So what to do about Hell Irenicus, hmm?

[Guest Glabro]

After trying for most of the night, I have to conclude that there's something terrible about Hell Irenicus / Slayer. Despite me stripping him of his spells, and having a plethora of protections, somehow the Slayer keeps besting me. I am one member short (Minsc) from the Selfishness Trial, but the main problem is that the Slayer seems to be able to do either 50 damage per strike, or over 100 on my main character. The text doesn't say "Slayer did x..." just "Charname: Damage Taken (50).

 

Needless to say, this is a bit frustrating - any tips on what's going on and what I should do? Obviously the dispels and remove magics are flying about from my side, as well as spellstrike etc...but still he has the power to do such damage naturally.

[Guest Guest]

After trying for most of the night, I have to conclude that there's something terrible about Hell Irenicus / Slayer. Despite me stripping him of his spells, and having a plethora of protections, somehow the Slayer keeps besting me. I am one member short (Minsc) from the Selfishness Trial, but the main problem is that the Slayer seems to be able to do either 50 damage per strike, or over 100 on my main character. The text doesn't say "Slayer did x..." just "Charname: Damage Taken (50).

 

Needless to say, this is a bit frustrating - any tips on what's going on and what I should do? Obviously the dispels and remove magics are flying about from my side, as well as spellstrike etc...but still he has the power to do such damage naturally.

To defeat him i had to make sure :

- I survived the timestops (most annoying part of the fight)

- I dispelled his protections

- I dispelled his black blade of disaster

- I killed the 4 demons with him

Once you've killed the demons and his protections, you "just" need to melee him to death using your melee character, and breach him everytimes he casts protection from magic weapons.

He'll be hitting for 30 damage with 4 attacks per round w/o blade of disaster anyway, so get ready for some heavy damage. You just *have* to dispell it to prevent the level drain / desintegrate / 20hp heal effect.

[Guest Glabro]

To defeat him i had to make sure :

- I survived the timestops (most annoying part of the fight)

- I dispelled his protections

- I dispelled his black blade of disaster

- I killed the 4 demons with him

Once you've killed the demons and his protections, you "just" need to melee him to death using your melee character, and breach him everytimes he casts protection from magic weapons.

He'll be hitting for 30 damage with 4 attacks per round w/o blade of disaster anyway, so get ready for some heavy damage. You just *have* to dispell it to prevent the level drain / desintegrate / 20hp heal effect.

 

 

Hmm. So no idea what causes the "damage taken: 50" on my main?

 

The problem might be that he avoids my dispels often because after my timestop, he timestops and moves away from the effects of the spells - and can't be targeted himself because of improved invisibility or something.

I need to get rid of that invisibility somehow before I unleash my barrage of dispels, I guess.

 

Level drain...yes, that contributes to the quick kills, surely.

 

Killing the demons? Well, it should be easy enough to kill them with a breach or two (the two fire-covered ones, Baalors, I think - the Glabrezus are chaff anyway).

[Guest Glabro]

Sure enough, I defeated him on my first attempt today. The key was moving very close to the Slayer during my timestops and casting my spells from there.

[berelinde]

Glad that worked. It must be a relief.

 

One playthrough I had, Irenicus was absorbing damage too fast for his script to acknowlege that he was dead, so he never died. I'd hit him with disintegration spells, Ali-Whoosit's Horrid Wilting, whatever, and he'd just stand there. He wasn't attacking, but he was basically too fried to die.

 

The solution was to attack him with fewer characters.

[DrAzTiK]

Personnally I use a lot of web (in minor sequençeur) / You can immobilize all demons in one second by this way .It is also possible to immobilize irenicus if you can move out his globe of invulnerability.

 

And yes, time stop is so annoying... I don't know David opinion but I really think a component to remove this stupid spell of the game could be interessing...

[DarkWon]

Hmm. So no idea what causes the "damage taken: 50" on my main?

 

Are you talking about the damage you take when in Slayer form maybe? it always happens when you are slayer...at least for me anyway. I think it gets increasingly bigger like 25, 50, 100 until you die

[DavidW]

Personnally I use a lot of web (in minor sequençeur) / You can immobilize all demons in one second by this way .It is also possible to immobilize irenicus if you can move out his globe of invulnerability.

 

And yes, time stop is so annoying... I don't know David opinion but I really think a component to remove this stupid spell of the game could be interessing...

 

Not going to happen, sorry, because (a) I like timestop, so I don't want to get rid of it altogether, and (b) it's too integrated into various scripts to make it optional (at least, not without way too much work).

 

With Hell Irenicus, to be honest I tend to use sacrifice strategies to survive his timestop. Put someone tough near him, and be relaxed about resurrecting them.

[Aranthys]

Personnally I use a lot of web (in minor sequençeur) / You can immobilize all demons in one second by this way .It is also possible to immobilize irenicus if you can move out his globe of invulnerability.

 

And yes, time stop is so annoying... I don't know David opinion but I really think a component to remove this stupid spell of the game could be interessing...

 

Not going to happen, sorry, because (a) I like timestop, so I don't want to get rid of it altogether, and (b) it's too integrated into various scripts to make it optional (at least, not without way too much work).

 

With Hell Irenicus, to be honest I tend to use sacrifice strategies to survive his timestop. Put someone tough near him, and be relaxed about resurrecting them.

I use limited Wish to trigger 3 kelben whips on his face right at the start.

Then I use limited wish for a timestop to dispell his Black Blade of Disaster.

 

I use summons as fodder at the beginning to prevent dying from the one or two first Timestops....

 

About timestop, it should at least have a downside, like setting attacks to 1/round for its duration.

[DavidW]

About timestop, it should at least have a downside, like setting attacks to 1/round for its duration.

 

 

Well, to be honest it's not really what the spell is designed for. I try not to overuse it (I think Irenicus and Melissan are the only people who do, and Melissan only does because I'm taking over vanilla-game behaviour) but it's fun to do these things every once in a long while.

[Ardanis]

I've beaten him last night, took me 5-6 reloads, and honestly I think I just was lucky. One time I thought I could finish them off for good, even while 2/3 of my party laid dead, but the last Balor managed to vorpal hit me.

 

Prior the battle I made 3 Skeleton Warroirs (useless for damage, but a decent meat shield), put Mordy into CC and SR's Malison+Disintegrate into Spell Trigger.

Hit the pause, called skellies back from where they were blown away to, Triggered the nearest Balor and had PC to use one of two remaining Timestop scrolls. Timora was on my side, Balor failed both MR and save, took 116 damage and blasted everything around, interrupting JI' Timestop casting along the way. Next second PC finished his scroll and proceeded to hack another Balor with Soul Reaver +4, 24 STR and Imp Haste. The second one went down.

 

Somehow I disposed of Glabrezu, survived JI's 2nd attempt to Timestop (nothing thrilling here, Korgan was just to hard to die and PC was full of Stoneskin, don't remember who took the beating in this reload). Planetar didn't really stand a chance against combined efforts of Korgan, PC and Haer, so did the last demon. After that I SpellStruck JI off and swarmed him with skellies, another Mordy and Korgan. Lower Resistance, Pierce Magic to shut the fresh Spell Deflection, then Disintegrates (bastard made saves against all 4 of them!), Abi-Dalzims and Magic Missiles. Voila, he's dead.

 

My party was ~3100k XP, the only HLA I made use of was Korgan's Hardiness.

[patlu]

If you're not one of those people who tries to avoid using HLA's during SoA (I know I'm not, heheh), I've found that Critical Strike + improved haste works wonders against Slayer Jon. Guess the slayer form doesn't have a helmet! I had a dual-wielding cleric/ranger doing 50+ damage per hit 7 times a round. Korgan + unnerfed grandmastery would be even nastier.

 

Also, if you have a mage who has improved alacrity you should be able to spell thrust, true sight, breach, triple lower resist, double ruby ray, magic missile before irenicus gets his first timestop off. Like some other people here, i find opponents' timestops to be annoying. Confession: I've actually never dealt with Irenicus's timestop--if he gets it off I just reload .