How do i beat the lich in the bridge district?

[roshan]

Hi - at the start of combat, the lich has:

 

Shield

Mirror Image

Fireshield Blue

Improved Invisibility

Spell Trap

Stoneskin

Protection from Fire

Protection from Acid

Protection from Magical Energy

Spell Shield

 

Then right away he has a chain contingency that gives him:

Protection from Magical Weapons

Protection from the Elements

Immunity: Abjuration

 

 

How do I get around this?????

[DavidW]

Use spells like Ruby Ray of Reversal to take down his magical defences, then use Breach so you can hurt him.

 

[freddie]

Disclaimer: writing this from memory, so feel free to address any inaccuracies.

 

Expanding on that answer a bit since it took me quite some time to fully get to grips with the magic system in BG2. You can deduce much of this from reading the spell descriptions btw.

 

Generally, the way you want to go about things is by asking yourself these questions:

 

1. Is the enemy using Immunity: Abjuration? They almost always do so this step can be skipped. If they are not, you can use dispel magic and remove magic on him since they are abjuration spells. If the dispel is successful most defensive buffs get removed excluding spell turning and spell trap, and possible the lower versions of those as well. Because of this, Immunity: Abjuration is the most important spell for both you and the enemy to keep up.

 

2. Is the enemy using Spell Shield? This is very important to check in the combat log because some do and some don't. Just looking at the character isn't enough since it's the same graphics as spell turning and such spells (white disc at their feet) Spell Shield always stops one anti magic attack and gets consumed in the process. It also protects against Breach, but I don't remember if Breach consumes it. Anti magic spells are Spell Thrust, Secret Word, Warding Whip, Ruby Ray, Spellstrike, in increasing order of power. You can use any of those attacks to remove the Spell Shield, but if you are playing smart, you use one of the cheaper ones, Spell Thrust or Secret Word to save the more powerful spells for when the Spell Shield is gone.

 

3. In the unmodded game I'm pretty sure that Spell Shield is the only thing that protects against Breach except for being Improved Invisible. So there I guess you would just remove the Spell Shield, make sure he wasn't invisible by having True Sight running, and then just use Breach and then just kill the wizard. Unless he was using Immunity:Divination as well which breaks the game kind of, which is why this is changed in SCSII. In SCSII there are additional protections against Breach. This is documented in the ReadMe, but basically, all the spell deflection/turning/trap spells don't allow Breach to go through. Immunity: Abjuration also protects against Breach, I think, but don't quote me on that.

 

4. So, when you've destroyed his Spell Shield the next question you need to ask yourself is: how many important spell protections is he using and what level are those spells? There are 3 levels to your own antimagic: spell thrust (removes lvl 5), secret word and warding whip (removes to lvl 8), Ruby Ray and Spellstrike (removes everything, but in different ways). Since there is only 1 protection that is higher than lvl 8, Spelltrap a level 9 spell, you can use Secret Word and Warding Whip against all mages that don't use Spell Trap. Once you've figured for example that the enemy is using Spell Turning (a lvl 7 spell) and Immunity: Abjuration (a lvl 5 spell), you can cast 1 spell thrust to remove Immunity: Abjuration, and 1 secret word to remove Spell Turning. You can also use any other combination of antimagic spells. Warding Whip is special because it removes 1 spell each round for 3 rounds without you needing to do anything besides waiting. So you could cast 1 warding whip, and wait for it to remove both Immunity: Abjuration and Spell Turning. Note: warding whip gets neutralized by Spell Shield and if it is, it doesn't remove anything at all the next rounds.

 

Alternatively, you could just remove Immunity: Abjuration with a Spell Thrust and attempt to dispel the enemy since Spell Turning won't stop dispels. The benefit to this is that you can do this quicker or cheaper if you have an Inquisitor for example that can instant cast dispels, but the downside is that it isn't always successful. Dispels depend on the level of the dispeller and the level of the person being dispelled. It's a 50% chance I think if both are the same level. If you are much higher level the dispel is almost always successful, which is why SCSII suggests to reduce the power of the Inquisitor's dispel. If the dispel is successful it will remove all those annoying buffs that makes it hard to kill him, but if it fails you've wasted a round where you could have just used something with 100% success rate.

 

5. Anyway, once everything that protects against Breach is gone, use Breach. Breach will remove pretty much every defensive buff from someone in one go. If Breach is successful you will hear a distinct sound and a small animation on the enemy. If you didn't hear and see this, you've probably forgotten to remove something. Once breached, just chop him up or kill him with spells if he isn't innately immune to those. When Breached most wizards will use contingencies (these are basically spells that allow you to instantly cast spells, you have them too), to get defences back up. If this happens, repeat the process until he or she can't keep up anymore.

 

What makes SCSII's magic system so neat is that you actually need to pay attention to these things and can't just Breach everything whenever.