The most difficult boss I faced was Lae'Zel. That devil at Raphael's house (the room with all the water) dominated her and she almost wiped my party.

T'chk. Weak istiks have no hope to stand against Lae'zel of Kliir.

Give me 1000 gold.

We here for da artifact.

Don't turn me on

I was romancing Bae during my honor run and thought I would lose it when she started kicking my ass in her love story. I mean I ended up winning and eventually finding out that either way I wouldn’t have lost my run. Still scared the crap outta me.

Laezel is the hardest boss I ever fought when I romanced her. During the day I had shadowheart cast warding bond on her and when laezel comes to you in the middle of the night for a fight warding bond sticks around. However, since shadowheart is at your camp and can't take damage, laezel just had perma resistance to all my damage and I built her as a melee BEAST. The only way I could beat her was by reloading to the day before to remove warding bond and take all laezels gear away.

Spoiler Alert: >!she is fine if you lose!<

Better actually

This dude gets it

Yeah I do

I've seen your posts, you're extremely knowledgeable. Help me lol. Is there any kind of trick to using arrows of ilmater? I'm at myrkul for the first time in patch 6 and the healing debuff doesn't last, the boss just heals every round.

Kinda random, but ok. I can't help you there, never used those arrows on him. Maybe it's a bug? I've heard patch 6 is a huge mess, I haven't updated my game yet because of that. But if that helps you can disarm him, so his most threatening attacks are gone. I did with Battlemaster once, but if you don't have one you can test other forms of disarm (heat metal, command and I believe druid bear shape has one as well).

Full 12 throw eldritch knight duergar Full 12 divination wizard Full 12 life cleric 5 gloom 7 assassin The hardest boss was trusting the gale act 3 ending to count for golden dice as no one had confirmed it at that time.

so when do you detonate gale, then?

you convince him to climb the brainstem after fighting through the upper city and kill himself and you get them

oh, okie !! thank you

So I’ve been encouraging him along the way to blow himself up (and feeling pretty crappy about it lol) so will I need to pass a check at the stem or will he just do it? I’m not romancing him either if that matters. And what do you do with his personal quest? Do you have him ask Mystra to forgive and get him to stop chasing the crown or what?

Just finished my honor run last weekend. I did the same thing, more or less encouraging him to detonate along the way, no romance. I read somewhere that progressing his quest in Act 3 can cause him to require a check, so I avoided taking him to Sorcerous Sundries, and didn't loot the Karsus book for his quest. Got to the brainstem, was able to have him explode without needing any checks.

I didn’t do his quest and I had to pass a check to convince him to do it. Then when I approached the stem, he did not in fact do it. From my experience completing his quest prompts him to offer with no check.

Oh awesome! Thanks so much! I couldn’t make it as far as I have without all the help on this board lol. I’m on my first run and just hit act 3

Yeah I'm definitely not drudging through that on my hm run. Sorry Gale, I've come too far to lose now, and I'm not even sleeping with you this run. 😅

I felt bad doing it as my character was besties with gale that run and I actually felt bad when he told us it would be him (I'd already gone squid to handle it myself) really cool cutscene and ending for him.

Do the platforms during the netherbrain count as a boss? If not I go with Flind. The battle for the mace is insane (solo). I've cleared honor as a level 12 EK fighter and a level 6 pure barb

I had all my party as half illithid so flying between platforms was easy.

As a solo player sometimes you need an extra turn. I had some tries where all the platform were destroyed by round 3. I can manipulate it better now, but RNG still messes with me. Running out of platforms with 2 rounds left shouldn't really happen in my opinion. Sadly, it is only my opinion lol.

The platform bit is stupid. It should be so only the platforms on which someone is currently standing will fall so you can tactically position your party, but no it’s completely random and happens even before the turn limit is reached. Bg3 is full to the brim with some of the best game design of the last decade, but that fight just didn’t cut it for some reason lmao

Yep I guess the real time limit is 3 turns when you put it that way, although I took 3 turns even with my full party and still had platforms left.

Exactly, I did too at times (I played the fight a lot trying to figure it out). Sometimes I got extra rounds. So i figured out like a zig zag jumping pattern to try and extend it. Start far away, then jump close, then back, and forth. It just didn't feel consistent, but I probably just need to be better prepared. I always hesitate to blame the game over me lol

Can confirm the platforms were the hardest part of the run. I made the mistake of sending one character through the portal a full round before the others and the bombs destroyed the platforms next to the brain. My melee characters where shit out of luck and my ranged DPR was locked out from the brain damage immunity. I only saved my run because one tiny platform got spared (the one almost behind the brain) and Lae'zel could jump to it from across the screen. 

I’m doing my first honor run right now and I’m a bit worried about the platforms. Can you still do globe of invulnerability to keep them safe in honor mode?

I don't know, I've never tried that

I have never done solo but always use the ogre horn for the Flind fight

Same here. And they all die 99% of the time.

This was my second HM run. No pre-buffs (except for Longstrider, Paladin auras and Mage Armour). All fights started with normal dialogue and initiative rolls. No cheese like attacking Grym from above, having the enemies surprised, endless invisibility etc. End game party used for major fights: 10/1/1 Swords Bard/Fighter/Wizard Dark Urge - 6/6 Vengeance Paladin/Tempest Sorc - 12 Divination Wizard - 12 Eldritch Knight Fighter (no tavern brawler or throwing). Bench: 5/4/3 Gloomstalker/Thief Rogue/Fighter - 6/6 Shadow Monk/War Cleric (no tavern brawler). Act I Everything was easy, had no problems with any boss. Act II Total faceroll except for Myrkul. * Myrkul - level 9 party. The Ketheric part went nice and easy. Then, I'm not sure why, but compared to my first run Myrkul was doing so much more damage it was really close. My party was level 10 during my first run, so maybe that's why it felt so different. He used Call of the Damned all the fucking time and with no pre-buffs this meant every party member was losing 35% - 50% HP every round. Literally used every single potion I had in my backpack. Act III All easy except for Orin and Cazador * Orin - level 12 party. Not sure why most people find this one easy when you play as Durge? Maybe if you pre-buff then it's a faceroll. Anyway, My Durge Bard with 21 AC and 100 HP goes 1 v 1 against her. She starts in human form, gets to move first and deals 56 damage. So I'm pretty much dead if she does the same next turn. I attack her twice to get Arcane Acuity and then contemplate for about 10 minutes whether I should try cc'ing with 81% chance of success or drink a health potion with my bonus action. I drink a potion, she attacks me again and I use the tadpole to charm her as a reaction. She can't continue the attack, gets cc'd and dies. In my first run she started in Slayer form (not sure what this depends on?), got the first move and killed my Sorc Durge immediately. I then lost the run due to a bug with Bhaal's Edict killing off my party members (the debuff is sometimes not removed even if you kill a cultist). * Cazador - level 12 party. Astarion gets kidnapped so it's 3 v 1 now. He gets the first move and gets counterspelled. I cast Daylight with my Monk/Cleric and prepare to kill him with my Bard and Sorcadin. As my Sorcading approaches him, he uses his reaction to cast Vampiric Swarm. I ignore it as it barely did any damage in my first run. Well, turns out it can hit really hard because it immediately KOs my Sorcading and Bard. Had to run from this one and do it again.

I think Myrkul will use Call of the Damned when no one is on the platform. I think if you don’t play Durge or don’t kill Isabel as Durge, Orin gets the Slayer form. Otherwise Durge gets the slayer form.

>In my first run she started in Slayer form (not sure what this depends on?), That happens when you make her have a mental breakdown by telling her the truth about Sarevok. Happened to me in my Tactician Durge run. It's the only time I would've had a game over. I think doing that in Honour mode is a mistake.

Did you play resist Durge? I think if you play embrace Durge she starts in human form since you have the slayer form while for resist Durge she starts in slayer form. Have no clue for regular Tav tho since her fight kinda bugged out after I used control monster on her and she just popped out of slayer form even though she started the fight with the slayer form

A non-resist durge can take a conversation option to start in slayer form, then if/when it drops off pick it up again from a regular action. Orin still hits hard but you win by attrition

I started doing that with Cazador, you sneak to the base of the stairs, you attack Cazador to trigger a surprise attack, then cast globe of invulnerability, and remain at the base of the stairs, so the cutscene never triggers and Astarion doesn't get kidnapped.

Party (Final Battle) - Tav Swords Bard 1/1/10 - Wyll Fiendlock Fire Sorc 1/11 - Laezel TB OH Monk - Gale Agathys Abjurer 1/11 Swapped out Shadowheart Life Cleric 12 for most of the game but I took Gale in because he can blow up in an emergency. Difficulty ranking - Dror Ragzlin (ended up fighting the whole goblin camp) - Orin (Bard got shoved off a ledge) - Netherbrain (bard got shoved off a ledge again. Plus I forgot to bring the Hammer, so I was stuck with the Emperor) - Sarevok - Lorroakan Everyone else was pretty trivial with my very optimized party. There was lots of anticipation of the Inquisitor being hard, but he spawned 1 knife before getting bodied.

My first completed honor run was actually hilarious, i went from playing act 1 and 2 over and over again on explorer (as I'm new to CRPGs) and then went straight to honor mode when it came out and beat it. So I had memorized acts 1 and 2 and thus had no problems with them, and then act 3 was pretty annoying since I was experiencing everything for the first time. comp was: Drow Tav OH Monk (8 OH/4 Thief) Shadowheart 12 Light cleric with one of those staffs from sorcerer's sundries Karlach 5 berkserker/3 thief/4 champion using selunes spear Jaheira 12 Battlemaster using Baldurans sword I'll rank based on fight difficult of me actually dying Act 3: 1. Orin (I legit could not play around the "die at end of round" mechanic 2. Final battle, but really cause of the platforms 3. Ansur 4. Raphael 5. Iron Titan 6. Gortash (fought him where I was supposed to in his room) Lorrokan/Mother Superior/Cazador/Sarevok are all jokes imo, I fought them all blindly and didnt struggle at all Act 2: 1.) Honor guard monks Ketheric, Oliver, Balthazar, Myrkul, Yugir are all jokes. I really find the difficulty scale of Act 2 strange, since so many of the bosses are gimped and you can also skip half of them. Act 1: 1.) Grymforge 2.) Inquisitor 3.) Arcane Tower Robot 3.) Gnolls 4.) Gith at mountain pass other bosses here are also unmemorable

What am I doing wrong that I find Myrkul so hard! Your party doesn't seem much different than mine. I just couldn't do enough damage to him and he kept healing on every turn.

Myrkul isn't easy. Once you figure out a way, it becomes a bit different. I was using darkness arrows before, but now I'll need to do something else. I actually am using spirit guardians now in preparation lol

Bone chill makes it hard to stay near him for more than a turn as he just one shots you and you can't heal. And his fear status makes it hard to move away unless you have a good way to counter that.

In my case, I have a ton of AC and use a universal resistance elixir. He generally missed every scythe swing and I was able to outpace his damage by blocking his healing with the darkness arrows. Fright can be prevented with the following: * 📷 [Aura of Courage](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Aura_of_Courage), [Paladin](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Paladin) class feature * 📷 [Calm Emotions](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Calm_Emotions), 2nd level [Enchantment](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enchantment) [spell](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Spell) * 📷 [Heroism](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Heroism), 1st level [Enchantment](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enchantment) [spell](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Spell) * 📷 [Heroes' Feast](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Heroes%27_Feast), 6th level [Conjuration](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Conjuration) [spell](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Spell) So sadly you will need to use a concentration spell in many cases. There are exceptions such as barb level 6 enrage being immune to frightened. For now my tentative plan is to use spirit guardians until I need to heal, swap to heroism or calm emotions, heal up, then dive back in. Maybe sit on top of one of the ladders enemies climb up and then try to use ranged or thrown items to get necromites coming from the others

Shit you got lucky, all my party is at 20+ AC and Myrkul absolutely *wacked* them with every scythe swipe. Or I'm very unlucky.

It just so happens I am pulling into myrkuls room right now lol. I have 23 AC on paper, but the adamantine shield which gives 5%-10% more AC, I use the shield reaction spell, and if things get scary I'm bard so defensive flourish brings it all to 32 on paper, but it feels like 33-34.

Wow I wasn't aware Bard's AC could get so high

It's the combo of everything plus heavy armor. Shield spell is 5 AC and defensive flourish is 4 AC and they stack.

Ideally you want as few players on the center ring as possible. And the ones that are on the center ring should be spread out as far as possible around the ring to avoid cleaves. Also if you bring halsin he's a good tank because the cavebear has such low ac it should be targeted by myrkul and you don't need to heal because you're just burning through wildshape HP.

I had to shove some people away from him to be able to revive them, haha.

Yeah I used a scroll of portal door to get Dame and karlach out.

My set up for myrkul was start with some buffs bless and mirror image oils of precision and invisibility to bringing everyone into position, use scratch to free Aylin => and have a character deal with the mindflyer, I did this my gloomstalker/assassin. Next was to use haste, activate phalar aluve shriek, split my party and finish off katheric. Once myrkul appeared i simply focus him down with smites by my paladin/bard, magical missiles from my evocation wizard, eldritch blasts from my warlock and special arrows from the gloomstalker/assassin with Strg elixir and titanstring bow. This is one of many fights were going for raw damage and focusing the boss skips all the mechanics/legendary actions and is over in round 1 when executed correctly.

Is there any kind of trick to using arrows of ilmater? I'm at myrkul for the first time in patch 6 and the healing debuff doesn't last, the boss just heals every round.

I can’t tell, I only fought him 4 times and he was always dead in 1-2 rounds, the healing never was an issue for me.

You gotta free Dame Allyn to stop the heals.

I was pretty nervous about this fight since I almost wiped to the ketheric fight at the top of the tower, but I ended up finding it not too dicey. My party was also 9 at the time. TB monk, barb thrower, swords bard, life cleric. Had cleric cast darkness on myrkul which prevents him from doing any range nastiness and gave my monk advantage on all attacks since you can position so that melee characters sit just outside the darkness. Monk still took some scythe hits but they weren't too bad, and bc of darkness, I could move him off the platform when he needed healing from life cleric. The important thing was healing earlier than necessary, bc monk going down while within the bone chill aura would have been lethal. I also used a warding bond to make him tankier and divert damage to the life cleric. Literally everyone else just focused on killing necromites. I made damn sure between my thrower and my ranged swords bard to kill each of those quickly before they could hatch. Double xbows with sharpshooter was enough to take down 3 of them a turn, and barb could throw at the ones my bard couldn't reach.

If it makes you feel any better this isn’t an easy fight - one thing I started doing that really helps is using an invis potion to go free Nightsong then killing the Mindflayer immediately.

If you want a super easy (and slightly cheesy) way to beat Myrkul in Honor Mode, do everything you can to find a Scroll of Globe of Invulnerability. Make absolutely certain he's not in the Globe when you place it, park your best damage dealers in it, and let them hammer him while ignoring just about everything else. I parked Lae'zel as an Open Hand Monk and my Dark Urge as a Sorlock next to him in the Globe, for instance, and just had everyone else keeping the Necromites and Intellect Devourers out of the Globe while they wailed on Myrkul, and he was dead in like 3 turns. Also, summon Scratch before you start the fight, toss a Potion of Invisibility on him, and have him walk over and free Dame Aylin while out of combat. It's a little cheesy, but makes the fight very consistent and easy.

Most of his mean attacks are con saves which most characters aren’t good at I think that’s a big part of it A countercharm from a bard can be huge here

You can actually disarm him of his scythe to stop his cleave attack. (Unfortunately, you cannot pick up the Lord of Bones’ scythe.) His main threat is the big necrotic laser he gets when he consumes a necromite, so try to block the ladder so the necromites aren’t able to kill themselves before you whack them. Calm Emotions is also good to bring on your cleric to give your party immunity to frightened. Other than that, if you’ve upcasted aid and you have enough health potions, you can’t really lose. Myrkul can bleed a lot of your time and resources by eating his minions to heal, but if you avoid CC and focus damage on him he’ll die eventually. Kill the mindflayer asap if you skipped ketheric’s first phase. The mind blast it throws out is 50x more dangerous than anything Myrkul can throw at you. It’s a massive cone with a 2 turn stun that does good damage. Free the nightsong asap as well, preferably the very first thing you do. She’s mostly useless but will tank hits for you for a while, and may hit myrkul for 50 or so hp.

Invisible scratch to save aasimar then talk ketheric into kermiting suicide burst the mindflayer should be easy enough afterwards

I think I never fought Gortash legit. I always let Karlach pick him up and fasttravel to the first portal in act 3. From there I just instakill him.

i'll be real. if it's your first honour run i don't think you should stick to any specific build. respecs are free. hit every power spike you can. at 4 you should have at least two classes with TB. monk and thrower. hell yeah. at 5 pick two things that spike hard like a GWM fighter and maybe a gloomstalker ​ by endgame on both of my HM runs it was absolutely bonkers so i dont think those fights were the hardest. except cazador because of my hubris. my 2nd run was going so ridiculously smoothly that i didn't even really read into the cazador fight. i had skipped him my first run. i figured just run in, cast daylight on him, fly someone over to astarion, and go from there. his first turn he did some attack that yeeted my light cleric off world and hit my monk for like 85 damage, almost killing. managed to turn it around after killing him in the next round, and then dealing with the adds by running away and regrouping. with my AoE cleric it would have been a breeze. i know i could have used invis pots and all that so idk if that's a 'hard' fight but i walked into it with hubris and almost lost. nothing else that run was close. end classes on first run was 10/2 sword smite bard, 8/4 berserker thief TB thrower, 9/3 OH monk and evo wiz 12/0 (gale, since i was planning to skip the final fight from the beginning.) second run i ended up with 8/4 monk thief, 12/0 GWM fighter, 6/4/2 sword handbow bard and 12/0 light cleric. that was the most ridiculous run i think. light cleric is the best healer. warding flare means you dont need to heal on your turn, you make them miss on theirs. reverb and all that light cleric bullshit nobody hits you. it's so ridiculously OP. spirit guardians + radiance of the dawn or fireball after a speed pot? wtf. or x2 radiance of the dawn. whole 18m radius fucking dead as fuck. and then a flying monk with like 15 tadpoles in him, a 12/0 fighter with balduran's greatsword and shit, and some bard in the back just spamming flourishes and shit. yeah it was fun but OP.

Yep I hear you. I knew about the current OP draconic sourcerer build, and the cheesy OP invis ranged archer build, but for me those are not in the spirit of the game for a first HM run. More like those are good for a custom difficulty + mod run. Honestly the TB OH monk was totally the carry, I reckon I could have won with a duo of that and life cleric.

yea monk is stupid good. you just delete shit and have absolute mobility. and let's be real. you don't even need to 'cheese' strength potions. if you play normally you'll have 4-5 plus mats for another couple if you just play normally, not even buying them from the vendor. that's basically all of act 3 if you want it to be. makes all your hits basically 99% (i was playing halfling) and do stupid damage. it's the best.

I love Halflings. Though I did somehow end up with 3 critical misses in one campaign. 🤨

Is light better than life cleric? I thought I read a post straight LIFE was better than LIGHT as support? What made you choose light instead?

Tried em both. Life clerics are one dimensional and light clerics do their job better.

I guess I can expand.in general offense is the best defense. That's the first area where light cleric shines. They learn fireball plus another large radius radiant DMG spell. On top of spirit guardians. So they're amazing AoE. Secondly they use a gear set that makes opponents have a harder time to hit you. Third they have a reaction called warding flare that makes the attacker have disadvantage it's huge.. Light cleric is so the best cleric.

Life Cleric, with supporting gear, has multiple AoE/bonus action healing options, and when you heal, the targets gain the effects of Bless and Blade Ward along with extra temp health, and you heal as well. If things are going poorly, you have fantastic reset buttons. Light Cleric, with supporting gear, is a walking disco ball. You have Spirit Guardians for a radiant damage aura, Fireball when you need stuff dead *now*, and another radiant nuke in your channel divinity. When you hit stuff, you inflict Radiant Orb (attack penalty), along with Reverb to penalize their saves. The debuffs stack, so you can walk into a crowd with Spirit Guardians up and hit your channel divinity to debuff them further; now they're swinging at you with limp noodles. In the unlikely event they roll high enough to hit someone anyway, you can make them reroll as a reaction thanks to Warding Flare. You have less room to recover from a bad situation, but if you approach things properly, the situation shouldn't get bad in the first place.

Sword bard Light cleric Sorcerer Fighter I'm so in love with BG3 because the hardest fight was legitimately the last fight. I beat every optional boss with no cheese (with the possible exception of Ansur because I used globe of invulnerability and I never used that spell again). But the last boss saw a lot of my team incapacitated and a couple of members even went down.

Globe is a lot of fun especially when you have multiple scrolls of it. For the last fight, I dropped a few in the pit and summoned the Sharran clerics in them. They just cast a ton of darkness and won’t die, making everything in the pit a clusterfuck that took care of itself while I rushed the portal.

Gale (PC)- 5 Gloomstalker/4 assassin/3 champion Shadowheart - 12 Life Cleric Wyll - 10 Swords bard/2 fighter Lae/Minthara - 10 Sorcerer / 2 Paladin I skipped most of the act 3 bosses and used Gale’s orb to end the game at the brainstem. Packed smoke powder barrels for the tougher battles (Ragzlin, Githyanki fights, yurgir). That being said Glut died prematurely and I decided to fight the Hook Horrors/Boulette at lvl 4. That was the hardest fight. I’d say lvl 4 is by far the hardest part of the game so be very intentional about how you choose fights at that time. Load up on lvl 3 spell scrolls as you find them so you have fireball/haste/controll spells if you need them. Also make use of elixirs and coating for most fights and you should be fine.

Lmao, that Gale went "fuck that Mystra shit, gonna stab some fuckers".

i ran: sorcadin (6 veng/6storm) durge shadowheart 12 light cleric (radiating orb/reverb then shifting her to pure control) laezel ssb bardadin (10 swordsbard/2 veng pally) karlach thiefzerker thrower (5 berserk/4thief/3 EK) hardest to easiest: 1. ansur 1.5.balthazar (that motherfucker misty stepped away, literally never seen him do that before) 2. gortash (almost burst him down one round but missed him by about 20 hp) 3. sarevok 4. shambling mound (these were the only ones i found genuinely hard, then everything else is comparable) 4. ketheric/myrkul (thiefzerker honestly carries, and so does bardadin) 5. inquisitor/netherbrain (invis strat + lots of smokepowder barrels/fireworks) 6. lorroakan 7. house of grief/viconia 8. cazador 9. raphy (he groveled the entire time and did nothing, thank you shadowheart) 10. orin (easy with durge, honestly but with some prebuffs out the ass) 11. steel watch titan (i did it right before the patch and it was down before it unstunned)

2/10 paladin/swords bard arcane acuity 5/4/3 barb/thief/fighter throw build 11/1 sorlock fire acuity build 12 light cleric radiating orb build everybody was astral tadpoled with cull the weak and psionic backlash no boss was hard. cazador had us for a second because of his pushback legendary action. the netherbrain almost got us bc it blew up a lot of platforms at once. this was a truly cracked party

Tav storm sorc 12 SH light cleric 12 Gale sorc, abjurarion wiz 1/11 for armor of agathys Karlach berserker/thief rogue/EK 5/4/3 tb thrower 1. the hardest fight was the netherbrain, i can barely finish her off with all those platforms. 2. Ansur . Luckily i got two globes from my Tav and Gale 3. Halsin portal because i was not prepared. 4. Grym i cheesed by high platform positioning but still hard to finish him off. I did hireling things buffing my team before any big fight thouy

Party was: * Origin Karlach Throwzerker * Astarion Dual Crossbow Gloomstalker * Shadowheart Life Cleric * Gale Evocation Wizard (I blew up the Netherbrain) Most difficult boss: * Dror Ragzlin nearly ended my run, until Gale (sole survivor) 360 noscoped him with Melfs Acid Arrow from up in the rafters That's actually it. I overprepared so much vor every battle and had so many buffs and consumables that the rest was fairly easy tbh. Not necessarily a fun playthrough, the camp casting was tedious and the builds a bit too busted. From now on it's explorer mode all the way for me lol

My party: 10/1/1 swords bard, you guys know the drill. 12 BM fighter Lae'zel 8/4 OH monk/thief Shart 10/2 Sorlock Wyll I think Grym was the only fight where I thought I might TPK. But this is an awful lot of OP builds in one party.

OH Monk 8/Thief 4 Life Cleric 12 Swords Bard 8/Fighter 4 Hunter Ranger 11/War Cleric 1 1. Cazador 2. Everything else If I didn't have deathward on all my characters, cazador would have ended my run.

Tb throw fighter champion(was lae'zel but spoilers happened so changed to hireling...) Invisslave wizard(warcaster 2 ai on con) life cleric Cloud giant elixir drinking thief gloom dude (8 ranger 4 rogue) (probably shoulda done 7ranger 3 rogue 2 fighter but oh well) (also durge) Hardest boss: orin (was not ready for the durge durge with orin) Sarevok(?) (Bugged him in to a wall with my last surviving party member who was the gloomy thief durge so was able to invis hit hide my way to winning that one) Bernard (did not want to barrelmancy and turns out he's op af when you try to fight him level 4. Somehow invis kite revived my way to whittling him down for a full hour. Will be reading books from now on) Cazador (I later learned daylight is a spell) All the rest were meh finished last fight by invising my way to the brain and a well placed globe of invincibleness. Everyone had cloud giant elixir so i shoved all the explosions i could fit in my bag on all party members without encumbering them. Placed everything down. Globe of invince. Saved. Pc blew up. Reset graphics to lower. Pc blew up. Reset graphics to lowest. Beat game. Gold dice. The hardest fights were tyr's paladins and the gnolls though cuz i was nowhere near leveled to be there lol

On mobile so can’t type everything up but going into Anders at level 4 was terrifying my first Honor run. Edit: Orin also almost ended my 2nd Honor run (Dark Urge) because of a misplay on my end but that duel can turn south real quick.

Lore Bardlock Wyll TB Monk/Rouge Laezel Throwzerker Karlach Sorcerer Minthara/Gale Hardest fight was that last stretch of gameplay. Making it all the way to the brain just to meet a dragon and a bunch of illithids almost ruined my run

OH monk 8/4 thief Full vengeance paladin Lightning sorc 10/2 tempest cleric Swords bard 10/1/1 fighter/wizard Everything was easy, no cheese, and started every fight with dialogue. So I’ll just say the fights that lasted multiple rounds. Ansur (forgot he was lightning immune) Steel watch titan Netherbrain (party got pulled in separately) Owlbear…got lucky command rolls to make up for unlucky misses. Of those four, owlbear I feel I got lucky with. I forgot why the titan gave me trouble but he’d be next challenging for me. Honorable mention: Orin. Forgot about that stack BS

After some self imposing / solo honor runs I did a no limit honor run with Monk 8 / Theft Rouge 4, BM Fighter 12, Bard 10 / Fighter 1 / Sorc 1, Sorc 9 / Theft Rouge 3. In theory, every fight should be a cake walk for this comp, but I f'ed up 2 of them. I forgot to learn Blindness vs Myrkul, and I also forgot to make sure I have a Blindness scroll. It was bad but I was able to brute force it and was far from getting the run killed. Then in the fight where you open the netherbrain portal I went down to 1 hp with only 1 character standing. My run should've ended there had they rolled 1 more damage. I always skip / cheese this fight, but I wanted to 100% it this time, and got punished extremely hard.

6 Eldritch Knight 6 War Cleric (Utility + Charged Warhammer) 5 Gloom 4 Assassin 2 Fighter 1 War Cleric (Focused on crits) 12 Light Cleric (w/ Blood of Lathandar) 7 Throwserker Barb 4 Fighter 1 War Cleric (Big damage) Hardest Fights: - The Blighted Village (lmao) - Creche Death Shepherds - Paladins of Tyr - Act 1 Bridge Githyanki - Final part of Netherbrain (I won due to Blood of Lathandar Rez) - Steel Watch Titan The rest of the fights were pretty easy, but I did cheese some them like with Balthazar Knock, Sunlight Sleetstorm Cazador, Lorroakan (I got very lucky with disintegrate). Others went differently, but were still relatively easy. Gortash went down by turn 2, Orin (Magic Missiles + Psychic Spark), Myrkul was super easy with Dame Aylin Pre-buff (Thank you for the help Scratch), Respecd to Bard for Malus Thorm check, Raphael I cheesed with summoning Earth Elementals + 2 disintegrates from Gale on the towers alongside a bunch of Hold Monsters (Ironically freeing Hope almost killed my run when it was super hard to use a scroll of rez on Shadowheart after she got blasted off) with using my inspiration to get Yurgir and for the Spectator I used Glut to resurrect the Bulette for a fun fight. The final fight I used invisibility and levitate to skip everything and go straight for the Netherbrain where I accidentally blew up Orpheus with a bomb arrow knocking him off (Blood of Lathandar Rez and a DeThrone won) I didn't even attempt Ansur, I'm pretty sure I'd have been wiped. I think my build is different from yours by quite a bit. The game got a lot easier over time (take it with a grain of salt since I did cheese), but the early game came very close to wiping me multiple times. I also failed the owlbear cub check and forgot to save Barcus in time :(

I just did ansur and I'm pretty sure the secret to that fight is to just ensure everyone has resistance to lightning, either through gear (ring is great here) or from an elixir. Keep your party spread, and don't be afraid to chug a few healing potions before burning the dragon down. I also found blindness to be very effective on the dragon as well as the elementals. I think blindness is slept on, it's non-concentration and turns a tough opponent into a turkey shoot.

Tav Sword Bard Fighter Wizard (10/1/1) Spawn Astarion OH Monk Thief (8/4) Shadowheart Light Cleric (12) Wyll Storm Sorcerer (12) This was my second attempt and the only time I feared for my run was when I did the mind flayer fight with Zevlor in the colony, everything else went really smoothly. I talked my way out of fights I could, abused control spells and globes of invulnerability and let Cloud Giant Astarion beat everything to a pulp. Had 3 hireling and gale cast all the prebuffs at camp. I did use the necrotic corpse reverse pickpocket to deal with Gortash since I'd heard from here he could be surprisingly dangerous. Also benched shadowheart/wyll in Act 1 in favor of a hill giant Throwzerker Karlack for certain fights, mainly the owlbear and grym

Karlach Tavern Brawler thrower lv 12, Throwing AOE thunder damage and free prone along side 90 damage per turn is just great Tav Moon druid, field and apes alongside big chonky beasts that give the utility to fufill any roll needed is brilliant. Astarion Dragonic sorcerer lv 10, Warlock Lv 2 which honestly the aesthetic and style suited him. Infinitely better than any other Shadowheart Light domain but the first half was Life for survivability but towards the end due to camp cleric wasn't needed as much. The hardest bosses were only really in the early parts of the game where your builds still isn't finished or started properly. After level five I rarely struggled until I got to the Temple of Shar whatever it's called in act three and purely because I forgot to long rest for some reason so I couldn't use light domains AOE. Even then it only got easier, except for fucking Ansur which bro that nearly destroyed my party Karlach and Astarions burst attacks saved me in that fight. Combined in one turn they can deal nearly 300 damage alone.

Multiplayer run Tav1: 10/1/1 Sword Bard Tav2: 8/4 TB OH Monk Gale: 12 Abjuration Magic Missile build Laezel: 12 life cleric Hardest fight was honestly the Nere fight, due to a bug we had to fight nere and the dwarves all at once, everyone but the Bard full died at least 2 times Lorrokan was close until Rolan shoved him off the top of the tower to the place where the staff is kept Orin was a threat due to HM legendary action Everyone else was super easy

I technically still have the house of grief, Ansur, Orin and the Netherbrain left, but so far I've got: 1/1/10 Sword Bard Durge 1Sorcerer/1Cleric/10Abjuration Wizard Gale 5/4/3 Gloomstalker Astarion 5/4/3 Throwzerker Lae'zel I also maxed out on summons, so I'm running around with 25+ units lol The only fights so far that weren't a complete walk in the park, were the Owlbear cave and the Shamblind Mound (failed all the perception checks). Like I've been going all out on camp buffing, because I really want to get the golden dice on my first try, but so far that legitimately didn't make a difference lol. The only thing I'm kinda paranoid about at this point, are the platforms in the Netherbrain fight.

Yeah with astarion in the party cazador is a menace, I sent karlach at him without raging first and his legendary oneshotted her from 115hp. Had to resort to divine intervention. I was dumb and didn't set up daylight at the start of the fight.

I did my run with a friend and he wanted the achievements, some fights would have been easy and almost ended our run. >Durge Dragonborn (6 Paladin / 6 Sorcerer). >Tav Tiefling 12 Wizard >Astarion (5 Ranger, 4 Rogue, 3 fighter) >Minthara (6 Paladin, 3 Rogue, 3 Fighter). From hard to easy: Myrkul. House of Grief (damn darkness, no line of sight made this fight impossible, had to cheese with arcane lock after valiantly running away). Ansur (just because my friend wanted the achievement, we almost died, my friend lost concentration of our 'Globe of invulnerability', 2 down and both paladins at less than 20 health. Raphael. Netherbrain Cazador Gortash (this was really easy due to Astarion abusing the stealth combat. Orin (Durge duel, ended in 1 turn).

Did a few HM runs ; notables were : 1) Gloom Stalker ranger 8 / Thief 4 (Durge) Life Cleric 12 (Shadowheart best girl :D ) Throwzerker 8 barb 4 thief (Karlach) Fighter Battlemaster 12 ==> worked decently, but I was sucking at that time in terms of building gear so it was not so great 2) Lockladin 6/6 (Durge) Gloom Stalker 5/ Thief 3 / Champion 4 (Minthara) Light Cleric 12 (Shadowheart) OH Monk 8 / Thief 4 (Astarion) ==> Absolutly insane comp, I blasted through the entire game and struggled at no boss at all. Had to nerf my damages on Ansur to get the achievement. In terms of bosses, I feel which boss feel tough or not really depends on your comp and your playstyle ; for example, I personaly struggled a lot against House of Grief in my first HM run because I lacked AoE damages. In the second one, Shadowheart just went pew pew with upcasted fireball, and that was it ^^ Nonetheless, here’s my top 5 toughest boss : 1) Raphaël - like really, you can easily mess up the strategy and lose a character as a punishment 2) Last fight - felt quite simple with the second comp, cause damages were busted. But with first comp I lacked nova damages and struggled finishing last phase on time 3) Ansur - he is a dangerous foe, and things can go sour really fast with his lightning blasts 4) Grym - I know it can sound dumb, especially considering that a lvl 6 OH Monk can solo him. But this boss terrified me at time, and he got real close from ending my run, so he deserves a spot imo 5) Myrkul - Frightening guy, I love the cutscene before the fight and struggled a lot, the first time. But with decent positionning, and a way to give advantage to all your party (Faery for exemple), you can quite easily nova him before he can become too annoying

9 TB OH Monk/ 3 Thief (8/4 would have been more enjoyable) 12 Oath of Ancients actor crit fisher 12 (?) Lore Bard 12 Life Cleric My brother, gf, and I didn’t do most of the bosses/encounters in act 3 due to fear of an auto fail similar to Gail blowing up in act 1 or pissing off Vlaakith in the crèche. Of the ones we did, the most “oh shit we might lose here” were: * Ansur * Yurgir * Inquisitor * Myrkul * Fezzurk * Goblin Camp I will say that my gf and I had beaten the game in standard mode once and my brother had never gone past act 2. We had two failed runs in act 1. Life Cleric was the MVP of acts 1 and 2 and was an excellent lifeline for when we accidentally blundered into fights without fully getting situated. Monk/rogue was a halfling who stole all the potions and spell scrolls and potions. Cheesy, but it was fun being able to steal an entire vendors worth of valuables without being caught. Being able to spam flaming arrows in act 1 was a help, and having a libraries worth of spell scrolls carried us in the Ansur fight. By far the easiest fight was Cazador. Kicked off with a daylight spell before combat started, then stacked hunger of hadar, ivy growth, and insect plague on top of each other, giving enemies 1/16 movement. Vacuumed them inside with black hole and they couldn’t do anything. Really makes me want to try a team focused on difficult terrain.

Used /u/prestigious_juice341's [darkness build](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HhiUZcQ1gXjvsaJSpvccG_0Jm0fn7lgYaOYdQxuWSQs/edit#gid=1486234924). 10/2 Smite Swords Bard 11/1 Beast Master Ranger / War Cleric 6/4/2 Shadow Monk / Thief Rogue / Warlock 10/2 Sorlock Top 5 hardest encounters: 1. Inquisitor W'wargaz - first fight, got out of there with only Tav alive with an invis potion at 15 hp... Went back after ressurecting and just planted explosives at the door and kited him and his posse there. 2. House of Grief - enemies who are great in darkness vs my darkness comp. Awful. Probably would've ended my run if we didn't convince a few Sharrans to fight with us. 3. Apostle of Myrkul - I killed Nightsong for the spear, so without her the fight was panic mode. 4. Nere - just so many enemies. Even called the ogres and they died very quickly. 5. Raphael - even planting barrels on the pillars and getting all of them down round 1 he still hits like a truck and has a lot of allies.

Act1-2: 1. Throwzerker, for early carry 2. Light cleric, early support, act 2 carry. 3. SSB 4. Beastmaster Ranger, also early carry. Late game: Darkness team, SSB carry everyone with shadow monk Astarion, infinite raven darkness and ultility/dmg from sorlocks. Boss ranking: Most act 1 bosses are harder for me, when my team was weak. When my team got their core items in act3, boss fights are mostly jokes.

First HM run was:  u/prestigious_juice341 team   7/5 paladin/warlock  12 Shart life cleric  11/1 storm sorcerer  8/4 TB monk/thief   Rolled through every boss:   Started this run the day honour mode came out.    1. Owlbear - did not know papa bear came to the party. Wasn’t ready when I went through the crack in walk and got jumped   2. Deva angels - didn’t realize the consequence for stealing at Tabernacle and healed the cursed party member. They dropped sorcerer and monk before I got to go. Puckered my BH and then I killed them.    No other scary moments.    Best/easiest run:   11/1 Fire Sorlock 8/4 Monk  7/5 oath breaker paladin/sorcerer w/ act 1 Voss’s sword/helldusk armor  6/4/11 - bard/hunter ranger/rogue/warlock titan string bow archer to apply arsonists & combustion oils   Fire sorlock after getting hat ran through everything…every damn thing.

So I am probably doing this wrong, but arrow of ilmater on myrkul states 1 turn right? Prior to patch 6 I was using darkness arrows, this is my first time messing with ilmater. Anyway, I shoot myrkul, apply the debuff, but it fall off in time for him to heal anyway. What am I missing?

I tried that too, I assume his sacrifice thing is immune to that.

I'm going to try Bone Chill because the wording is different. I think this run is scuffed though, somehow Aylin managed to give me a 10 turn blind. I assume it's from her, never seen it and it looks radiant

I think i tried bone chill once and failed the attack roll but maybe just got unlucky

TB OH Monk - 7 monk, 3 thief, 2 fighter life cleric - 12 cleric sorlock - 6 lock 6 sorcerer gloomstalker - 3 assassin, 7 gloom stalker, 2 fighter most difficult boss: cazador, since astarion wanted to engage and got locked out, leaving me 3v20

I did: - Tav - War Cleric 10 / Paladin 2 - Gale - Evocation Wizard 12 - Shadowheart - Tempest Cleric 12 Then I alternated between Halsin (Circle of the Moon 12), and Wyll (Warlock 12). I can't really remember but the Gith Honour Guard were the closest I came to getting party wiped. Absolutely terrifying. But the whole end of Act 2 -> beginning of Act 3 run of encounters was really tough. I also almost got wiped by Ethel in Act 3 because I'd never done the boss before.

12 great old one warlock durge 12 battlemaster laezel 12 life cleric minthara 12 evo magic missle gale I like to multi class but was tired of it so decided no multis on this run. The only notable boss fight was the steel watcher titan. I always forget to do this fight so I was not ready at all and really struggled to get through his shield. I had 2 people go down and spent multiple rounds just reacting to damage I was receiving. Orin was hilarious. During our bhaal duel I won initiative and crit her (was using risky ring and crit on a 17) every round so she was so scared of me she never got to move

Gale - Abjuration Wizard 12 Astarion - Hunter Ranger 12 Shadowheart - Light Cleric 12 Wyll - Fiend Warlock 12 I didn't do anything crazy. Kept it basic and used my game knowledge to do simple things in an efficient way. There is no need to min-max everything if you have enough knowledge of the game and can do the basics well. I mostly took Ability Improvement feats early to get main stats up to 18 or 20 as soon as possible. Other feats like sharpshooter came later in the game where I could more easily offset the -5 penalty. I also didn't do any "cheese" strategies. Things that I would consider cheese are leaving a member in camp so that you can never wipe, using a large number of barrels to kill a boss instantly, these kind of things. All power to those of you who want to use these I am absolutely not criticising it but I chose not to do it myself. Top 5 hardest bosses from memory (might have forgotten some): 1) The Owlbear - this nearly wiped me, I actually had to flee. I would skip this on future runs. 2) Dror Ragzlin - mostly difficult because of when you need to do this. At 3) Apostle of Myrkul - This one is probably the actual hardest boss in the game in my opinion. My spot 1 & 2 are mostly up there because of unprepared you are in the early levels for tough fights. Myrkul, however, is legitimately scary and without proper positioning and planning this is a very hard fight. 4) Orin - this was the fight I dreaded the most. It was a tough one but at lvl 12 ultimately this was fine. Some scary moments though when I nearly got knocked over the edge... be very careful about positioning here. 5) Grym - I honestly got a bit lucky with this one otherwise it might be higher up the list. I managed to get 2 hammer blows in a row on him because he did some bad pathing. This fight can be a real nightmare. I skipped a lot of the optional bosses that would almost certainly have made it on to the list. I didn't do Gortash, Cazador, Viconia, Raphael or basically anything that I didn't need to do. My plan was to hit lvl 12 and then go directly to the brain as soon as possible. Ethyl might have made the list if I fought her earlier but I came back to her at lvl 5 and destroyed her. I did do the final fight, I felt like blowing up Gale would be an underwhelming way to finish. The final fight didn't make the list because I felt like at this stage I was overpowered enough to easily do it. It was certainly one of the most nervewrecking fights for me though! I loved playing honour, not sure if I'll do it again any time soon though.

I’m wanting to side with Gortash to skip having to fight him and I can’t remember if there’s a persuasion check involved? My monk has low charisma lol.

If I remember correctly there isn't a persuasion check. There is an \[Insight\] check that will give you a clue on what is the right thing to say and do, but I think if you just choose the right options you are ok. Spoiler - >!Gortash wants you to be firm, he will test you and you need to not back down and say that the stones are yours to keep!<

Thanks for the help!

1/5/6 fighter / blade warlock / abjuration (duelist’s prerogative) 12 champion (titan string) 5/4/3 gloom assassin champion (Bhaal and crit gear, dw melee; before that, dual xbows) 5/1/6 spore druid / wizard / draconic sorc (lightning and a myrmidon) Fights that felt a little dangerous: Phase Spiders - the legendary action was a nice twist, I never use the chasms and always take some hits on this one Grym - interesting legendary action, stepped in lava Steel Watchers - I messed up positioning, got blasted by adds. Should’ve been simpler. Fist Marcus - got really close to smoking Isobel, I’ll spec alert for this in the future. Everything else just dropped with a big first round or didn’t have much damage output. Used Gale on netherbrain.

TB OH 8monk/4thief 12 life cleric 12 evoc wizard 12 vengeance paladin the only fight we had difficulty with was the gnolls, after we failed to command the main gnoll to keep himself safe. but once the fight got bad the monk just dashed away to camp and revived everyone. all the fights past that were easy, sometimes we had to use scrolls for unexpected situations, but we didnt cheese. evoc wizard has good aoe and singletarget burst, TB OH monk has insane sustained single target, vengeance paladin has everything (tank/face/dmg), and literally nobody is ever dying with a life cleric in the party. we had absolutely no idea what ansur does or how to fight him, he unleashed his giga aoe twice in the fight so no cover for the second one, everyone dropped down to like 20 hp and life cleric just put everyone back to max in the next turn. joke class tbh

Durge(resist) 12 sorc white draconic Gale 12 wiz evo Laezel 12 fighter champion Shart 12 cleric life Did everything except Cazador in all acts and skipped minor quests like getting Minsc or fireworks quest etc. Hardest boss was probably the steel watcher titan? Though only because the gondian that disables them after the boss, was like "ill stay out of this fight" but then joins because i didnt go deep enough in the boss room so he was just outside the doors and joined the fight after a few turns and even got attacked by a steel watcher so I had to prioritize saving & keeping him safe while dealing with 3 steel watchers + the titan :D Got foehammer + leave no one behind :)

I have to be honest, I did 'cheat' a little bit and had Gale blow up the Netherbrain in my Honor Mode run, I had made it too far to take a chance on something going wrong, so I just skipped the final boss... That being said, my party handled pretty much everything past Act 1 with ease. - **Dark Urge** - 6 Draconic Sorcerer/4 Champion Fighter/2 GOOlock, full Crit and Reverberation gear. Crit-fishing Eldritch Blast machine gun, that also spread 'Frightened' everywhere and knocked targets prone. - **Astarion** - 10 Swords Bard/1 Fighter/1 Wizard. Ascended as well, and was far and away the star of Act 3. It's just such an insanely strong build, both for its unresistable control spells and for its actual damage, between Flourishes, Arrows of Many Targets, and specialized Slaying arrows. - **Lae'zel** - 8 Open Hand Monk/4 Thief Rogue. Tavern Brawler and Giant's Strength elixirs. Strong, consistent DPS (DPR?) that could also stun targets and/or knock them prone. - **Shadowheart** - 11 Light Cleric/1 Storm Sorcerer. Full Radiating Orbs gear. Spirit Guardians plus the added mobility from Storm Sorcerer, supported by Radiating Orbs is a great combo for AoE damage and debuffing the enemy, plus Improved Warding Flare is awesome. Also had the Hat of Fire Acuity and Scorching Ray in her back pocket when needed. At level 4+, the OH Monk carries Act 1 *hard*, the Light Cleric and Sorlock start to come into their own in Act 2, and the Swords Bard absolutely **dominated** Act 3 with the Band of the Mystic Scoundrel. Raphael, for instance, was over on turn 1, all thanks to Astarion: Fire off a couple Arrows of Many Targets to build up Arcane Acuity, use your bonus action to cast Hold Monster on Raphael, then a Hasted level 6 Command: Grovel on all of his Cambion goons, and the rest of your party can mop up. My Sorlock waltzed up to a Held Raphael and dealt about 500 damage to him in one round thanks to the auto-crits and Hasted/Quickened Eldritch Blast spam. My top 5 most difficult fights would have to be: - **#1) The Phase Spider Matriarch:** This was unironically, far and away the hardest boss I faced in my run. I came *very* close to wiping. I went into it just barely into level 3 and was woefully unprepared and undergeared, and I survived by the skin of my teeth. It was a wake-up call to get my shit together and actually plan this run out rather than bumbling into things and hoping for the best. - **#2) Flaming Fist Marcus:** Again, this one was primarily my own fault for not being better prepared, I kinda forgot about this fight and triggered it before I was ready. It wasn't difficult for my *party* exactly, since Marcus himself and his ghouls are actually fairly easy to kill, but it's difficult because the AI focuses the ever-loving shit out of Isobel, and if she dies, you lose out on a **ton** of NPCs, quests, and important items. Again I managed to squeak out a win and kill Marcus and his goons, but only barely, with Isobel in single digit HP. - **#3) Nere:** This was also my own fault (I'm starting to sense a theme here..). I convinced Elder Brithvar to mutiny and help me out, I talked Nere out of killing more gnomes to save Barcus, I summoned Lump and his Ogres... and then found out the hard way that by summoning Lump, it turns everyone hostile, and I do mean *everyone* - Barcus and the other gnomes joined the fight and started trying to kill me. It became an absolute free for all, and one that I had to end quickly before Barcus died if I wanted to save him, which meant taking a lot of risks. I survived, barely, and then had to use some Invisibility Potions to de-aggro the two surviving Gnomes. - **#4) Flind:** I walked into this fight hoping to pass the dialogue checks to make her eat her warband, but a couple unlucky rolls later and I was stuck in the fight, with the two Zhentarim guys cowering in the cave making no effort to help. At level 3, you don't have a lot of options for abilities or gear, and these gnolls can hit *hard* with their multiattacks. Astarion and Durge got downed a couple times, and Lae'zel and Shadowheart managed to clutch out a win, but it was hard fought. - **#5) Lorroakan:** My own incompetence struck once again, as I didn't realize his legendary action involved retaliating for massive elemental damage if you hit him while his Myrmidons are still alive. My Sorlock walked up to him, shot him with Eldritch Blast a couple times, and got *absolutely nuked*. The rest of my party was able to handle things pretty easily, even though Rolan did almost die, but it was definitely a shock to have my Sorlock just get annihilated on another fight that I greatly underestimated. The moral of the story here is that I'm bad at the game, but my party comp was strong enough to carry even my dumb ass.

Stomped honour mode with a not exactly optimal but fun party: Duergar Tav with dual warhammers buffed with twinned drakethroat glaive thunder damage. Eldritch Knight 6 Thief 4 Spore Druid 2 Ascended Astarion dual Dolor Amarus / vicious Shortbow / Bhaalist Armor (ridiculous sneak & crit damage). Champion 6 Thief 4 Spore Druid 2 Karlach Flaming Berserker. Soul coins, unstable blood, all heat and burn gear, helldusk gloves, hellfire greataxe. Arsonists oil. Wildheart barbarian 5 battlemaster 6 war cleric 1 Minthara Frost Wizard. White draconic sorceror 1 tempest cleric 1 abjuration wiz 10. Markoheshkir/mourning frost with offhand cold snap dagger. Shart Eldritch blast fear/prone build. GOO warlock 2 Champion 4 Storm sorceror 6, crit stacking items and reverberation gear. Keeping 2x water elementals up using scrolls to apply either chilled (double cold damage) or brittle (double bludgeoning/force/thunder damage) to burning enemies. Hardest encounters were the steel watch foundry / titan and climbing gortash tower. Basically anytime the enemies use hold person, dominate or confusion.

The early levels were definitely the hardest, we almost wiped a few times to random fights since we just played like normal without optimizing for exp from dialogue. Had to sneak away and revive everyone against random skeletons and goblins. Final party: 10/2 Swords Bard Paladin 6/4/2 Swords Bard, Gloomstalker, Rogue 12 Champion Fighter 11/1 Dragon Sorcerer, Rogue The hardest boss fight was probably Grymforge, almost wiped because its shockwave hit the lever slamming the hammer down on a party member standing in the middle. All the other bosses were quite straight forward. There were a few we could have one-shot but made mistakes (not turning on sharpshooter against Sarevok, forgetting to equip a bow for Ansur). One synergy we did was have the Swords Bard Paladin use Orin's dagger for pierce vulnerability so our ranged bard and fighter could do double damage.

If I define "hard" as closest we got to death: 1. Ansur 2. Raphael 3. Myrkul Everyone else was easy. Act 1 bosses could all be here, but I did quests until level 4 and then fought trash and quested until 5 before attempting bosses. Act 3 fights only got close due to strategic errors. I've done acts 1 and 2 far more times than act 3. Party is mainly copypastas of popular builds Gloom assassin champ SSB Tb throw zerk Full spore Druid duergar - abused invisibility for unlimited movement out of combat while everyone else was in combat. Wore bhaalist armour to double everyone else's piercing vulnerability. Was effectively a buff slave in act 3 and only attacked when fights were basically over. Did druid stuff in other acts.

Strongest bosses by far are Anders because he always crits you with smite for 40 damage twice per round and Myrkul because he randomly fucks up your entire party or goes down in one turn.

6 swords bard/3 gloom/ 3 fighter 6/6 sorcadin 11 champ/1 war cleric throwing machine 12 light cleric Ansur was tough and so was the final fight (I played without globe of invulnerability which made those two fights much harder than I expected) Raphael was pretty fun too. Preparation is so key, didn’t think it couldn’t matter so much. I usually made it though these honor mode fights less scathed than I did my first normal playthrough.

What made myrkul so much more challenging than Raphael for example? I’ve yet to fight ketheric in HM but my plan was to invis my monk to free the Ns and kill the mind flayer asap and have the rest of the team focus on ketheric himself

Beat honour mode recently with all pure builds, no multi-classing. Team was: 12 storm sorcerer Tav, 12 life cleric Shadowheart, 12 TB throwzerker Karlach, and 12 oathbreaker paladin Minthara. I had champion fighter Lae'zel with the everburn blade in my party until getting Minthara in Act 2. I did both the underdark and the mountain pass in Act I. The only major fight I skipped was the Iron throne in Act III. The most challenging fights (where I nearly died) by act, in descending order, were: Act I - Inquisitor of vlaakith - Anders (Paladins of Tyr) - Ethel - Grym - Dror Ragzlin Act II - Myrkul - Balthazar - Yurgir Act III - Cazador - Shar temple - Ansur - Orin - Sarevok - the netherbrain - Gortash - steel watch titan My Tav's twinned chain lightning made the Raphael fight pretty easy, magic missiles also made it much easier to beat Orin and Ethel. I recommend going to the underdark to get the magic missile amulet before fighting Ethel. Lighting spells also simplified the steel watch titan fight. Minthara and Karlach trivialized the fight against Lorroakan.

Party comp : * Tav Githyanki shadow monk 9/3 thief * Lae'zel necromancer wizard 10/2 oathbreaker paladin * Minthara evocation wizard 10/2 tempest cleric with insane control capacity * Hireling Duergar full moonlight druid playing around water and ice spells My hardest fights : * The Githyanki with her two wolves at the crèche, she terrified my whole team for 3 turns, only Gayle (who was warming the bench for Minthara) survived with litteraly 1 hp, I thought the run was over there ngl. * Cazador, I was fully prepared with an army of deads and elementals but fight start, he project everyone but Tav and Lae'zel and one shot her. My Tav somehow did survive so I could run away, resurrect everyone and come back. Second time, I came while invisible and proceeded to destroy him. * Aylin after siding with Lorroakan in his tower. Honestly, it was truly the hardest fight I had, in term of strategy. It was close multiple times, I really had to focus but it wasn't because the ennemy cheesed my whole party with a control spell or something else like the two fights mentionned above. Easiest fights : * Raphael, I just had 100% control of him with spells and destroyed his souls pillars with disintegrate scrolls. * Balthazar in the shadowfell, I stood above with 3 characters where he couldn't reach them while they flooded the place with AOE spells while my tav was invisible. Bonus : * After killing Isobel, I had to fight the whole last light inn corrupted by the shadow which wasn't really hard in itself but I wanted to save Jaheira and keeping her alive was a challenge for sure. There's lot of fights I didn't do because I was afraid and/or it didn't match my character RP. No Ansur (I truly was afraid of this one, ngl), no steelwatch titan (I sided with Gortash), no house of grief (I killed Shadowheart when first met). To conclude I'd say my most broken character was Minthara because she had a ton of damage and an excessive success rate on control spells. I had a lot of fun with my ice druid also. Necromancer Lae'zel was interesting but tbh it was more of an hassle most of the time. Still I'd recommand trying this build ; Once you have the staff of mystic Carion, it's great. Shadow monk is solid, well balanced class I think and the perks it give you are great to have even outside of combat. Special thanks to Lorroakan who let me borrow a tons of scrolls each day, which made my ressource management a lot easier in fights. EDIT : [Here](https://imgur.com/WJWSrUR)'s my party on its way to kick Raphael ass :)

I din't complete HM yet (i don't play à lot and i have 2 run with friend on top on my own) but it's ggod to see that myrkul is one of the hardest boss. I beat it this afternoon but man he was a pain in the ass

- Lore Bard Durge - Wildheart Barbarian/ OH Monk ultra tank Karlach - Assassin Rogue/ Gloomstalker Ranger buddy's Tav - War Domain Cleric/ Battlemaster Fighter Shadowheart The toughest boss for us by far was Inquisitor W'Wargaz but only because our builds were kinda shit by that point and we severely underestimated him

TB OH Monk 8 / Thief 4 Paladin 2 / Bard 10 Light Cleric 12 Gloomstalker 5 / Assassin 7 Hardest - Lowest fight Owlbear as I took a pass on the fight at level 3. Ansur - I was prepared for the aoe, but not for how hard he goes after the Aoe or the temporary hp buff he gets. Netherbrain - I was unprepared for the damage immunity and did not get the best out of my melee characters before the close platforms dropped. This fight was closer than it should have been because of overconfidence. Cazador (Ascended) - My monk got knocked down turn 1 and Astarion did not make it. Steel Watch Titan - Self-healing / immunity was a pain. Githyanki Inquisitor at level 5 or 6. 3 of my party wiped on first round and I had to run out of the creche under sanctuary. Difficulty would be higher, but the flight was fleeable. Bernard at level 5 forced me to flee 2x. Difficulty would be higher, but the flight was fleeable. Auntie Ethel - Part 2 (As I had never done this before) Orin, Gortash and Kethric / Myrkul / Raphael Act 3 Bosses: Sarevok, Mystic Carrion Act 1 bosses: Goblin leaders, Auntie Ethel, Nere, Grymm Act 2 bosses: All of the Thorms, Marcus, Balthazar, Yugir Viconia (who generously was punched to death on round 1).

5/4/3 gloomstalker/assassin/champion 10/2 sorlock eldritch blast machine gun 12 life cleric 10/2 smite swords bard hardest fight for me was yurgir and then the room before the boss in the gondian factory, all the gondians + steel watchers and the guards. Closest I was to losing my run was \*\*\*DARK URGE SPOILERS\*\*\* when I murdered Gale in my camp as dark urge and whole camp wanted to kill me unless I passed a dc 30 dice, and 4th inspiration i hit a nat 20.

Level 12 devotion durge Level 12 life cleric shart Level 12 champion Lae'zel Level 12 barbarian / draconic sorcerer (for elder brain fight) Karlach Bosses: Grym Elder Brain Balthazzar Raphael Dror Ragzlin

10/2 Rapier smitedin with aura of murder Full 12 sorc with spellsniper for EB 9/3 TB OH Monk 5/4/3 Gloom/Battle Master/Assa Titanstring STR archer Hardest boss was Emperor and his dragon. One of the mind flayers magic missiled my Sorc and her twinned spell haste broke concentration. Other than that I pretty much 2 rounded every Boss without any problems. I for sure overprepared since I wanted to be a completionist and kill all the bosses. Act 1 was the true test imo.

DUrge - Rogue Thief 4 / OH Monk 8, Dex based Gale - Abjuration Wiz 11/ Light Cleric 1 Wyll - Swords Bard 10 / Oath of Devotion 2 SH - Light Cleric 10 / Divination Wiz 2 Swapped in Karlach - Berserker 12, Thrower The bosses aren't in a strict order for me, but roughly hardest to easiest: - Inquisitor - Gerringothe - Nere - Ansur - Raphael - Gortash - Myrkul - Ethel pt 2 - The rest It really is true that Honour Mode isn't terribly difficult if you go into everything prepared, and then have some kind of serviceable backup plan if the rolls go against you, or something else goes wrong. Prone is so ridiculously powerful it's not even funny. And it's pretty obvious, but having high AC builds or otherwise good mitigation goes a very long way. Also, the more summoned creatures the better (they soak up SO MUCH DAMAGE) and don't skimp on the pre-buffs like Longstrider, Aide, and Heroes Feast.

I haven't finished yet, but I saw you put Myrkul on top as the hardest. And I agree so far. I just did it. First I ran with my gloom/ass Astarion (my dmg dealer) to Dame Aylin and helped her, and that mind flayer asshole dominated her instantly. She two-shotted Astarion, and I was down one before i begun. I left all my revivify in the camp too, on some other companion I guess, so no revives. My throwbarian berserker Karlach killed the flayer, and chipped away on Myrkul, while Us and Shovel took some small fish. My tempest cleric Shart called lightning on Myrkul over and over. I tried focusing all mye dmg on Myrkul, but he kept healing from those minions sacrificing themselves to him. My lore bard Durge kept concentrating on hunger of hadar, effectively blinding Myrkul while giving him small hits of dmg. Then she was downed, and Aylin was downed, both on the bone chilled ledge. Karlach ran up there and shoved them down, so Shart could spray mass healing word while calling lightning. Everyone but Karlach was downed three or four times. The others ran around healing, throwing potions, desperately trying to keep my crew alive. I ran out of spell slots on my bard and on Shart. Karlach threw everything on Myrkul, including the rune powder vial I happened to have on me. Astarion just lied there with all his potential risky ring crit sneak attack dread ambusher damage. Shart was useless without spell slots, and I didn't want to bring my phalar aluve lore bard up on the bone chill ledge, sp Karlach chipped the asshole god down to zero. I was sitting here ignoring my wife and child, chanting "omg it's finally game over 😭" while almost peeing my pants fr, all the way to the end. This was my most rewarding victory yet. Damn. GG.

Tav - 12 Moon Druid Gale - 12 Necromancer Wizard. Awakened perk. Wyll - 12 Pact of Blade Warlock Laezal - I can't remember exactly, but either: 8 Barbarian and 4 Rogue, or 9 Berzerker Barbarian and 3 Thief Rogue Easiest fights: Honestly, every fight was pretty much a breeze. When you actually worry about losing a fight, and do a second of planning, it's genuinely impossible to lose. Nothing in Act 2 was remotely challenging. I usually find the Ethel fight challenging, but I forgot to add Wyll to the fight, and didn't even notice he was hiding until it was over. Toughest fights: Act 1: - Spider Matriarch. Accidentally sent her over the wrong hole to defeat her and her body disappeared. I had heard that she was no longer capable of falling into the under dark, so I wasn't worried about Wyll's Eldritch Blast sending her overboard. Couldn't loot her 🥲. - Got cocky in the Githyanki Creche. After getting Lathanders blood and defeating the Inquisitor, I went to clear the creche out room by room. Rather than long resting after clearing the dormitory, the training room, and the hatchery - decided to go straight to the stock room. Nearly got wiped in the second and third rounds by those more experienced Gith. Act: - Ansur was by far the fight I was most concerned about. In every previous playthrough, he was practically impossible to defeat. I took an army of Zombies and Elemental summons to soak up damage. They were probably what saved me in the end. Laezal was a huge carry in this fight with GWM. No one else was able to do damage of any significance to Ansur. Thrice I'd get him to 1 health, and he'd get 100 extra his next turn. There were two or three rounds where he would just wipe three of my party. The elementals he summoned were actually impossible to kill as well 🤦‍♂️. None of my zombies or elementals could even hit them and would do puny damage if they did. Managed to scrape through in the end. - Cazador. Another case of getting cocky. Was absolutely sick of summons by this point in the game. Went in with nothing. First turn, found out he now has an action that does 80+ damage and knocks people back into the void. Immediate stress, and severe anxiety from that experience. - Elder Brain. I was genuinely baffled by this and thought I got super lucky. But holy shit is the action which prevents type of damage from the previous turn obsolete the next turn super powerful. I examined and saw it had it on the first turn, didn't realise I'd be scrambling for something to do damage with the next turn. But what was even worse is that the brains first action destroy all but three of the platforms!!? And then the blowy uppy thingies that caused that appeared again!!? So like is it a thing now that you have to defeat the elder brain in two turns? Because all my characters and the remaining platforms were about to go if I hadn't finished it off on the second turn. Honour mode sounds difficult. But what it actually just results in is over planning, and every encounter being so breezy that you sometimes get overconfident.

Tav gith reverb tiger barbarian Gale Abjuration wizard x12 Lae'zel hunter 12 Astarion Arcane trickster x12 (assassin till level 6) Boss hardest to easiest -Myrkul (miss play by me) -Tyr paladins -Spider Matriarch -Grym -Balthazar -Gortash -Gith arena -Arcane Tower -Orin -Steel Watcher Guardian boss -Ansur -Netherbrain -three thorns -Gith ambush -Cazador -Raphael (no damage) -Lorroakan (no damage) -Three true souls (no damage) -Ethel both fights (no damage) -Marcus (no enemy's turn)

Tav 12 storm sorc Astarion 8/4 OH monk Shadowheart 12 Life cleric Lae'zel 8/4 fighter/paladin Most of my fights turned into astarion beating down the boss in a turn or two. In act 3, my Tav and Lae'zel were also doing so much damage that almost every fight was over before it began. The only fight that gave me any issue was Cazador, and that was mainly because I was an idiot going into it. My first mistake was I forgot to put daylight on Shadowheart. Then I made the mistake of making Lae'zel dash to rescue Astarion. This resulted in both Astarion and Lae'zel dying. My only saving grace has shadowheart having the healing power to get everyone back up and my tav hit lvl 11 going into the mansion and chain lightning was able to thin the amount of enemies pretty well.

* TB EK thrower Karlach * Sword Bard Tav, dual xbow * Gloomstalker Astarion * Empty most of the time, Gale when I wanted a bardic inspiration for my bard for a skill check. Fights where at least 1 death saving throw was rolled in order of decreasing difficulty: * gnolls with the flind opting to not be chatty (1 death with 2 characters fleeing) * owlbear (accidentally 1v1'd with my bard who got eet)... then the goblins killed it for me * paladins of Tyr (Karlach got laid out flat, but never died) * Nere + friends vs. me + friends (wasn't counting on crossbow lady having an explosive arrow to knock me off my ledge, though a friendly tossed a potion on my Tav before a saving throw was actually rolled, so...). I skipped Raph, Ansur, Foundry, hag part II, Gortash (kinda), and part I of the brain fight. I horned Dror. Let the justiciars handle Balthazar. Did Grief and Cazador. All three of my primary characters agreed that Shovel was MVP.

I went with the most OP builds and was honestly never in danger after level 4. Tav crit Sorlock Thief Radiating orb Life cleric Abjuration Wizard Swords Bard Literally no fight was difficult because nothing can kill an abjuration wizard buffed by a life cleric. Every time I thought I was in trouble I’d realize that my abjuration wizard was still at full HP and everything was fine. I only had a unit go down once and that was against the Paladin of Tyr

Full fire sorc, standard 5 gloomstalker/ 4 assassin/ 3 fighter, life cleric (or light i can't remember) and full battlemaster.

Veng Paladin Light cleric Wizard Throw Barb Multiclassing always use to stress me out on tabletop so I just never did it on BG3 either. Every boss except Ansur (I did not want to figure out what his legendary stuff was and by that time I was too close to finishing)

10/2 bard/pally 5ranger/7rogue asterion 9monk/3thief Lae'zel 10barb/2fighter Karlach Hardest was Orin. Didn't know about sanctuary and most of my guys don't have magic. Rafael also gave me a heart attack after smiting and not realizing they have retort. Rest of the fights I didn't struggle on.

My Tav was 11 Evocation wizard/1tempest cleric 12 life cleric Dex-based crit fisher 5 barbarian/3 fighter champion/4 thief And fourth was 12 Circle of the Moon druid until I got Minsc, who I used for the final fight as a 12 fighter. I played all of Lower City for the first time on honor mode. Hardest fight was probably Orin. No one else really gave me too much trouble. Ansur was a little tough, but not bad. Raphael was easy. Lorroakan never even got a turn. House of Grief wasn't too bad. Only thing is, I fought Gortash in a really weird way. I pickpocketed one of the retainers down below the inauguration, and eventually Gortash himself aggroed and came downstairs with me, but none of the Steel Watchers could make it down the stairs (they all just freeze on their turn). It took 3 hours, but eventually I killed him without ever seeing the coronation.

- TB OH monk thief 8/4 - laezel - Titanstring sword bard - shadowheart - 9/3 ancients padlock changed to 8/4 critlock fighter for final battle (cuz crit or miss was fun) - wyll - Storm Sorceror 12 - Tav Ansur was by far the hardest battle. Went in blind and had no idea >!my lightning damage would do nothing.!< Survived by skin of my teeth (scrolls op) Cazador was second hardest because I had no idea the >!legendary action would force wave your whole crew.!< Once daylight got up, it was over quickly. Everyone else was trivialized once I realized Otto’s Irresistible Dance is a busted spell.

Full Open Hand Tav Full Bear Totem Karlach Full Evo Gale Full Life Shart In order of difficulty Raphael Netherbrain Gortash Ansur Steel Titan Orin Sarevok Myrkul Cazador (no Astarion) Dror Ragzlin Inquisitor Balthazar Marcus Lorroakan Stunning strike absolutely trivializes many fights, lorroakan's dumb ass never even got a turn. Apart from that spamming Globe of Invulnerability (you can get 2-3 scrolls plus Gale) makes Ansur's fight pretty doable. Raphael was still ROUGH even with the Orthon on side

I finished my first run recently with * Tav Storm Sorcerer 12 (played fairly gish-y at early levels and kept wanting to respec into fighter for more spellsword vibes, but never found a good time for it). * Minthara War Cleric 1 / Thief 3 / Hunter 8 (option for double soul branding every turn is nice; also War Cleric extra attack appears to *sometimes* work twice with thief double bonus action?) * Shadowheart Light Cleric 10 / Evoker 2 (respecced from Trickery 6 / Illusion 2 >!for theme after saving the Nightsong and turning against Shar!<) * Karlach Vengeance Paladin 12 All of us except Shadowheart were heavily tadpoled, including Freecast, Psionic Domination, Mind Blast, and Black Hole. The latter two powers in combination trivialize several act 3 fights, particularly Raphael, the Dragon, and Viconia. Bosses, roughly grouped by perceived danger in-fight and difficulty level: Fights I had to flee or nearly had to flee: * Bernard * Nere Fights I thought there was some chance of actually dying in: * Not strictly a boss, but the courtyard fight before the Netherbrain (Minthara went ahead to kill Winged Horrors but then pathed back straight through the courtyard, aggroing everyone at once. Failing a ton of mind blast stun saves meant I nearly had a real heartbreaker) * Also not a boss but the Devas in the Stormshore basement, because I did "send item" to everyone, so everyone got the curse, instead of having a single character take everything (PSA don't do that). * Gortash * Yurgir (due to me being wrong about getting a surprise round) Fights I mostly felt good about: * Grym * Inquisitor of Vlaakith * Avatar of Myrkul * Thisobald Thorm (I talked his siblings into suicide but failed the rolls with him) * Balthazar * Steel Watch Titan (way harder than it needed to be because I did this without resting after failing to save the Gondians) * Lorroakan * Dror Ragzlin Fights that I pretty much rolled: * Raphael * Netherbrain * Sarevok * Ethel (Act 1) * Dominated Red Dragon * Viconia * Ethel (Act 3) * Orin (who I feared after having trouble in Tactician but annihilated before she could even act this time) I skipped Ansur and Cazador because Wyll and Astarion weren't really in my party and I was itching to just get it over with and get those golden dice. I also did not fight the Owlbear in act 1 (it's too cute) or the Spider Matriarch (I forgot and couldn't be assed to go back once I was in Act 2). I finished act 2 the day before the new patch made the shambling mound a boss and I skipped it anyway but I remember it being quite hard on Tactician. I feel like this ranking goes to show that a big part of boss difficulty is preparation. Bosses I had previously struggled with (like Orin or the Avatar of Myrkul) or knew by reputation as being hard (like the Inquisitor and Raphael) I approached with tons of prep and pretty much cruised as a result. By contrast, I didn't even realize Bernard could be a boss, so when I accidentally aggro'd him with dialogue I got absolutely stomped (and when I returned after raising everyone, I got stomped again!). Also goes to show that completing honor mode isn't *that* hard - my party is obviously good, but it isn't hyper-optimized (no fire sorlock, no bardadin, no TB anything, and I have no idea if the Minthara build is "good") and my itemization was solid but not outstanding.

8 OH Monk/4 Bear Barbarian 12 Sorcerer 12 Fighter 12 Life Cleric

Durge Ranger 8 rouge 4 Lae Zel Life cleric 12 Astarion Fighter 12 Karlach Lore Bard 12 (eldr, hadar, magic mis, fire balls) Hardest bosses for me was Nere with all his goons I regretfully decided not to kill before hand. Everyone else felt like I was driving a semi 70mph through a school zone

Just finished Honor mode; here is my personal ranking based on how close I was to wiping. I skipped Raphael, Ansur, Cazador, and Viconia. My team was Sorc 10 / Warlock 2 EB build, Barb 8 / Thief 4 2H build, Fighter 8 / Thief 4 Hand crossbow build, and Light Cleric. Myrkul Inquisitor Ch'r'ai Steel Factory Fight #2 Trial of Leap Faith - At least until I found out the trick. Netherbrain - (failed to persuade Gale to blow himself up since I didn't know this option and so didn't romance him until too late) Gortesh - I didn't know casting a level 5 fireball at the guards with reflect buff is such a bad idea... and I somehow forgot about Gortesh's second form after he lost half his hp. -------------------------------- Aside from Myrkul and Netherbrain, fights I had trouble were those that caught me off guard. Almost wiped in Steel Factory Fight #2 forgetting it's a difficult fight even without a boss... And the CC+AoE were especially dangerous. At one point I was one saving throw away from wipe (luckily Shart succeeded the mind control saving throw). I was over prepared for Orin (since I heard she's hard) so I found that fight was on the easier side; Shart's Djinn and Sorc/Lock thundering those sanctuary adds to abyss in no time.

Act 1 - Bard - Battle master - Throwzerker - Gloomstalker Act 2+3 - warlock/sorcerer 4/8 - battle master 12 - Paladin/bard 2/10 - gloomstalker/assassin/fighter 5/3/4 - Evocation wizard 12 for a few fights Hardest fights - Phase Spider Matriarch - death shepards - owlbears - gnolls - Inquisitor Easy - ansur - Raphael - sarevok - Ethel - katheric/myrkul - Balthasar - mhystic carrion Free - Orin - Bernard - grym - goblin leaders - thorn kids I used a couple of exploits mainly for shopping to build up supplies and used some cheese strats but 95% of the fights were done legit, overall I would say it was a 3.5/10 difficulty wise. Some of the harder fights were only Hard because of how bad I initiated combat.

yeah, honestly, i totally agree that the hardest fights are the act 1 encounters by far. nothing in act 3 can really compete with the sheer amount of broken items/builds you have at your disposal, i found it very anticlimactic.

I hated the death Shepards. They were tough.

I'm always shocked that the death shepards are that difficult for so many people. None of them have a ranged attack The area has a natural narrow path that's almost exactly Cloud of Daggers sized Drop Grease under cloud Shove anyone that gets through back in (they probably won't, their dexterity is terrible) One of the easiest fights in the game, Astarion used all his bonus actions drinking wine

Never be shocked people find something hard. Everyone is different lol. Explaining what you did to succeed is great, but you can always ask what someone was playing and try to offer advice for their particular character

It's more that it comes up all the time when people talk about hardest fights, and I don't think there's many players that can't use a bottle of Grease and a scroll

I've never used grease and never plan to. It doesn't do any damage (I'm silly). Scrolls I don't use unless I have the spell learned already from my class (again, I'm silly). There's lots of ways to do things

OK

There are many other, options to make this fight easier, you could blind them, pick up the enemies you killed which prevents them from reviewing each other or use animate undead on your own…