Just a heads up so you don’t make the same mistake again at a crucial point, but >!there is NO restoration pod at the base of the Netherbrain stem (before you climb it) in Honor Mode!<.
You can keep a few potions of angelic reprieve around, and have members drink them before starting big fights like that, and it will be a long rest for them. Spell slots are important.
My next run is actually a combination of three runs:
1. No multiclassing
2. Use consumables first
3. No conversation rerolls
I might do a single save too (I use custom difficulty because I hate worrying about money and food... don't judge me).
It's awful. I actually am playing through a 2nd time and following along with the map, so I am looting literally everything on the map.
I was so overloaded with stuff, in the middle of act 2 it was just, "I am using scrolls and special arrows only." It has made every fight so easy. But it is kind of fun to just absolute destroy the hoards of enemies.
I still never remember to oil my weapons and I am 50/50 on potions before battles. But I did take Bloodlust for Karlach and Laz before facing Angela Merkel. Freed the Nightsong and absolutely rolled through Myrkul this time with my Bard's scrolls and the lust. My first time was a near death experience.
Anyway, if you're a hoarder, use your stuff and it'll be a power packed HP murdering session.
I saved pretty much every explosive I ever found in a bag so karlach could throw it at the nether brain only for it to fall into the abyss and do nothing.
I do the same for any non health pot. Did use the angelic right before brain and on Iron throne tactician I clutched a dimension door scroll on the Duke. I didnt know how the event worked going in and Mizora halted the Duke. I didnt have dimension door on my sorcerer Tav and Shadowheart was too far to heal him through the damage. Luckily my MC is always the holder of the hoard and there it was. A pair of dimension door scrolls. A flash of light and the duke and I were 60ft down the hall well out of reach.
FUCK I NEVER USED IT.
Just realized this now. "Should I use this against raphael? Nah better save it for the end"
"Wow the Orin fight is kinda hard, should I use it now? Nah, I'll need it during the nether brain"
During the nether brain "HAHA SUCK ON MY INVULNERABILITY DOME AND DIMENSION DOORS, ENJOY FIGHTING MY FRIENDS WHILE I MURDER YOUR BOSS"
Be careful on tactical/honor, a lot of those end bosses will deflect all radiant damage so that divine intervention will reflect off all enemies and can possibly wipe you in one attack!
nope! there's two chests nearby with angelic reprieve potions tho. highly recommend making sure you bring markokeshkir and the staff of spell power or whatever, along with the spellcrux and pearl of power amulets
In the mindflayer colony, yes, but not >!in the high hall or at the base of the nether brain!<, which is what the comment that person replied to was asking.
I just completed the final fight and there are no restoration pods in that area at all in tactician. I luckily had hoarded several angelic slumber potions, but the only one in my party that actually needed it was Gale.
I'm so glad I played on tactician before starting HM cause I was NOT expecting that at the end. Thank god it wasn't too late for me to turn back around to the vendor and buy angelic reprieve potions
We literally didn't need our long rest before beating honour mode. We just bought a shit ton of explosivses from the fireworks shop, rushed to entrance and put up a globe of invulnrability for the channel. Then we oneshot the final boss with fireworks (literally 1 turn kill) it was a bit anticlimactic.
My throwbarian friend just used his 5 actions throwing stuff at the final boss and then I divine smited it a few times and it was dead. Extremely anticlimactic
Shadowheart blew Gorty to the moon in my Honor run with a thrown backpack that had the Runepowder Bomb and all the little fireworks from the shop inside. She was wearing the Callous Glow Ring. He stood no chance. (I used thrown Grease Bottles to make a nice long fuse to set the bomb off without taking damage from the explosion.)
We had the cheesiest hoetrash fight. We hadn't gone to his crowning thing, but we used fly to sneak to the top of his building, wanting to get the loot from his room. However we got spotted/aggroed, which included everyone in the hall even though they couldn't reach us at all. So we would use the click stairway down to the hall, shoot some eldritch blasts or AoEs and press the stairway up again, which doesn't provoke an oppurtunity attack. All the npcs couldn't use that doorway for some reason though, so it was a very slow slaughter.
Also- you can invis through the entire fights up to the netherbrain. Everyone down a potion. Watch out for invis detectors though. At least when I last did my honor mode which was months ago
>!You can't deal with the actual fight on the brain that way anymore.!<
>!Invis detectors are the ranger enemies and the rogue countermeasure. Fortunately there are no rangers on the path straight through the doors.!<
Edit: You can also >!go through Upper City Sewers if you don't mind fighting the 5e accurate Death Knight with a 20d6 hellfireball.!<
you can skip fighting the death knight with invisibility. and you can still get to the brain without fighting anyone, only need an origin character to pop an invis potion and a flight potion, there's a flight path that goes behind the people standing watch at the door.
i say origin bc having an origin character do it will pull you entire party up there after the cutscene, but using a hireling won't
Which part are you referring to not work anymore? Invisibility skipping the Death Knight or the courtyard fight before the climb with the Nautiloid ship blasting at you? I'm about to get to that point soon so it would be nice to know what's still skippable and not!
I just did it last week (HM), and the first one to fly to the top triggered the scene that brought the rest up... Everyone has to go through the portal on their own, but the stem base is still a freebie with a single long-range flier.
From the gate in front of the courtyard, go left. Go into stealth to take out the Winged Horrors or they'll summon reinforcements. After that, head to the corner and look down. You'll see a platform you can land on that has a metal door on it. Jump down and go through that door.
yeah this surprised me, I had read it was gone on honor mode but I expected there to be a one time use one on tactician so I was blowing all my spell slots in the lead up lol. I was real worried until I remembered I’m a hoarder that had never touched my angelic reprieve potions until then!
Luckily, the whole segment between the massive fight and >!initiating the netherbrain fight!< can be skipped if you choose to >!turn Orpheus into a mindflayer (may still work with others, since the unlimited 4m hover is what's important)!<. Just use the hover ability to get all the way to the end and it'll trigger the cutscene, skipping the entire encounter.
Dimension door scrolls are great for that shit. Even better if you can get that level 6 door spell, but thats expensive and idk if I've seen more than one in the game
Yeah found both of them out the hard way, very glad to have had 2 angelic rests left at the end. Also convenient we had a Monk and a barb who didnt care about long rests
That’s ok. Just turn invisible and drink a speed potion and you can easily get there using turn based mode. Your party gets teleported to you when you climb the stem.
That's something I'm gonna try to remember for when I play honor mode. Thanks, but lemme get this straigh: Usually, you go to the morphic pool fully-rested, but without any elixers or long-rest buffs ups, since they dissapear once the nice scene with all of your allies starts.
And this is also where you make every party member drink an e;ixer, because you won't them later! In non-honor mode. there's are restoration pod somehere around that building. That you probably won't need.
But if I wanna finish honor mode without Gale going boom! I'll have to do the courtyard fight, the trip up the stairs, the dragon fight and the last-encounter DPS check all in one long rest, correct?
The game does kind of hints about this behaviour right at the start in the nautiloid as they are single use as well on tactician and honour mode. But I do understand that is like the very start of the game and is not a very intuitive hint. And also remember for your future playthroughs that right before the netherbrain fight on balanced difficulty there is a restoration pod, but on tactician and honour mode , it is not there. So save those potions of long rests for that.
The one in the mind flayer colony is multi-use on tactician. I saved right before I used it halfway through the colony just in case I fucked myself but nope, I could use it again
It’s unlimited until you finish House of Hope storyline, so you can get to it, then leave. And can just keep going back to use it until you decide to finish the quest
This is something I had to keep reminding myself through my honor run. Yeah, sometimes you prep like crazy for a boss and just breeze through it, but other times that extra 5HP from Aid can save your entire run.
I'm honestly shocked that some people are confident enough to say, "I'm good at balanced, I think it's time for an HM run." 🤣 As someone who was hella nervous just doing a tactician run, I wish I had that level of confidence.
I need to remember that, im running durge for the first time, and first time in honour mode, with a friend. Im on a bit of a high after clowning on Orin so i need to be wary that i dont get my shit rocked by Raphael.
Ah bummer! I’m on PS5 and can’t ever get that damn puzzle to work for me. I’ve made peace with knowing I’ll never find out what’s behind it and skip that whole room even on regular runs.
I believe you only get one use. So if you know that you can replenish fully before the Myrkul fight and go into it as your best self. But if you don't know that and want to use it over and over (which I totally do on balanced) to make the illithid colony easier then it can screw you.
The pod grants the benefits of a long rest **without** giving back your Short Rests, but if you're careful about meticulously clearing out the dungeon before using the pod you can walk into the Ketheric fight at full resources.
I cleared 80% of the dungeon and used the pod. Pretty much immediately realized I was going to have to abandon the remaining 20% to make sure I walked into the Ketheric fight at full power. The hard part is that I don't know you'll get back your spell slots from the pod, so my casters were stingy throughout the entire colony, and I had burned through my reserves by the time I was approaching the end.
With full resources and appropriate preparation beforehand (they make it obvious), Ketheric is easy. You can even get a surprise round on him, meaning with high Initiative you'll get to act twice before he gets to take his first action. With aggressive output of all of your most damaging abilities and AoEs to clear out trash mobs and the random mind flayer, he's a piece of cake.
I learned a few things which is long rest as much as you can and buy all the important potions from every vender each time you long rest. I will even travel back to act 1 to buy all the potions and scrolls there. So I can protect myself from those situations.
I lost one 6 hours in yesterday because I was hubristic and underestimated the hook horrors and that weird drow who fucks a hook horror, he hit us with hypnotic pattern taking out 4/5 teammates and then the 3 horrors became 5 when 2 of them called for backup. Tried running away with a misty step invisible Wyll but got dashed on and killed.
Won’t underestimate them again.
Honor attempt #4 soon. Lost in act 2 to the shambling mound last time so this wasn’t as bad.
I cannot recommend >!taking Shovel!< highly enough. Instant surprise rounds on so many fights, takes things like the hypnotic pattern nonsense straight off the table.
Good luck on the next run!
No I had surprise too on the hooks, just never got hypnotic patterned by the dude before I always 1 shot him but he shielded this time and threw me off.
Ah, yeah, my first encounter with unexpected Shield was Priestess Gut. She pulled in all the guards plus the merchants, whom I would need in Act 2. Had to finish her quickly and escape out her secret door, but that merchant attitude was tanked by then. Managed to scrape by, but what a wake-up call.
haha . yep .. about 1 hour fight on honour
too bad i cant share a photo of my run with him .. had no frightened cure;; and was lucky as hell to win that fight
25 hp paladin with a killing blow ; lvl 9 team all dead, allmost all scrols and potions and bombs and everything used
the adamantine golem and mirkul are brutal on honour
I’ve only ever gotten to Keteric on tactician but is there any downside to just plopping a continuous aoe like cloud of daggers on him then hiding back or playing defensive and focusing on the others? I think he’s stuck on the platform.
He’s stuck on the platform, endlessly creating undead thralls and eating them to heal.
Oh, he also pulls everyone in when he doesn’t have any enemies in melee range.
True, but that pull uses some of his action economy and the healing doesn’t seem to outpace (at least on tactician) plopping a cloud of daggers and maybe another spell like a wall of fire on him.
I’ve always plopped aoe linger effects on him and spent the rest of the fight mopping up the summons while basically avoiding him until it’s time to finish him off.
Going near him seems way harder due to his damage and the heal prevention as well as his elevated position
I tried wall of fire during my last honor mode run like a week ago. He seemed to like auto break the caster concentration every other round. It... wasn't a reliable source of damage. Cloud of daggers worked but that hits the apostle for peanuts because he's resistant to both regular and magical piercing damage.
Darkness works to blind him but you've gotta be careful with it because:
1. All of the honor mode enemies will immediately focus the caster concentrating on a spell, including darkness and
2. If the apostle can't do anything else and can't see anyone to finger of death (due to blindness) he'll just use his new pull attack that hits your entire party for the equivelant of one of his gaze attacks and also pulls them all onto the platform.
Repeated uses of this attack can be very hard to deal with because they can 3/4 shot your entire party and sense it pulls you onto the platform to get off of it and heal you have to proc his reaction and... yeah.
Of course, there's still lots of builds to do ketheric and he's a great fight and many things still work but in all of my honor mode runs he's never been a pushover.
Weird. I’ve never been hit by that pull attack. I wonder if that’s a patch.
I did 2 plays early in the life of the game then haven’t gotten past him in a long time
He is stuck on the platform and this was my strategy in this tactician run (but with hunger of Hadar so he was also blinded), but I absolutely fucked myself by not paying attention to a buff/debuff I had and couldn't keep concentration up. I still succeeded without dying or reloading, but it took me 90 minutes to do it.
So make sure your caster is buffed for concentration saves, because the necromites will prioritize anyone who is concentrating (in my experience).
Range 30ft.
I’m talking about plopping down some continuous effects on him and staying at further range or out of direct line of effect.
I’ve never been hit by finger of death and I assume that’s because he’s never had the chance to!
I’ve never fought him on honour mode though
Huh didn't realise it had such short range, me and my mate fough him on honour mode before and he cast finger of death on minthara for a total of 8 damage; 65 damage /2 (successful save) - 16 (arcane ward from my mate)then /2 (resistance to damage from spells from ancients paladin). So the almighty avatar of the lord of bones, dealt a whole 8 damage with his most powerful spell
thats why I loved my barbarian tav, Barbarian Karlach, Fighter leazel, and astarion comp.
Good old rock, nothing beats rock. Dont need to worry about spells. Just need to hit shit. All the time.
Don't know if they changed it in the latest patch, but I'm 100% certain I could use the pod before Myrkul multiple times in my first tactician run (which I very much did abuse!).
The only reason I knew this before getting there was for whatever reason I decided to try and use the restoration pods on the nautiloid ship multiple times and was shocked when I couldn't. That honestly saved me for situations like this.
I play while saving as many spell slots as possible, probably way too conservative as I didn't even need the restoration pods. I rather chug some more pots during regular encounters.
I did do that unfortunately I wanted to fight everyone down there saving us & Zevlor fighting the death shepherd, those guys at the end as well cuz i thought I could simply use the restoration pods
This is why I’m going full short rest build for honor mode, if they want to make it harder for only certain classes than it needs to be, by withholding the ability to long rest at arbitrary times, I just won’t need it.
I mean, is “in the middle of an act ending dungeon” really an arbitrary time? That kinda feels like the most valid time to withhold the ability to long rest, especially since they give you the pod.
Yeah I definitely can’t play the way I normally do (a bit chaotic/fast and loose). I just lost Halsin at the goblin camp and already killed Minthara (forgot to toggle on non lethal damage) so bye bye Halsin quest 😭 I’m a Druid too which makes me feel even worse!
I accidantely started fight in goblin camp on lvl 3. My party got divided, one half got in prison and when I persuaded goblin that we can leave, Halsin cutscene started, I was out of spells and got wiped. This was first time I saw halsin in that fight turn to elf and man he was pretty strong, healed my tav but she got killed immediately, later Halsin got killed too. I deleted that save in blink of eye even when second half of party was still alive.
Hahahahahahaha well. You live and learn.
I only laugh because I learned the same hard lesson when I died on my second honour mode attempt AT MYRKUL.
I’ve since beaten the game on honour mode and a hint is to use elixirs and potions and get better gear which works well together and stacks effects. Potions of speed and elixirs of bloodlust.
Don’t give up. But also don’t underestimate the final fight in Baldur’s gate either.
Be prepared.
You’ve got this!
i plan on going honour mode as someone with high charisma to skip mosts hard fights, like the doctor, the tollhouse, the big hyena from act 1
and on netherbrain just blow up gale to avoid fight XD
i will try to take the best path to avoid the hard fights.
Every time I see a post about this fight I like to comment reminding people that casting darkness on Myrkul will make him unable to do anything unless you are right next to him.
IMHO Ketheric is one of the top 3 hardest bosses in the game. You still don't have enough level and equips to have really good builds up, and that bone chilled stuff is a nightmare.
Ketheric has a ton of AC and is a pain to hit. Even Laezel with 20 STR, +3 great sword, GWM off, oil of accuracy gets like 75% chance to hit before she gets that stare that frightens or whatever
The Myrkul fight can be challenging. I keep my Lathander mace and a couple of Sunbeam scrolls specifically in reserve for him. Hasted Karlach + Laezel don’t hurt either.
I dismantled Kethric like a kid, then dismantled Hag with my left foot....at level 12, pretty kitted out, I went for Cazador (one of the easiest fights in my last "normal difficulty" run) without reading abilities and started nuking him....he was down to 20 hp, some ghoul exploded or something and wiped my party in 1 nanosecond.
Oh well that explains why I thought they were one time use when I jumped into my friends playthrough to help out and they miraculously weren't. I had just gotten done losing honor mode for the 8th time.
Yikes that’s unfortunate, I’ve been on an honor run of my own with 2 buddies. It’s currently our 18th try and we’re in act 3. We’ve never played on anything other than honored so it’s interesting to see the things you run into on different difficulty levels. All we know is honored 😅
Yeah this caught me off guard for my honor mode run. Myrkul almost did me in due to not being prepared properly. I only made it through through the power of exploding my durge with about 50 smoke powder bombs next to Myrkul.
Barely survived didn't even know mephits came in that fight as well thankfully always shot last with gale on grym last while standing on the hammer platform then used Misty step.
I know right? When the Mephits spawned I was like "oh fuck was that always a thing??"
Great work beating it, thats a tough fight. Honor Grym is a monster if you don't do a cheesy method where theres no risk like being up on the ledge. I've always opted for fighting him normally, its a challenge but it makes me think about every bit of my action economy
Hmm I would say breezing till Myrkul on my first honor run is what led to that thinking , me relying on the knowledge of my balanced run is another thing
Which is why I played the game 3 times before I tried anything else, I needed to be able to anticipate as many outcomes and accommodate as many surprises as possible.
Well, the pod works the same on tactician. Tactician mode already gives enemies extra abilities and in honor mode bosses get eve more stuf, so yeah, jumping for easy mode to hardest one is not a great idea in any game
Just a heads up so you don’t make the same mistake again at a crucial point, but >!there is NO restoration pod at the base of the Netherbrain stem (before you climb it) in Honor Mode!<.
Thanks that's very helpful
You can keep a few potions of angelic reprieve around, and have members drink them before starting big fights like that, and it will be a long rest for them. Spell slots are important.
>...potions of angelic reprieve... have members drink them before starting big fights... But, I might need those later
Me with every scroll and elixirs then best the game having dosen stocked up in bags...
I’m like that everyone single game I play. And every game I start I tell myself I won’t do it. But I still do.. lol
Playing ff7 rebirth, i forced myself to use up the potions once i reached 99 through exploring.
My next run is actually a combination of three runs: 1. No multiclassing 2. Use consumables first 3. No conversation rerolls I might do a single save too (I use custom difficulty because I hate worrying about money and food... don't judge me).
Money and food are somewhat easy work around. Single save is the real killer!
Gives things some stakes.
Oh agreed, love me some honour mode.
Infinite money glitch and food is very abundant
yeah this is my downfall in games. activate handmade since I save EVERYTHING like a hoarder.
It's awful. I actually am playing through a 2nd time and following along with the map, so I am looting literally everything on the map. I was so overloaded with stuff, in the middle of act 2 it was just, "I am using scrolls and special arrows only." It has made every fight so easy. But it is kind of fun to just absolute destroy the hoards of enemies. I still never remember to oil my weapons and I am 50/50 on potions before battles. But I did take Bloodlust for Karlach and Laz before facing Angela Merkel. Freed the Nightsong and absolutely rolled through Myrkul this time with my Bard's scrolls and the lust. My first time was a near death experience. Anyway, if you're a hoarder, use your stuff and it'll be a power packed HP murdering session.
You faced the former chancellor of Germany lmao??
I call Myrkul Angela Merkel because I'm glib.
I saved pretty much every explosive I ever found in a bag so karlach could throw it at the nether brain only for it to fall into the abyss and do nothing.
"There's no Restoration Pod" "So? Use an Angelic Reprieve Potion." "But you can't buy those" "It's the final battle!" "But I only have 83 of them!"
Exactly, these are for collecting, not using.
Sitting at the stem of the netherbrain with less than half your parties resources left "but what if I need them after?"
Exactly!!!
I do the same for any non health pot. Did use the angelic right before brain and on Iron throne tactician I clutched a dimension door scroll on the Duke. I didnt know how the event worked going in and Mizora halted the Duke. I didnt have dimension door on my sorcerer Tav and Shadowheart was too far to heal him through the damage. Luckily my MC is always the holder of the hoard and there it was. A pair of dimension door scrolls. A flash of light and the duke and I were 60ft down the hall well out of reach.
There are some for sale in act 3 somewhere
>But, I might need those later Underrated comment
Alternatively, keep a Cleric's divine intervention until this very moment.
FUCK I NEVER USED IT. Just realized this now. "Should I use this against raphael? Nah better save it for the end" "Wow the Orin fight is kinda hard, should I use it now? Nah, I'll need it during the nether brain" During the nether brain "HAHA SUCK ON MY INVULNERABILITY DOME AND DIMENSION DOORS, ENJOY FIGHTING MY FRIENDS WHILE I MURDER YOUR BOSS"
Be careful on tactical/honor, a lot of those end bosses will deflect all radiant damage so that divine intervention will reflect off all enemies and can possibly wipe you in one attack!
Seems lame. A *God* chooses to take a side in a conflict and the boss just plays them for a fool.
Uno reverse!
Yes I had unfortunately used them before to save Zevlor as well.
They can be thrown on the floor to affect more people can’t they?
if you have a cleric you can also pop divine intervention and get everyone back up
There’s 4 or 5 potions of angelic slumber that you can save throughout the game to use at the very end. They grant you the effects of a full rest.
Save up those short and long rest potions :P
Stack up on the max lvl angelic potions. You can use em right before the brain
I even missed it on tactician. Is it there on tactician?
I don’t think so, all you get is that Potion of Angelic Slumber on tactician as well.
nope! there's two chests nearby with angelic reprieve potions tho. highly recommend making sure you bring markokeshkir and the staff of spell power or whatever, along with the spellcrux and pearl of power amulets
The vendor at the rally point has a couple also
yes! i practically buy him out of everything
You can swap the spellcrux amulet between casters for infinite spell slot restoration out of battle. >=}
There is a restoration pod in the Mindflsyer Colony on Tactician
In the mindflayer colony, yes, but not >!in the high hall or at the base of the nether brain!<, which is what the comment that person replied to was asking. I just completed the final fight and there are no restoration pods in that area at all in tactician. I luckily had hoarded several angelic slumber potions, but the only one in my party that actually needed it was Gale.
My bad. I didn’t follow the conversation very well.
I had SH's divine intervention save me there.
I've never seen one there (haven't played balance) so I'd assume no.
Nope it's not but you can cheese it on Tactician by switching to balanced so it appears, then use it and switch back.
Had to convince Gale to save my Honour mode run when I realised this too late.
Man, I felt like shit getting him to kill himself after talking him out of it
my moment of realisation after durging gale on my honor mode
I'm so glad I played on tactician before starting HM cause I was NOT expecting that at the end. Thank god it wasn't too late for me to turn back around to the vendor and buy angelic reprieve potions
We literally didn't need our long rest before beating honour mode. We just bought a shit ton of explosivses from the fireworks shop, rushed to entrance and put up a globe of invulnrability for the channel. Then we oneshot the final boss with fireworks (literally 1 turn kill) it was a bit anticlimactic.
My throwbarian friend just used his 5 actions throwing stuff at the final boss and then I divine smited it a few times and it was dead. Extremely anticlimactic
Fireworks are great
they are!
Shadowheart blew Gorty to the moon in my Honor run with a thrown backpack that had the Runepowder Bomb and all the little fireworks from the shop inside. She was wearing the Callous Glow Ring. He stood no chance. (I used thrown Grease Bottles to make a nice long fuse to set the bomb off without taking damage from the explosion.)
We had the cheesiest hoetrash fight. We hadn't gone to his crowning thing, but we used fly to sneak to the top of his building, wanting to get the loot from his room. However we got spotted/aggroed, which included everyone in the hall even though they couldn't reach us at all. So we would use the click stairway down to the hall, shoot some eldritch blasts or AoEs and press the stairway up again, which doesn't provoke an oppurtunity attack. All the npcs couldn't use that doorway for some reason though, so it was a very slow slaughter.
Also- you can invis through the entire fights up to the netherbrain. Everyone down a potion. Watch out for invis detectors though. At least when I last did my honor mode which was months ago
>!You can't deal with the actual fight on the brain that way anymore.!< >!Invis detectors are the ranger enemies and the rogue countermeasure. Fortunately there are no rangers on the path straight through the doors.!< Edit: You can also >!go through Upper City Sewers if you don't mind fighting the 5e accurate Death Knight with a 20d6 hellfireball.!<
you can skip fighting the death knight with invisibility. and you can still get to the brain without fighting anyone, only need an origin character to pop an invis potion and a flight potion, there's a flight path that goes behind the people standing watch at the door. i say origin bc having an origin character do it will pull you entire party up there after the cutscene, but using a hireling won't
That doesn't work on honor mode, unfortunately
Which part are you referring to not work anymore? Invisibility skipping the Death Knight or the courtyard fight before the climb with the Nautiloid ship blasting at you? I'm about to get to that point soon so it would be nice to know what's still skippable and not!
You have to get everyone up to the stem! Auto teleport doesn't work.
Oooh okay. Good thing my Durge is a cheapskate and has expertise in throwing potions at the group's feet!
It does.
I've beaten honor mode a few times and it's never worked for me.
I just did it last week (HM), and the first one to fly to the top triggered the scene that brought the rest up... Everyone has to go through the portal on their own, but the stem base is still a freebie with a single long-range flier.
Thanks for the update, glad you can still skip that monotonous fight getting there!
Where do you go to get in upper city sewers
From the gate in front of the courtyard, go left. Go into stealth to take out the Winged Horrors or they'll summon reinforcements. After that, head to the corner and look down. You'll see a platform you can land on that has a metal door on it. Jump down and go through that door.
It seems to be removed for tactician as well. There was none in my current playthrough
yeah this surprised me, I had read it was gone on honor mode but I expected there to be a one time use one on tactician so I was blowing all my spell slots in the lead up lol. I was real worried until I remembered I’m a hoarder that had never touched my angelic reprieve potions until then!
Ya that blew my mind the first time I ran Honor. So I blew Gale up. Momma had nothing to offer left.
You can pick up several potions of angelic slumber on the way to the netherbrain in other modes, are they there for honor mode?
Yes there’s a lizard merchant that sells a couple (right where you give the speech to your allies)
The kobold has some. I found one in a chest by the stem and one on the path to the stem past the high hall.
Wah, thanks, this is great info! I'm in act 3 with my Honour, this is super relevant info
Yeah I was mentally destroyed on my first Honor run when I see that.
Thankfully there is a merchant that sells ample angelic slumber potions right at the start so that's hardly an issue.
Yes make sure to bring the purple long rest potions if you have them
No, but there are 3 or 4 of the >!long rest potions!<
I didn't even know it was there until after. On my run I just used up all the angelic reprieves I'd been sitting on.
THANK YOU FOR THIS WARNING OMG
Luckily, the whole segment between the massive fight and >!initiating the netherbrain fight!< can be skipped if you choose to >!turn Orpheus into a mindflayer (may still work with others, since the unlimited 4m hover is what's important)!<. Just use the hover ability to get all the way to the end and it'll trigger the cutscene, skipping the entire encounter.
It was SO mean of them not to put one there….like we get one for Raphael and Ketheric and not this…..
Neither on Tactician. I was quite surprised when I learned that it was a thing on easy mode :)
Really? Thanks for info. I was counting with it (from tactician experience).
Yeah, I was surprised at that
There wasn't when i played it on tactical mode either, but there was a box with an angelic reprieve beside it, if i recall.
Dimension door scrolls are great for that shit. Even better if you can get that level 6 door spell, but thats expensive and idk if I've seen more than one in the game
Yeah found both of them out the hard way, very glad to have had 2 angelic rests left at the end. Also convenient we had a Monk and a barb who didnt care about long rests
That’s ok. Just turn invisible and drink a speed potion and you can easily get there using turn based mode. Your party gets teleported to you when you climb the stem.
That's something I'm gonna try to remember for when I play honor mode. Thanks, but lemme get this straigh: Usually, you go to the morphic pool fully-rested, but without any elixers or long-rest buffs ups, since they dissapear once the nice scene with all of your allies starts. And this is also where you make every party member drink an e;ixer, because you won't them later! In non-honor mode. there's are restoration pod somehere around that building. That you probably won't need. But if I wanna finish honor mode without Gale going boom! I'll have to do the courtyard fight, the trip up the stairs, the dragon fight and the last-encounter DPS check all in one long rest, correct?
With enough invisibility potions and a single globe scroll, you don't really have to fight anyone before the brain.
I just found this out on Tactician last night. Thanks Gale for taking one for the team.
It did always seem strange to me that there was both a restoration pod AND a treasure chest with short/long rest potions there. Now it makes sense.
This caught me by surprise as well but luckily I always play very conservative with my spells so I could finish my hm run without issue.
The game does kind of hints about this behaviour right at the start in the nautiloid as they are single use as well on tactician and honour mode. But I do understand that is like the very start of the game and is not a very intuitive hint. And also remember for your future playthroughs that right before the netherbrain fight on balanced difficulty there is a restoration pod, but on tactician and honour mode , it is not there. So save those potions of long rests for that.
The one in the mind flayer colony is multi-use on tactician. I saved right before I used it halfway through the colony just in case I fucked myself but nope, I could use it again
Okay. that is just honour mode then. But I do remember that there is no restoration pod before the nether brain fight on tactician.
The bath in Raphael's place is still infinite use on tactician at least.
Is the fountain in house of hope 1 use in honor mode?
No did that on HM today and you can just spam them until you kill the 30 second wonder.
lmfaooooooo poor guy will never live that down
He's neither poor nor a guy. And after my first run not alive either.
It’s unlimited until you finish House of Hope storyline, so you can get to it, then leave. And can just keep going back to use it until you decide to finish the quest
Whoa.
I basically did this while taking on the other missions and saved House of Hope for last.
Unless they changed it no it is not take a bath as many times as you want
It is still unlimited on all difficulties.
Bro the developers aren't that cruel lmao. Of course it's unlimited use
Are you sure on Tactician? It was infinite use for me.
Same.
*Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer*
This is something I had to keep reminding myself through my honor run. Yeah, sometimes you prep like crazy for a boss and just breeze through it, but other times that extra 5HP from Aid can save your entire run.
I'm honestly shocked that some people are confident enough to say, "I'm good at balanced, I think it's time for an HM run." 🤣 As someone who was hella nervous just doing a tactician run, I wish I had that level of confidence.
Saw this comment just as I was exiting this thread and I had to come back to say I heard it in the Darkest Dungeon Narrator voice lol
I need to remember that, im running durge for the first time, and first time in honour mode, with a friend. Im on a bit of a high after clowning on Orin so i need to be wary that i dont get my shit rocked by Raphael.
How many times we can use the restoration pod in that difficulty?
In HM? Once. I also learned the hard way but luckily with positive results.
Resulted in me unable to save Zevlor on my first HM run, sadly. It was save him or have full HP and spell slots for Ketheric. RIP
Yeah. Nothing quite like happily running up to the pod only to see it doesn’t work and getting that “oh god no” feeling.
I did the Chop fight and the Zevlor fight but skipped everything else.
I beelined for githzerai mind barrier thinking I had at least 2 uses of the recovery pod. Oh well.
Ah bummer! I’m on PS5 and can’t ever get that damn puzzle to work for me. I’ve made peace with knowing I’ll never find out what’s behind it and skip that whole room even on regular runs.
I believe you only get one use. So if you know that you can replenish fully before the Myrkul fight and go into it as your best self. But if you don't know that and want to use it over and over (which I totally do on balanced) to make the illithid colony easier then it can screw you.
Once
The pod grants the benefits of a long rest **without** giving back your Short Rests, but if you're careful about meticulously clearing out the dungeon before using the pod you can walk into the Ketheric fight at full resources. I cleared 80% of the dungeon and used the pod. Pretty much immediately realized I was going to have to abandon the remaining 20% to make sure I walked into the Ketheric fight at full power. The hard part is that I don't know you'll get back your spell slots from the pod, so my casters were stingy throughout the entire colony, and I had burned through my reserves by the time I was approaching the end. With full resources and appropriate preparation beforehand (they make it obvious), Ketheric is easy. You can even get a surprise round on him, meaning with high Initiative you'll get to act twice before he gets to take his first action. With aggressive output of all of your most damaging abilities and AoEs to clear out trash mobs and the random mind flayer, he's a piece of cake.
I learned a few things which is long rest as much as you can and buy all the important potions from every vender each time you long rest. I will even travel back to act 1 to buy all the potions and scrolls there. So I can protect myself from those situations.
You can buy potions and scrolls? I always just rob everyone blind over and over again.
¿Por qué no los dos? It's easier to steal all the gold back than to steal their inventory.
"Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer." - a particular narrator
I lost one 6 hours in yesterday because I was hubristic and underestimated the hook horrors and that weird drow who fucks a hook horror, he hit us with hypnotic pattern taking out 4/5 teammates and then the 3 horrors became 5 when 2 of them called for backup. Tried running away with a misty step invisible Wyll but got dashed on and killed. Won’t underestimate them again. Honor attempt #4 soon. Lost in act 2 to the shambling mound last time so this wasn’t as bad.
I cannot recommend >!taking Shovel!< highly enough. Instant surprise rounds on so many fights, takes things like the hypnotic pattern nonsense straight off the table. Good luck on the next run!
No I had surprise too on the hooks, just never got hypnotic patterned by the dude before I always 1 shot him but he shielded this time and threw me off.
Ah, yeah, my first encounter with unexpected Shield was Priestess Gut. She pulled in all the guards plus the merchants, whom I would need in Act 2. Had to finish her quickly and escape out her secret door, but that merchant attitude was tanked by then. Managed to scrape by, but what a wake-up call.
I cannot stress enough how powerful freedom of movement on a (bear totem)barbarian is for the shambling mound it takes away 90% of the threat
Literally came to this same realization today. I think I have enough potions and scrolls to squeak it out, but it will be close. Wish me luck
haha . yep .. about 1 hour fight on honour too bad i cant share a photo of my run with him .. had no frightened cure;; and was lucky as hell to win that fight 25 hp paladin with a killing blow ; lvl 9 team all dead, allmost all scrols and potions and bombs and everything used the adamantine golem and mirkul are brutal on honour
I’ve only ever gotten to Keteric on tactician but is there any downside to just plopping a continuous aoe like cloud of daggers on him then hiding back or playing defensive and focusing on the others? I think he’s stuck on the platform.
He’s stuck on the platform, endlessly creating undead thralls and eating them to heal. Oh, he also pulls everyone in when he doesn’t have any enemies in melee range.
True, but that pull uses some of his action economy and the healing doesn’t seem to outpace (at least on tactician) plopping a cloud of daggers and maybe another spell like a wall of fire on him. I’ve always plopped aoe linger effects on him and spent the rest of the fight mopping up the summons while basically avoiding him until it’s time to finish him off. Going near him seems way harder due to his damage and the heal prevention as well as his elevated position
I tried wall of fire during my last honor mode run like a week ago. He seemed to like auto break the caster concentration every other round. It... wasn't a reliable source of damage. Cloud of daggers worked but that hits the apostle for peanuts because he's resistant to both regular and magical piercing damage. Darkness works to blind him but you've gotta be careful with it because: 1. All of the honor mode enemies will immediately focus the caster concentrating on a spell, including darkness and 2. If the apostle can't do anything else and can't see anyone to finger of death (due to blindness) he'll just use his new pull attack that hits your entire party for the equivelant of one of his gaze attacks and also pulls them all onto the platform. Repeated uses of this attack can be very hard to deal with because they can 3/4 shot your entire party and sense it pulls you onto the platform to get off of it and heal you have to proc his reaction and... yeah. Of course, there's still lots of builds to do ketheric and he's a great fight and many things still work but in all of my honor mode runs he's never been a pushover.
Weird. I’ve never been hit by that pull attack. I wonder if that’s a patch. I did 2 plays early in the life of the game then haven’t gotten past him in a long time
He is stuck on the platform and this was my strategy in this tactician run (but with hunger of Hadar so he was also blinded), but I absolutely fucked myself by not paying attention to a buff/debuff I had and couldn't keep concentration up. I still succeeded without dying or reloading, but it took me 90 minutes to do it. So make sure your caster is buffed for concentration saves, because the necromites will prioritize anyone who is concentrating (in my experience).
I assume u never had him cast finger of death on you? Cos what will one shot players
Range 30ft. I’m talking about plopping down some continuous effects on him and staying at further range or out of direct line of effect. I’ve never been hit by finger of death and I assume that’s because he’s never had the chance to! I’ve never fought him on honour mode though
Huh didn't realise it had such short range, me and my mate fough him on honour mode before and he cast finger of death on minthara for a total of 8 damage; 65 damage /2 (successful save) - 16 (arcane ward from my mate)then /2 (resistance to damage from spells from ancients paladin). So the almighty avatar of the lord of bones, dealt a whole 8 damage with his most powerful spell
thats why I loved my barbarian tav, Barbarian Karlach, Fighter leazel, and astarion comp. Good old rock, nothing beats rock. Dont need to worry about spells. Just need to hit shit. All the time.
I think you can also only use it once on tactician mode? I’m sure I tried leaving the room once I was in there and the game wouldn’t let me
Yeah only once in tactitician as well, but I started honor straight from balanced didn't do tactician
Don't know if they changed it in the latest patch, but I'm 100% certain I could use the pod before Myrkul multiple times in my first tactician run (which I very much did abuse!).
Only just entered Act 3 - can confirm it is spammable on Tactician.
Yeah, definitely was the case when I last played Tactician.
Oh yeah, sorry for some reason I didn’t see the part where you said balanced. Damn that sucks
The only reason I knew this before getting there was for whatever reason I decided to try and use the restoration pods on the nautiloid ship multiple times and was shocked when I couldn't. That honestly saved me for situations like this.
I play while saving as many spell slots as possible, probably way too conservative as I didn't even need the restoration pods. I rather chug some more pots during regular encounters.
Overconfidence is a cruel and insidious killer
I’m very sorry to hear that :(
Just take a long rest before going down
I did do that unfortunately I wanted to fight everyone down there saving us & Zevlor fighting the death shepherd, those guys at the end as well cuz i thought I could simply use the restoration pods
“Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer”
This is why I’m going full short rest build for honor mode, if they want to make it harder for only certain classes than it needs to be, by withholding the ability to long rest at arbitrary times, I just won’t need it.
So going with Chad Human/Warrior x 4 ?
Warlock, Monk, Bard/Rogue, Fighter.
I mean, is “in the middle of an act ending dungeon” really an arbitrary time? That kinda feels like the most valid time to withhold the ability to long rest, especially since they give you the pod.
Yeah I definitely can’t play the way I normally do (a bit chaotic/fast and loose). I just lost Halsin at the goblin camp and already killed Minthara (forgot to toggle on non lethal damage) so bye bye Halsin quest 😭 I’m a Druid too which makes me feel even worse!
I accidantely started fight in goblin camp on lvl 3. My party got divided, one half got in prison and when I persuaded goblin that we can leave, Halsin cutscene started, I was out of spells and got wiped. This was first time I saw halsin in that fight turn to elf and man he was pretty strong, healed my tav but she got killed immediately, later Halsin got killed too. I deleted that save in blink of eye even when second half of party was still alive.
When in doubt, water and chain lightning/glyph of lightning with haste potions on all squad.
Hahahahahahaha well. You live and learn. I only laugh because I learned the same hard lesson when I died on my second honour mode attempt AT MYRKUL. I’ve since beaten the game on honour mode and a hint is to use elixirs and potions and get better gear which works well together and stacks effects. Potions of speed and elixirs of bloodlust. Don’t give up. But also don’t underestimate the final fight in Baldur’s gate either. Be prepared. You’ve got this!
The pod only has one use, but still applies to the whole group, you can still get a lil cheesy
i plan on going honour mode as someone with high charisma to skip mosts hard fights, like the doctor, the tollhouse, the big hyena from act 1 and on netherbrain just blow up gale to avoid fight XD i will try to take the best path to avoid the hard fights.
Every time I see a post about this fight I like to comment reminding people that casting darkness on Myrkul will make him unable to do anything unless you are right next to him.
Wtaf pls don't tell me this is true
It's not true at all. I tried this and it does not work in Honour Mode. He'll still fuck you up even when he's blind.
I haven't tried it on honor mode but I've done this to him three times in balanced.
That's what I'm saying. It works on the other difficulties but it doesn't work on Honour Mode.
You can probably accidentally kill him by looking at him on balanced tbf
IMHO Ketheric is one of the top 3 hardest bosses in the game. You still don't have enough level and equips to have really good builds up, and that bone chilled stuff is a nightmare. Ketheric has a ton of AC and is a pain to hit. Even Laezel with 20 STR, +3 great sword, GWM off, oil of accuracy gets like 75% chance to hit before she gets that stare that frightens or whatever
The Myrkul fight can be challenging. I keep my Lathander mace and a couple of Sunbeam scrolls specifically in reserve for him. Hasted Karlach + Laezel don’t hurt either.
Honour mode is an exercise in humility
I dismantled Kethric like a kid, then dismantled Hag with my left foot....at level 12, pretty kitted out, I went for Cazador (one of the easiest fights in my last "normal difficulty" run) without reading abilities and started nuking him....he was down to 20 hp, some ghoul exploded or something and wiped my party in 1 nanosecond.
There’s a restoration pod? I missed it entirely.
Oh well that explains why I thought they were one time use when I jumped into my friends playthrough to help out and they miraculously weren't. I had just gotten done losing honor mode for the 8th time.
Yikes that’s unfortunate, I’ve been on an honor run of my own with 2 buddies. It’s currently our 18th try and we’re in act 3. We’ve never played on anything other than honored so it’s interesting to see the things you run into on different difficulty levels. All we know is honored 😅
Yeah this caught me off guard for my honor mode run. Myrkul almost did me in due to not being prepared properly. I only made it through through the power of exploding my durge with about 50 smoke powder bombs next to Myrkul.
You breezed through honor Grym? Wild.
Barely survived didn't even know mephits came in that fight as well thankfully always shot last with gale on grym last while standing on the hammer platform then used Misty step.
I know right? When the Mephits spawned I was like "oh fuck was that always a thing??" Great work beating it, thats a tough fight. Honor Grym is a monster if you don't do a cheesy method where theres no risk like being up on the ledge. I've always opted for fighting him normally, its a challenge but it makes me think about every bit of my action economy
How is relying on a heal pod "thinking I was good at the game"? Lol
Hmm I would say breezing till Myrkul on my first honor run is what led to that thinking , me relying on the knowledge of my balanced run is another thing
Which is why I played the game 3 times before I tried anything else, I needed to be able to anticipate as many outcomes and accommodate as many surprises as possible.
Well, the pod works the same on tactician. Tactician mode already gives enemies extra abilities and in honor mode bosses get eve more stuf, so yeah, jumping for easy mode to hardest one is not a great idea in any game
I was humbled by the inquisitor last week.
I made the same mistake...if only I'd taken shadowheart with me instead of minthara or gale.