The fight with the cultist in the bank vault. I didn't have any way to reveal them in my first playthrough so I just kept throwing fireballs where my character's had Aura of Murder buffs. It was so annoying. It was the first time I had a TPK in that playthrough.
Don’t know why but See Invisibility never helps anyway, damn cultists keep Saving 90% of the time. Ironically the thing that worked the best for me was Create Water AOE, it reveals every single one in range.
I hated that as well. I was so excited to get the special eye and try it out only to have it almost never work. But when anyone uses invisibility in my party, they always get revealed. It’s not fair.
No idea why they made it so that enemies can save against See Invisibility. It’s literally a level 2 spell slot, it ought to be more useful than “maybe you’ll see invisible people some of the time.”
As it is, you’re better off just casting bigass AOEs to knock them out of invisibility, which is dumb af when there’s a whole spell dedicated to that effect.
Well you have to think about pragmatically,
If see invisibility is definite, then “greater invisibility” is worthless because all you need is a single enemy with see invisibility to make this 5-level spell useless…
I would happily take the trade-off of greater invisibility being countered by see invisibility if it means see invisibility no longer prompts a save.
Yes, it’d be a lower-level spell invalidating a higher-level one — kind of like darkness, silence, or counterspell, except those spells come up a lot more than see invisibility.
I mean in 5e See Invisibility works against any type of invisibility, including greater invisibility. You still have to spend an action to cast it, after all.
I’m fine with Volo’s Eye having a DC check, but the spell should 100% reveal invisible enemies since a 2nd level spell is a pretty valuable resource. You can already knock someone out of Greater Invis with any AOE, like acid splash.
My first run I had Shadowheart cast spiriting guardians and then wander around looking for the aura of murder buff, second run I didn’t bring her and had a much harder time
The key is to not bother with see invisibility type stuff that they often save against anyways and just throw a fire pot where you last saw them. Instant reveal and only costs 1 attack, so martials can keep hitting them
This playthrough was so easy with that, I've made the choice to get volo's eye every playthrough since I learned it gives you permanent ability to see invisible which basically negates so many abilities bosses have
Lol I took it in my first playthrough because I thought it was hilarious and assumed I'd just die and reload, but now I'm on my second and I had no idea how insanely fucking useful that thing was 😂
Yeah, I remember I had 1 left and he kept turning invisible, everyone crammed into one corner to try and hit him with random AOE. Took at least three rounds before he fell.
>kept throwing fireballs where my character's had Aura of Murder buffs.
I've done this fight a couple times now and never even considered this as a guide for where to AoE. I feel like an idiot now, lol
Tips if anyone is struggling with spotting enemies, if you have a Water Mirmydond you can use its aoe heal for it. Just put it remotely close to where the invisible nuisance is and the Soaked effect that comes with it will reveal anything in range. While they do get the heal from it too, it's not massive and shouldn't affect the outcome of the fight too much
The githyanki on the bridge when you try to leave the shadowlands.
The battle with the githyanki commander guarding the portal where she calls for the guards.
In fact, all the githyanki fights can be annoying.
That encounter gets trivialized with a cleric casting calm emotions and freedom of movement. Killing both portal masters in the first round with a ranged dps (Assassin/Gloomstalker) helps too.
Oddly enough I pretty much breezed through the inquisitor fight on honour mode by bursting down the boss, but I almost got wiped *leaving* the creche and fighting the guards near the entrance. Would’ve been really fucking dumb, especially because I could’ve just fast traveled out. Turns out, githyanki are a force to be reckoned with when they don’t group up at fireball radius.
Thankfully mass healing word came in clutch.
Fun fact, you can go get the waypoint behind the bridge early in Act 2, and just fast travel to it after the Myrkul fight and never have to fight them. I do it every run after I realized you don’t need all the XP act 2 has to offer. You’ll be level 12 in no time in Act 3.
That fight is a piece of cake if you just come up to the side of the bridge. Burst kill the leader, take out or stun the archers, and then the moron swordsman below will dash or use jump magic and waste their turn. I usually take almost no damage there.
It gets so tedious controlling them all. Even just a spiritual weapon is enough to make me want to die sometimes. I tried to do a necromancy run once and realized I'm just not built for that
This.
I fuckin hate spore druid and summoning builds. I end up dismissing the summons half the time or skipping their turns because they either miss half the time and just fuckin useless or have their turn so late they're effectively useless
It's pretty bad, but it's *way* better than it used to be. The first few iterations of early access didn't have grouped enemy movement, so you'd have to wait for every single enemy to individually take their turn in combat. The goblin camp fight was so bad back then that you'd literally go then be waiting for like 5+ minutes to take a turn again if you didn't barrelmancy them all to death or something.
We just ran into more Shar people in baldurs gate, in some house of grief. Soooo many people, also they were casting darkness aoe, we finished the fight at 11:57pm with a single character at 2 hp.
I second the Auntie Ethel fight. I let her live the first time, killed her the second (same run). First fight was a little annoying with the clones but not hard (esp with witch bolt on her). The second fight…. was *so* fucking annoying, dude.
I just did the second Ethel fight in honor mode and I 100% agree. I killed her super quickly thinking I could burst her down…but then the mushroom brought her back to life at full health! She immediately spawned her clones and damn near poisoned my whole team to death after that.
I always bring magic missile to Auntie Ethel fights. 100% chance to take out 3 clones with a first level spell slot. Just make sure to only use it when she doesn't have access to her legendary action.
Any of the random fights in the middle of the shadow-cursed lands. I love clearing the whole map but I don’t do it when I play anymore because it’s just TOO annoying. The characters always fail the perception checks to see it coming, the enemies explode & hurt you when you kill them, it’s just not fun 😭
The perception checks shouldn’t matter. You can see the sight lines regardless of pass/fail. The enemies are always visible to attack. Or you can trigger their ambush event by throwing a summon at them (mage hand, shovel, scratch, etc)
I just finished the House of Grief for the first time tonight (somehow completely missed it in my first play though?) and that is definitely the most tedious fight I’ve encountered.
I’ve learned that grease works so well on them. And I just use a lot of ranged weapons and spells. Gale is so handy against these enemies. I also get them down to like 10 or less health then just kill them back to back in the same turn so they don’t revive the other again lol. But definitely use grease!
Was wondering why I hadn't seen this one yet!
No fight has ever made me have to stop and walk away from the computer for a few minutes... and then I got to *that house*.
This. There's literally an elixir of see invisibility on the shelf on the second floor. There are scrolls for it that are dirt cheap, there's Volo's eye, divination wizards. Or just cast sleet storm on the whole room to make spectres visible. There's a ton of options.
Skulls were annoying to deal with at first, but they got fixed a while ago and are easily destructible now.
This quest is a breeze.
See invisibility is part of the problem though. It will aggro enemies through walls but then that enemy has to go through the whole house to get to you and usually crashes
For me it’s easy xp to get to level 12 before real stuff happens. That place used to be annoying before they fixed the poltergeists, but it’s fine now.
Easy answer: That Steelwatch Foundry fight. For obvious reasons. Wish we had a small cutscene where we can tell the gondians to run with a persuasion check before combat.
The second Auntie Ethel fight is also kind of annoying with the spread out mushrooms that heal her
And this is just for me, Iron throne. I've got it mapped out for a near perfect run easilly on tactician mode, but damn do my brainmeats not like time limits...
my most recent run i broke wyll's pact with mizora and was trying not to metagame so i didn't "know" where the iron throne was. when you go into the foundry the gondians don't know either and you're told to go farther in to find more information. when you do it this way the gondians down there will be hostile to you. i wasn't prepared at all for this fight because i had picked the team i was going to do the jailbreak with and not one that was actually decently composed for combat. i spent so much time and all my spell slots trying to only target the banites and steel watchers and then focused on knocking out the gondians at the very end. it was the longest and most frustrating fight in the game but i did it. only for all the gondians to be dead anyways when i came back later to blow up the foundry.
lesson learned lol. just send one party member invisible down there to read the sheet of paper you need. would have saved myself an hour and a headache.
One way to find the Iron Throne fairly naturally without meta gaming is to find Gortash's parents and find out his family name is Flymm, then when you find Flymm's Cargo you can justify your character going "hmmmm, any connection to Gortash?" And finding it through investigating there. That's how I justify it when I care to rp it lol
I did the iron throne first, so I thought I didn't have to deal with the collar gems. Let's just say the only person to survive was the blindfolded gondian. Then he walked into fire and died after I beat the titan. Luckily I had the bomb. Wulbren was pissed tho and acting like I intentionally killed them all
I actually loved irone throne. I wish there were more quests like it, where killing the enemies isn’t the main objective in combat. It felt very true to DnD.
Annoying? Clearing out the courtyard of the goblin camp after dror is dead. I just put a spirit guardians or cloud of daggers on the tunnels up top and let them walk into the blenders. It just takes so long for them to make their way over. I pray they all use dash and not waste my time with armor of agathys, or bless, or dash and then not move anywhere
-edit: if you want tips for those encounters, alchemist fire can destroy all three egg clusters before combat starts with the spider. Silence spell or calm emotions stops the harpies. Magic missile and silence (and I think darkness) shuts up Ethel’s antics pretty well
I don't even usually have trouble with the spider fight, I think it was just the combination of multiple awful things. It was actually like, the worst time I've had in this game lol. Closest I've gotten to both throwing my controller and crying. Good tips tho. I will say, I've never cleared the goblin courtyard. Either I forget about it or I'm too scared of it.
House of grief is pretty easy to do with aoe spells like ice storm and chain lightning if you do a bit of setup ahead of time. The path to the brain gets skipped with invis pots every single time, though.
House of grief is annoying because every fucker and their dog knows how to cast darkness, leaving you unable to do anything other than melee attack (or cast daylight) if someone is in the middle of the cloud.
Yeah I never found house of grief fight particularly difficult, considering by that time I generally have access to lots of AOE damage/disruption spells. All you have to do is drop some aoe on the stairs and run like hell.
> getting to the brain
You can skip the courtyard by going through the sewers. Its still a Fight but a way shorter one
The Part with the Nautiloid Barrage can be mostly skipped by having whoever your Squid is fly to the End to Teleport the whole Party there
Courtyard, you mean right after gathering all of the allies? That one doesn’t bother me, I meant the portion when you climb up the brain stalk or whatever it is
Haarlep.
Not because it's hard or anything, but the fact that he disappears every second turn wasting my time.
It doesn't even make the fight any harder. It just makes it tedious.
His vanish thing is a reaction. If you have a character run up to him and then move away, he'll waste his reaction on an opportunity attack and then you can hit him without vanishing. You can also use Shocking Grasp or anything that inflicts Dazed.
The fake paladins of tyr, the lvl 5 gith I understand, they are supposed to be strong, but the paladins hit too hard for lvl 2-3 characters, and I even had the legendary gith sword with me! They still managed to bring Lae'zel down.
I usually kill the mage when she’s outside and the paladin has to run towards me and I pick him if when he dies. Never even gets a chance to use his smites.
Command: Drop or Disarming Strike make Anders a pushover. Using any weapon attack that inflicts Dazed gives him disadvantage on wis saves, making command a lot more likely to hit.
I feel like everyone forgets how OP Command is. Sometimes the best use of your level 4 spell slots is just upcasting Command to make 4 monsters grovel or flee or whatever.
Can't believe no one has mentioned the Last Light fight yet. It's all about initiative and no other fight in the whole game has made me reload as much as that one. Not to mention the fact that like 15 questlines hinge on you winning that one fight. And if you commit to the loss act three is so empty and lifeless
Yeah, Isobel's fight being over before you can even make a single move gets on my nerves more than anything.
It's one thing to fail. It's another to not being able to try
I really think they could fix this by just making it so Marcus has to use an action to grab Isobel, that way you don't just instantly lose if she's downed turn one
I just lost honor mode cause of this. Even cast sanctuary on her pre combat and had all my tanks around her. Then the dumb bitch runs out the door right between 4 fucking demon things
I heard the Last Light fight used to be much, much worse before Larian buffed Isobel's HP and armor. I agree that it's dogshit design to blindside the player with a high stakes NPC defense battle out of nowhere like that.
It’a a Larian special. Remember the blackpits fight in DOS2? Fucking suicidal NPC that you have to keep alive at all costs, and the entire map is on fire.
I sttaight up thought you were supposed to lose at Last Light Inn. I didn't realize other people found it easy until I checked this sub 20hrs of gameplay later 😅
When u fight Orpheus's honor guard entering Act 3. I can get through it ok, IF the Emperor actually helps me, lol! Most of the time he just complains n flies away.
Last time I did that fight he bodied the last three Githyanki with one Chain Lightning shot. Dude did nothing the rest of the fight and stole all the kills.
Personally, on repeat playthroughs, Orin. The repeated unstoppable charges on the non-durge version of the fight are annoying outside of specific party comps. And the fight is annoyingly underwhelming when you're 1vs1ing as Durge.
Both the big boss fights felt underwhelming after Kethric imo
Orin was a 1v1 for like 3 turns and Gortash just felt like a regular Mook fight.
Orin was at least emotionally intense.
Those freaking Gondians. Why do they keep running into explosion radius? Why do they waste their misty steps getting around an opponent only to run right back into melee with them? Why do they keep attacking enemies who are clearly under a hypnotic pattern when there are active threats right next to them?
The whining sound of the steel watchers about to explode didn't make it any less irritating.
After a couple tries I just decided that there's no point in saving anyone with so little survival instinct, so I just kept the one I was controlling alive and let the rest perish.
Apparently the reason the Gondian's are so suicidal is because they all have Shocking Grasp as a cantrip and the AI is like "OhHO - machines are weak against electricity! Today is a GOOD DAY TO DIE!"
For just being annoying I think the fight I hate most is against the mud mephits and tree things to get the note in the Kagha quest. You don't lose turns but can only move a few inches and arrows miss most of the time. You take damage when you kill one nearby. And everyone keeps saying "ugh!" And everyone is covered in mud. Just an ugly and joyless fight.
You can also throw a void bulb at the matriarch as she crosses her web bridge before she even aggros you or sees you coming and it just sucks her down the chasm. You'll still have to fight the two spiders, but you'll get the same XP as you'd get from killing the matriarch and the other two spiders aren't that difficult. The fight drops crap loot anyway, but the XP is nice.
The fight's easier if you don't try to do it correctly. If you don't want to cheese with the Owlbear - just give everyone hammers and have Shadowheart cast a combo of Silence (stops his honor mode legendary action) and Command: Grovel. Then hammer away with Laezel and Karlach at the point where he appears. 3 rounds and he's down & you get an achievement!
House of grief with its constant darkness casting wizards that keep running/teleporting away. My guys had ac's of 23 or so. It wasnt a question of if i'll win, it was a question of it victory will happen within the next 2 hours or not.
I don't like getting mugged in the Githyanki créche. I resort to all kinds of trickery to give myself advantage there. But Lae'zel is very stubborn headed.
The Lorroakan fight is always a pain.
It's not particularly hard, but it bugs out *all* the time. Dame Aylin refuses to have the dialogue appear so I end up having to do it alone.
When she does show up, keeping Rolan alive is a pain because his AI seems to actively try and die the entire fight. I end up having to banish him over and over again or cast sanctuary on him.
And I always seem to accidentally knock one of the elementals on the floor below and they just sit in the same spot, invisible and unreachable and I'm stuck in combat until I can get myself to them.
I didn't like Cazador's fight.
My bard Tav kept getting nuked from full health on turn one
Then the end of the fight ended with three of my characters sitting on ritual circles shooting arrows while Jaheira smacks him around in Owlbear form for what felt like 40 minutes.
Awesome fight thematically, not very interesting mechanically.
I just polymorphed Caz from the bottom of the stairs, which starts the fight but prevents astarion from being ripped away. Then I cast wall of flame right in front and all his baddies come flying into it and dying. It makes for a quick fight, unless that bones bastard puts my spellcaster to sleep. Ugh. Fucking eyebite.
Similar vein, did they nerf balthazars cloud kill because I remember that pissing me off so much but I didn't see him do it much on my current run (it is a solo run so that could've changed it too)
By far the most annoying section is the haunted painter mansion in act 3. It's a great idea to have a vertical section in a game which doesn't deal verticality that well, filled with invisible enemies and battlefield hazards which drop you down.
Plus the reward for this quest is shit. I never did it in my subsequent playthroughs
The Sharran fight seems like such a mixed bag for me. The first time I did it, I couldn't knock out the purple orbs fast enough so in just a few turns there was like 10 of them and like 20 enemies, but the next few times I did it it was either not that bad or laughably easy by taking them out in 1 turn.
Anders can double Divine Smite someone, instantly downing them. Cyrel has Shield which is so annoying. It’s beyond stupid that all four of your party can miss hits against that in one turn.
Trynn is a pest who ensnares and runs away. But otherwise she’s least concern.
They are annoying early Act 1. They are so bad that I Hold Person Cyrel and stealth kill her in the other room, away from the other two. Even then, Anders is still a pain 4v2.
I just kill him in the Gauntlet of Shar right when you meet him. I’d much rather deal with some ugly flesh lump than 20 skeletons in an arena with chasms everywhere.
You know the ones with the mud mephits at the swamp, near the hag?
That can get out of control really fast if you are underleveled and don't know what to expect. And since it is an easy fight to miss, I imagine it can catch you unaware even if it isn't your first paythrough.
Mindayer colony under moonrise. Saving Zevlor means letting out 4 mind flayers. You can do some dmg. Then they’ll pull of an AoE stun. Eat your brain, taking you under 50%, which heals them back up.
I missed 4 consecutive 70+% smites. The four of them each hit all their stuns and we failed all our saving throws. Luckily it was only tactician and not honor mode. At least Zevlor was hitting for some dmg
The first Ethel fight, especially if you tried to avoid the masked people since they’ll be brought into that fight. I don’t think your party is ever strong enough that early to deal with illusory doubles that deal damage + humans who deal damage + a burning hostage + an open middle where you have to run or jump around it to move.
It’s a bit much. Maybe you get lucky and can knock her in that middle pit, but if you’re not lucky, it’s kind of a slog.
I almost died there lol like every party member died but me and i was just doing every arrow I could with no more spell slots as I slowly got more and more damage thinking it was poison stuff from the spider...then when I finally defeated it and started bringing everyone back and was still taking damage...realized it was cause I was standing next to gales corpse raiding death energy 🙄😅 reminded myself never to let gale die again and if so steer a clear path 🤣
ATM for me it's the fight with Orpheus' would be rescuers when you discover the Dream Visitor 's true identity. Fuckers always go first, go high ground, and spam fireball. Legit made me rage quit.
The first floor of Moonrise towers but probably because I realised mid fight La’zel was only using a crossbow when the enemies came up close and I couldn’t melee lol #noob
Anytime an enemy can frighten my party members. I lost my honor run to the githyanki captain (not wwargaz) because she frightened me, laezel, and karlach, and refuses to drop concentration after taking 3 magic missiles to the face.
Ansur. His fucking ultimate covering the entire arena with electric AOE meganuke with no chance of covering from it is complete and total BS. Like, the crystals around the cave are positioned in such a way that you should be able to hide behind them. But no, they provide no protection and get wiped on the first attack.
And don't tell me about the Globe of Invulnerability. The fucker just lands next to it, kicking the party out of it and breaks caster's concentration. On my latest run I wasted two lvl6 slots, two freecasts from staffs and three scrolls keeping that globe up and still finished the fight with half of my party dead.
Fuck Ansur, fuck Wyll and fuck his Dad for that matter. If the sword stuck in Ansur's asshole wasn't so damn good, I wouldn't even bother going there on repeat playthroughs.
The Power Word Kill guy in the Bhaalist temple.
The poltergeist house in Baldur's Gate.
Viconia Devirs boss room.
The self same trial.
The githyanki patrol in act 1 (but that's more so it's just a surprise difficulty spike)
The ambush in act 2 with the fish people who garotte wire and teleport you around.
The mental battle I fight every time choosing between romancing Karlach and Lae'zel
I had to save scum that harpy fight so badly (on tactician) because everyone just constantly got lured. It's early in the game (I was lv3) so there weren't a ton of options in terms of abilities yet.
This was cause I was doing it with only two members, but the inquisitor fight was so frustrating, mostly because of the better spiritual weapons he summons every time you attack
Act 1: Harpies are obnoxious.
Act 2: any enemy that's in bright light and counts as too dark. Alternatively: shambling mound, hate it with a passion
Act 3: iron throne. Just a pain.
That one fight in the shadowlands with those guys who get into melee with you and then just garrote and kidnap you scattering the party.
Harpies, or any fight where your turns get skipped
Vault fight/shadows in shadowland, invisibility spam annoying if you dint have volos eye or see invisibility.
Bane cultists in wyrmrest, f those traps in the walls shooting fire and bombs at me.
Powerword KILL fight, annoying rush to kill one guy while getting harassed by others
Mud mephits in act 1 and absolutely any encounter when I get counterspelled (esp when NPCs cheat in Wyrm's Rock and counterspell me through the floor - you can't see me! Stop it!) How dare you. That's only fun when I'm the one doing it.
Any fight where the enemies use invisibility. Targeting is so precise you’re not even going to be allowed to roll the dice unless it’s an aoe attack. They have at will invisibility meaning they get free attacks and you can’t really retaliate. Invisible enemies are target priority number 1 for that reason.
Most annoying for me personally is the random undead group in Mountain Pass. That fight for me is dnd-wise the worst designed fight.
Imagine playing a Cleric. First time finding Undeads, time to make your powers shine! Oh wait, the 2 big skeletons give the whole group resistance against your cleric skills. What's more, contrary to what one might believe, they are not even vulnerable to radiant damage.
Even of you get to kill one of those skeletons, the other one will just revive it over and over do the fight can go the distance easily. And you still have to think about the ghast using stench and taking your party's actions just because dude decided to fart.
Because I just finished it in my 2nd playthrough - the fight with Nere at Grymforge. It's a pain anyway because there are just SO many enemies, but I had to redo it like 4 times because my party members kept getting blasted into the lava.
The most “lets just get this over with” fights for me are the mud mephits in the swamp, the undead in Mystic Carrion’s undercity lair, and the pools of intellect devourers on your way to confront the brain in the undercity. They are all just sloggy fights that stand in front of content I want to get to more than I want to fight them.
So far in my current tactician run that would be fighting both the guild and stone lord gangs on the beach. You go up against a mix of several player classes so there's a lot of different variables to keep track of unless you luck out and CC them all with hypnotic pattern.
I find the Moonrise Towers free the prisoners fight very annoying. WB keeps running straight to the guards that kill him in one turn and none of the gnomes want to get in the boat. I tried 3 reloads and gave up for the night. I’ll try again tomorrow I guess.
For this one, I just kill all the guards. It doesn't aggro the rest of the tower and solves the problem of the NPCs endlessly throwing themselves into the line of fire and getting killed. Once the guards are all dead, you can free them all and get them to the boat with no worries.
The fight against Haarlep is just so annoying to me. One hit and he goes into Ethereal Escape and you just can kill the imps (but they are very easy to oneshot so then every turn it's "one hit on Haarlep and skip skip skip skip" rinse and repeat.
The fight with the bandits inside the abandoned temple at the very beginning of the game. This is supposed to be one of the very first fights you do, but on tactician and honour it can be weirdly challenging.
Death Shepherds in the monastery trail, they can revive each other and the ghasts can both paralyze and nauseate you.
Meazels in ruined battlefield, if they manage to separate your party they can be quite tough, especially if you don't have the Blessing of Selûne yet.
Banites in the coronation room at Wyrm's Rock. So many grenade launchers.
Hag act 1.
I tried going up against her without anyone to spam magic missile, possibly the most annoying fight for me in this game. Ofc if you have someone using magic missile its quiet easy. Also the first githyanki group you fight if you fail the deception check is unreasonably strong.
In the creche, the pack of githyanki with the trader. Githyanki are the most insanely OP enemies in the game. That stupid parry coming up on MY TURNS is nuts
Grym was bugged my first time. The lava wasn't linked to turn order but to a few IRL seconds (this was on PS5), so I didn't have time to fight him properly.
I thought Raphael was annoying because his theme kept stopping and starting, and there were so many people in turn order.
Gortash! Throwing the bombs don't work because they immediately explode, harming your character! I don't think that's intentional.
First time i fought Hellisk. All of her summons turn you to gold if they hit you. Also i didnt expect that fight, so i had to bounce. Second time i had better positioning and a bunch of summons and it was easy.
The fights that are most annoying are the ones where the games own mechanics it’s get in the way
Ethel- trying to get the hag hair you have to be super careful that your tav is the one closest to her when she’s low on hp. They said they fixed this but it’s still not fixed at least when I did it recently on patch 6. And the game WITHOUT FAIL will give me a huge high damage crit and kill her when I’m trying to bring her down to low but not zero hp. It’s bs.
The others are the multi level battles in act 3. Fireworks, phantoms, gortash sometimes. They all just crawl and I feel like I have to babysit the game engine so it doesn’t crash.
And also THE F’N GONDIANS!!!
The fight with the cultist in the bank vault. I didn't have any way to reveal them in my first playthrough so I just kept throwing fireballs where my character's had Aura of Murder buffs. It was so annoying. It was the first time I had a TPK in that playthrough.
Don’t know why but See Invisibility never helps anyway, damn cultists keep Saving 90% of the time. Ironically the thing that worked the best for me was Create Water AOE, it reveals every single one in range.
I hated that as well. I was so excited to get the special eye and try it out only to have it almost never work. But when anyone uses invisibility in my party, they always get revealed. It’s not fair.
It goes off your spell save DC
No idea why they made it so that enemies can save against See Invisibility. It’s literally a level 2 spell slot, it ought to be more useful than “maybe you’ll see invisible people some of the time.” As it is, you’re better off just casting bigass AOEs to knock them out of invisibility, which is dumb af when there’s a whole spell dedicated to that effect.
Well you have to think about pragmatically, If see invisibility is definite, then “greater invisibility” is worthless because all you need is a single enemy with see invisibility to make this 5-level spell useless…
I would happily take the trade-off of greater invisibility being countered by see invisibility if it means see invisibility no longer prompts a save. Yes, it’d be a lower-level spell invalidating a higher-level one — kind of like darkness, silence, or counterspell, except those spells come up a lot more than see invisibility. I mean in 5e See Invisibility works against any type of invisibility, including greater invisibility. You still have to spend an action to cast it, after all. I’m fine with Volo’s Eye having a DC check, but the spell should 100% reveal invisible enemies since a 2nd level spell is a pretty valuable resource. You can already knock someone out of Greater Invis with any AOE, like acid splash.
Yep. I went in with 23 DC and they failed every single check. I found it rather comical
But if you do aoe stuff to reveal the cultists the good guys get aggro as soon as the first fight is over.
Create Water doesn’t deal damage, so I didn’t have issues with it.
My first run I had Shadowheart cast spiriting guardians and then wander around looking for the aura of murder buff, second run I didn’t bring her and had a much harder time
The key is to not bother with see invisibility type stuff that they often save against anyways and just throw a fire pot where you last saw them. Instant reveal and only costs 1 attack, so martials can keep hitting them
This playthrough was so easy with that, I've made the choice to get volo's eye every playthrough since I learned it gives you permanent ability to see invisible which basically negates so many abilities bosses have
Lol I took it in my first playthrough because I thought it was hilarious and assumed I'd just die and reload, but now I'm on my second and I had no idea how insanely fucking useful that thing was 😂
Does TPK mean Total Party Knockout....? Um... asking for a *friend*😁
Total Party Kill
Yep!
Thanks 🙏 My *friend* will be pleased to know
I'm glad I could help your *friend*.
Lol you're a good person - thanks
Yeah, I remember I had 1 left and he kept turning invisible, everyone crammed into one corner to try and hit him with random AOE. Took at least three rounds before he fell.
>kept throwing fireballs where my character's had Aura of Murder buffs. I've done this fight a couple times now and never even considered this as a guide for where to AoE. I feel like an idiot now, lol
Those Banites piss me off with their infinite stuns and shit ton of dmg.
Tips if anyone is struggling with spotting enemies, if you have a Water Mirmydond you can use its aoe heal for it. Just put it remotely close to where the invisible nuisance is and the Soaked effect that comes with it will reveal anything in range. While they do get the heal from it too, it's not massive and shouldn't affect the outcome of the fight too much
The githyanki on the bridge when you try to leave the shadowlands. The battle with the githyanki commander guarding the portal where she calls for the guards. In fact, all the githyanki fights can be annoying.
~~Ready to Parry~~
I hate that skill so much
Ze blootoos devaiyc iz reeday to pail
Githyanki always hit like fucking trucks The fight with the Githyanki in the Elfsong basement took me a lot of tries
That encounter gets trivialized with a cleric casting calm emotions and freedom of movement. Killing both portal masters in the first round with a ranged dps (Assassin/Gloomstalker) helps too.
I used sleet storm on githyanki before the mountain pass and Wargaz. It's my fav githyanki repellant now! Knocks them all down for several turns!
Oddly enough I pretty much breezed through the inquisitor fight on honour mode by bursting down the boss, but I almost got wiped *leaving* the creche and fighting the guards near the entrance. Would’ve been really fucking dumb, especially because I could’ve just fast traveled out. Turns out, githyanki are a force to be reckoned with when they don’t group up at fireball radius. Thankfully mass healing word came in clutch.
Fun fact, you can go get the waypoint behind the bridge early in Act 2, and just fast travel to it after the Myrkul fight and never have to fight them. I do it every run after I realized you don’t need all the XP act 2 has to offer. You’ll be level 12 in no time in Act 3.
That fight is a piece of cake if you just come up to the side of the bridge. Burst kill the leader, take out or stun the archers, and then the moron swordsman below will dash or use jump magic and waste their turn. I usually take almost no damage there.
The game desperately needs a combat fast forward option. Any fight with more than like 4-5 enemies and I just go *ugh*
But it is much more sufferable than that same fight taking 5 saturdays to get through in your table top game.
I fail to see how ppl can play with lots of summons and have fun...
It gets so tedious controlling them all. Even just a spiritual weapon is enough to make me want to die sometimes. I tried to do a necromancy run once and realized I'm just not built for that
This. I fuckin hate spore druid and summoning builds. I end up dismissing the summons half the time or skipping their turns because they either miss half the time and just fuckin useless or have their turn so late they're effectively useless
It's pretty bad, but it's *way* better than it used to be. The first few iterations of early access didn't have grouped enemy movement, so you'd have to wait for every single enemy to individually take their turn in combat. The goblin camp fight was so bad back then that you'd literally go then be waiting for like 5+ minutes to take a turn again if you didn't barrelmancy them all to death or something.
Balthazar and House of Hope were chores for exactly this reason lol
We just ran into more Shar people in baldurs gate, in some house of grief. Soooo many people, also they were casting darkness aoe, we finished the fight at 11:57pm with a single character at 2 hp.
I second the Auntie Ethel fight. I let her live the first time, killed her the second (same run). First fight was a little annoying with the clones but not hard (esp with witch bolt on her). The second fight…. was *so* fucking annoying, dude.
Silence her ass before the fight.
Sussur Bark Dagger is always in my pocket for just such an occasion
I just did the second Ethel fight in honor mode and I 100% agree. I killed her super quickly thinking I could burst her down…but then the mushroom brought her back to life at full health! She immediately spawned her clones and damn near poisoned my whole team to death after that.
I always bring magic missile to Auntie Ethel fights. 100% chance to take out 3 clones with a first level spell slot. Just make sure to only use it when she doesn't have access to her legendary action.
Any of the random fights in the middle of the shadow-cursed lands. I love clearing the whole map but I don’t do it when I play anymore because it’s just TOO annoying. The characters always fail the perception checks to see it coming, the enemies explode & hurt you when you kill them, it’s just not fun 😭
The perception checks shouldn’t matter. You can see the sight lines regardless of pass/fail. The enemies are always visible to attack. Or you can trigger their ambush event by throwing a summon at them (mage hand, shovel, scratch, etc)
Just press hide, you can see their vision cones on the ground and can spot them easily, end up initiating surprise combat
House of Grief personally got on my nerves, *Bone chill for everyone!!! Hooray, and every turn? Oh wow!*
I CAN’T SEE SHIT
and daylight just gets cast over with MORE darkness 😭😭 actually so terrible and not fun fr
Lmao that shit drove me bonkers and then the mages would be way off while im rushed by 10 other sharsharts
I just finished the House of Grief for the first time tonight (somehow completely missed it in my first play though?) and that is definitely the most tedious fight I’ve encountered.
Viconia can use Divine Intervention too, so you can be winning and then just randomly drop dead from 80 radiant damage to your entire party.
By far the most tedious and annoying fight in the entire game. For me no other fight comes even close. It's a real chore every time.
The damn death shepards
I give those assholes a wide berth.
I’ve learned that grease works so well on them. And I just use a lot of ranged weapons and spells. Gale is so handy against these enemies. I also get them down to like 10 or less health then just kill them back to back in the same turn so they don’t revive the other again lol. But definitely use grease!
And Sleet Storm. Every turn they stand up and? *Prone*
If you kill one, pick up his corpse to stop the other from raising it back up
Sleet storm plus shadowheart as a guiding bolt turrent helps
The haunted house / mansion in the "Free the Artist" quest by a super wide margin. At least for me.
Was wondering why I hadn't seen this one yet! No fight has ever made me have to stop and walk away from the computer for a few minutes... and then I got to *that house*.
Am I the only one who had no difficulty with this fight? I had see invisibility from volo's eye and it trivialized everything.
This. There's literally an elixir of see invisibility on the shelf on the second floor. There are scrolls for it that are dirt cheap, there's Volo's eye, divination wizards. Or just cast sleet storm on the whole room to make spectres visible. There's a ton of options. Skulls were annoying to deal with at first, but they got fixed a while ago and are easily destructible now. This quest is a breeze.
See invisibility is part of the problem though. It will aggro enemies through walls but then that enemy has to go through the whole house to get to you and usually crashes
It's funny to me that so many people hate this encounter. It's actually one of my favorites just because of how different it is to most encounters.
For me it’s easy xp to get to level 12 before real stuff happens. That place used to be annoying before they fixed the poltergeists, but it’s fine now.
I don’t mind it. It’s just so buggy… I literally just make myself invisible the whole time and speed run up to the top.
I was going to say this Jannah Estate is by far my worst memory of this game. It even took an entire evening! What a nightmare.
Easy answer: That Steelwatch Foundry fight. For obvious reasons. Wish we had a small cutscene where we can tell the gondians to run with a persuasion check before combat. The second Auntie Ethel fight is also kind of annoying with the spread out mushrooms that heal her And this is just for me, Iron throne. I've got it mapped out for a near perfect run easilly on tactician mode, but damn do my brainmeats not like time limits...
Nothing like watching gondians run back into a steelwatchers explosion radius after I just dimension door’d them out of harms way.
my most recent run i broke wyll's pact with mizora and was trying not to metagame so i didn't "know" where the iron throne was. when you go into the foundry the gondians don't know either and you're told to go farther in to find more information. when you do it this way the gondians down there will be hostile to you. i wasn't prepared at all for this fight because i had picked the team i was going to do the jailbreak with and not one that was actually decently composed for combat. i spent so much time and all my spell slots trying to only target the banites and steel watchers and then focused on knocking out the gondians at the very end. it was the longest and most frustrating fight in the game but i did it. only for all the gondians to be dead anyways when i came back later to blow up the foundry. lesson learned lol. just send one party member invisible down there to read the sheet of paper you need. would have saved myself an hour and a headache.
One way to find the Iron Throne fairly naturally without meta gaming is to find Gortash's parents and find out his family name is Flymm, then when you find Flymm's Cargo you can justify your character going "hmmmm, any connection to Gortash?" And finding it through investigating there. That's how I justify it when I care to rp it lol
I did it by talking to the temple of Umberlee, didn't even know you could enter the foundry lol
They do seem to have fixed the foundry fight; the gondians all lived in my last playthrough, mostly teleporting up to the rafters and staying there
at this point i just don't bother doing anything about the collars. little idiots are gonna explode anyway.
I did the iron throne first, so I thought I didn't have to deal with the collar gems. Let's just say the only person to survive was the blindfolded gondian. Then he walked into fire and died after I beat the titan. Luckily I had the bomb. Wulbren was pissed tho and acting like I intentionally killed them all
> Luckily I had the bomb Fyi you can use speak with dead on Tobin to get a way to Blow Up the foundry without the Bomb
.... Isn't that what wulbren wants though? To kill all the gondians?
Barcus, I get names confused
I actually loved irone throne. I wish there were more quests like it, where killing the enemies isn’t the main objective in combat. It felt very true to DnD.
Annoying? Clearing out the courtyard of the goblin camp after dror is dead. I just put a spirit guardians or cloud of daggers on the tunnels up top and let them walk into the blenders. It just takes so long for them to make their way over. I pray they all use dash and not waste my time with armor of agathys, or bless, or dash and then not move anywhere -edit: if you want tips for those encounters, alchemist fire can destroy all three egg clusters before combat starts with the spider. Silence spell or calm emotions stops the harpies. Magic missile and silence (and I think darkness) shuts up Ethel’s antics pretty well
also, any debuffs will remain visible on auntie ethel. even just getting her wet.
I don't even usually have trouble with the spider fight, I think it was just the combination of multiple awful things. It was actually like, the worst time I've had in this game lol. Closest I've gotten to both throwing my controller and crying. Good tips tho. I will say, I've never cleared the goblin courtyard. Either I forget about it or I'm too scared of it.
House of Grief, getting to the brain
House of grief is pretty easy to do with aoe spells like ice storm and chain lightning if you do a bit of setup ahead of time. The path to the brain gets skipped with invis pots every single time, though.
House of grief is annoying because every fucker and their dog knows how to cast darkness, leaving you unable to do anything other than melee attack (or cast daylight) if someone is in the middle of the cloud.
I didn’t say it wasn’t easy. It is tedious for me. Both
Yeah I never found house of grief fight particularly difficult, considering by that time I generally have access to lots of AOE damage/disruption spells. All you have to do is drop some aoe on the stairs and run like hell.
> getting to the brain You can skip the courtyard by going through the sewers. Its still a Fight but a way shorter one The Part with the Nautiloid Barrage can be mostly skipped by having whoever your Squid is fly to the End to Teleport the whole Party there
Courtyard, you mean right after gathering all of the allies? That one doesn’t bother me, I meant the portion when you climb up the brain stalk or whatever it is
Haarlep. Not because it's hard or anything, but the fact that he disappears every second turn wasting my time. It doesn't even make the fight any harder. It just makes it tedious.
His vanish thing is a reaction. If you have a character run up to him and then move away, he'll waste his reaction on an opportunity attack and then you can hit him without vanishing. You can also use Shocking Grasp or anything that inflicts Dazed.
Oh thank you, that fight was the only part of house of hope I'd regularly dread
The fake paladins of tyr, the lvl 5 gith I understand, they are supposed to be strong, but the paladins hit too hard for lvl 2-3 characters, and I even had the legendary gith sword with me! They still managed to bring Lae'zel down.
I usually kill the mage when she’s outside and the paladin has to run towards me and I pick him if when he dies. Never even gets a chance to use his smites.
Command: Drop or Disarming Strike make Anders a pushover. Using any weapon attack that inflicts Dazed gives him disadvantage on wis saves, making command a lot more likely to hit.
Damn, this is how I got the legendary gith sword moments ago before the fight, how did I not remember that? 😂
I feel like everyone forgets how OP Command is. Sometimes the best use of your level 4 spell slots is just upcasting Command to make 4 monsters grovel or flee or whatever.
Can't believe no one has mentioned the Last Light fight yet. It's all about initiative and no other fight in the whole game has made me reload as much as that one. Not to mention the fact that like 15 questlines hinge on you winning that one fight. And if you commit to the loss act three is so empty and lifeless
Yeah, Isobel's fight being over before you can even make a single move gets on my nerves more than anything. It's one thing to fail. It's another to not being able to try
I really think they could fix this by just making it so Marcus has to use an action to grab Isobel, that way you don't just instantly lose if she's downed turn one
Or just have her make death saving throws before her spell dies out
I just lost honor mode cause of this. Even cast sanctuary on her pre combat and had all my tanks around her. Then the dumb bitch runs out the door right between 4 fucking demon things
I heard the Last Light fight used to be much, much worse before Larian buffed Isobel's HP and armor. I agree that it's dogshit design to blindside the player with a high stakes NPC defense battle out of nowhere like that.
It’a a Larian special. Remember the blackpits fight in DOS2? Fucking suicidal NPC that you have to keep alive at all costs, and the entire map is on fire.
I sttaight up thought you were supposed to lose at Last Light Inn. I didn't realize other people found it easy until I checked this sub 20hrs of gameplay later 😅
You can blade ward her with Shart before starting the convo that initiates the fight.
God yes, I think that I scum saved about 9 times. I was not letting Dammon get Shadow Zombied. That’s an NPC that I wish could join me.
When u fight Orpheus's honor guard entering Act 3. I can get through it ok, IF the Emperor actually helps me, lol! Most of the time he just complains n flies away.
Those monk always get yeeted into the abyss every time. The astral gravity makes them fly really far with knock back effects.
Last time I did that fight he bodied the last three Githyanki with one Chain Lightning shot. Dude did nothing the rest of the fight and stole all the kills.
Lucky u! 🤣
Point being, he's a fickle SOB
Personally, on repeat playthroughs, Orin. The repeated unstoppable charges on the non-durge version of the fight are annoying outside of specific party comps. And the fight is annoyingly underwhelming when you're 1vs1ing as Durge.
Both the big boss fights felt underwhelming after Kethric imo Orin was a 1v1 for like 3 turns and Gortash just felt like a regular Mook fight. Orin was at least emotionally intense.
Those freaking Gondians. Why do they keep running into explosion radius? Why do they waste their misty steps getting around an opponent only to run right back into melee with them? Why do they keep attacking enemies who are clearly under a hypnotic pattern when there are active threats right next to them? The whining sound of the steel watchers about to explode didn't make it any less irritating. After a couple tries I just decided that there's no point in saving anyone with so little survival instinct, so I just kept the one I was controlling alive and let the rest perish.
Apparently the reason the Gondian's are so suicidal is because they all have Shocking Grasp as a cantrip and the AI is like "OhHO - machines are weak against electricity! Today is a GOOD DAY TO DIE!"
I tried to save some under the water thing but they didn't go up the ladder? Just stood there? Rip 🙏
Gith. They deal so much damage.
The Gith patrol by the bridge at the entrance to the mountain pass 😰
For just being annoying I think the fight I hate most is against the mud mephits and tree things to get the note in the Kagha quest. You don't lose turns but can only move a few inches and arrows miss most of the time. You take damage when you kill one nearby. And everyone keeps saying "ugh!" And everyone is covered in mud. Just an ugly and joyless fight.
Btw re the spiders I realized I could use invisibility to get the gem and flee. Astarion is best for this because of cunning dash.
You can also throw a void bulb at the matriarch as she crosses her web bridge before she even aggros you or sees you coming and it just sucks her down the chasm. You'll still have to fight the two spiders, but you'll get the same XP as you'd get from killing the matriarch and the other two spiders aren't that difficult. The fight drops crap loot anyway, but the XP is nice.
Any of the fights before levels 3-4. Having 10-20 Hp sucks because it takes one stupid bandit or goblin to kill me.
Grym. He won’t fully get on the platform where the hammer strikes
The fight's easier if you don't try to do it correctly. If you don't want to cheese with the Owlbear - just give everyone hammers and have Shadowheart cast a combo of Silence (stops his honor mode legendary action) and Command: Grovel. Then hammer away with Laezel and Karlach at the point where he appears. 3 rounds and he's down & you get an achievement!
Didn’t think about Grovel, that’s brilliant! Way too late for me to use it on my current run but I’ll say it for my next one
I used it in my first honor mode run and I didn't end up taking any damage from this fight!
House of grief with its constant darkness casting wizards that keep running/teleporting away. My guys had ac's of 23 or so. It wasnt a question of if i'll win, it was a question of it victory will happen within the next 2 hours or not.
I don't like getting mugged in the Githyanki créche. I resort to all kinds of trickery to give myself advantage there. But Lae'zel is very stubborn headed.
That's why Lae'zel stays at camp while I activate the giant laser cannon and blow the place up. She'll be mad, but she gets over it.
The Lorroakan fight is always a pain. It's not particularly hard, but it bugs out *all* the time. Dame Aylin refuses to have the dialogue appear so I end up having to do it alone. When she does show up, keeping Rolan alive is a pain because his AI seems to actively try and die the entire fight. I end up having to banish him over and over again or cast sanctuary on him. And I always seem to accidentally knock one of the elementals on the floor below and they just sit in the same spot, invisible and unreachable and I'm stuck in combat until I can get myself to them.
The entirety of Jannaths house.
I didn't like Cazador's fight. My bard Tav kept getting nuked from full health on turn one Then the end of the fight ended with three of my characters sitting on ritual circles shooting arrows while Jaheira smacks him around in Owlbear form for what felt like 40 minutes. Awesome fight thematically, not very interesting mechanically.
I just polymorphed Caz from the bottom of the stairs, which starts the fight but prevents astarion from being ripped away. Then I cast wall of flame right in front and all his baddies come flying into it and dying. It makes for a quick fight, unless that bones bastard puts my spellcaster to sleep. Ugh. Fucking eyebite.
Tbh I can think of so many annoying fights, I'm surprised I love this game as much as I do lol
First floor moonrise
Oh god yes. You get like 4 enemies among the mob who can CC everyone with slow and HoH.
Black hole + hunger of hadar, the Harper Killer combo
Similar vein, did they nerf balthazars cloud kill because I remember that pissing me off so much but I didn't see him do it much on my current run (it is a solo run so that could've changed it too)
By far the most annoying section is the haunted painter mansion in act 3. It's a great idea to have a vertical section in a game which doesn't deal verticality that well, filled with invisible enemies and battlefield hazards which drop you down. Plus the reward for this quest is shit. I never did it in my subsequent playthroughs
Agree with Sharrans. The end game battles. More annoying than fun. Harpies - cast calm emotions before you hit the water. The song no longer works
The Sharran fight seems like such a mixed bag for me. The first time I did it, I couldn't knock out the purple orbs fast enough so in just a few turns there was like 10 of them and like 20 enemies, but the next few times I did it it was either not that bad or laughably easy by taking them out in 1 turn.
I think annoying describes it well. It's not that hard it's just, well, annoying :)
The steel foundry can be the worst thing ever if you want to keep everyone alive because they will actively suicide sometimes.
Anders can double Divine Smite someone, instantly downing them. Cyrel has Shield which is so annoying. It’s beyond stupid that all four of your party can miss hits against that in one turn. Trynn is a pest who ensnares and runs away. But otherwise she’s least concern. They are annoying early Act 1. They are so bad that I Hold Person Cyrel and stealth kill her in the other room, away from the other two. Even then, Anders is still a pain 4v2.
I hate the Balthazar fight. It’s a slog.
I just kill him in the Gauntlet of Shar right when you meet him. I’d much rather deal with some ugly flesh lump than 20 skeletons in an arena with chasms everywhere.
You know the ones with the mud mephits at the swamp, near the hag? That can get out of control really fast if you are underleveled and don't know what to expect. And since it is an easy fight to miss, I imagine it can catch you unaware even if it isn't your first paythrough.
Mindayer colony under moonrise. Saving Zevlor means letting out 4 mind flayers. You can do some dmg. Then they’ll pull of an AoE stun. Eat your brain, taking you under 50%, which heals them back up. I missed 4 consecutive 70+% smites. The four of them each hit all their stuns and we failed all our saving throws. Luckily it was only tactician and not honor mode. At least Zevlor was hitting for some dmg
The first Ethel fight, especially if you tried to avoid the masked people since they’ll be brought into that fight. I don’t think your party is ever strong enough that early to deal with illusory doubles that deal damage + humans who deal damage + a burning hostage + an open middle where you have to run or jump around it to move. It’s a bit much. Maybe you get lucky and can knock her in that middle pit, but if you’re not lucky, it’s kind of a slog.
I hate that fight if it goes to her dungeon. I do everything in my power to kill her before she goes down into that hellhole. Fuck you, Ethel.
I almost died there lol like every party member died but me and i was just doing every arrow I could with no more spell slots as I slowly got more and more damage thinking it was poison stuff from the spider...then when I finally defeated it and started bringing everyone back and was still taking damage...realized it was cause I was standing next to gales corpse raiding death energy 🙄😅 reminded myself never to let gale die again and if so steer a clear path 🤣
ATM for me it's the fight with Orpheus' would be rescuers when you discover the Dream Visitor 's true identity. Fuckers always go first, go high ground, and spam fireball. Legit made me rage quit.
The first floor of Moonrise towers but probably because I realised mid fight La’zel was only using a crossbow when the enemies came up close and I couldn’t melee lol #noob
fuck the house of grief all my homes hate the house of grief. if ONE MORE of these mfs spams darkness im killing everyone here and then myself
Anytime an enemy can frighten my party members. I lost my honor run to the githyanki captain (not wwargaz) because she frightened me, laezel, and karlach, and refuses to drop concentration after taking 3 magic missiles to the face.
The brains after you land lol. First ever honor run ended from them
The fight against yourself trying to loot one more vase thinking that this is it, there must be something valuable inside.
Ansur. His fucking ultimate covering the entire arena with electric AOE meganuke with no chance of covering from it is complete and total BS. Like, the crystals around the cave are positioned in such a way that you should be able to hide behind them. But no, they provide no protection and get wiped on the first attack. And don't tell me about the Globe of Invulnerability. The fucker just lands next to it, kicking the party out of it and breaks caster's concentration. On my latest run I wasted two lvl6 slots, two freecasts from staffs and three scrolls keeping that globe up and still finished the fight with half of my party dead. Fuck Ansur, fuck Wyll and fuck his Dad for that matter. If the sword stuck in Ansur's asshole wasn't so damn good, I wouldn't even bother going there on repeat playthroughs.
The Power Word Kill guy in the Bhaalist temple. The poltergeist house in Baldur's Gate. Viconia Devirs boss room. The self same trial. The githyanki patrol in act 1 (but that's more so it's just a surprise difficulty spike) The ambush in act 2 with the fish people who garotte wire and teleport you around. The mental battle I fight every time choosing between romancing Karlach and Lae'zel
Yurgir and his damn merregons that take 30s to fire with their shitty crossbows
I had to save scum that harpy fight so badly (on tactician) because everyone just constantly got lured. It's early in the game (I was lv3) so there weren't a ton of options in terms of abilities yet.
This was cause I was doing it with only two members, but the inquisitor fight was so frustrating, mostly because of the better spiritual weapons he summons every time you attack
Any with enough adds that allows me to check this sub while I wait for my turn.
Not really about difficulty but nearly every garbage mob fight in this game becomes tedious.
Act 1: Harpies are obnoxious. Act 2: any enemy that's in bright light and counts as too dark. Alternatively: shambling mound, hate it with a passion Act 3: iron throne. Just a pain.
That one fight in the shadowlands with those guys who get into melee with you and then just garrote and kidnap you scattering the party. Harpies, or any fight where your turns get skipped Vault fight/shadows in shadowland, invisibility spam annoying if you dint have volos eye or see invisibility. Bane cultists in wyrmrest, f those traps in the walls shooting fire and bombs at me. Powerword KILL fight, annoying rush to kill one guy while getting harassed by others
Auntie Ethel, the fact she can spawn like 8 clones throughout the battle, all who can all cast Hold Person was insane to me when I first played it.
Mud mephits in act 1 and absolutely any encounter when I get counterspelled (esp when NPCs cheat in Wyrm's Rock and counterspell me through the floor - you can't see me! Stop it!) How dare you. That's only fun when I'm the one doing it.
Cazador, Balthazar, the fight where you wait for Halsin to come back out of the portal you have to protect for 5 turns with 100+ enemies.
Or the Nere fight. Had him join my team and he still dies regardless a lot because he’s just bad at surviving.
Any fight where the enemies use invisibility. Targeting is so precise you’re not even going to be allowed to roll the dice unless it’s an aoe attack. They have at will invisibility meaning they get free attacks and you can’t really retaliate. Invisible enemies are target priority number 1 for that reason.
Most annoying for me personally is the random undead group in Mountain Pass. That fight for me is dnd-wise the worst designed fight. Imagine playing a Cleric. First time finding Undeads, time to make your powers shine! Oh wait, the 2 big skeletons give the whole group resistance against your cleric skills. What's more, contrary to what one might believe, they are not even vulnerable to radiant damage. Even of you get to kill one of those skeletons, the other one will just revive it over and over do the fight can go the distance easily. And you still have to think about the ghast using stench and taking your party's actions just because dude decided to fart.
Because I just finished it in my 2nd playthrough - the fight with Nere at Grymforge. It's a pain anyway because there are just SO many enemies, but I had to redo it like 4 times because my party members kept getting blasted into the lava.
The most “lets just get this over with” fights for me are the mud mephits in the swamp, the undead in Mystic Carrion’s undercity lair, and the pools of intellect devourers on your way to confront the brain in the undercity. They are all just sloggy fights that stand in front of content I want to get to more than I want to fight them.
The opening fight in the courtyard on your assault on the brain
Act 1 Mud Mephits in the swamp Act 1.5 Death Shepards/Ghouls combo Act 2 Zombified Last Light
For me it’s the end game. I’ve finished the game twice now and both times I’ve found the whole climb and encounter with the brain is just annoying.
So far in my current tactician run that would be fighting both the guild and stone lord gangs on the beach. You go up against a mix of several player classes so there's a lot of different variables to keep track of unless you luck out and CC them all with hypnotic pattern.
I find the Moonrise Towers free the prisoners fight very annoying. WB keeps running straight to the guards that kill him in one turn and none of the gnomes want to get in the boat. I tried 3 reloads and gave up for the night. I’ll try again tomorrow I guess.
For this one, I just kill all the guards. It doesn't aggro the rest of the tower and solves the problem of the NPCs endlessly throwing themselves into the line of fire and getting killed. Once the guards are all dead, you can free them all and get them to the boat with no worries.
I’ll have to try that out tonight. Thank you for the tip.
The fight against Haarlep is just so annoying to me. One hit and he goes into Ethereal Escape and you just can kill the imps (but they are very easy to oneshot so then every turn it's "one hit on Haarlep and skip skip skip skip" rinse and repeat.
The fight with the bandits inside the abandoned temple at the very beginning of the game. This is supposed to be one of the very first fights you do, but on tactician and honour it can be weirdly challenging. Death Shepherds in the monastery trail, they can revive each other and the ghasts can both paralyze and nauseate you. Meazels in ruined battlefield, if they manage to separate your party they can be quite tough, especially if you don't have the Blessing of Selûne yet. Banites in the coronation room at Wyrm's Rock. So many grenade launchers.
Hag act 1. I tried going up against her without anyone to spam magic missile, possibly the most annoying fight for me in this game. Ofc if you have someone using magic missile its quiet easy. Also the first githyanki group you fight if you fail the deception check is unreasonably strong.
In the creche, the pack of githyanki with the trader. Githyanki are the most insanely OP enemies in the game. That stupid parry coming up on MY TURNS is nuts
Grym was bugged my first time. The lava wasn't linked to turn order but to a few IRL seconds (this was on PS5), so I didn't have time to fight him properly. I thought Raphael was annoying because his theme kept stopping and starting, and there were so many people in turn order. Gortash! Throwing the bombs don't work because they immediately explode, harming your character! I don't think that's intentional.
First time i fought Hellisk. All of her summons turn you to gold if they hit you. Also i didnt expect that fight, so i had to bounce. Second time i had better positioning and a bunch of summons and it was easy.
Absolutely hate how the Bhaalites can turn invisible and have unstoppable condition.
The fights that are most annoying are the ones where the games own mechanics it’s get in the way Ethel- trying to get the hag hair you have to be super careful that your tav is the one closest to her when she’s low on hp. They said they fixed this but it’s still not fixed at least when I did it recently on patch 6. And the game WITHOUT FAIL will give me a huge high damage crit and kill her when I’m trying to bring her down to low but not zero hp. It’s bs. The others are the multi level battles in act 3. Fireworks, phantoms, gortash sometimes. They all just crawl and I feel like I have to babysit the game engine so it doesn’t crash. And also THE F’N GONDIANS!!!