The Biggest Battle in Act 2! Baldur's Gate 3, Nine Hells Challenge

[@curlyfryzzz1]

The thing about Shar being mad about heat in the universe reminds me of Auntie Ethel's quote about her - "Shar won't bother us here. She's far too busy writing poetry, and crying about how much people prefer her sister." lool

[@Melth]

@@curlyfryzzz1 I loved that part! Sadly I didn't think Ethel managed the same quality roasting of Raphael if you bring up that a devil offered to remove the parasite too

[@wekashipo7507]

That's really impressive. If this was already such a spectacle, I can't wait to see you crash Gortash's inauguration. And then presumably reload a backup like with Elminster because beating Gortash that way locks you out of the Iron Throne and Steelwatch Foundry.

[@Melth]

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it so much! And yes, that's my plan for Gortash. Battle him at the coronation for maximum carnage and difficulty, and then reload for maximum story and quests

[@ReunionMana]

So a fun way to fight this battle is to have someone invis go up and use Knock to get Balthazar's door open then re-invis when the fight begins and slip away while your party hides to make Balthazar fight the Dark Justiciars. Usually the Dark Justiciars win and although they aren't easy to take down themselves afterwards, it sure makes fighting Balthazar a breeze. When the Dark Justiciars have almost cleaned up Balthazar and his minions, that's usually when I spring out of hiding with my party and start throwing aoe spells on everything. The darkness that the Dark Justiciars leave when they die is so obnoxious though.

[@Melth]

Definitely fun! Enemies fighting enemies is something I enjoy a lot. Though in this game it's very slow because enemy tactics are awful and inefficient!

[@MrBlitzballer]

Some quick notes for the trials of Shar coming up. The Soft Step trial has 2 shadows in it you can kill, the Self Same Trial gives xp for each party member's copy that you fight so make sure all 4 characters enter the trial, and finally in the Silent Library the "Librarian" mob functions the same as the other umbral tremors so make sure you let it spawn the extra guys like you did for the last 2 fights. Hope something in here was useful.

[@Melth]

@@MrBlitzballer thanks, I already did those fights, but those are good tips for other viewers!

[@brokenmeats5928]

I love ALL Melth videos!

[@Melth]

Thank you!

[@atlas3104]

Been having sooooo much fun with Hunger of Hadar. Such such such a fun spell to crowd control with!! Def would love to see you use it more (whenever the limited resources are necessary xD) Also Astarion struggling with the Fog cloud is def a Hunger mechanic. Whenever he went in it the game heavily reduced the range the player is able to do... anything. And suddenly the placement of the fog wasnt acceptable anymore, and thankfully rejected it instead of wasting all your movement going deeper in the cloud for no reason. Then, once he was inside, the preview was accurate to where he could place it thus why he would walk on top of the fire wall. So previewing casting/shooting anything from outside to inside a vision imparting AOE is inaccurate, but i dont mind it as a mechanic. It makes sense and it must be a hard thing to code around)

[@Melth]

@@atlas3104 it's a fun spell! One reason I don't use it very often, even when willing to spend resources, is that it doesn't do its damage immediately upon creatures entering the area. Only for ending or starting a turn in it. This makes it less effective at slaughtering and blocking hordes of weak creatures than wall of fire, spirit guardians, or cloud of Daggers, etc

[@atlas3104]

​​​@@Melththats true! Im not used to the "going first and not letting enemies go at all" midset so i always consider how much damage i can do throughout rounds and how much I can resist throughout them... even tho the first tactic is clearly superior

[@lnsatiabie4364]

Let commence my Sunday morning ritual!

[@Rhakimdar]

I never realized that there was a giant crusader that eventually spawned! My sword barb archer made quick work of all the portals so never let them spawn. Def keen to try out this fight on my next playthrough that looked real fun!

[@Melth]

Enjoy! On my first run I killed all the portals too except that I noticed one was called the 'deep umbral tremor' and I let that spawn its huge guy out of curiosity

[@Rhakimdar]

@@Melth I had assumed they'd just spawn enemies infinitely so I focused them quickly. Definitely looks really fun and I had a blast crashing the gortash ceremony per your recommendation. I managed to kinda brute force it with op helmet acuity sword bard things tho I had an epic darkness arrow on an invisible sleeping MC as she used the short rest potion to avoid her getting targeted xD Felt pretty awesome for that. Shield also carried that fight pretty hard

[@shadowfireblaze0439]

i did this on an honor mode run just to try and control undead the big justiciar avenger or whatever that spawns at the end. You could choose to just stay out of the way and have the spawned enemies kill balthazar and flesh for you but it'll take an hour or so to play out

[@Melth]

@@shadowfireblaze0439 yeah, as much as it's fun to watch the AI fight the AI in this game, they're very slow and inefficient about it!

[@dinospfc]

I'm not sure if its considered cheesy, but putting a wall of fire through a narrow corridor, like a door, will give them a lot more opportunity to be standing in it than a wall in the traditional sense. Essentially if you start at the door and draw it towards the room, or perpendicular to the way you put it

[@Melth]

@@dinospfc kind of, but in this case where when they die they leave clouds of darkness, I wanted to minimize the number that died in or near the doorway and instead try to have them die at a distance from it. A perpendicular wall would let the AI choose to only enter the flames near the doorway itself

[@dinospfc]

You could've used the Eversight ring in this fight to see through Hunger of Hadar

[@Melth]

Yep, except I don't have it yet since I haven't been to that area

[@maelstrrom2824]

Nice job controlling the encounter. Hungar of Hadar is really strong situationally. Too bad the camera didn't want to show us all the carnage

[@Melth]

@@maelstrrom2824 yeah the camera really wanted to censor out all the violence there!

[@charlettmoon2693]

I personally don't mind the Cloaker; it feels annoying to me that, by the time you have Remove Curse, everyone just says "Put it on, if it's cursed, we'll uncurse you, and then if it's not, then we'll find out what +s it gives to us immediately." It's annoying that PCs just metagame, so while I don't like sticking them in *everything,* I think having a mimic or two helps put the fear of god into them. Part of TTRPGs that differ from Video Games is that in video games, you can play through several times and know every item and understand it all the time, but in TTRPGs, most of the fun is not knowing what's around the corner. It can slow the game down, definitely, but that's why I'm sort of enjoying the "Hold this item and study it during a short rest and you learn what the item is (sans any cursed shenanigans) rule that was added (siiiince 4th ed I think???). That makes mimics and cloakers less necessary, but it also means they will probably be used less, which means that it's a surprise for the few times they *do* pop up. Nature is healing, and we're moving past necessitating the "Mimic Room", but I'm glad they're not all gone. (I am mostly saying all of this because Cloakers have always been my favorite Not-Mimic Mimic type. The thought of "I'm going to put this cloak on!" and then have it start choking you had a lot of interesting and scary thoughts for my young, impressionable mind who thumbed through monster manuals for fun.)

[@BicMars]

it seems like the most difficult and frustrating part of the run for you is actually trying to group the enemies together in order to direct the fights into being as challenging as possible, as opposed to the actual battles themselves. lol

[@Melth]

@@BicMars absolutely! And I've had to reload from backups several times when enemies did things like walk away and refuse to fight when I was trying to get a giant battle organized!

[@cannyvalley8522]

Cool battle! So, only one Dark Justiciar spawns initially if you approach from kitchen door, I thought my game was bugged, but ok.

[@Melth]

Do more spawn from the other direction? I thought I tested it and got the same number

[@MrBlitzballer]

If you want to min max xp for Balthazar then you need to fight him in the shadowfell but the ghouls in his room now won't be there when you come back. You can use an arrow of darkness or something similar to lure them out of the room and fight them outside of Balthazar's range to get the xp though. Flesh will join them if you do it that way or at least he did in my run so take that into consideration. (I don't know if Balthazar summons him with the other skeletons in the shadowfell or not because I always kill him with the ghouls before going down there.)

[@Melth]

I can confirm that Flesh will NOT be in the shadowfell. So the maximum XP is attained by fighting the group in the initial room, leaving Balthazar alive, and then going into the Shadowfell (though you hilariously need to bribe Balthazar in the shadowfell enough to like you. Otherwise he'll just attack alone instead of starting conversation and then summoning people)

[@wesmantooth32]

If you have read Malazan the rat dude made me think of D'ivers. How does vision work with Hunger of Hadar, Darkness, and Fog Cloud? I have found that Darkness makes units have to be right next to something to perform unless they have like Shar's Spear of Evening that explicitly grants vision. I haven't played around with HoH at all, but I did see someone claiming it was stronger than Darkness for vision purposes (only Warlock dark vision could see through it or something). That didn't seem to be the case for you there, so now I kind of don't understand the rules for the different types of clouds.

[@Melth]

It's a common mistake to think that Hunger of Hadar is darkness but stronger. Not even close. It's best to think of them as not even SIMILAR because a dark coloration is the only thing they have in common. Darkness is a cloud, and Hunger of Hadar is an area. So darkness can be cancelled by fog or whatever but HoH can be stacked on top of anything. HoH does not prevent attacks through it in any way. Darkness acts like an invisible wall for no intelligent reason. The player isn't even allowed to throw bombs into it! (But the enemy is). Arrows shot into it will just hit nothing even if it says you can hit The only way that HoH impedes attacks is that it blinds creatures in the cloud, but doesn't affect anyone outside firing in. (Sometimes it also imposes disadvantage for the light being too dim, but that's not consistent)

[@Laura-hl4tx]

I think the game is interesting because it lets you summon in so many character and fight so many character at once but it is unable to deal with it so it keeps not working properly. I wonder what the purpose of that and how it could be fixed you think they would put a cap on summonsbut apparently didn’t

[@Melth]

What's peculiar about it in this case is that, insofar as having tons of summons causes problems, it's an issue of their own creation. Almost no summons in 5E last more than a few minutes and most of the summon spells which this game allows to spawn multiple guys do so in 5E either. BG3 created this whole new style of play where one gathers a massive army of summons.

[@Bman6464]

Gortash with the Steelwatch as soon as you get to act 3 is gonna be interesting. I guess that is the toughest group fight in the game. I didnt know this fight was even possible lol. Always kill the portals too quick i guess

[@Melth]

@@Bman6464 i love the giant Gortash and Steel watch battle! Though overall, relative to your power level at the time, I think Zhalk+ Mindflayer+ Cambions are the toughest fight in the game

[@Melth]

@@HQbaracuda likewise you're probably not supposed to fight Gortash + the steelwatch. Even Karlach will tell you not to try it!

[@jakobandersen3210]

​@Melth I tried the fight and lost hard. But that was before I learned to do optimization. But to me, it still seems hard. Gonna be fun and see what will happen.

[@JohnTCampbell1986]

Looking forward to Myrkul most tbh. That and the Dragon+Countermeasure fight on top of brain are the only fights in the game I had to drop from tactician for

[@Melth]

@@JohnTCampbell1986 I'm honestly confused why so many people cite Myrkul as a hard fight. Imo there are many fights in the game much harder than that one, and I remember being weirded out at how easily the supposed god got killed compared to some of the previous harder battles in act 2

[@jay-tee-L]

what are the builds your using they look fun too play !!!!

[@Melth]

@@jay-tee-L in the playlist, a few videos before this one, I have a video about my builds for act 2

[@GianniCampanale]

the wall of buffs is making almost half of your screen un-interactable! sometimes i had the feeling you were not properly reading the terrain because if you hover the pointer around the party line' buffs you cant click or read tooltips on the map. Speaking of buffs, IIRC all your party can make the interaction and get necrotic resistance until long rest, not just one

[@Melth]

That's true about everyone being able to get necrotic resistance there, but that only increases the risk of someone failing the check and getting penalized. Plus the Selune blessing gives necrotic resistance to the entire party AND all summons and whatnot. So the Shar one is pretty worthless unless you killed Isobel or something I guess

[@GianniCampanale]

@@Melth ohh! there's so much to learn all the time

[@louishealy2696]

Age of Mythology Retold Please!

[@louishealy2696]

Sorry just saw ur response on the last video. Keep goin strong brotha!

[@Melth]

@@louishealy2696 I've got 2 AoM videos finished. One will release tomorrow assuming I can get a good thumbnail together

[@JohnTCampbell1986]

Really enjoying this playthrough (and realising how shit I am at the game at the same time lmao), do you stream it on twitch and then make the youtube series from that or only youtube?

[@Melth]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it so much! I'm only on KZbin, not Twitch.

[@sgiath]

Hi, I love the series, just one question which I don't think was properly answered: why did you choose to play with Karlach and Lae'zel at the start of the game? You have explained Astarion for his +1 to everything but since you have made Cleric out of Karlach why not to use for example Shadowheart? I am just not sure if there are some hidden bonuses to those characters, story reasons (Lae'zel can help in Creche I guess) or because you just like their banter/energy.

[@Melth]

@@sgiath it was about both bonuses and RP in this case. If you're going to have a cleric/wizard, Shadowheart is worthless for the job. Her half high elf race gives shield and weapon proficiency that the cleric already gets, and she gets the firebolt cantrip that wizards can just learn from a scroll. Useless. Karlach on the other hand gets resistance to fire and after her heart upgrade also gets advantage vs charm. Not amazing stuff, but free bonuses compared to Shadowhesrt. LaeZel provides greatsword proficiency to a druid which was useful in the early game for using the Everburn Blade. She also provides mage hand, which is great, and proficiency in a ton of good skills. Small bonuses, but better than nothing. Roleplay-wise, my dark urge Bhaalista was horrified to realize that he has inexplicable murderous urges. He tried telling his companions but they wouldn't listen- and two of them even encouraged him to murder people for fun. He decided that, until he understands what kind of risk he poses to innocent people, he should surround himself only with horrible people who deserve to die anyway. Hence Astarion and LaeZel. Karlach was added later because she's going to die in like 5 minutes anyway and because although Shar worship and wanting to destroy the world certainly merits death, Shadowheart was too clever compared to Astarion and LaeZel and had to be disposed of before she could betray the party for Shar (as she had talked about needing to do)

[@Chloepricelover23]

hey how do you have both karlach and minthara?

[@Melth]

@@Chloepricelover23 there are several ways to get Minthara while siding with the grove (and thus keeping Karlach). The one I did is: 1) go to the goblin camp 2) do NOT allow any goblins to hit the war drums and do NOT aggro Dror Ragzlin 3) knock out Minthara. The key is that she must be temporarily hostile when you knock her out. Anything that makes her permanently hostile (like the drums being used) ruins everything. 4) now, slaughter the goblins at will, save the grove, etc 5) when you get to Moonrise Towers, Minthara is on trial and you can save her as usual

[@Chloepricelover23]

@@Melth ohh I see, I killed her in my first playthrough 🥲. Thank you so much!

[@voon1032]

I was wondering what you thought of the new legendary actions they gave some bosses in Patch 7, Melth. I think they made the Bullete and Spectator's a lot more interesting to fight, and the Act 2 Chrai's soul steal is also pretty neat, although it doesn't really change up the fight like the Bullete and Spectator. I've yet to see what the others are, but I am excited to fight Ptaris, because I never even knew he existed before seeing the patch notes for act 7 (I was aware that if you sent the gith egg to the society he slaughtered the whole place, but I didn't realise he was a unique boss fight!)

[@Melth]

@@voon1032 I was waiting a long time for the bulette one. It's been in the game files but not implemented for like a year. I delayed my own bulette battle as long as possible in hopes they'd finally add the ability so I could have a hard fight against it Honestly I don't love that ability though. Its a gajillion times stronger than most legendary abilities and the part about it negating damage under 15 while also having damage resistance means only a small number of builds can even scratch it. Which just applies MORE pressure toward a small number of optimized builds like titanstring archer or TB monk

[@MrBlitzballer]

@@Melth It also kinda sucks because once the temp hp is gone it is just back to the normal version of the fight. It is like having a 2 phase fight where the first phase is a challenge and the second phase is just cleanup.

[@Melth]

@@MrBlitzballer I do think it probably changes one thing about the 'second phase' of the fight, which is that whereas a standard party could probably muster the resources to keep the Bulette commanded or otherwise incapacitated for the 2 or so rounds required to kill it before, almost no party is going to be able to control it long enough to easily kill it before it can escape now So it's much more likely to get to use its burrow move and escape to attack again later. I hate burrow tbh, but I have to admit it's unique and different from other flights

[@MrBlitzballer]

@@Melth it is definitely a level 5 fight for me now but if you abuse the power builds for act 1 you can still kill it with relative ease before it can burrow. Throwing barb, titanstring bow, and tb monk like you said put in a lot of work here and if you can pull off a surprise round with something like Shovel then you can even safely fight in melee for that first round.

[@MrBlitzballer]

@@Melth another strat for it that I’ve found recently is applying wet then using luck of the far realms for a crit on a level 3 witch bolt (might legit be the only time I’ve ever used that spell.) 6d12 from crit x2 from weakness chunks that temp hp hard enough for your martial characters to punch through what is left.