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blackjackkent · 2 months

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FINAL Boss Battle Report!

Our buddy Baldy has 140 hit points and many friends, though not as many as I have. The dragon behind him is much more scary; it has 400. It's dominated by the brain itself, not by anyone on the field that I can kill, unfortunately, and its presence is definitely freaking Hector out something fierce.

Also on the field are four other mind flayers, the three dream guardians at 80HP apiece, and the Crown itself, which leads me to believe this is it, the big kahuna fight, and it's time to pull out all the stops.

The Crown has no hit points but will presumably do unpleasant things when its turn comes around.

Quick look at the other dream guardians with flycam, just because I can.

This one is Hector's obviously, the one we saw during the first half of the game.

These are the other two; I'm assuming if we had another tadpoled companion instead of Jaheira, there would be a fourth on the field? Wonder which of these is Karlach's and which is Lae'zel's. XD And why are neither of them githyanki. It feels like there are lore implications here.

(I haven't done an origin run - are these randomized or are they ones you get in Karlach and Lae'zel origin?)

Anyway. We have this notification on the side of the screen which usually indicates we just need to survive:

I'm doing a hard save at the start of the fight because it feels like it'd be really easy for me to fuck this up - particularly because it is CRITICALLY important that Buddy survives to the epilogue. And, after some consideration, I've decided everyone's first action is going to be spent summoning more friends onto the field.

So we kick off with Aylin, Yurgir, and Buddy exploding onto the field. Tragically, the dragon is immune to fire damage so this is probably not the right moment for Rolan's firestorm, so after some consideration and for roleplay reasons, I have Jaheira summon the Harpers as our fourth summon for the round.

As soon as our first summon hits the field, a bunch of tentacles spring up in response, which is unfair. This seems to happen just in general in response to movement around the brain; luckily they're only about 30hp each and can mostly be removed by Orpheus's black hole attack.

I get full control over the big summons, unlike the trash mob ones which ran on their own recognizance; this is a lot of new characters to learn to deal with on the fly.

After summoning Aylin, Lae'zel manages to almost completely eliminate one of the dream guardians on her first turn.

"Time to bite, my owlbear friend!" Hector says as he summons Buddy, which is adorable.

Aylin is (unsurprisingly) a paladin, so lots of smiting. I think there's probably more about to happen when these four turns are up so we need to be careful not to use everything up too fast though. She removes Hector's dream guardian from the field.

At this point the game crashed so I got to start over and took the opportunity to have Jaheira cast Hero's Feast on everyone before we come up.

Knowing what I know, and realizing that my companions shout about it as soon as the fight starts, I decide to keep everyone in place for the most part to reduce the number of tentacles and immediately kick off Orpheus's netherstone ability:

OK on closer inspection we need to get Orpheus CLOSE to the crown in order to do this. And I guess the idea is we need to do it within four turns before the nautiloid shows up?

Buddy is the coolest:

Overall this round is going a lot better, although it's a bit scary when the Emperor yeets itself all the way across the field and stuns half the crowd in one go.

Once again, the good guys are all frontloaded which makes the long string of enemy attacks very disheartening.

Karlach and Lae'zel wreck the Emperor's whole world, which is very satisfying to watch:

Orpheus's black hole is continuing to be super useful against all the tentacles that pop up whenever we move around.

Aylin goes down - and immediately pops right back up again because she is a sexy motherfucker.

Ho!

At this point I have everyone open up on the dragon while Orpheus starts booking it towards the Crown. If we can get rid of it, then all is left is the other mind flayers on the platform surrounding the brain and hopefully we can just turtle up around Orpheus and protect him while he works.

Victory on the Dragon! It had the most elaborate death animation too.

Orpheus reaches the Crown! This needs to channel for a whole round so fingers crossed.

"How long are you going to keep this up for?" the remaining dream guardian screams around her 9 remaining hit points. Girl, I don't know, you got another appointment somewhere?

Orpheus gets IMMEDIATELY stunned by a mind blast and loses concentration; we'll try again next round.

All of the illithids can cast Shield which is making them VERY challenging to hit. And I just realized we've reached the last turn before the nautiloid shows up. O.o:

Oh boy.

Unsurprisingly this means now we're getting aerial attacks in addition to everything else. But almost all of the illithids are dead at this point. Just need to keep Orpheus safe for one round!

Hector slips in a bit of ice in the middle of an aerial attack target, whoops D:

Orpheus kicks off the compulsion again. All of the illithids are dead. One of the dream guardians is the last survivor, with two hit points.

Aerial attack goes off, does not kill Hector! And we're now only friends between us and Orpheus so I think we've got this in the bag! Everyone together on the platform for the moment of triumph.

The last remaining Harper summon shoots the last dream guardian for her last two HP. Orpheus completes the summon. The screen shakes, then fades to white...

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle #holy shit what a long fight #and it's not over yet!

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