Clearing out Ust Natha

[kryptix]

Does anyone have any advice on how to accomplish this? The closest I got was surviving until the demons spawn (which I think is the end of this) but even with 2 fighters improved hasted with speed weapons in the off hand I just can't kill fast enough to keep up, and if I try a choke point rather than viconia slaughtering with her sword shield thing (the weaker globe of blades), I just get overrun earlier.

 

I'm running with Fighter/Illusionist, Jahiera, Neera, Imoen, Viconia and Hexxat.

 

Fighter/Illusionist is running the axe from Nalia's keep with ice and acid, and MOD+2 for undead summons, off hand kundane. She has 1x Hardiness, 2x Critical Strikes, 1x Whirlwind (can't get mage HLAs yet).

 

Jahiera is using the club that ticks 2 points of damage a turn and belm. She has energy blades, 2x GWW and 1x Implosion.

 

Neera has timestop, wail of the banshee and 1x dragon's breath. (No wish scroll yet or I'd just be using wish rest when I need more dragon's breath).

 

Imoen has no HLAs yet, but does have horrid wilting.

 

Viconia has Fallen Deva and Energy Blades. (She also has like -13 AC unbuffed so I've been using her with blade barrier to tank and do a lot of the damage, along with her fallen deva's globe of blades).

 

Hexxat has UAI, 2x spike trap, 1x exploding trap and 1x assassination. Carosmyr, Celestial Fury and Scarlet Ninja-to.

 

One problem is that Hexxat keeps dying and can't be ressed (I have 2 charged up rods of ressurection). Also the mod doesn't allow in combat trap setting so her traps are useless.

 

I have a potion bag full of goodies plus more and every spell accessible up until this point on all three mages.

 

I'm willing to keeper a bit to reassign HLAs if it will make a big difference since I haven't had any fights where I relied on any HLA to win so far, Fallen Deva helped a lot on Deirex though, and does wonders in this fight too.

 

I don't have the item tweaks installed so I do have Helm of Vhaillor, Cloak of Mirroring and Robe of Vecna.

 

Also if anyone knows any Wizard/Druid/Cleric spells that would do good AOE damage to drow (I hate their magic resistance), I would love to hear it since Dragon's Breath seems to be the only reliable one.

 

I guess I'd also be willing to drop the difficulty from Insane to Core for this but towards the end it was the massive amount of mages that got to me, because by that point I had very little spell defenses left and they eventually landed a bunch of chaos/charm on me.

[scorpio]

Here's 2 videos on youtube that might be helpful:

 

- Bioware NPCs

 

- Custom Party

[polytope]

Imoen has no HLAs yet, but does have horrid wilting.

 

Incendiary Cloud is probably a better bet here because it lasts for a whole turn and the damage tick is likely to catch each drow in the area a few times inspite of their MR.

 

Also if anyone knows any Wizard/Druid/Cleric spells that would do good AOE damage to drow (I hate their magic resistance), I would love to hear it since Dragon's Breath seems to be the only reliable one.

 

Firestorm and earthquake both ignore MR, although firestorm does more damage and earthquake is more annoying because your screen jiggles. Blade barrier works too, as you've noticed.

[onerous]

I don't think it was David's intention for the player to clear out Ust Natha (in fact, quite the opposite). I thought the spawns keep coming until you leave. I think he said as much in the readme under Improved Drow. It seems like a hopeless endeavor due to to the fact that you have a finite amount of spells and fresh waves come after you every few rounds.

[polytope]

I don't think it was David's intention for the player to clear out Ust Natha (in fact, quite the opposite). I thought the spawns keep coming until you leave. I think he said as much in the readme under Improved Drow. It seems like a hopeless endeavor due to to the fact that you have a finite amount of spells and fresh waves come after you every few rounds.

 

There's a finite number of enemy drow (about 150 in total), so it IS possible, as the 2nd video shows (skip to the end).

 

I think you would need epic levels (i.e. completing WK before leaving for spellhold) to beat them reliably though, I don't usually play this way.

[kryptix]

One of my problems is I don't think sunfire bypasses MR any more, so I have 3 mages with it but I don't think it works, I'm going to try again tonight or tomorrow but reworking Jahiera's HLAs to give her devas rather than whirlwind and hardiness which I have yet to use in a fight yet so I find somewhat legitimate.

 

He's also using a custom party I think...

 

For some reason for me the whole city agros as soon as I finish the eggs and the demon and doesn't give me a chance to reenter the city like him...

 

wow he does a ton more damage than me lol... He also has way more spells than me so I'm assuming much higher level. I guess I'll give it a few more tries then just run away and see if i can split the fight up into chunks using zone lines...

[kreso]

The 2nd video won't help you much since he's using Weimer's Anti-Paladins, the uber kit which is Inquisitor on steroids, it uses "dispel on hit" like Carsomyr with any weapon (so he can remove PFMW with a mundane weapon for example, which I assume you can't).

I have beaten (and tried) them only once, long time ago, with many reloads (I think it was when v21 came out). What you want to do is effectively shut down any castings. Due to sheer numbers of enemies with MR, you need lots (and lots!) of cloud-type spells. Level 8 fire cloud is especially useful, provided you keep you own fire resistance high. You still need to stack them so some of them manage to bypass MR. Potions like Magic Shielding/Invunerability/Magic Resistance are of great help. Regeneration+haste on an AC tank is what I used (Korgan+shield+127% MR) to survive until most of them fell to clouds (final groups). Don't waste most powerful resources immediately, don't bother debuffing mages until you take care of fighters/clerics/demons.

Another point to note - immunity to mind-effects is priceless. Make sure you have things like Equilizer close at hand.

[veyn]

I did that with 6 arcane casters party, with SCS + SR + IR installed. Difficulty level was "insane", but it didn't matter for this party: if anyone had stoneskins stripped, he was dead immediately anyway. Few notes:

1. The majority of enemies in this fight are < 12 level, so Wish "greater deathblow for whole party" option is really great, especially for "war party" groups (probably the only time in 10 years I've found it useful, lol).
   
2. Cleaning up group fast sometimes allows to drop combat state and save game. Sometimes enemy mages managed to drop some cloud (Teleport Field, for example), which removed that possibility.
   
3. IR Staff of Magi's high-level dispel is good, because many enemy mages use SI:Div instead of SI:Abj (this might be random, don't know).
   

The most "problematic" part of the fight was keeping track of buffs: the fight is very long, there are no significant pauses for rebuff, so even with long SR durations buffs tend to expire. Without AC buffs stoneskins got destroyed too fast, without magic defenses I got breached, without IHaste I didn't have enough DPS - basically, full buff had to be maintained for whole ~10 turns.

 

The second problem was lack of resources (spell slots) for such buffs, even in my arcane-heavy party. This was solved by wish-resting after successful combat drop (kinda cheesy ) - I only had a single wisher - a sorcerer with 3 or 4 9th level slots.

[kryptix]

I tried this for 3-4 hours last night and kept getting to the final spawns before getting overwhelmed... I think I am trying it lower leveled than the rest of you because for some reason in my game the whole city agros when the demon kills Phaere... so I was engaging it right away with no chance to prebuff etc ( no other save except for a while back).

 

The way I did it was by having my party go all ranged on the second platform  where you go upstairs once from the Female Fighter's Guild. You expose almost the entire platform if you position your people right so you hardly ever have spawns on your own little platform. Most of the spawns will be in the upper left hand platform so I just kept tanking it and clearing out the platform with firestorms every 2-3 turns while popping ~20 wand of cloudkill charges up there. Problem is they kept on using zone of clean air.

 

What eventually got me killed was a spam of doom and malison on my CHARNAME followed by a finger of death... Otherwise I think I might have won. I had Charname and Jaheira swap between dual wield and shield + sling/azureedge to either dps or clear out the rare spawns on my platform.

 

I then gave up and easily beat it by setting DavidW's setting to 2.

 

@DavidW

 

Have you considered a medium setting for this encounter a bit harder than the 2 setting but not quite so overwhelming as the all out version? I really don't think a party right out of spellhold can possibly take the full on version but the 2 setting version was a bit too easy. I barely had to use spells and didn't have to use any HLAs, only the demons at the end required a PfMW on my fighter mage to take down...

[DavidW]

The demons are by no means the end of the full-fat version; after them you get another bunch of mid-level drow, then a bunch of high-level mages with stone golem support, then some more mid-levels, then the real final battle (two balors, two glabrezu, a bunch of high-level clerics and a bunch of mid-level fighters). As people have noted, this is intended to be virtually impossible, not to be a realistic challenge - but I didn't want literally to go for infinite spawning.

 

If you want something intermediate, setting 1 is actually harder than setting 2. (No, I don't think that was sensible coding in hindsight - but it is documented.)

[kryptix]

Ah from the description it seemed like 2 was harder than 1 which was why I was like where did all the enemies go when I set it... I might have to go back and try 1... Yeah I meant I survived til the balors but my shorty saves fighter Mage failed a save vs instant death after I ran out of death wards and ended it which was rather frustrating...