How do you kill OP shadows in the Lighthouse?

[Rafkos]

I find it nearly impossible, my party dies everytime I try to walk through this damn door. Any ideas?

[zimcub]

they are weak to fire.

[Rafkos]

I have tried everything, fire too. 

[TheUsernamelessOne]

It's funny, I was just about to post about how I hate the spirit-type enemies. Shades, spirits, specters, phantoms, whatever, they're all utterly obnoxious in about ten different ways.

 

My first playthrough, they kept stunlocking my party to death; alternatively my Chanter would summon a phantom and it would solo the encounter by stunlocking the enemies to death, and that was every fight. My current playthrough, the mob of spirits in the lighthouse spam ranged icicles to murder my Cipher in the first two seconds of combat before teleporting around the front-liners and murdering everyone in the back row. My plan to counter this currently is to use Slicken and Mind Binding to make them trip and fall down and paralyze their muscles. Because apparently disembodied spirits have legs and muscles(?).

 

Usually in D&D clerics and paladins are the anti-undead specialists, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Pillars of Eternity.

[sparklecat]

What level are you and how many companions, to start?

 

I just cleared out the lighthouse on hard with 4 companions at level... 5, I believe, so it's definitely possible.  Up one floor I used my priest to put a shock glyph thing at the room's chokepoint and tossed a fireball in with my wizard to open, which softened them all up nicely by the time they reached me.  Other than that, it just took a fair bit of buffing and healing with my priest, and accepting that my wizard was going to be out of the fight fairly early.

[Rafkos]

Ok, here's what I did to kill them

gather your party into a tight formation so those douchebags won't kill your casters inside.  Initiate encounter with your pet/useless character and cast some DPS buffs with your priest. Kill those bustards with fire spells (druid or mage). This fight took me about 5 mins, at the end only 2 my tanks were still alive.

[Lathuc]

I had problems with spirits early on then suddenly at lvl 7 ish (which is the lvl I was at doing that quest) they suddenly just sort of die to me no idea why, later I enchanted some of my gear with spirit slaying and that made them even easier

[TheUsernamelessOne]

Ok, here's what I did to kill them

gather your party into a tight formation so those douchebags won't kill your casters inside.  Initiate encounter with your pet/useless character and cast some DPS buffs with your priest. Kill those bustards with fire spells (druid or mage). This fight took me about 5 mins, at the end only 2 my tanks were still alive.

 

I actually ended up using a more or less similar strategy, with similar results. They eventually killed my Cipher and Wizard with the ranged icicles of course, but spamming mind crush, burning hands, and fireball did the trick. The rest of the party sort of stood around mostly eating hits to the face and missing, then they managed to finish off the last few hit points on the ones that survived the inferno.

 

Then I got the Horn of Moderation and it broke my Cipher so I have to wait for a patch to see if I can even continue my playthrough or if I have to start all over again.

[Kaldurenik]

Go to any kind of corner / choke point. The first floor can be hard and the last floor also.

If you go to the top then head down in the south area. Next to the wall there are some barrels / boxes. You can stand there and then you will have a decent choke point. 

[Jay Peg]

Hard fight even on lower difficulties.

 

My method was as follows

 

1. 3 Melee characters-1 Fighter, 1 Paladin, 1 Bard Guy; 3 Casters -1 Cipher (me), 1 Wizard, 1 Priest

2. Close formation with a melee on 3 sides and a wall at the back.

3. Potions at the ready, rest in the Inn before hand and eat some food.

4. Place a trap if you have one.

5.Use one of your melee to trigger the fight then run back to formation without getting engaged.

6. The spirits will try to take out your cipher as they are weak to mind attacks; so your priests job is to stay next to the cipher at all times.

7. Get cipher to dominate one of the purple spirits

8.When bard is ready summon skeletons as fodder to block holes in your formation.

9.Buff everything

10.Try create a front line and use your wizard to to weaken them with disabling spells on this front line.

 

They key in this battle is controlling the battlefield, never letting the spirits at your casters, don't let your melee get bogged down move them back to protect your casters as needed. Save your knockdowns etc to disengage from your casters, especially any Ciphers - they are strong against spirits and will be prime targets.

[termokanden]

As usual in this type of game, some designer delighted in spawning enemies around your party to ruin your position. Remember how BG2 liked to spawn level-drainers around your characters so you couldn't properly guard against it?

 

Yeah so I've been trying this fight 5 or 6 times now at level 5 and I think I'll just come back later. Shadows are ridiculously OP. Sometimes they start the fight by all firing straight at my cipher so I die before I can do anything.

 

It's funny, most fights are easy, but once in a while there's a really crazy group of enemies like this.

 

They key in this battle is controlling the battlefield, never letting the spirits at your casters, don't let your melee get bogged down move them back to protect your casters as needed. Save your knockdowns etc to disengage from your casters, especially any Ciphers - they are strong against spirits and will be prime targets.

Undoubtedly. It's just hard to control the battlefield when they kill my cipher right away. I don't think a single one of my knockdowns has connected, by the way.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind it so much as I'm sure I can level up, gear up and come back later, I just think the difficulty is all over the place.

Edited March 30, 2015 by termokanden

[Rafkos]

Devs, any chance it's going to be fixed in 1.03? A friend of mine is having problems with getting into the Stronghold due to shadows.

[gkathellar]

Target defenses other than Deflection. Use major debuffs - Charm, Dominate, Paralyze, Stun (Ciphers are especially good for this). Keep careful control of your formation. Use fire. Don't go after the Shadows that Shades summon - they'll get unsummoned when you take down the Shades.

[Silentsigil]

Chanter using the ranged fire/reload speed chant. One melee, doesn't matter. He's just there to hug people. The chanter and everyone else gets Gunner/Two Handed. Use arbalests/arquebuses. Win game. Oh, I guess there are skills to use, too? 

[Katarack21]

It's funny, I was just about to post about how I hate the spirit-type enemies. Shades, spirits, specters, phantoms, whatever, they're all utterly obnoxious in about ten different ways.

 

My first playthrough, they kept stunlocking my party to death; alternatively my Chanter would summon a phantom and it would solo the encounter by stunlocking the enemies to death, and that was every fight. My current playthrough, the mob of spirits in the lighthouse spam ranged icicles to murder my Cipher in the first two seconds of combat before teleporting around the front-liners and murdering everyone in the back row. My plan to counter this currently is to use Slicken and Mind Binding to make them trip and fall down and paralyze their muscles. Because apparently disembodied spirits have legs and muscles(?).

 

Usually in D&D clerics and paladins are the anti-undead specialists, but that doesn't seem to be the case in Pillars of Eternity.

In PoE there aren't any undead. Shadows and such are typed as Spirits. Priests get special ability to target Vessels, because that includes the human undead. In PoE undead are corpses that have had souls shoved and locked inside of them in the same way as an animated armor, so therefore fall under vessels.

[Gecimen]

What about the skeleton warriors?

[Katarack21]

What about the skeleton warriors?

Vessels. All physical, corporeal "undead" are vessels. Everything else is spirits. Unless you mean the things summoned up by Chanters, which are probably some kind of spirit but really....don't think theirs an in-world explanation for that gameplay element.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Katarack21

[Mungri]

Well your whole problem is standing your whole group together in one spot. Do you even have tanks?

 

Obsidian Lamp in one of the buildings, go find it. Hide non tanks / ranged characters in the north room. Use triple shade summon to block the entrance, leave a tank (or two on Potd) in the main room. Throw every fricking thing you have from behind the summoned shades, fireballs, warding seals, fire symbols, whatever AoE a druid gets if you have a druid. Oh chill fogs too. And more fireballs. Ran out of fireballs? Got a firewall? Got level 2 rolling fire ball? Got symbol of fire? Seals of warding? Fricking any kind of any AoE?

 

THROW ALL THE AOE!

[Ichthyic]

I'm quite surprised nobody suggested just protecting yourself from cold damage.

you know, there are ways to do that, right?

there's even a second level mage spell: bullwark, that is easy to get and will give you 10 extra dr against cold over whatever else you have.

if you have durance, try painful interdiction.  weakens their damage still further, and slows them, and makes them easier to hit.  in fact, painful interdiction might be my single favorite spell in this game.  Foe only, great range, huge AOE, instant cast, per event instead of rest, works to interrupt, slow, and weaken all at the same time.  I start every fight with this.

if you get an affliction, use the priest spell "suppress affliction", and basically it nullifies everything.

got a paladin? are you using zealous endurance?  there's another 3 dr against all damage right there.

got eder?  did you give him "defender"?  make sure it's turned on, and those teleporting shades will target him instead. his starting armor has good resistance to cold.

did you make some weapons that have spirit slayer and/or burning lash on them?

did you let your tanks engage the enemies FIRST?

did you cast "armor of faith"?

did you give your tanks some scrolls of "fan of flames"?


this was a *slightly* challenging fight only in the fact that they spawn on top of you.  On hard you get 3 specters besides.  it still WASN'T that tough.

take a look at what you characters can actually DO.



 

[Mungri]

Previously I used multiple priest traps. That got nerfed, so I used the obsidian lamp.

[Exyll]

bunch your group into a corner, start your priest the 2nd level spell that heals over time, mage spam fireball

[defragmentor]

I don't know if this is news to anyone, but I found that fight much easier when noticed that Shades seem to spawn Shadows and that those Shadows die when the shades that spawned them are killed.

[Merina]

My heroes put on heavy armor when fighting spirits. Aloth concentrates on the Shades with his Ray of Fire and other burning spells.

[Archaven]

This is one of the most fun battle i would said. I beat it on hard with my own intelligence and feels great about it

[Atheosis]

Devs, any chance it's going to be fixed in 1.03? A friend of mine is having problems with getting into the Stronghold due to shadows.

 

Fixed?  What is there to fix?