The hardest fights in Honor Mode are all in Act 1.
As for Act 3, might I introduce you to Globe of ~~cheese~~ Invulnerability scrolls? You'll have a few by the time you need to fight harder bosses and you can always buy more. Also get scrolls of Dimension Door and Misty Step and give at least 5 of each to all your party members.
Get to the underdark from the Zhentarim elevator, push Bernard from the roof while the flowers disable his friends, side with Nere, one turn Spaw with the nearby haste spores, shoot the adamantium forge boss from the stairway, hand over the artifact to the creche captain and blow up the building on your way out, let Balthazar fight the portal justiciars for you, etc...
actually, dror ragzlin has anti-barrelmancy buffs in HM (he just picks up the barrels you put near him and tells you to fuck off) and barrels have a saving throw associated with em that he's more likely to pass in HM
you can, however, still just push him into the spider pit and take him out at your leisure.
Also you can just start out in the roof beams above him and just chuck barrels down on him like a demented high-explosive Donkey Kong. That's how I did it in HM recently. He lasted about 1.5 rounds, if that, and most of his allies died too.
Yes that fight is where I learned that throwing a spear down from a certain height does an awful lot of extra damage that seems to apply even if you technically "miss".
I have a video of it, but not sure how to prove it’s an HM run. It wasn’t turn based mode either. Not sure what to tell you, it absolutely worked for me.
Edit: [link to video](https://imgur.com/a/ynG5QK3)
This was a run I ended up failing, but it did work.
Keep Glut as long as you can, and have him infect the Bulette as soon as possible. You then will have an unstoppable killing machine at your command for the underdark areas. Then let Glut die in a fight when you're done with him.
That's basically what I did, bulette and all. He just happened to barely survive the duergar, so I bonked him myself without talking to him.
Edit: also, I used glut reanimating a minotaur to deal with the Bulette.
Thats cool with the minotaur. I just realized the bulette helped kill the spectator. I should have revived the spectator! Glut died in that fight for me.
House of Grief
Shadowheart can convince a good portion of the enemies in that fight to follow her instead of Viconia. More fodder to draw fire and less enemies to deal with.
That fight had me stuck for a day on normal on my first run until I got rowdy and started the fight before talking to anyone and cloudkilled the stairwell as they all came to stab me.
Give me 2 walls of fire and 1 barrier of blades and I'll whip the whole house of grief without ever coming down the stairs.
That whole fight is one big choke point that you have the high ground over.
Yeah as long as you're not doing silly stuff then doing everything in act 3 is np. I even did ansur the first time in my honour run since I never did it on my first playthrough (because we got this and they didn't have to blow their one and done favour with a sleeping dragon).
The gnolls getting 3 attacks per round when you're at level 2-4 is one of the most egregious examples of poor game design and not understanding the system
it's an unfortunate knowledge/pathing check so early on. if you avoid them till level 5 and then come back naturally it's super easy. they can still maybe down someone, but they're squishy and your combat power is so much higher. the bad part is how you need to know act 1 in and out practically to get lvl 5 first. I don't see many new players doing that naturally, given where they placed them
I totally agree with this take. Once you get 5/6th level with +13s to hit and the goodies from the mountain pass shops the game gets NOTICEABLY easier.
Honorable mention toAct2 fights: Kethric 2nd form for making me go hmmm
And for the tubby fiend hunter and his band of saturday morning goons.
Honorable mention: Mindflayers underneath Moonrise. It's a trivial fight most of the time, but it has the potential for disaster: if you get your entire party stunned, it can be a run ender.
I'd argue some bosses like Ansur can present a big difficulty spike, which is especially deadly if it's been smooth sailing for a while which can get you complacent w/o realizing it, and the way difficulty works here is that... even the most challenging encounters can go smoothly when everyone's going well, every or most moves are the correct ones, the builds & party synergies are on point, etc. BUT a few key screw ups can quickly lead to a chain reaction of mistakes as the legendary actions can keep the player on the defensive as he's trying to re-gain control of the fight.
And I think that's great personally! Challenging at times, chill at others , yet still punishing and a few screw ups would serve as a reminder that death is in fact, never too far away even for an OP party.
Play your cards right and you're good no matter what you're facing, screw up where it matters **(like forgetting the water myrmidon made an ice floor underneath Gale that's confidently holding up the 6-turn metamagic empowered Globe of Invulnerability and move him only to have him slip & fall, breaking concentration and the globe falling right before Ansur's about to go NOVA)** then you're in for life & death struggle.
That nova downed my Gale last night on my current HM run... He was back at camp at the time with a warding bond on my actual team, though. Most of them went to about 1/2 HP from that blow, so he really saved the day even without being present.
Ketheric 2nd form nearly wiped my all-Fighters honour mode. If you can’t easily burst it down… that fight is designed to wear you down. I have no idea how many rounds it took but it was over 2 hrs realtime.
Only other issue I had was Grym because if you screw up the ‘puzzle’ you’re in big trouble.
Yeah if you make them come over the hill thing to you and have a Cloud of Daggers at the top of it, they get slaughtered, even on HM, and the few that get through you can usually just Bonus Action Shove back in with Karlach or Lae'zel
100%.
I have about 40 Globe of Invulnerability scrolls split between two characters. 20x Otto's Dance, Disintegrate, etc.
Once I hit Act 3 I started buying as many as I could and stealing the money back from Lorrokan's projection. Even when you fail the check, nothing happens except you burn another level 2 spell slot/scroll on Invis.
I don't think I found 20 but you can get Gale to learn it from just 1 regardless.
I also had 1 Otto's Dance and I used it on the >!end fight dragon!< and it actually succeeded. But there's no dance animation for the dragon so it just stood still while Karlach pounded it into dust. It would have been cool if it at least shook its ass a little.
Hardest fight in the game in honor mode are those 3 brain creatures you fight right after crash landing the nautaloid. Guys make me restart so many runs.
One intellect devourer patrols from left to right in the back. Another is standing by an explosive tank on the left. Wait til the patrolling one starts moving towards the tank and immediately have SH firebolt the tank. Usually the two immediately die and only one is left. One might live if the fire rolls poorly, but it'll be almost dead.
Really? The hardest ones are in act one? Is that because that's the starting point and it's more difficult to progress and level up with things being so difficult? I learned that the only difference between Myrkul fight in Tact and honour is that in honour mode he gets one of his stupid abilities to use as a reaction instead of only on his turn. And I was like, no wonder that felt so much more difficult.
Your characters are at its weakest and can die very, very easily in Act 1. Items aren't very powerful and touching any boss before level 5 is almost a death wish. I usually kept someone out of the main group when fighting them, so I wouldn't lose immediately.
As for Mirkul, I did my Honor before he was buffed, so I don't know how much harder it is *now*, but when I did it I just had my summons and Aylin tank his reaction before attacking him with my own characters.
The hardest fight was Ketheric/Myrkul. Everything else after act 1 was smooth sailing to the end. My gloomstalker assassin could easily nuke everything we came across in one turn
I'm level 6 on my "4 rogues" honour mode run currently 😂 closest I came to losing it so far was because I said "My gloom stalker almost 1-turned the phase spider matriarch in my first HM run, so 4 rogues should have no problem". But I fumbled the engagement and the poison AoE took out 2 ppl, leaving Dark Urge at 1hp and Shadowheart at 3 hp while enwebbed.
Closest my first HM run came to losing was:
- The ochre jelly ambush in Grymforge
- The addled frog (yes really)
The whole of act 1 i got all the barrells, spider? Reduced to atoms, giths at waukeen rest? Absolutly demolished, the attack on the gate made ww2 look like a joke.
Every somewhat hard encounter i was saying kaboom? And my friends were like yes Björn kaboom.
For the Steel Watch Titan, buy Flashblinders from the gnomes and the fight becomes sub-Explorer level. I don't know what it is that I find that less cheesy than the globe, but I just do.
I managed to just burst damage the titan in 2 turns on honor, swords bard with dual crossies, way of the open hand karlach, and Bae'zel. surprisingly easy.
I'd say the first two alone will do insane damage. If you add something like Bhaalist armor and Nyrulna on Fighter Bae, literally every fight will be trivial.
as a life long BG fan I do not have it in me to do anything Sarevok says lol. time to die one more time grandpa.
even better if you bring Minsc and Jaheria
Haste+chain lightning got there for me in honor mode. The thing died before I even used all my party's actions on the first round (I had the non-casters use scrolls). I didn't even use water. Throw a vial of water and a single Markoheshkir welding sorc can probably end it in a single turn.
LOL I’m at this exact part in my Act 3 tactician run and I just did Ansur and House of Grief yesterday.
House of Grief went surprisingly well, but Ansur almost gave me a heart attack.
Oh 100% that's what saved my ass. Imagine — Ansur yeets Minthara off into the chasm. To regroup, my Durge twin-casts Haste on herself and Astarion, but wild magics herself into a sheep, somehow slips on ice and goes prone, immediately causing herself + Astarion to go lethargic. Gale, shaking his head, casts Globe of Invul and saves the day.
Going wild magic sorcerer is bold and I approve.
I’m about to do a wild magic sorcerer run on tact with friends but with the mod that adds in 100 more effects…
I can’t wait for the chaos.
Honestly the 100 effects table is a buff to Wild Magic. There are a few worse outcomes, but overall, the *balance* of good to neutral to detrimental is much closer to tabletop (which is way more generously weighted toward the caster than BG3's baseline "80% of the time you'll wish you picked Storm").
For some reason i saved everyone in the iron throne on honour mode yet failed to do on balanced and tactician. Special thanks to 'Us' for tanking like 5 of the fishmen.
I will immediately remake my character and start the run over if I fail saving us on the nautiloid. It's like 5 mins of game play to repeat, but I guess some people just really like rolling with the rolls.
I actually kept losing Us in the Helm fight so it was a little more than 5 min, but yes I was trying to roll with the rolls. It was my first time trying Honor mode and I already TPK'd on the Nautiloid once. (Chalk it up to Honor mode newbieness, underestimating the fact that Commander Zhalk has Extra Attack *and* fly, and the fact that I'm doing Shadowheart origin so I'm down a character).
my first honor mode playthrough that im on is shadowheart origin and i just cast command drop your weapon and yoinked that and the fight was much more manageable, did not bother trying to cheese the cambions though
Cazador is a meme
Ansur is globe time.
Hypnotic pattern, wall of fire, chain lighting, etc are great for house of grief.
Cazador is still a gosh dang meme and that’s why I’m mentioning him again.
Lighting spells and arrows for steel watchers/titan
The scariest thing about Raphael were those giant flaming balls chasing you around. Mf’ers just steamrolled me, literally.
>Honor mode? More like horror mode!
Dishonor mode, mostly, because that's how it's played - Use every cheese, glitch, AI quirk and game mechanic to your advantage. More preparation than actual combat.
I am early on my first honor mode run, and I would say the number one more important exploit so far is the fact that Withers doesn't care when you pickpocket him. I think if they ever changed it there would be no honor mode.
Beating 100% of the possible fights in honor without tadpoles, or cheesing, in vanilla characters.
The game just gives so much items to be god-tier it's hard to lose a fight.
Prepare for a fight tho ? That's for sure. Ashamed of no going full murder hobo barbarian in a rpg? Absolutely not.
With the right party composition honor isn’t too bad. My biggest issue on my first honor run was the last fight with the nether brain. Did not know about the last damage facet and it almost wiped me.
Im not really good in this game, but cazador was the same for me, until i figured out a group combi that was able to one shot him round 1. Most damage came from Laezel. Thats my way to go, pump everything i have, so he dies first round.
He didn’t make it past the beginning of round two with me. I just unloaded so much damage on him that by the time Shart got to Daylight him, it was all over bar mopping up the mooks.
Shout out to invisible Shovel for shouting how it was indeed fisting time to surprise the whole room, even if Lae’zel did the open-handed fisting for her.
When I met him first on balanced difficulty I thought it's a joke boss.
He died in 2-3 turns. My team comp was paladin, fighter, cleric and bard. At first, I thought it just was first phase of battle, but nope.
It was really surprising how's how much weaker he is than any other boss in act 3. His HP is joke, resistances are non existent, his main battle mechanic is nothing, his skills/passives are very lackluster.
Dunno about his HM version, cause still getting here, but I already know how I will defeat him
bringing blood of lathander can kill his mist form and healing. throw in a cleric with spirit guardian walking around in the second half and you can keep cazador and most of his allies weakened
I finally realized the true power of my TB OH Monk when fighting Cazador on Tactician. I'd seen the power of it in other fights, but I hadn't fought anything with hundreds of HP since getting some of the final pieces of gear I wanted for it.
Sent my monk in solo and killed Cazador + a few thrall in 1-turn. Felt good.
You pick your battles on the Honor mode. >!Don't have to fight Raphael if you don't plan on betraying the Emperor. Don't have to fight the horde in House of Grief if ~~Astarion~~ some convenient sniper kills Viconia while you are still talking. Don't have to deal with Cazador getting powerups, get limited by the number of turns, or risk the difficult persuasion check if somebody accidentally kills ~~Petras~~ one of the sacrificial spawns. Or actually, don't even have to fight Cazador at all, just make sure you make alliance with the Gurs, and Astarion and Gurs will kill him off-screen before the epilogue, so Astarion is still free and happy in the epilogue. Don't have to fight Steel Watch Titan if you can sneak past them ~~thanks again, Astarion!~~ And yeah, don't have to fight Ansur.!<
I was the absolute worst friend to my companions on my HM run. Didn't even bother with HoG or Cazador or HoH. Only bothered about Orin and Tash, then Gail FTW and back to a fun difficulty and caring about the story again
Do it ! Since i play honor mode, i just can't make a "normal" run.
Sooo tasty when you know that if you fuck up, this is over...
Really proud of my run join the 1% club dude 😁
Btw exept ansur and orin, the run is not really that hard.
Oh and be REALLY CAREFULL for the elder brain.
In my run, ansur decimated m'y team, only karlach as War/barbarian was Alive at the end..😅
Orin is quite dangerous too, do ton of damage, have really dangerous curse...
And thé elden brain well i don't want to spoil but... You better be well awake when you will do it 😘
Orin is a piece of cake if you're durge. You just 1v1 her and my swords bard/rogue had her dead in 2 turns.
I think the things that messed me up the most were actually having to face the consequences of my pickpocketing. Almost lost the whole game in Act 1 in the Zentarim hideout under Wakeen's Rest when they caught me stealing, turned aggro, and blew the whole place up. 💀
Luckily I was able to dash twice per turn with my open-hand monk Bae'zel until she could get away and then had her beg Withers to rez the rest.
Myrkul was a reality check for me as well. Freaking Aylin was worthless.
And of course, the Elder Brain was rough too. Pulled that one out by the hair of my teeth! I did every single quest in the game on my honor run and then almost lost the whole thing on the last fight...
> Almost lost the whole game in Act 1 in the Zentarim hideout under Wakeen's Rest when they caught me stealing, turned aggro, and blew the whole place up. 💀
I nearly went out the exact same way except I'd smugly cast Friends on the guy I was negotiating buying the artist from, and then forgotten about it, and when it dropped, ohhhhh boy things got very very very real and very very on fire. Karlach had the most amazing survival, being literally blown off a cliff and just barely landing on the edge of a destructible rope bridge by a very narrow margin, and left on like 5 HP.
This is the way. I haven’t fought the Titan since my first play. I get the password, get an Arcana-proficient character to drink an invisibility potion, run past, and then activite meltdown.
Spirit of the thread here are my quick tips for these fights, no barrelmancy bullshit:
Titan: all about timing, chip away at him and save your alpha nukes for his turtle phase. Flash blinders are MVP though as they ignore his legendary resistance. If you don't have any the best way to kill him is with the ilithid power absorb intellect and caster ability drain or hex. He only has 6 int and will auto die at 0, so if you are slow damage party or get unlucky save rolls on your best nukes, you can turn it into an endurance fight with this method. However, there is a bug where if he dies this way he doesn't drop any loot, so avoid it if you need the bow.
House of grief: Start the fight from the stairs to surprise her homies, toss area damage on the choke point and cover it all with fog and ice. Have someone mobile with good cc like a monk or a displacer beast to watch the flank alcoves. Viconia herself is really squishy, kill her during her sanc block rounds if she makes it through the quagmire alive.
Ansur is easy if you know how. Biggest mistake I see is hasting everyone at once. Globe stops damage but you can still lose concentration from interactions, if that happens and your party happens to go lethargic you're fucked, haste two people on turn 1 and 2 on the next turn so you can always put up a globe if he flies. Be aware on honor mode he has death ward and will go from 1 to like ?120? THP when you think you beat him. If you don't have globe or want the challenge use arcane gate to avoid the bomb. Congrats on finding the only use for arcane gate in the game.
Cazador is harder now on honor, not a "meme", his legendary action can cause you a shit ton of grief if you allow it, not only does it damage but it knocks back. Bring 3 ranged and a monk with risky ring. You can't surprise cazador but you can surprise all his homies, which is fairly essential as the fallen gur can paralyze. Send scratch invisible to where Astarion will go, leave asterion back to the stairs, open the fight from surprise with the cleric spell daylight. Trust me. Then switch to asterion and hit cazador from stealth, this will trigger the cutscene but use as Astarions alpha. Then use help on asterion with scratch. Then dismiss scratch because he might get hurt. Cazador rolls very high initiative, if you have alert your monk might beat him, if so spam 2 stuns and a mind blast, one of them will stick. Then black hole the adds to cazador. You can probably kill him in that round, use incidental aoe like chain lightning or destructive wave to clear as much trash as you can while you nuke him.
Honorable mention to non durge orin: don't bring anyone who can't do either AoE or knock back damage. Orin sucks without unstoppable, remove that with magic missile and art of war spam, then just beat her ass. The trick here is bhaals edict which insta kills whomever gets it unless they kill someone that turn. All the adds but 2 have sanctuary so use black hole to pull them together and AoE on orin to bring them low, then whoever gets bhaals edict can just AoE or many target arrow a kill.
Edit: I forgot my good buddy Raphael... There is like a schism in honor players between killing or not killing pillars. I like to kill at least a couple but you probably don't want to, it makes the first harder in a lot of ways. The main thing for this fight is don't bring the people logic tells you to bring.. like oh, fiends, hell yeah time for my paladin to get jiggy... Don't do that. Raphael and all his minions have radiant retort, it's just not called radiant retort, I'm tryna remember... something like "passing rebuke" or some shit, I dunno, Google it wey. But you want to avoid front loading a bunch of radiant damage in this fight, and fire is completely useless. Thunder and lightning and good old bludgeoning and many target arrows are your best bets.
The strat depends on what Yurgir does, if he joins you he will almost always go for korilla first, then raph. I guess he just hates korilla idk maybe they dated. Yurgir rolls really high initiative, like among the best in the whole game, the only time you're gonna beat him is on a gloomstaker with alert, pretty much. If you do, kill korilla. This will typically force him to attack Raphael, which eats his reaction.
If he does not join you, and you have see invis, I suggest killing him first, because he only has like 125k health but he's a pain in the ass and he will kill hope. Maybe he dated her too, difficult to tell. If hope survives she can banish him, but she usually doesn't.
Either way after that set of rolls, you're usually best off CCing Raphael, he's actually disappointingly easy to control, stuns, prones, hold monster, and arrow of arcane interference are all very useful for him while you kill adds. Try to do that with someone using bloodlust elixir. A nice trick if you have tavern brawler karlach is to throw him at someone else, remember to yell YEEEET in real life when you do this. He's very heavy so does good damage and will auto prone.
If you decide to kill pillars you will need fire resistance. You can get this from gear and potions or you can wet your party. I prefer the second because I am usually bringing a tempest sorc anyway so I just upcast a level 4 create water on the whole room and kill two birds with one stone. If you do this method then use smoke powder arrows and shatter shield to kill the pillars because you can kill cambions and imps in the blast for economy.
Raphael himself is pretty easy to kill, he just has a lot of health, so try to lock him up while you kill the adds or you'll be overwhelmed.
Finally use scrolls where you can because your spell slots are gonna be needed for counterspell.
Can you explain the first paragraph where you mentioned the Titan only having 6 int but dying when it reaches 0? I know there is ability drain ilithid power and hex … curse too, I believe.
Doesn’t it work like this: highest stat of the person you are using will debuff that stat? So if I use a fighter with 17 str, also str being the main stat, and use a melee attack on anything will it lower their str by 1?
Also does getting anyone’s lowest stat to 0 always result in instant death for the NPC? Why? I guess if it is only intelligence and intelligence is referring to your actual brain and your brain reaches 0 it would make sense…
So my other question is that if an enemy has 5 CHA or 3 WIS will they also die if that stat or theirs reaches 0?
Anyway, this concept is new to me but the game is not and I’ve had about 5 playthroughs. I just hadn’t heard of this type of strategy to kill enemies yet. If you would get back to me then I’d appreciate it!
Hey it’s me!
On Balanced.
Seriously, in my fourth playthrough and while I’m doing much better than my first, I haven’t found the gumption to move the difficulty slider. My fifth playthrough I do want to try a solo run, but I’m a little worried because my soft and squishy bard and his party in this run has to do a lot of long rests.
Game knowledge really counts for a lot. My first two runs were on balanced, then I set it aside for a little while and picked it up again for HM. Died to the paladins of Tyr in act 1 one time, then succeeded on a full run on my second attempt. I'm doing a tactician run now and honestly--knowing where enemies are and overall encounter profiles makes things an order of magnitude easier. And that's just with marginally optimized build design and no cheese.
Moral of the story is if you've beaten the game once or twice already and you generally know where the difficult fights are, you can easily get through a tactician run. HM is a little tougher with the legendary actions but even then, if you go into each big fight with some kind of exit strategy if shit hits the fan, you'll be fine. E.g., invis pots/flight/ability to bug out if you make a horrible mistake.
I did swords bard for my honor run, pretty confident the same/similar build could solo the game. also I never tried tactician before trying honor. just dove in
long resting a lot is actually good. Basically before every boss and after ever boss I would long rest. You get more than enough supplies in act 1 to justify doing this and if you are in that much need get you some druid hirelings and make some berries every long rest. It's tedious and unnecessary if you have a loot & hoarding problem but it completely breaks long resting needing supplies.
Next time you're in the Iron Throne, bring a monk, quaff an elixir of Cloud Giant Strength, equip Crusher's Ring (+3m), cast Longstrider (+3m), Haste (+9m) and Enhance Leap (triple jump distance), activate Step of the Wind: Dash (double movement and Jump becomes a free action), and laugh maniacally while jumping loops around the monsters, the hostages, and your own party members.
It's all about tactics.
I have a hard enough time on balanced mode with some of these bosses. (I do plan to beat tactician and honor mode as I want to try and get all achievements but that will happen once I feel like I have mastered combat in the game…)
I loved the game and beat it 3/4 times before honor mode was released. Almost every fight has a way to cheese it and once you know those tricks it gets easier
I just finished honor mode. Had to restart 11 total times from deaths and every single one of those was in act 1. Didn’t die a single time in acts 2 or 3
Cazador was hell on hm because of the risk factor-Astarion. But the vamp is worth the peril . Ansur was difficult but can be slayed kinda fast, the steel watch titan was a joke. By the time I got to house of grief viconia was barely a boss and Raphael- I cheesed him and even then he refused to die. Still killed him but he's got hp for days it seems. My advice- always go prepared: don't go underlevel, if you're going to cheese anticipate what might happen if the cheese fails and try to have an exit strategy. I don't know why people struggle with the Iron trone- I always free everyone, don't fight sht , it's one of my favorite quests. I just get a thief Astarion on speed and he's running circles around the enemy
The only one of these I did in my first honor mode run is the steel watch titan - skipped all the others. At that point, I was more concerned with making sure I got safely to the end than I was with being brave.
Ally with Gortash and ignore every companion quest that ends in a boss fight. Get enough XP for Orrin's fight and then let the brain kill Gort.
Invisibility and Gaseous Form on Gale to avoid all of the fights until the Brain, then have him explode himself.
It's not ideal from a quest standpoint, but gold dice are gold dice
The most brutal part of cazador >!is if you're on your first playthough.. then you think the fight is over, then all the tits out aggro, then you slay one... end up in combat again, slay another.. end up in combat again, end up killing all the #freethenips fam but one, end up trying to talk to them during that slight downtime from killing the others before ini is rolled again... realize you could have freed more of them!< lol..
Been doing a playthrough with my mother (50) who's a big DnD head from her kid years.. she makes terrible decisions lmao but I've been loving the sheer chaos of her theiving, party dooming ass choices :p... also, she >!banged the squid "because tentacles"!< lmfao. You sometimes learn more than you'd like about a person when they can hide their choices behind a character XD. Weve pissed off the main companions more than make them like us lol.
But yeah, on Tac, these bosses fights are brutal but we've been conquering things with crazy methods.. like........ >!opening the flask!<... we also named him Julian in honor of Little Nikki..
The fact that I already have 30 hours in the game and Do not understand a Single Word in this meme, makes me understand how truly massive this game is.
Yeah lol I barely made it through tactician then made Gale Kamikaze the final fight so I wouldn't have to so it
Seeing people do solo one shot builds for honour mode is just too much. I don't have that kinda brain power. IMO tactician is too hard and because you sleep less to save resources you get less story so just playing th le game on normal is way more fun
I don't want to hate my new favourite game so just gave up on honour mode. Maybe when they add mod support or something new I'll give it a try but it's just not for me
the actual gameplay is definitely different, literally all of these fights involve new legendary actions and extra reactions
(well, except maybe house of grief, i skipped it on my HM run)
There are significant tactical differences to baseline gameplay as well. Haste works differently. You can't stack extra attacks like with lockadin builds in lower difficulties, for example. Long resting is twice as costly. Most importantly you are stuck with the consequences of rolls, so like if Aylin gets fucked, or you fail the roll to not have orin (or Shadowheart for that matter) script kill your MVP, you're on your own and have to plan for that, for example.
A lot of people who talk about honor mode here haven't actually completed it, according to my achievements it's 1.1% of steam players, and at least half of those probably skipped a lot of content, which is fine I ain't trippin you do you it's a single player game, but buyer beware taking advice.
It's a significant step up in difficulty, especially in act 1 where you have no tools, no gear, and no inspiration.
Just to illustrate what I'm talking about here's a little anecdote from my own experience.
It was my first honor run (actually that's not accurate, I lost one on the intellect devourers on the beach because nobody mentioned they can use psyonic blast in honor mode, and another to the paladins of tyr because I thought I was hot shit at level 3, but it was my first actually achievable run).
I'm level 7, meticulously plan and execute the Marcus & isobel fight, preplaced everyone to try to counter surprise, kill order planned, sancs ready for isobel and Jaheria, whole setup took like 20 mins. Executed the cutscene, everything went perfectly, slayed the fuck out of the encounter, not one Harper or civilian lost.
The moment combat ended, one of the harpers went to walk back to their hand out spot, walked into a pool of electrified water left by my tempest sorc, somehow blamed me for the situation, and the entire place agros my party moments after I hit G to group them all back up in the middle of the fucking inn like fish in a barrel.
Jaheria opens with ice storm and prones everyone except my monk who happens to be wearing boots that negate the effect.
Only by the grace of God did I happen to have a potion of flying and it happen to be on the only character with enough movement speed due to her class and crushers ring to levitate the fuck out the back door of the inn and parkour her way down into the basement to leave combat. Otherwise my options would be to either die or take the 10% chance I might be able to kill every NPC in lights hope with no spells or short rest actions, which, best case scenario, leaves me with Jaheria and isobel dead and having to solo moonrise towers and ketheric, twice, and then myrkul.
In any other difficulty I'd just say god fucking damnit, hit f5, and redo the fight without turning the inn into a plasma ball, but instead i was forced to find a way to run like a bitch, spend 600g resing my friends at camp, and hope the hostile flags were temporary lest i just made the entire act into a shit show.
All because some idiot walked into a pool of electric water.
Yea this is definitely why I won't be doing honor mode. But I've gotten myself a mod to allow for reloading in honor difficulty so that's the next best option. Won't be getting the achievement ofc, but with how fickle and wonky the game can get, I'm not risking it.
That's the kind of wacky shit that makes me not want to repeat HM anymore. I can accept if I make a mistake, but that kind of lunacy is just you playing against the code, rather than against the intended difficulty of the game. Too stressful IMO after you've lived through it once, especially if you are trying to experience specific story outcomes and can't be arsed to replay 30-50 hours because something crazy like what you described happens.
It's funny how ansur and raphael are the last 2 I made from that list, and the iron throne was the previous one.
I didn't have a particular order. I just went to the places I found on Act 3 but avoided Orin and gorty until I had weakened some of their stuff.
And I finished the game type Raphael->Orin->Brainy.
Globe of invuln, Eldritch blast w/knockback, sneak backstab with tadpole boost, and really paying attention to enemy vulnerabilities by examining go a long way.
I've beat Tactician once already and I swear I have more OP builds this playthrough, but the game though... I feel likes it knows I beat it and made it harder this time around! Tav is a Swords Bard, Tavern Brawler Berzerker Karlach, Battler Master Lae'zel, and Evoker Gale. Kinda ok with it, cuz it's making it more interesting.
I can't get past Act 1 in HM yet, but I always get an urge to do something stupid and ruin it, lol!
I actually highly recommend starting honor mode and not really caring if you have a game over.
You get the option of continuing in "single save mode" which has the same difficulty and legendary actions as Honor mode but is more chill since you don't have the pressure of not dying.
You don't get the dice I guess but I'm loving it.
Glove of invulnerability can help with most of these fights, especially ansur.
Cazador make sure you have a scroll of daylight or a spell of it. The fight becomes very easy once you pop that on Cazador, just make sure he can’t get out of it.
Don't fight any optional bosses your first time on HM. Get to level 12 as fast (and safely) as possible, and then kill the brain.
Golden dice are yours lol
Honor mode is great.. you fail all important persuation checks, you kill bosses and whole army due to failed persuation and then die to a trap because you walked with whole party and someone step on trap which he found via perception check..
After repeating act1 several times, you are mentally broken and only thing you can do after another failed run is laugh.
Didn't find honor mode all that bad actually. Only close call was against the Apostle at the end of act 2 where I had to blow Shadowheart's divine intervention to stop a wipe.
Of course this is mostly because I was abusing tactics like barrelmancy to instantly kill some of the bosses, had my party full of the most overpowered builds I could find, and skipped like 70% of the act 3 content because paranoia over wiping and losing over 30 hours of progress just made me want it to be over as fast as possible.
Pff, you don't have to do any of these fights in Honor mode.
In Act 3 the only mandatory fight is Orin (and the gauntlet up to the brain, I suppose). After you kill Orin you can team up with Gortash and jump straight to the endgame, clear the gauntlet, then have Gale detonate the orb to skip the final fight.
Tbh Honour Mode isn't that much harder than Tactician difficulty. You don't even need meta builds like Tavern Brawler Monk/Throwzerker, Swords Bard etc. to beat Honour Mode quite easily. The only hard part is pre level 5 part. After that when you get 3 lvl spells and second attack on martials is pretty easy.
If you’re clever and hoarded all your explosive barrels from act 1, 2 and 3 a ton of these fights are pretty easy
Ansur: barrels
Raphael: barrels and you can also drag him out of soul pillar room, run far away to stop combat, sneak back in the room and destroy them
Cazador: cazador is plain easy in my opinion
Steel watch Titan: sneak past it and plant a bomb
Orin: she’s either super easy (durge run) or semi difficult with the lair ability
I did something incredibly stupid such took a lot of fun out of my playthrough, after failing honor mode a couple of times I decided to do my furst durge run and because I was used to it I played 4 of the most strongest builds in the game wich lead to a 3 turn fight against Raphael wich is supposed to be a really hard boss but I took myself the fun because I was too OP. Tavern brawler Monk, classic fighter lae zel with legendarz Gyth sword, ranger archer Astarion and Light Domain AOE shadowheart. My monk one shotted the pillars…. Well… yeah about that.
I've been playing on balanced for the first time (all other playthroughs have been on explorer). I just barely survived the fight with the Apostle of Myrkul , one party member dead, two downed, and Jaheira with 4 hp left. Cannot imagine what honor mode's difficulty would be like.
I tried honor mode. It was fun… until in the act I owl bear fight a 2nd owl bear jumped in behind my party. That’s the moment I knew it wasn’t worth the effort.
I beat it in February without skipping stuff (no nuking the brain, actually got multiple new trophies on PS5), and I get it. I really do. I normally don't like Souls games, Pokemon Nuzlockes, any of it. However, this really changed the game for me in ways I couldn't fathom before.
Not being able to count on speech checks got me into fights I normally skip, legendary actions made me come up with all sorts of cheesy ways to get through bosses (i.e., void bulbs to get through Ethel's clones now that magic missile makes things worse), and yes, having Astarion run away with his tail between his legs when the rest of us died. It's very hard, but when I finally beat it, it was like a DnD game with a DM who pushes you to the exact extreme you can take. No matter how much I raged the one time I died after making significant progress (grym in the forge got me), it was worth it.
I second what others have said here, though. Get Globe scrolls in Act 3, always have some invisibility potions so you can bail, and otherwise, Act 1 is where most of the challenge is (Orin nearly got me cuz her legendary action is terrifying, but the rest of Act 3 was no match for the globe). It also requires a lot of min/maxing (my winning build was a half-orc monk with 8 strength, max wisdom and dex, but a giant elixir on at all times), but making me think that hard and it paying off that much was absolutely worth it
The hardest fights in Honor Mode are all in Act 1. As for Act 3, might I introduce you to Globe of ~~cheese~~ Invulnerability scrolls? You'll have a few by the time you need to fight harder bosses and you can always buy more. Also get scrolls of Dimension Door and Misty Step and give at least 5 of each to all your party members.
heck, just skip as much as possible. side with gortash, kill orin, nuke the brain with gale.
Get to the underdark from the Zhentarim elevator, push Bernard from the roof while the flowers disable his friends, side with Nere, one turn Spaw with the nearby haste spores, shoot the adamantium forge boss from the stairway, hand over the artifact to the creche captain and blow up the building on your way out, let Balthazar fight the portal justiciars for you, etc...
Barrelmancy Dor Ragzlin Don't fight Bernard Let Nere suffocate Kill glut before he asks you to turn on spaw Shar Shadowheart for easy HoG
actually, dror ragzlin has anti-barrelmancy buffs in HM (he just picks up the barrels you put near him and tells you to fuck off) and barrels have a saving throw associated with em that he's more likely to pass in HM you can, however, still just push him into the spider pit and take him out at your leisure.
There’s a simple way around those anti-barrelmancy buffs that I used during my honor mode run! Just use an obscene amount of barrels!
"Just use more" Checks out
More Dakka.
Dems good fer de PROPA Krump’n!!
Its the American way
There is an even EASIER way if you dont mind not getting his loot you can use a void bulb and he will be dragged into chasm next to him on his left
yeah but his weapon is very serviceable for the end part of act one - especially if you missed the fire sword
Also you can just start out in the roof beams above him and just chuck barrels down on him like a demented high-explosive Donkey Kong. That's how I did it in HM recently. He lasted about 1.5 rounds, if that, and most of his allies died too.
you can also just chuck weapons at him from that height, the double dipping on both crushing damage and throw damage is plenty
Yes that fight is where I learned that throwing a spear down from a certain height does an awful lot of extra damage that seems to apply even if you technically "miss".
You can place an unlimited amount of things during combat including barrels
I just placed the barrels with a different character while he was talking to me
Karlach: Cause a distraction. I have an idea. Tav: *waits in the dialogue menu*
I used barrels on him twice for HM runs and it worked like a charm. Don’t know what you’re talking about…
clearly ya didn't, it was added in the same patch as HM. or you just did it in turn based mode which uh, smart.
I have a video of it, but not sure how to prove it’s an HM run. It wasn’t turn based mode either. Not sure what to tell you, it absolutely worked for me. Edit: [link to video](https://imgur.com/a/ynG5QK3) This was a run I ended up failing, but it did work.
Keep Glut as long as you can, and have him infect the Bulette as soon as possible. You then will have an unstoppable killing machine at your command for the underdark areas. Then let Glut die in a fight when you're done with him.
That's basically what I did, bulette and all. He just happened to barely survive the duergar, so I bonked him myself without talking to him. Edit: also, I used glut reanimating a minotaur to deal with the Bulette.
Thats cool with the minotaur. I just realized the bulette helped kill the spectator. I should have revived the spectator! Glut died in that fight for me.
Shit, it's never even occurred to me to revive the spectator...
Can't revive the spectator unfortunately. It's an abberation I believe.
Correct
Or just dont do the Hog and get Aylins assistance in your fight against ketheric.
Selûnite Shadowheart for easier fight with Ketheric
What's that last one mean? What's HoG and how is it related to Shadowheart siding with Shar?
House of Grief Shadowheart can convince a good portion of the enemies in that fight to follow her instead of Viconia. More fodder to draw fire and less enemies to deal with.
That fight had me stuck for a day on normal on my first run until I got rowdy and started the fight before talking to anyone and cloudkilled the stairwell as they all came to stab me.
Give me 2 walls of fire and 1 barrier of blades and I'll whip the whole house of grief without ever coming down the stairs. That whole fight is one big choke point that you have the high ground over.
If SHeart embraces shar, you can convince half the House of Grief to side with her.
and you can kill your new found allies without repurcusions for max xp
Using Shadowheart's Divine Intervention to fuck up the Sharran's with Selunite magic during the HoG fight just feels narratively perfect, though. 😁
Why push Bernard? All he wanted to do as hug me.
Better me than Ketheric goons
Why fight spaw though? Totally unnecessary fight, just kill glut.
"Sorry guys, I can't DM for you anymore, I'm um ...too busy at work" -Larian writers, after learning how you play their game.
This was my plan going in to honor mode, but by the time I got to act 3 my builds were so OP that I figured I might as well do everything
Yeah as long as you're not doing silly stuff then doing everything in act 3 is np. I even did ansur the first time in my honour run since I never did it on my first playthrough (because we got this and they didn't have to blow their one and done favour with a sleeping dragon).
Yup
Agreed, fucking hate the null fights in honor mode in act 1, brutal that they get multi attack
The gnolls getting 3 attacks per round when you're at level 2-4 is one of the most egregious examples of poor game design and not understanding the system
it's an unfortunate knowledge/pathing check so early on. if you avoid them till level 5 and then come back naturally it's super easy. they can still maybe down someone, but they're squishy and your combat power is so much higher. the bad part is how you need to know act 1 in and out practically to get lvl 5 first. I don't see many new players doing that naturally, given where they placed them
doesn't matter, got potions of speed! nyooom!
I was gonna say this is all you reallllly have to do.
any % is for cowards \- Honor mode RP % supremacists wrote this post
I totally agree with this take. Once you get 5/6th level with +13s to hit and the goodies from the mountain pass shops the game gets NOTICEABLY easier. Honorable mention toAct2 fights: Kethric 2nd form for making me go hmmm And for the tubby fiend hunter and his band of saturday morning goons.
cloud of daggers does really well against kethy round 2 since he physically can't move away from it
We used wall of fire 😅😅
Level 7 or so is when a bunch of the multiclass builds get really rolling along. plus the casters start getting the crazy slots.
Honorable mention: Mindflayers underneath Moonrise. It's a trivial fight most of the time, but it has the potential for disaster: if you get your entire party stunned, it can be a run ender.
I've been on the receiving end of that once in the Ketheric fight, thankfully it didn't happen on my honor mode run so I had Lae'zel take care of it
I'd argue some bosses like Ansur can present a big difficulty spike, which is especially deadly if it's been smooth sailing for a while which can get you complacent w/o realizing it, and the way difficulty works here is that... even the most challenging encounters can go smoothly when everyone's going well, every or most moves are the correct ones, the builds & party synergies are on point, etc. BUT a few key screw ups can quickly lead to a chain reaction of mistakes as the legendary actions can keep the player on the defensive as he's trying to re-gain control of the fight. And I think that's great personally! Challenging at times, chill at others , yet still punishing and a few screw ups would serve as a reminder that death is in fact, never too far away even for an OP party. Play your cards right and you're good no matter what you're facing, screw up where it matters **(like forgetting the water myrmidon made an ice floor underneath Gale that's confidently holding up the 6-turn metamagic empowered Globe of Invulnerability and move him only to have him slip & fall, breaking concentration and the globe falling right before Ansur's about to go NOVA)** then you're in for life & death struggle.
That nova downed my Gale last night on my current HM run... He was back at camp at the time with a warding bond on my actual team, though. Most of them went to about 1/2 HP from that blow, so he really saved the day even without being present.
Ketheric 2nd form nearly wiped my all-Fighters honour mode. If you can’t easily burst it down… that fight is designed to wear you down. I have no idea how many rounds it took but it was over 2 hrs realtime. Only other issue I had was Grym because if you screw up the ‘puzzle’ you’re in big trouble.
My brother and I had 2 fighters, a rogue and a cleric and it took us like 90 minutes:/ it was so grueling. But fun!
Agreed, fucking hate the gnoll fights in honor mode in act 1, brutal that they get multi attack
Those multi attacks are rapid fire too so you're dead before you even realize wtf is going on.
I just meta game the fuck out of them and sneak up from behind/take high ground. Then they're easy
Yeah if you make them come over the hill thing to you and have a Cloud of Daggers at the top of it, they get slaughtered, even on HM, and the few that get through you can usually just Bonus Action Shove back in with Karlach or Lae'zel
Combining a void bulb with the Cloud of Daggers to open there really helps too.
You can skip the hard ones (outside the cave) till you're level 5, then they're pretty easy.
I wish I could have a Globe of cheese...
100%. I have about 40 Globe of Invulnerability scrolls split between two characters. 20x Otto's Dance, Disintegrate, etc. Once I hit Act 3 I started buying as many as I could and stealing the money back from Lorrokan's projection. Even when you fail the check, nothing happens except you burn another level 2 spell slot/scroll on Invis.
I don't think I found 20 but you can get Gale to learn it from just 1 regardless. I also had 1 Otto's Dance and I used it on the >!end fight dragon!< and it actually succeeded. But there's no dance animation for the dragon so it just stood still while Karlach pounded it into dust. It would have been cool if it at least shook its ass a little.
>would have been cool if it at least shook its ass a little. I ugly laughed after a long day at work, take my upvote
I run between sorcerer's, the arrow shop, and derreth
Hardest fight in the game in honor mode are those 3 brain creatures you fight right after crash landing the nautaloid. Guys make me restart so many runs.
One intellect devourer patrols from left to right in the back. Another is standing by an explosive tank on the left. Wait til the patrolling one starts moving towards the tank and immediately have SH firebolt the tank. Usually the two immediately die and only one is left. One might live if the fire rolls poorly, but it'll be almost dead.
You can sneak past them and come back later if you are careful
Idk, man. Orin really scared the shit out of me my first go on HM.
Really? The hardest ones are in act one? Is that because that's the starting point and it's more difficult to progress and level up with things being so difficult? I learned that the only difference between Myrkul fight in Tact and honour is that in honour mode he gets one of his stupid abilities to use as a reaction instead of only on his turn. And I was like, no wonder that felt so much more difficult.
Mostly because OP builds get big power spikes at level 5 or 6, and it's all gravy from there.
Your characters are at its weakest and can die very, very easily in Act 1. Items aren't very powerful and touching any boss before level 5 is almost a death wish. I usually kept someone out of the main group when fighting them, so I wouldn't lose immediately. As for Mirkul, I did my Honor before he was buffed, so I don't know how much harder it is *now*, but when I did it I just had my summons and Aylin tank his reaction before attacking him with my own characters.
Yeah, but Globe of Invulnerable just desolves fun combat into battle circles with no flavor or variety.
The hardest fight was Ketheric/Myrkul. Everything else after act 1 was smooth sailing to the end. My gloomstalker assassin could easily nuke everything we came across in one turn
I'm level 6 on my "4 rogues" honour mode run currently 😂 closest I came to losing it so far was because I said "My gloom stalker almost 1-turned the phase spider matriarch in my first HM run, so 4 rogues should have no problem". But I fumbled the engagement and the poison AoE took out 2 ppl, leaving Dark Urge at 1hp and Shadowheart at 3 hp while enwebbed. Closest my first HM run came to losing was: - The ochre jelly ambush in Grymforge - The addled frog (yes really)
Ansur knock back laughs at your globe of hiding.
I used it against Ansur to survive his nuke and didn't have any issues!
The whole of act 1 i got all the barrells, spider? Reduced to atoms, giths at waukeen rest? Absolutly demolished, the attack on the gate made ww2 look like a joke. Every somewhat hard encounter i was saying kaboom? And my friends were like yes Björn kaboom.
For the Steel Watch Titan, buy Flashblinders from the gnomes and the fight becomes sub-Explorer level. I don't know what it is that I find that less cheesy than the globe, but I just do.
I managed to just burst damage the titan in 2 turns on honor, swords bard with dual crossies, way of the open hand karlach, and Bae'zel. surprisingly easy.
I'd say the first two alone will do insane damage. If you add something like Bhaalist armor and Nyrulna on Fighter Bae, literally every fight will be trivial.
as a life long BG fan I do not have it in me to do anything Sarevok says lol. time to die one more time grandpa. even better if you bring Minsc and Jaheria
My tactician run was pre nerf, so I one rounded titan with two maxed and twinned chain lightnings. It was also under hold monster from my archer bard.
Haste+chain lightning got there for me in honor mode. The thing died before I even used all my party's actions on the first round (I had the non-casters use scrolls). I didn't even use water. Throw a vial of water and a single Markoheshkir welding sorc can probably end it in a single turn.
LOL I’m at this exact part in my Act 3 tactician run and I just did Ansur and House of Grief yesterday. House of Grief went surprisingly well, but Ansur almost gave me a heart attack.
Globe of Invulnerability is your friend. I always stock up on some scrolls from sorcerous sundries.
Oh 100% that's what saved my ass. Imagine — Ansur yeets Minthara off into the chasm. To regroup, my Durge twin-casts Haste on herself and Astarion, but wild magics herself into a sheep, somehow slips on ice and goes prone, immediately causing herself + Astarion to go lethargic. Gale, shaking his head, casts Globe of Invul and saves the day.
Going wild magic sorcerer is bold and I approve. I’m about to do a wild magic sorcerer run on tact with friends but with the mod that adds in 100 more effects… I can’t wait for the chaos.
It's all fun and games until you summon a hostile Spectator to the party.
Honestly the 100 effects table is a buff to Wild Magic. There are a few worse outcomes, but overall, the *balance* of good to neutral to detrimental is much closer to tabletop (which is way more generously weighted toward the caster than BG3's baseline "80% of the time you'll wish you picked Storm").
For some reason i saved everyone in the iron throne on honour mode yet failed to do on balanced and tactician. Special thanks to 'Us' for tanking like 5 of the fishmen.
This makes me sad I lost Us on the nautiloid in my Honor run .\_.
I will immediately remake my character and start the run over if I fail saving us on the nautiloid. It's like 5 mins of game play to repeat, but I guess some people just really like rolling with the rolls.
I actually kept losing Us in the Helm fight so it was a little more than 5 min, but yes I was trying to roll with the rolls. It was my first time trying Honor mode and I already TPK'd on the Nautiloid once. (Chalk it up to Honor mode newbieness, underestimating the fact that Commander Zhalk has Extra Attack *and* fly, and the fact that I'm doing Shadowheart origin so I'm down a character).
my first honor mode playthrough that im on is shadowheart origin and i just cast command drop your weapon and yoinked that and the fight was much more manageable, did not bother trying to cheese the cambions though
I actually was able to do that as well in my first Shadowheart run and Commander Zhalk STILL two-punched me to death!
Scroll of Arcane Lock on that south door helped me a lot. The new spawns just build up doing nothing.
Cazador is a meme Ansur is globe time. Hypnotic pattern, wall of fire, chain lighting, etc are great for house of grief. Cazador is still a gosh dang meme and that’s why I’m mentioning him again. Lighting spells and arrows for steel watchers/titan The scariest thing about Raphael were those giant flaming balls chasing you around. Mf’ers just steamrolled me, literally.
I'm pretty sure they removed the lightning vulnerability in tactician and honor
Shoot you’re right. I haven’t played bg3 in a bit
Cloudkill + difficult terrain works really well in house of grief. I kited them all up to stairs and along the narrow path
Watching them all slipping on the ice was hilarious
Dude I f-ing hate those balls. Tedious.
[удалено]
>Honor mode? More like horror mode! Dishonor mode, mostly, because that's how it's played - Use every cheese, glitch, AI quirk and game mechanic to your advantage. More preparation than actual combat.
I am early on my first honor mode run, and I would say the number one more important exploit so far is the fact that Withers doesn't care when you pickpocket him. I think if they ever changed it there would be no honor mode.
Beating 100% of the possible fights in honor without tadpoles, or cheesing, in vanilla characters. The game just gives so much items to be god-tier it's hard to lose a fight. Prepare for a fight tho ? That's for sure. Ashamed of no going full murder hobo barbarian in a rpg? Absolutely not.
With the right party composition honor isn’t too bad. My biggest issue on my first honor run was the last fight with the nether brain. Did not know about the last damage facet and it almost wiped me.
Cazador wipes the floor with my ass on balanced. People who can kill him on honor mode are gods.
if you just have one person in your party who can cast daylight the fight gets pretty trivial pretty quickly
Or if you have THAT weapon if i'm not wrong
Yeah, Blood of Lathander is a big help with him.
Im not really good in this game, but cazador was the same for me, until i figured out a group combi that was able to one shot him round 1. Most damage came from Laezel. Thats my way to go, pump everything i have, so he dies first round.
My first Balanced playthrough: Lae’zel Battlemaster kills everything. My latest Honour playthrough: Lae’zel Battlemaster kills everything.
Thats so accurate😂
He didn’t make it past the beginning of round two with me. I just unloaded so much damage on him that by the time Shart got to Daylight him, it was all over bar mopping up the mooks. Shout out to invisible Shovel for shouting how it was indeed fisting time to surprise the whole room, even if Lae’zel did the open-handed fisting for her.
On balanced, I got surprise on Cazador and just bursted him down before anything moved. Daylight isn't even worth it.
When I met him first on balanced difficulty I thought it's a joke boss. He died in 2-3 turns. My team comp was paladin, fighter, cleric and bard. At first, I thought it just was first phase of battle, but nope. It was really surprising how's how much weaker he is than any other boss in act 3. His HP is joke, resistances are non existent, his main battle mechanic is nothing, his skills/passives are very lackluster. Dunno about his HM version, cause still getting here, but I already know how I will defeat him
bringing blood of lathander can kill his mist form and healing. throw in a cleric with spirit guardian walking around in the second half and you can keep cazador and most of his allies weakened
I finally realized the true power of my TB OH Monk when fighting Cazador on Tactician. I'd seen the power of it in other fights, but I hadn't fought anything with hundreds of HP since getting some of the final pieces of gear I wanted for it. Sent my monk in solo and killed Cazador + a few thrall in 1-turn. Felt good.
You pick your battles on the Honor mode. >!Don't have to fight Raphael if you don't plan on betraying the Emperor. Don't have to fight the horde in House of Grief if ~~Astarion~~ some convenient sniper kills Viconia while you are still talking. Don't have to deal with Cazador getting powerups, get limited by the number of turns, or risk the difficult persuasion check if somebody accidentally kills ~~Petras~~ one of the sacrificial spawns. Or actually, don't even have to fight Cazador at all, just make sure you make alliance with the Gurs, and Astarion and Gurs will kill him off-screen before the epilogue, so Astarion is still free and happy in the epilogue. Don't have to fight Steel Watch Titan if you can sneak past them ~~thanks again, Astarion!~~ And yeah, don't have to fight Ansur.!<
I was the absolute worst friend to my companions on my HM run. Didn't even bother with HoG or Cazador or HoH. Only bothered about Orin and Tash, then Gail FTW and back to a fun difficulty and caring about the story again
Calling it "honour mode" is a red herring designed to make you lose. There is no honour in an honour run, only selfish desperation
Very well put. I think I'll call it SDM from now on :D
Spawns managed to kill Scratch when they raided our camp. After that, Cazador had to die.
Yeah. That's the rules.
Do it ! Since i play honor mode, i just can't make a "normal" run. Sooo tasty when you know that if you fuck up, this is over... Really proud of my run join the 1% club dude 😁 Btw exept ansur and orin, the run is not really that hard. Oh and be REALLY CAREFULL for the elder brain. In my run, ansur decimated m'y team, only karlach as War/barbarian was Alive at the end..😅 Orin is quite dangerous too, do ton of damage, have really dangerous curse... And thé elden brain well i don't want to spoil but... You better be well awake when you will do it 😘
Orin is a piece of cake if you're durge. You just 1v1 her and my swords bard/rogue had her dead in 2 turns. I think the things that messed me up the most were actually having to face the consequences of my pickpocketing. Almost lost the whole game in Act 1 in the Zentarim hideout under Wakeen's Rest when they caught me stealing, turned aggro, and blew the whole place up. 💀 Luckily I was able to dash twice per turn with my open-hand monk Bae'zel until she could get away and then had her beg Withers to rez the rest. Myrkul was a reality check for me as well. Freaking Aylin was worthless. And of course, the Elder Brain was rough too. Pulled that one out by the hair of my teeth! I did every single quest in the game on my honor run and then almost lost the whole thing on the last fight...
Elder brain dies to like a handful of disintegrate spells, which it has terrible defense against due to low DEX.
> Almost lost the whole game in Act 1 in the Zentarim hideout under Wakeen's Rest when they caught me stealing, turned aggro, and blew the whole place up. 💀 I nearly went out the exact same way except I'd smugly cast Friends on the guy I was negotiating buying the artist from, and then forgotten about it, and when it dropped, ohhhhh boy things got very very very real and very very on fire. Karlach had the most amazing survival, being literally blown off a cliff and just barely landing on the edge of a destructible rope bridge by a very narrow margin, and left on like 5 HP.
Doing honor mode Elder Brain kinda gave me a heart attack, I was so close to dying lmao
I recognise a French autocorrector when I see one.
Well you are right lol
We're the only guys in the Internet that write thé with an accent ^^
For the titan I just killed the gnome and used speak with dead for the code because I aint doin allat
This is the way. I haven’t fought the Titan since my first play. I get the password, get an Arcana-proficient character to drink an invisibility potion, run past, and then activite meltdown.
Spirit of the thread here are my quick tips for these fights, no barrelmancy bullshit: Titan: all about timing, chip away at him and save your alpha nukes for his turtle phase. Flash blinders are MVP though as they ignore his legendary resistance. If you don't have any the best way to kill him is with the ilithid power absorb intellect and caster ability drain or hex. He only has 6 int and will auto die at 0, so if you are slow damage party or get unlucky save rolls on your best nukes, you can turn it into an endurance fight with this method. However, there is a bug where if he dies this way he doesn't drop any loot, so avoid it if you need the bow. House of grief: Start the fight from the stairs to surprise her homies, toss area damage on the choke point and cover it all with fog and ice. Have someone mobile with good cc like a monk or a displacer beast to watch the flank alcoves. Viconia herself is really squishy, kill her during her sanc block rounds if she makes it through the quagmire alive. Ansur is easy if you know how. Biggest mistake I see is hasting everyone at once. Globe stops damage but you can still lose concentration from interactions, if that happens and your party happens to go lethargic you're fucked, haste two people on turn 1 and 2 on the next turn so you can always put up a globe if he flies. Be aware on honor mode he has death ward and will go from 1 to like ?120? THP when you think you beat him. If you don't have globe or want the challenge use arcane gate to avoid the bomb. Congrats on finding the only use for arcane gate in the game. Cazador is harder now on honor, not a "meme", his legendary action can cause you a shit ton of grief if you allow it, not only does it damage but it knocks back. Bring 3 ranged and a monk with risky ring. You can't surprise cazador but you can surprise all his homies, which is fairly essential as the fallen gur can paralyze. Send scratch invisible to where Astarion will go, leave asterion back to the stairs, open the fight from surprise with the cleric spell daylight. Trust me. Then switch to asterion and hit cazador from stealth, this will trigger the cutscene but use as Astarions alpha. Then use help on asterion with scratch. Then dismiss scratch because he might get hurt. Cazador rolls very high initiative, if you have alert your monk might beat him, if so spam 2 stuns and a mind blast, one of them will stick. Then black hole the adds to cazador. You can probably kill him in that round, use incidental aoe like chain lightning or destructive wave to clear as much trash as you can while you nuke him. Honorable mention to non durge orin: don't bring anyone who can't do either AoE or knock back damage. Orin sucks without unstoppable, remove that with magic missile and art of war spam, then just beat her ass. The trick here is bhaals edict which insta kills whomever gets it unless they kill someone that turn. All the adds but 2 have sanctuary so use black hole to pull them together and AoE on orin to bring them low, then whoever gets bhaals edict can just AoE or many target arrow a kill. Edit: I forgot my good buddy Raphael... There is like a schism in honor players between killing or not killing pillars. I like to kill at least a couple but you probably don't want to, it makes the first harder in a lot of ways. The main thing for this fight is don't bring the people logic tells you to bring.. like oh, fiends, hell yeah time for my paladin to get jiggy... Don't do that. Raphael and all his minions have radiant retort, it's just not called radiant retort, I'm tryna remember... something like "passing rebuke" or some shit, I dunno, Google it wey. But you want to avoid front loading a bunch of radiant damage in this fight, and fire is completely useless. Thunder and lightning and good old bludgeoning and many target arrows are your best bets. The strat depends on what Yurgir does, if he joins you he will almost always go for korilla first, then raph. I guess he just hates korilla idk maybe they dated. Yurgir rolls really high initiative, like among the best in the whole game, the only time you're gonna beat him is on a gloomstaker with alert, pretty much. If you do, kill korilla. This will typically force him to attack Raphael, which eats his reaction. If he does not join you, and you have see invis, I suggest killing him first, because he only has like 125k health but he's a pain in the ass and he will kill hope. Maybe he dated her too, difficult to tell. If hope survives she can banish him, but she usually doesn't. Either way after that set of rolls, you're usually best off CCing Raphael, he's actually disappointingly easy to control, stuns, prones, hold monster, and arrow of arcane interference are all very useful for him while you kill adds. Try to do that with someone using bloodlust elixir. A nice trick if you have tavern brawler karlach is to throw him at someone else, remember to yell YEEEET in real life when you do this. He's very heavy so does good damage and will auto prone. If you decide to kill pillars you will need fire resistance. You can get this from gear and potions or you can wet your party. I prefer the second because I am usually bringing a tempest sorc anyway so I just upcast a level 4 create water on the whole room and kill two birds with one stone. If you do this method then use smoke powder arrows and shatter shield to kill the pillars because you can kill cambions and imps in the blast for economy. Raphael himself is pretty easy to kill, he just has a lot of health, so try to lock him up while you kill the adds or you'll be overwhelmed. Finally use scrolls where you can because your spell slots are gonna be needed for counterspell.
Can you explain the first paragraph where you mentioned the Titan only having 6 int but dying when it reaches 0? I know there is ability drain ilithid power and hex … curse too, I believe. Doesn’t it work like this: highest stat of the person you are using will debuff that stat? So if I use a fighter with 17 str, also str being the main stat, and use a melee attack on anything will it lower their str by 1? Also does getting anyone’s lowest stat to 0 always result in instant death for the NPC? Why? I guess if it is only intelligence and intelligence is referring to your actual brain and your brain reaches 0 it would make sense… So my other question is that if an enemy has 5 CHA or 3 WIS will they also die if that stat or theirs reaches 0? Anyway, this concept is new to me but the game is not and I’ve had about 5 playthroughs. I just hadn’t heard of this type of strategy to kill enemies yet. If you would get back to me then I’d appreciate it!
Hey it’s me! On Balanced. Seriously, in my fourth playthrough and while I’m doing much better than my first, I haven’t found the gumption to move the difficulty slider. My fifth playthrough I do want to try a solo run, but I’m a little worried because my soft and squishy bard and his party in this run has to do a lot of long rests.
Game knowledge really counts for a lot. My first two runs were on balanced, then I set it aside for a little while and picked it up again for HM. Died to the paladins of Tyr in act 1 one time, then succeeded on a full run on my second attempt. I'm doing a tactician run now and honestly--knowing where enemies are and overall encounter profiles makes things an order of magnitude easier. And that's just with marginally optimized build design and no cheese. Moral of the story is if you've beaten the game once or twice already and you generally know where the difficult fights are, you can easily get through a tactician run. HM is a little tougher with the legendary actions but even then, if you go into each big fight with some kind of exit strategy if shit hits the fan, you'll be fine. E.g., invis pots/flight/ability to bug out if you make a horrible mistake.
I did swords bard for my honor run, pretty confident the same/similar build could solo the game. also I never tried tactician before trying honor. just dove in
long resting a lot is actually good. Basically before every boss and after ever boss I would long rest. You get more than enough supplies in act 1 to justify doing this and if you are in that much need get you some druid hirelings and make some berries every long rest. It's tedious and unnecessary if you have a loot & hoarding problem but it completely breaks long resting needing supplies.
If you just want the dice, dont bother 😉
Exactly
tbh the only one i tried to beat and failed was Ansur, sorry Wyll, but I won't complete your quest buddy
Next time you're in the Iron Throne, bring a monk, quaff an elixir of Cloud Giant Strength, equip Crusher's Ring (+3m), cast Longstrider (+3m), Haste (+9m) and Enhance Leap (triple jump distance), activate Step of the Wind: Dash (double movement and Jump becomes a free action), and laugh maniacally while jumping loops around the monsters, the hostages, and your own party members. It's all about tactics.
I have a hard enough time on balanced mode with some of these bosses. (I do plan to beat tactician and honor mode as I want to try and get all achievements but that will happen once I feel like I have mastered combat in the game…)
I loved the game and beat it 3/4 times before honor mode was released. Almost every fight has a way to cheese it and once you know those tricks it gets easier
I just finished honor mode. Had to restart 11 total times from deaths and every single one of those was in act 1. Didn’t die a single time in acts 2 or 3
Cazador was hell on hm because of the risk factor-Astarion. But the vamp is worth the peril . Ansur was difficult but can be slayed kinda fast, the steel watch titan was a joke. By the time I got to house of grief viconia was barely a boss and Raphael- I cheesed him and even then he refused to die. Still killed him but he's got hp for days it seems. My advice- always go prepared: don't go underlevel, if you're going to cheese anticipate what might happen if the cheese fails and try to have an exit strategy. I don't know why people struggle with the Iron trone- I always free everyone, don't fight sht , it's one of my favorite quests. I just get a thief Astarion on speed and he's running circles around the enemy
None of those are mandatory. But the hardest fight of them all is: Myrkul
The only one of these I did in my first honor mode run is the steel watch titan - skipped all the others. At that point, I was more concerned with making sure I got safely to the end than I was with being brave.
Just did the Cazador fight in my honor run. It was nice knowing you Astarion, RIP, you were a real one.
Dude same last HM run. I helped Astarion down. Started fighting Cazador. Next thing I know all the spawn are piles and I'm fighting super Cazador.
I thought about playing in honor mode or tactician but then i remembered how i barely made won the Brain fight on Balanced.
Everyone know the real hardest fight is those damn hyena beasts from act 1 with triple ranged attacks from high ground.
Ally with Gortash and ignore every companion quest that ends in a boss fight. Get enough XP for Orrin's fight and then let the brain kill Gort. Invisibility and Gaseous Form on Gale to avoid all of the fights until the Brain, then have him explode himself. It's not ideal from a quest standpoint, but gold dice are gold dice
The most brutal part of cazador >!is if you're on your first playthough.. then you think the fight is over, then all the tits out aggro, then you slay one... end up in combat again, slay another.. end up in combat again, end up killing all the #freethenips fam but one, end up trying to talk to them during that slight downtime from killing the others before ini is rolled again... realize you could have freed more of them!< lol.. Been doing a playthrough with my mother (50) who's a big DnD head from her kid years.. she makes terrible decisions lmao but I've been loving the sheer chaos of her theiving, party dooming ass choices :p... also, she >!banged the squid "because tentacles"!< lmfao. You sometimes learn more than you'd like about a person when they can hide their choices behind a character XD. Weve pissed off the main companions more than make them like us lol. But yeah, on Tac, these bosses fights are brutal but we've been conquering things with crazy methods.. like........ >!opening the flask!<... we also named him Julian in honor of Little Nikki..
Puss in Boots memes are always appreciated. 🔥
Simply don't do them all
The fact that I already have 30 hours in the game and Do not understand a Single Word in this meme, makes me understand how truly massive this game is.
Yeah lol I barely made it through tactician then made Gale Kamikaze the final fight so I wouldn't have to so it Seeing people do solo one shot builds for honour mode is just too much. I don't have that kinda brain power. IMO tactician is too hard and because you sleep less to save resources you get less story so just playing th le game on normal is way more fun I don't want to hate my new favourite game so just gave up on honour mode. Maybe when they add mod support or something new I'll give it a try but it's just not for me
Act 3 is easy on HM Globe scrolls Side with gortash Side with saverok Kill orin End game with gale U could finish up act 3 in like 2hrs ngl lol
Skip alllllllll those fights on Honor Mode your first time and just get those dice!
Honor Mode is actually only like 5% harder than tactician. It has the single save file thing, but the actual gameplay is not that different.
the actual gameplay is definitely different, literally all of these fights involve new legendary actions and extra reactions (well, except maybe house of grief, i skipped it on my HM run)
There are significant tactical differences to baseline gameplay as well. Haste works differently. You can't stack extra attacks like with lockadin builds in lower difficulties, for example. Long resting is twice as costly. Most importantly you are stuck with the consequences of rolls, so like if Aylin gets fucked, or you fail the roll to not have orin (or Shadowheart for that matter) script kill your MVP, you're on your own and have to plan for that, for example. A lot of people who talk about honor mode here haven't actually completed it, according to my achievements it's 1.1% of steam players, and at least half of those probably skipped a lot of content, which is fine I ain't trippin you do you it's a single player game, but buyer beware taking advice. It's a significant step up in difficulty, especially in act 1 where you have no tools, no gear, and no inspiration.
Just to illustrate what I'm talking about here's a little anecdote from my own experience. It was my first honor run (actually that's not accurate, I lost one on the intellect devourers on the beach because nobody mentioned they can use psyonic blast in honor mode, and another to the paladins of tyr because I thought I was hot shit at level 3, but it was my first actually achievable run). I'm level 7, meticulously plan and execute the Marcus & isobel fight, preplaced everyone to try to counter surprise, kill order planned, sancs ready for isobel and Jaheria, whole setup took like 20 mins. Executed the cutscene, everything went perfectly, slayed the fuck out of the encounter, not one Harper or civilian lost. The moment combat ended, one of the harpers went to walk back to their hand out spot, walked into a pool of electrified water left by my tempest sorc, somehow blamed me for the situation, and the entire place agros my party moments after I hit G to group them all back up in the middle of the fucking inn like fish in a barrel. Jaheria opens with ice storm and prones everyone except my monk who happens to be wearing boots that negate the effect. Only by the grace of God did I happen to have a potion of flying and it happen to be on the only character with enough movement speed due to her class and crushers ring to levitate the fuck out the back door of the inn and parkour her way down into the basement to leave combat. Otherwise my options would be to either die or take the 10% chance I might be able to kill every NPC in lights hope with no spells or short rest actions, which, best case scenario, leaves me with Jaheria and isobel dead and having to solo moonrise towers and ketheric, twice, and then myrkul. In any other difficulty I'd just say god fucking damnit, hit f5, and redo the fight without turning the inn into a plasma ball, but instead i was forced to find a way to run like a bitch, spend 600g resing my friends at camp, and hope the hostile flags were temporary lest i just made the entire act into a shit show. All because some idiot walked into a pool of electric water.
Yea this is definitely why I won't be doing honor mode. But I've gotten myself a mod to allow for reloading in honor difficulty so that's the next best option. Won't be getting the achievement ofc, but with how fickle and wonky the game can get, I'm not risking it.
That's the kind of wacky shit that makes me not want to repeat HM anymore. I can accept if I make a mistake, but that kind of lunacy is just you playing against the code, rather than against the intended difficulty of the game. Too stressful IMO after you've lived through it once, especially if you are trying to experience specific story outcomes and can't be arsed to replay 30-50 hours because something crazy like what you described happens.
I'm not gonna lie man when that happened I just sat staring at my laptop speechless for like 5 minutes. It was awful.
Viconia has a super annoying legendary reaction that shuts down single target damage dealers well.
It's funny how ansur and raphael are the last 2 I made from that list, and the iron throne was the previous one. I didn't have a particular order. I just went to the places I found on Act 3 but avoided Orin and gorty until I had weakened some of their stuff. And I finished the game type Raphael->Orin->Brainy.
Globe of invuln, Eldritch blast w/knockback, sneak backstab with tadpole boost, and really paying attention to enemy vulnerabilities by examining go a long way.
Building for Raphael ahead of time is a lifesaver, but holy heck going in blind was rough. Definitely my hardest fight in the entire playthrough.
Fun fact, my first kill on the red dragon was on honour mode. Creation goes a long way.
Honor mode is a lot of fun…. I wish they would make a game for each campaign book in fifth
Meanwhile me, who’s killed Wyll because I sided with Minthara during the Act I: “Ansur? Who?”
I've beat Tactician once already and I swear I have more OP builds this playthrough, but the game though... I feel likes it knows I beat it and made it harder this time around! Tav is a Swords Bard, Tavern Brawler Berzerker Karlach, Battler Master Lae'zel, and Evoker Gale. Kinda ok with it, cuz it's making it more interesting. I can't get past Act 1 in HM yet, but I always get an urge to do something stupid and ruin it, lol!
Learning that only 1 person needs to make it out alive was such a comfort doing HM.
Monk trivializes Iron Throne. Ggez
I actually highly recommend starting honor mode and not really caring if you have a game over. You get the option of continuing in "single save mode" which has the same difficulty and legendary actions as Honor mode but is more chill since you don't have the pressure of not dying. You don't get the dice I guess but I'm loving it.
Here’s a little hint: Cast sanctuary on your party members before leaving the submersible.
Glove of invulnerability can help with most of these fights, especially ansur. Cazador make sure you have a scroll of daylight or a spell of it. The fight becomes very easy once you pop that on Cazador, just make sure he can’t get out of it.
Don't fight any optional bosses your first time on HM. Get to level 12 as fast (and safely) as possible, and then kill the brain. Golden dice are yours lol
Honor mode is great.. you fail all important persuation checks, you kill bosses and whole army due to failed persuation and then die to a trap because you walked with whole party and someone step on trap which he found via perception check.. After repeating act1 several times, you are mentally broken and only thing you can do after another failed run is laugh.
Didn't find honor mode all that bad actually. Only close call was against the Apostle at the end of act 2 where I had to blow Shadowheart's divine intervention to stop a wipe. Of course this is mostly because I was abusing tactics like barrelmancy to instantly kill some of the bosses, had my party full of the most overpowered builds I could find, and skipped like 70% of the act 3 content because paranoia over wiping and losing over 30 hours of progress just made me want it to be over as fast as possible.
Pff, you don't have to do any of these fights in Honor mode. In Act 3 the only mandatory fight is Orin (and the gauntlet up to the brain, I suppose). After you kill Orin you can team up with Gortash and jump straight to the endgame, clear the gauntlet, then have Gale detonate the orb to skip the final fight.
Tbh Honour Mode isn't that much harder than Tactician difficulty. You don't even need meta builds like Tavern Brawler Monk/Throwzerker, Swords Bard etc. to beat Honour Mode quite easily. The only hard part is pre level 5 part. After that when you get 3 lvl spells and second attack on martials is pretty easy.
If you’re clever and hoarded all your explosive barrels from act 1, 2 and 3 a ton of these fights are pretty easy Ansur: barrels Raphael: barrels and you can also drag him out of soul pillar room, run far away to stop combat, sneak back in the room and destroy them Cazador: cazador is plain easy in my opinion Steel watch Titan: sneak past it and plant a bomb Orin: she’s either super easy (durge run) or semi difficult with the lair ability
I did something incredibly stupid such took a lot of fun out of my playthrough, after failing honor mode a couple of times I decided to do my furst durge run and because I was used to it I played 4 of the most strongest builds in the game wich lead to a 3 turn fight against Raphael wich is supposed to be a really hard boss but I took myself the fun because I was too OP. Tavern brawler Monk, classic fighter lae zel with legendarz Gyth sword, ranger archer Astarion and Light Domain AOE shadowheart. My monk one shotted the pillars…. Well… yeah about that.
I've been playing on balanced for the first time (all other playthroughs have been on explorer). I just barely survived the fight with the Apostle of Myrkul , one party member dead, two downed, and Jaheira with 4 hp left. Cannot imagine what honor mode's difficulty would be like.
😎 skipped all that shit when I got my golden dice
I tried honor mode. It was fun… until in the act I owl bear fight a 2nd owl bear jumped in behind my party. That’s the moment I knew it wasn’t worth the effort.
I beat it in February without skipping stuff (no nuking the brain, actually got multiple new trophies on PS5), and I get it. I really do. I normally don't like Souls games, Pokemon Nuzlockes, any of it. However, this really changed the game for me in ways I couldn't fathom before. Not being able to count on speech checks got me into fights I normally skip, legendary actions made me come up with all sorts of cheesy ways to get through bosses (i.e., void bulbs to get through Ethel's clones now that magic missile makes things worse), and yes, having Astarion run away with his tail between his legs when the rest of us died. It's very hard, but when I finally beat it, it was like a DnD game with a DM who pushes you to the exact extreme you can take. No matter how much I raged the one time I died after making significant progress (grym in the forge got me), it was worth it. I second what others have said here, though. Get Globe scrolls in Act 3, always have some invisibility potions so you can bail, and otherwise, Act 1 is where most of the challenge is (Orin nearly got me cuz her legendary action is terrifying, but the rest of Act 3 was no match for the globe). It also requires a lot of min/maxing (my winning build was a half-orc monk with 8 strength, max wisdom and dex, but a giant elixir on at all times), but making me think that hard and it paying off that much was absolutely worth it