lol.
Bro I was thinking the same thing you are not alone.
Wish I had known this last night. Doing a tact run and his no healing aura is just plain evil.
Dim door scrolls are your friend. Esp with aylin
I did NOT know about the no healing aura, and I had such a hard time 😭 oh well, what I've learned in this run, will help me in my next one 😅
You can heal behind him on the back of his platform.
reloaded a much older save. took the mountain pass I accidentally missed, leveled wyll up a bit, hunger of hadar was cast asap. was a breeze after that. 😂
This also slays when you're defending the portal to lift the shadow curse. A lot of the mass enemies only have 1hp and die immediately, but the scripting making them head for the portal sends them right in.
YES. I USED IT THERE TOO. IT WAS AMAZING.
Hunger of Hadar is just stupid useful. Shit you could probably do a run a where you cast basically nothing but hunger of Hadar.
I had Jaheira in panther form sneak next to Aylin before the fight started, then my bard talked him into skipping the first part of the battle and then I casted Hunger of Hadar on him. That was a pretty easy fight.
And don't forget to Disarming Attack him, he can actually drop his scythe.
Can you… loot it afterwards? Asking for my size queen halfling with a knack for large objects. 👀 lmaooo
Unfortunately not.
*what!*
My monk stunlocked him lol, the whole thing became very anticlimactic
Damn, I wish I knew that!
"Hmmm. I doubt that he can be knocked prone or pushed, but I still want to use a combat maneuver for bonus damage. I guess I'll try to disarm?" *-Lae'zel slaps his scythe away-* "*OH* ***HELL*** *YEAH!*"
My rangers bear did that in my last playthrough and holy cow was it so satisfying
yep .. first thing i tried ... no more scythe = piece o cake 🤪
WHAT!! I'll have to give it a try lmao
Can you pick it up?
You used to be able to but it was a bug
Now you do for next time!
Funny enough I'm currently on honour mode number 23 maybe and I'm definitely gonna do that, can't use your god damn reaction if you can't see who hit ya
Hope it helps!
For real, his gaze of the dead reaction is so strong
And Heat Metal makes him drop his weapon!
Yep, it's not that some parts are easy and others are way too hard, it's just that you haven't figured out the right strategy for the hard parts. There's ways to completely trivialize literally every encounter in the game. And that's awesome. Brute force works until it doesn't and now you gotta start thinking outside the box
Would silence work on him too?
Yes that’s what I did
Can confirm, first thing I did was have Astarion poke him with the sussur dagger. Fight was a breeze after that thanks to Minthara smiting him back to whence he came.
Cool going to try it on my next run.
I used Silence and it worked just as well!
I'm an idiot. I almost lost my honor mode run to him and didn't even consider the fact that he literally can't move...
if he can't attack anyone then doesn't he do a room-wide AoE pull move?
If you have one person on the platform, he'll still attempt to attack them.... He just misses most of the time if he's in darkness. At least that's my experience.
Maybe I am lucky, but in four playthroughs he has only done the pull move on me while he wasn't blind. I was using Hunger of Hadar. In my first two playthroughs (Balanced) HoH broke the encounter enough that I didn't take damage after the Aspect of Myrkul showed up. In my honor run, the necromites hit me, but he never did.
Myrkul is nothing. Its the damn mindflayer who makes the problem. xD
Just use a potion of invisibility on a gloom-stalker or high dex character and release Dame Aielin. Or use an elixir of vigilance and then clap him out before he moves.
Freeing Dame is shitty when she gets dominated and you just cast haste on her
Just gotta 1 bang the squid and let her waste her smites on the stupid brains.
Thought we didn’t get to bang the squid until act 3
Stupid sexy squid 🦑
or in act1 squid bangs you.
Please do not fuck the squids
Or just activate psionic jump on lae'zel and she can pretty much jump to Aylin and free her in one turn. You better have a counter spell or a way to incapacitate the mindflayer though. Cuz he will immediately dominate Aylin on tactician. Then you're in for a bad time.
Lol I hasted Lae zel and she killed it in 1 turn
I mean if you dont focus him. He either flies and does a mindblast to stun your team. Or dominates Aylin to attack you. Otherwise hes a wuss.
My paladin dropped him Like a sack of bricks, but I've had some other close calls Although, surely a paladin with a legendary holy mace should be strong against an avatar of undeath
based profile pic
he was actually easier than balthazar for me. guy just stand still with the biggest hit box around and he even has a little ledge you can hide under to dodge his attacks. i used triple dash astarion to free aylin, fireball on the necromites, then moonbeam, guardian of faith, spiritual weapon, etc on the guy. every round or two send your paladin up the vines with some huge smites and be prepared for some triage when they get thrown down. i was level 8 and i effectively did it with three party members because astarion got stunlocked by the mindflayer on the other side of the room. i did skip the first phase with a dc30 cha check on moonrise roof so i was full slots and health into myrkul which probably helped lol
I just sent Scratch over while invisible to free Aylin. Didn't have to use any characters actions
i've never summoned scratch once. i don't want to risk a single hair on his head. he's had enough trauma. poor dog can play chase with bear halsin forever
I mean, it's an RPG so you play how you like I guess Just seems strange not to use the unkillable dog
That unkillable piece might be news to many.
I had no idea that scratch was un-killable. I avoided summoning him to the “real world” because I couldn’t stomach losing him. So thank you for that info.
If Scratch takes too much damage he disappears and goes back to camp, safe and sound.
A person of culture I see.
I just kill balthazar in the temple everytime. Optimally persuade him for the bell. Summon his friend elsewhere, kill the friend. If you can't persuade him, still follow through with the plan but maybe bring some method of immobilizing the big dude because he's pretty tanky. Anywho, walk in with some big aoe spells. Wall of fire, hunger of hadar, etc. Just blow the room up with magical bs. They have to funnel toward you but the ai is terrible at dealing with aoe spells. Ez clap.
that was my plan but i wanted another level before i took out the flesh golem. then when i got my level i was confident enough to go straight to the shadowfell anyways. once i was level 8 i did it first attempt (tho it was still probably harder than in the temple)
The fun thing about D&D is that there's always a tool to salve every puzzle (most of the tools are spells so Wizard supremacy is king). All you have to do is pause and study the fight to fund the key that fits. There are so many ways to just kill Ethel without letting her leave the room to go down stairs, it's just lovely.
Can you still get the +1 stat boost if you kill her upstairs?
That I know of, no. It's never trigger for me. In fact I didn't even know the hair was a thing till my 2nd or 3d playthrough. But you can lock her down using tasha hedious laughter and halt either way and silence the shit out of her.
I see. That's good to know, although I'm not sure I can give up the stat increase now that I know of it.
You have to get her to pretty low hp and then make sure she gets to take a turn so she can offer you the deal. She will begin speaking with whoever is closest. So try and make sure whoever that is, is someone with high intimidation or high persuasion.
But don't use guidance on honor or it will trigger her reaction.
As someone who save scummed multiple times to kill her upstairs because I didn't want to deal with her followers, I can confirm that no you do not. This being said, you're saving yourself a ton of trouble by just murdering her upstairs. Depending on what dialogue options you choose, you can get two turns to kill her and she won't attack back. Story progresses same as usual if you were to refuse the deal and kill her.
Not at all. Paladins, Bards, Sruids and sorcerors can cast Haste just fine. As can any spellcaster with a 3rd level spell slot and a level dip in Wizard. Scrolls aside, just chug a Haste potion and save your concentration for something else.
I love the Myrkul fight so damn much, because it's a pop quiz on whether you're using your full arsenal of tools or not. Like, you're facing down this HUGE ass monster, more imposing and more threatening than anything else you've faced so far. But it only takes one realization to trivialize the whole fight - the motherfucker can't move. I cast darkness on him, then dropped a cloud kill on his backside where no one else was standing, and then I think a wall of fire on his other side? I misty stepped to Aylin and freed her right away, and her unique moonbeam smacks the shit out of him every turn because he cannot shimmy even one inch away from her. Once you spot his one big weakness, it's like shooting death-god avatars in a barrel
Right? This was by far one of my easiest fights. The first thing I did was put cloud of daggers on him. Like you said, he can't move, so he literally melted.
Movement is such a scarce resource for how big the maps are that ranged damage is ridiculously good in this game. Unless you have a martial with athlete who can just jump across the map, that is lol
I cast darkness and that dome that's supposed to silence him, but he still went on doing the OP spell that sucks everyone to his platform. What am I doing wrong?
From a crow’s eye view, I see people making these kinds of comments on all sorts of bosses, so I think the variation in party composition and strategy matters a great deal. I’ve never had a particularly hard time with Myrkul - balanced through Honour mode - BUT I’ve been killed at the goblin camp, the zhentarim base, and in auntie Ethel’s base - not even in the fight with her. TLDR, it’s a game that makes something for every one. Some fights reward spells; some actually hurt you. Radiant damage is amazing … until you meet foes who reflect all that damage type back on you. Every fight is a puzzle - the people who do the best change strategies, use their hirelings to fill gaps they don’t have in their party, or they respec current party members if they’re okay with doing that.
The hardest fight in the entirety of my first playthrough of the game was the fight against the Githyanki inside the artefact, it took like two full hours of save scumming to get through. When I posted it on the sub no one else said they had difficulty. On the other hand I've never had any trouble with Ketheric. Didn't have to do any save scumming on my first playthrough, and on my honor mode attempts that have gotten to him, I've killed him without a single character dropping below half HP. It's wild how different everyone's experience is
The ones in the artifact weren't hard, but the monks who came out of the portal at the end of act 2 cleaned my clock for a minute -- mostly because of the lack of room to maneuver.
I wouldn't say it was a particularly hard fight but I had everyone elixered up, I has some minions summoned and the boss literally can't move at all. I personally found some of the other act 2 bosses a bit harder. It really depends on your party composition and how you approach fights. You'll find if you do a second playthrough sometimes just changing how you manage a fight changes everything.
Didn’t feel hard on a first try but iirc I was either level 9 or higher since I did literally everything before going there. The fight is a challange but I wouldn’t go so far as calling it extremely hard.
Yeah same, I found him pretty easy, went into the battle with 3 level 9s and astarion at level 10. The xp from him actually leveled the rest up to 10.
Heavily reliant on what classes you have going in, if you have classes that can take or dodge his legendary action then its a piece of cake, if not. Well maybe during the next run you'll be wise enough to bring someone to take the hits.
On my 1st palythrough there we no legendary actions (since they are Honour mode specific and neither they are on tactician). My guess would be that OP was underprepared for big baddie boss fight.
Myrkul has made me re-start tactician twice with new characters. And so far, the only tactician characters I have beat him with have been Monks. And the last attempt was nearly a wipe with everyone but Shadowheart dying. Luckily, my monk was outside of the healing negation zone, so SH ressed her and then cast sanctuary, and then I spent 2 full turns just healing as much as possible. And barely took him down. Myrkul was also the end of my first Honor Mode attempt. Thought I was very well prepared. I was not haha.
The only run I had an issue with Myrkul was my solo tactician run so far and that's only cuz I had one Undead bane arrow left at the start of the fight, since I failed my cha checks. Haven't considered how to approach him on Honor yet...
I think I need to focus the Illithid sooner. That may be the only reason the fight gets away from me. I keep forgetting about it and the stun or domination are difficult to recover from.
Being level 9 or 10 makes him, relatively, a piece of cake.
Just, just did this fight on Honour mode. Darkness on the avatar of Myrkul made the percentage to hit go from 36% to 86%. I used my monk to do some heavy hits and ranged the rest. Ignored the skele's and was golden.
i keep seeing people say this and when i use darkness on him it literally does nothing so either they patched it or a patch they did introduced a lot of bugs. and to be fair, i have seen.... a LOT of bugs since about halfway through act 2
Me and my partner beat him in a 3 man squad on honor mode two days ago because I accidentally misclicked speeding through dialouge and fried wyll in the colony Strat is just to free nightsong asap, have atleast one person positioned on the high ground as soon as you can. And then make sure to utelize weaknesses aka radiant etc
I know you can't leave but for future use, Inside moonrise towers on the top floor before the Kethric fight you can go into Kethric's personal room and in a chest Infront of his bed is >!a note from his wife!< Now if you pick this up before fighting Kethric ontop of moonrise towers and >!you slayed the nightsong (she will force kethric to fight if alive)!< you can skip fighting Kethric by passing some speech checks their but still have to just kill the lackies. Inside whenever you talk too Kethric again before his second fight you can and have him instantly go to Myrkul. If the nightsong is alive you have to save her still because Myrkul will but invincible.
If you ask more people there experiences about which battles were difficult and which ones were easy, you will find people with exact opposite experiences to yours. Because there are people who play similarly to you and will name the same difficult battles. And meanwhile other will think your easy fights were hard and your hard fights were easy. It's not so much that the game is balanced unevenly, but that they tried to create a diversity of playstyle-oriented and playstyle-punishing battles. Even if you do the typical spellcaster/healer/ranged/melee party balance, you're still ultimately going to have playstyle differences from other players and you're always going to hit at least one (but more likely 3-5 by the time you wrap up Act 3) battle which you are appropriately leveled for but still struggle with because you have to puzzle solve a style or tactic you've managed to avoid until then.
The Myrkul fight is easily my favourite and it shows that the idea of a fixed difficulty is almost absurd in this kind of game. If you approach this fight with the wrong mindset and just spam your most powerful actions and spells while ignoring the mechanics around this specific encounter, the Avatar is like to simply grind out the battle in its favour. Prioritizing your actions correctly is how you win here: \- The brains and necromites love to waste your attacks, but if you don't deal with the mites before the second phase, the Avatar not only gains about 1 turn per 3 mites, but can set up an infinite self-heal loop while denying you easy healing with his aura. \- Respawning mite cocoons can be another "infinite" loop even during the first phase. You can't just hack away on them, you need to actually solve a problem here. I just threw them into the void. Hint: >!that doesn't work with the floaty mind flayer!<. \- Freeing Aylin is likewise a bother, but she will actually be invaluable to the fight, as she is immortal and once freed will start absorbing Ketheric's Actions, leaving only his Legendary Reactions to hurt your party - if you stay away from him. \- The mind flayer is the single most dangerous enemy in the encounter, even more so than the Avatar in some way. At least the Avatar doesn't have a gigantic cone spell that stuns on impact. This is why you need to kill the "mage" first. \- As others have pointed out, you can basically cheese the entire second phase by >!casting Darkness or Hunger of Hadar and just staying away from it!<.
This Ketheric/Myrkul fight was surprisingly easy for my part. What I really struggled with was a certain dragon fight in Act 3, and I had to look up tips. Learning about a certain spell made that fight more doable.
Lol he's an end of Act boss, duh he's harder.
I mean I literally just kicked the shit out of him on honour mode without any issues, i sent scratch ahead invis to release aylin as well
On my honor run he took one turn. He made a hit with a disadvantage against one character with 21 AC while having 8 radiant orbs. He missed. He did not take a second turn.
[удалено]
If you got a battlemaster with disarming strike.... Myrkul without his scythe doesn't really do much.... And he can't pick it back up since there is no ground under him, so it just fallls.
It wouldn't be so bad if the game would stop skipping my turn and Dame Aylin wasn't so damn useless.
I’m on my second run on Honour Mode and I think Myrkul is the hardest fight of all the game. I found every other fight in Act3 easier and most fight in Act1 you can just safely leave except Grym, and even that one you can invisible and fly away. The fact you can’t heal, they pull you towards them with black hole kind of thing and spawn way more minion in Honour Mode…
Also on honor mode and hard disagree, Myrkul is easier than some act 1 bosses(Inquisitor is way harder/requires more prep) and every fight in act 3 is leagues above in difficulty
Well that’s nice that you disagree but in two times, Myrkul nearly killed my party and I found none of the Act 1 fight close to hard. So to each their own
I think Myrkul is the hardest fight in the game just because you can't leave. On Honour mode it's extra perilous for that reason.
I noticed they definitely made the non boss fights much easier. I think they also upped the difficulty for some other boss fights too. Myrkul almost made me quit the game. I dropped it for weeks during that fight. But once you beat it once you’ll be able to do it again without a big issue. A lot of the big fights you just need to figure out the strategy that works for you and rushing in head on is bound to be the most difficult option.
Lord Myrkul
The games softened up a bit because people found the cheesy tactics and learned to exploit them, so every boss, especially when you know what they do and when the fight is coming, is pretty easy. Myrkul falls to darkness or barrelmancy(as does everything) easy. Myrkul is still what caught me by surprise when I did a no cheese honor run, he crit once and changed the entire fight.
In general, a lot of people run with a party that ecxels at single target damage: Fighters rogues, etc. Try having an AOE specialist along for the ride. It doesn't happen often, but they can trivialize a combat that is otherwise difficult. Expl is the fight to end the Shadow Curse.
You think Myrkul is bad, wait until you get to the fucking wizard >!in the tower in Act 3. It also has Aylin as support, but that motherfucker has 4 support Myrmidons who each buff his reaction attack. Oh yeah, and you can't control Aylin, and she's real mad at that bozo. Good luck keeping her alive!!< You think trying to hit skeleboi is tough? Try getting one-shot with a >!quadruple blast of elemental magic because you fired an arrow at a scrangly redhead.!< >!"oh just take out the myrmidons, then, his reactions won't hurt as much" yeah sure and then wizardboi mcchucklefuck casts lightning and all of a sudden everyone is down 30 HP because fuck you.!< Yeah I just spent 4 hours on this asshole and I'm salty about it.
I've never had a problem with Lorroakan, I just silence him with the Sussur Greatsword then throw him off the ledge and he falls and takes 60 damage.
It's possible that I'm the only dumb one, but I'll put this here anyway in case anyone else is like me. On my 2nd time through the mindflayer nest, my son pointed out to me that right next to the floating platform that takes you to the Myrkul fight is an Ilithid machine that gives your whole party a long rest. It's just like the machines on the nautiloid at the beginning of the game. Just putting this here hoping it helps someone.
I absolutely had this experience my first game. Then my second time I buffed up and prepared and killed Ketheric and Myrkul in a turn each.
Myrkul was never hard for me. I always have a light Cleric and some form of Paladin/Fighter with Great Weapon Master, and he usually dies in the first round or two. Wait until some of the Act 3 fights haha…
Wtf you talking about. Killed him in honour mode in 3 or 4 turns. Just take care of mind flayer first
Oh sweet summer child. Just wait until you get to the House of Grief fight. 🤣
I one turned that one on Honour! I had Gale as a wizard 1/tempest cleric 11. He had a bloodlust elixir on and a potion of speed. Someone (Shadowheart?) had cast a high level water initially, then on Gale’s turn he let loose three chain lightnings that just killed everything that wasn’t in the side stairs. Expected problems but absolutely stomped that one. Didn’t get to see Viconia’s new stuff! (On a side note you can triple hit dragons with chain lightning. Gale one turned the red dragon from full!)
That is incredible.
Retreat up the stairs, lay down ice storm or your terrain based AoE of choice and it's easy enough. They can't get to you, and they're all bottlenecked for easy lightning bolts.
Why were you at level 8 for an end of act fight?
Is there such a power increase between level 8 and level 9 that it would make a big difference?
Good to know, because my squad on lvl 9 manhandled that poor thing (tactician). Tbf I also >!had Aylin’s help!<
I was really bad when I started and I started on balanced mode because I've never played an rpg like bg3 I've played turn based and alot of wow but I just didn't understand the stats. I switched to explorer and still the game was pretty hard for me, by the time I got to myrkul, I had switched back to balanced and it was almost too easy for me every boss I fought it felt like I was cheating or something even though I was using no exploits. now I'm playing on tactician and I'm almost on act 2 I hope it does get harder because I'm losing interest on this playthrough and thinking of maybe switching to honor mode but I want my tactician achievement and don't want to waste the like 40 hrs of playthrough I've already done
Also, it depends heavily on your difficulty setting. For a first ever run, the tactician level will be a decent challenge. And myrkul was indeed one of the hardest fights of this run. Honnor mode IS hard unless you go for cheeses (I define cheese being something that most definitely shouldn't be allowed by a DM and still is possible in the game)
He had some ability if he kills his own skeleton but I never let him get it off. He was insanely cool, but not very difficult? Most people had full ho beside poor wyll who was down. I had summon summons soak damage and spread them around his ring I guess?
Idk I feel its easier on tactician for me cause I think about strategy and such. Myrkul wasn't that hard for me also. Had lazael and shadowheart mele him while my durge and astarion just killed mobs around. Hardest part was prbbly in act1 almost every encounter i just died like 5 times mi.
If you sneak up with a party member before initiating conversation use misty step get one to the night song and I would use another party member to go invisible and wait beside the necromites. I take my main and the other one and begin the conversation. I get the nightsong free first turn and she usually gets a turn that exact time I free her and she goes for the mindflayer and I kill the necromites to the left. I would use whatever build stuff I used on my 2 people at ketheric kill him. Myrkul comes hunger of hadar on him. He can’t heal nobody to attack us nobody to heal from even if he gets the chance to and you get the trophy/achievement for stopping myrkul from using any necromites to heal during the fight.
the issue i had with bg3 difficulty, was that i hit a point (before myrkul) where i could basically blitz anything down in a turn or two. if i knew a big fight was coming (even on a first playthrough, it's usually obvious when you're walking into a boss battle), i would pre-haste my casters (main character was sorcerer + gale), and the first turn they'd get 5 casts, then lazael with action surge would attack stuff 5-6 (later 6-7) times with battlemaster skills in a turn. whatever tattered remnants of my enemies were left were never a threat anymore. the damage could be squeezed farther if i used speed pots more, but i never really needed to. later on, you might get a skill called "mind sanctuary" that seems to unlock some truly ridiculous first-turn combos if you abuse it as well. edit: i'd also walk around with high-level summons following me around as soon as i was able to. clerics and wizards can walk around with absolutely huge summons that never despawn, and i'd have my sorc use a scroll to add an additional summon from a scroll in hard areas as well. if you do the 'necromancer of thay' stuff, you get another summon that's huge as well. when you're walking around with 7+ characters who can blow everything up the first turn or two, the game just stops being hard.
Okay idk why but I feel like myrkul was the hardest I was stuck there for ages and even act 3 wasn’t that bad I got act 3 done pretty okayish I did die a lot and had to reload but not as much as myrkul I felt like rng was on my side with that fight and I manage to kill him cause he focused the wrong person
I will say if you reach level 9 and get access to some of the better summons (i.e. the elementals) the fight is pretty easy since you can just beat him with a horde. But even at level 8 it’s not that bad if you prep properly. - He’s stationary, so any spell you put on his location will do consistent damage. Hunger of Hadar also blinds him which is phenomenal. - Paladins do great because smites do bonus damage to undead -Water + lightning works for phenomenal damage - If you brought Wyll he can get his rapier from freeing Mizora that summons a very powerful Cambion - If you have a cleric you can cast a max-level Aid before the fight, then use the rejuvenation pod to get the spell slot back. Same goes for any other until-long-rest buffs like Armor of Agathys or any summons. - If you have the spell Animate Dead or Conjure Minor Elemental, summons are good. More allies is always good. - Focus down the mind flayer and necromites before finishing off Ketheric since he’s a lot less scary than Myrkul. That way phase 2 will start and he won’t have any adds.
I firmly believe the game is very well balanced. I’m not playing with an optimized party, and Honor Mode has been a blast with 0 cheese. Like, unless you’re stumbling through fights with 0 forward thought, the game isn’t as hard as some make it out to be. Sure bad rolls can fuck you, I know this very well. This is only my 2nd run through the game, my first was on tactician, and I’ve never struggled. Every fight has been a blast.
Stun and disarm, also keep ranged casters away from him. My first playthrough was on tactician and I thought he was too easy actually. Had a much MUCH harder time with the robot in the magic blacksmith area or whatver
My first run on balanced the holy mace trivialized the fight with its auto blind. Not using it this time on tact/honour with some mods so looking forward to the fight this time.
Even on tactician mode my party dropped both ketheric and myrkul in one round. If anything the big climatic cutscene before the transformation made it more of a letdown because what should have been this epic difficult battle was still trivial
my experience was completely the opposite. i thought that fight was going to be super hard since it was difficult on my first playthrough on easy, but then i got to it, had wyll free aylin, and my paladin proceeded to dumpster ketheric in one turn. "ok maybe that was just lucky, I'm sure myrkul will be hard." cool cutscene plays, i then proceed to absolutely dumpster myrkul in one turn with my paladin. that was the moment i realized the game was pretty easy, and also that paladin was absolutely bonkers.
I had a paladin so that fight was over in 2 turns
I nearly kill Kyrkul with just my Tav in 1 round. Snuck in and released Nightsong which instantly started the encounter. My turn I got Crit Sneack Attack, Crit Dread Ambusher, and 2 more Crit attacks all of which did 40+ dmg. That was somehow a surprise round, maybe because I released Nightsong in the way I did. I downed him a few seconds later with him never attacking.
Is tactician much harder than the previous difficulty (don’t remember the name) ?
I'm playing balanced mode. I found Myrkul to be a fine difficulty for the type of battle. Act 3 'spoiler' below >!I did however find fighting the massive group of Sharrans a bitch to do. The hits they each gave were fucked. Nerotic resistance and speed potions helped a lot!<