Useful Tips and Tricks
You can avoid many fights with a high charisma / persuade character but at the expense of XP and loot, your choice.
Use the world and the environment to your advantage. Example, when you crash you have to face off vs 3 brains in the crashed ship. You could just charge in but it’s a tough fight for 2. But if you look around you notice that there is a barrel leaking in the middle of the room. So I had my sorc cast a lvl 1 cantrip “Illusion” by it which caused all the brains to investigate it, moving around the barrel, then I fired off a firebolt and BEWM, massive damage to all three enemies and the rest of the battle was a cakewalk.
Also in that room is highground which gives you an advantage on attacks.
Another fight i had, there was a mage on the highground and my barbarian couldn’t reach, so I had her throw the body of the dead enemy at the mage which damaged her enough that I could kill her next turn (and was a lot of fun).
Or you could use mage hand (or a stealthed character) to push a box on an unsuspecting head.
There are tons of spells, scrolls and potions + environmental elements that you can take advantage of, so it pays to have a look around and not just charge in.
Advantage on attacks is based on height, line of sight, conditions such as frightened etc. light/dark, if an enemy is immobile etc. These can be improved by spells such as bless and other factors.
You also want to consider position for tactical advantages and spells or effects that can take enemies out for a few turns. Larian love height in this game and so skills that can push can level the playing field.
You can think of scouting ahead and starting a battle with a stealth attack or using your highest initiative party member and then you can position your other members to get an advantage.
If you see a group of enemies, before you engage them:
- Make the entire team sneak.
- Then disconnect the whole group so each character moves individually.
- Get three of your team mates as close as possible to the enemies WITHOUT being detected and have them wait there, possibly standing behind something so if the enemy moves or turn around you got something blocking their view of you
- Have who ever is your tankiest character start combat. When you start combat you will notice, only the guy you started the combat with is in the battle and not your other three team mates.
- When its your turn in combat, dont do anything with that character, instead select one of the three team mates, you will notice they can move freely since they are not in combat.
- Either move closer to the enemy without being detected and get a sneak melee attack in, or hit them with a ranged attack from stealth. Even better if you have a rogue who has a sneak attack melee/range skill that can only be used when in stealth.
- Repeat this with all three characters.
You can take out multiple enemies this way right at the start of combat, making many fights much easier since there’s less enemies to deal with. Some encounters can be completely won before you even finish your first turn in combat with this tactic.
Even in combat, use stealth! I Always go into stealth in combat when I lose line of sight with the enemy. Enemies cant target/attack sneaking characters. Especially my rogue since they can stealth with a bonus move. I dont even attack with my rogue until they stealth first if its possible to sneak in the first place.
With a balanced party it should be easy, even on medium difficulty.
If you are outnumbered, use crown control and area of effect spells. Multiple enemies getting hit at the same time will do the trick. Use the environment for cover and sneaky damage tricks.
Don’t sit around wasting moves trying to heal everybody. It’s not a MMO, you don’t need a dedicated healer. The damage done in this game will always overpower any healing that you can do. Go on the offense, kicking off your battles with sneak attacks. That will give you the advantage.
Use a tank, a ranged unit, and a couple of damage dealers. That includes a Rogue because, unfortunately, like them or not, they are very important in games like these. Inside and outside of combat. A Rogue Assassin will do.
Get better charisma and the skills for it when making a character, and you open up the social interactions. You can explore the goblin camp without a fight as example or disarm pending conflicts here and there. And there is stealth (tricky), which also allows to bypass fights.
Have wizard or sorcerer and cleric on your team.
– Having trouble hiting someone, cast bless with cleric or sleep with wizard.
– Need to hold of some enemies, cast spiritual weapon from cleric, and it even use bonus action so you can cast something else too.
– A lot of small fry enemies swarming you, cast dancing daggers with wizard.
– Annoying caster is bullying you, cast silence (though they can run out of effect area, but you can use that to your advantage too)
In all honesty, the game’s about mitigation. How fast can character A hit enemy B and, if enemy B is attacking character A, how many hits can you sustain before the battle is compromised.
Don’t overlook spells that don’t do damage.
Using spells like sleep or hold person can be the difference between your party dying and your party winning.